Talking Technicians

S01-E05 Mike came from the Army Rangers

March 19, 2021 Season 1 Episode 5
Talking Technicians
S01-E05 Mike came from the Army Rangers
Show Notes Transcript

Mike started out in the Army Rangers. He went to a Nanotechnology Education Program and landed a job as a technician with a high tech company. Hear how Mike went from the guy who was putting the pepperoni on the pizzas at one o'clock in the morning to completing his engineering degree and moving up at H. B. Fuller - a high tech adhesives company.


The Talking Technicians podcast is produced by MNT-EC, the Micro Nano Technology Education Center, through financial support from the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education grant program.


Opinions expressed on this podcast do not necessarily represent those of the National Science Foundation. 


Join the conversation. If you are a working technician or know someone who is, reach out to us at info@talkingtechnicians.org.


Links from the show:


Dakota County Technical College: https://www.dctc.edu/


H. B. Fuller: https://www.hbfuller.com/


The Micro Nano Technology Education Center (MNT-EC): https://micronanoeducation.org/


Episode Web Page:
https://talkingtechnicians.buzzsprout.com/

Peter 0:03

From MNT-EC, the Micro Nano Technology Education Center, this is Talking Technicians. The podcast about technicians: who they are, what they do, and where they come from. I'm your host Peter Kazarinoff. I teach technicians and Engineers at Portland Community College.


In each episode, you'll meet a working technician and hear their story. That means real interviews, with real technicians, about real jobs. At the end of each episode, you’ll hear actions you can take if you want to be a technician too.


In this episode, you'll meet Mike. Mike works at H.B. Fuller in the Minneapouls / St. Paul region of Minnesota.



Peter 0:50

Mike, welcome to Talking Technicians.


Mike 0:54

Thanks Peter. I’m happy to be here.


Peter 0:56

So tell me about yourself. Where do you live? How long have you been there?



Mike 0:59

I live in Minnesota. I actually bought a house in 2016. I’ve Lived here most of my life when I wasn't in the good military or traveling around, just outside the military. So - probably about 25 - 27 years, oughta, my 40.


Peter 1:15

And where did you grow up and where do you move around when you were in the military?


Mike 1:21

I grew up in the east side of St. Paul, went to the military. I was stationed down in Fort Benning, Georgia. That was pretty much my homebase. Not too much I can talk about that from the unit I was in- Special Operations Army Rangers. Afterwards I bounced around southeast, southwest United States up in Minnesota, but came back to base. And that was about it.


Peter 1:46

And what brought you back to Minnesota?


Mike 1:48

I had a daughter and then the relationship didn’t last, so I became a single parent. 


Peter 1:55

How old is your daughter now?


Mike 1:58

19.


Peter 1:59

19 - Has it been difficult to balance, like, work and family at the same time?


Mike 2:06

Because I was going to school in the middle because of a custody battle and the custody battle  lasted 16 years. She’s in college now in Iowa. 


Peter 2:14

Congratulations. So tell me about where you work. What's your job title and what do you do day-to-day now?


Mike 2:20

I work at H. B. Fuller. And what we are is an adhesives company that services, the marketing and manufacturing for production. So think about, let's say you own a small store like a Cub Foods or a grocery store. We deal with the adhesives that are put on labels, put in the shipping, so everything comes in, it's not broken in transport and it passes all the approvals. There are different adhesives to go into play there. I focused mostly on manufacturing end of it. But we have a lot of different markets. I mean, there's all kinds of things you can do with adhesives between roads and machinery, and seals and food packaging, all kinds of things. What I - go ahead.


Peter 3:02

There's some people who might not think of adhesives as like a high-tech product. How are adhesives high tech?


Mike 3:08

Well, let's say I want something that's going to hold a label on a pop bottle, for instance. This is one of the markets I work with a lot. And you say, OK, I want to stick to the bottle, but it's a chemical. So it's gotta be food safe because we don't want to have people get sick. And it's got to look clean and clear because if I put that on a shelf and it looks brown and crusted or when we think of adhesives like an Elmer's white gloves was just solid blob. There was going to buy that. Nobody wants to - and that's got work. Right. I mean, we're we're not just saying shipping to one area. What if I'm shipping something from California and it's gotta go to New York. They put it on a plane now I gotta deal with humidity and pressure. And if they put it on truck now I gotta go through a desert, gotta go through mountains. Those are a lot of different environmental changes. So there's a lot of factors at play into getting a product and using adhesive there. And a lot of times used ends up being a better option for the supplier or the customer because it can't just put staples on everything, punch holes in containers. Right?


Peter 4:05

And how much do starting techs at H. B. Fuller make? Maybe just like a range if someone's was starting at H. B. Fuller? 


Mike 4:13

Well, it's going to come down to what your experience level is and what your education level is. As I joined age before I was still going for a four-year degree. I had seven years as a contractor for a different company and I had a two-year degree. And when I left my previous employer, I was making around between 15 and 20. And I started at that same level when I joined H. B Fuller. So I had done seven years of doing contract work and putting myself through school at one job. And that's where I started at  H. B Fuller. And since then I'm on salary and I'm at the upper end of the 60 to 80 thousand a year range. 


Peter 4:53

That's great. So how did you become a technician? Originally? You said after your stint in the army, you came back to Minnesota. How did that lead you to become a consultant? And then work at H. B. Fuller?


