Getting to know datacenter employees: Nur Uguz
Microsoft’s success depends on our people. We are proud to introduce some of the talented folks in your community who work in our global datacenters. Discover what inspired them to seek a career in the tech industry, the different pathways they pursued, and what a day in the life of a datacenter employee looks like.
Introducing Nur Uguz
Senior Datacenter Technician
Sydney, Australia
Employee since 2020
Early days
Growing up Nur had several role models, including her mother, grandmother, and five aunties who were all very strong and very different from each other.
When Nur was about ten years old, her aunty worked in a computer store and brought a computer home and Nur was hooked. One day her aunty said to improve the computer’s performance Nur should clean and defragment the disks, then delete unnecessary files, and Nur took her advice. Seeing all these files that didn’t mean anything to her, Nur decided to delete a whole bunch of operating system files… and the computer failed to reboot.
This was Nur’s first lesson that began her journey of trying to understand computers, how they worked and how to fix them.
The path to technology
After high school, Nur started at a computer repair shop right across the road from her home, soldering motherboards. She enjoyed repairing them, but knew she needed to gain some customer service experience and applied for a role where one of her aunties worked. One day she stayed late to help two IT team members deal with a virus that had infected all the machines on the network. The next day the CEO offered her a job in IT, which led to a career in service desks.
To enhance her skills and experience, Nur moved to different organizations, but remained a service desk analyst. She finally realized that she needed to specialize in an area rather than being a generalist, and so applied for a Datacenter Technician role at Microsoft.
Nur initially was hesitant due to her lack of datacenter specific experience. She came to realize that she was the roadblock in her own career; having the right mindset is more important than knowledge and skills that can be acquired on the job.
Superpowers
Nur is highly curious and has always solved the most difficult problems by talking to people. She tries to find the right person to help and ask for their opinion and ideas. This allows her to apply their experiences, expertise, and skillset to issues affecting her team, which has been extremely helpful throughout her career.
A day in the life
As a senior datacenter technician, Nur starts her day by checking the ticket queues, emails, and chats to prepare with the team for the challenges ahead. They have a daily safety discussion and assess any hazards they may encounter throughout the day.
Nur’s favorite aspect of work is the autonomy and sense of achievement provided by resolving challenging issues.
Favorite childhood food
Manti (Turkish ravioli)
Nur’s favorite childhood food is manti, a Turkish ravioli type dish. Her grandmother made this dish on special occasions throughout Nur’s childhood. This dish always reminds Nur of her grandmother and the home she grew up in. If she is far from home or missing her family, no matter where, Nur will try to find a plate of manti to take her back home.
.
.
.
.
.
.