Mike 5:06

Well, this is going to be a bit of a long story. So I got out of the military. I had a daughter, and I immediately got myself into some trouble. And it's the kind of trouble that follows you around for seven years. So getting gainful employment was extremely difficult. There was a time where making $10 an hour was considered a great job. Pay for me. Bounced around work security. I worked a lot in manufacturing and overnight plants. Try to work that third shift and an extra 25 cent differential. Hopefully they hire me on in 90 days, they do a background check. That trouble comes up again, sorry, we can't hire you, but we could hold you on for another 30 days. So I bounced around a lot. And it took quite a bit to get that record clear because having an exposure causes a lot of money and that requires or seven your wait time. So I was working overnight security. A friend of mine who was in a similar situation, was working in construction and having met the guys there, what I'm going to join construction- well this is right before the housing market started collapsing. When I looked at that and said, Okay, I need to go to school. That's the only way. There's no other way. These jobs aren't paying anything. And I mean, $11.50 an hour is the highest I’ve been paid in six years. So I started going to community college. Enough or off that start small, start with what you can afford. Custody battle starts up. So now I'm splitting up my GI Bill between trying to pay for community college and trying to pay for lawyers. I felt like I was spinning my wheels a bit. A community college, not really getting anywhere. Had gotten a flyer for DCT. So it's a Dakota County Technical College and it's this Nano Technology Program. It says on there: you are going to have to be able to do problem-solving- I can do that. Then you gotta be able to work with machines. Machines don't bother me at all- I can do that. Gotta be able to analyze, whoa, look at problems all time- I can do that. Let's go for it.  Part of the two-year degree required a three month internship at a major corporation, R&D. OK - So I get three months of experience. Well, that three months turned into seven years. That’s how I got it. When I had gone through the internship, I was going through a third party, essentially a skills house, and there's a lot of different terms for it, but essentially it's like a hiring hall or a job finder is a good way to put it. But the third party had gotten in dispute with the people that were actually contracting me because the company wanted to hire me on but they required a four year degree. The contracting service wanted me to charge more. We're going to just stay charged more and they want more money because I had been there so long. So I got in the middle of this tug of war and eventually it was decided that I should be given the option of staying on at the pay rate I was making just over 15 at that point and dropping out of school. Or I don't have a job. While I've got 2 and a half years into my four-year degree, I've got my 2-year. I'm not giving up on school, so I left. And I went back that summer to manufacturing for $8 an hour for three months, 3.5 months.


Peter 8:17

Say tell me about some of the opportunities for advancement. So after DCTC you worked as a tech and then it sounds like you are able to turn that later into working on a four-year degree and changing jobs.


Mike 8:33

Originally when I got my 2-year degree, I continued on as a contractor tech for about a year and a half afterwards. And I was offered the company would say they would hire me on $50,000 starting if I had gotten a four-year degree. So when I went back to school to start this thinking I was going to get a job at this corporation. I've been on for a while. I got - I'm assuming that my two-year degree is going to count towards everything and I only have two years. Well, didn't work out that way because I was going to the University of Minnesota. They want me to start from scratch. Okay. I'll take the hit but I need to get this done. Still fighting the custody battle, still dealing with all these other things, ended up leaving the U of M, went to metropolitan State and they said, Here's your schedule. This is what we can work with. Well, I know I'm jumping around a bit, but I just loved my first company here. I've gone back to manufacturing and after 3.5 months of making $8 an hour, I'm asking myself what am I doing? I should be going and getting my schooling, done, staying in the field that I'm in. So when I went to a different separate contract service and that was Arrow Tech, they put me in to actually go to HB Fuller and the job was funny enough - unloading trucks. Now we're going to have any work in their pilot facility is essentially general labor. So I went into their interview thinking OK, and you're going to go through basic math, how to work in a plant, that kind of things and stuff I've done before. I'm on my way home, I get a phone call, hey, are you done? I figured this meant I didn't get the job. We want you to turn around, go to another interview there. Well, I went to the interview there and because I had gone through and rate-corrected anything that I thought was wrong- They decided to pass me along to the tech service team that was there over needing technicians. I interviewed with three different people that afternoon and I started two weeks later. And right now, still starting at 16 an hour- The deal I made is I go to school full time, but I guarantee 40 hours a week if you give me 24 hour access to the building, they're willing to do it. Two weeks later, they decided they were going to break my contract and hire me on full time. So now Arrow Tech wants to know how that happened because I broke all the accompanying records fast his hire, nine days. So I ended up working with all these different groups. And what it really comes down with is - I was ready to go school and I was almost done with a four-year degree, was I won't say fanatical that pretty resolute and making sure that I'm doing any kind of task. Making sure we're double-checking everything's right. And they needed somebody who had machine experience and actually worked in the field. And it turns out the company I was working for specializes in servicing all those companies and dead-end jobs, quote unquote, I used to work for. 


Peter 11:13

And what was something unexpected about working as a technician once you got out of DCTC?


Mike 11:22

Well, the biggest thing is the background experience, I would say. DCTC who taught me how to work in a lab. But understanding the correlation to what I'm seeing on a benchtop for a problem or how I'm seeing results when I'm working in a lab and how does that correlate to an actual production facility? That comes from me having worked in those production facilities and Arrow Tech and a lot of hiring halls are like this. They see the term R and D. Well, if you have blue collar experience, they think that doesn't matter. Well do a company that's doing R&D, specializes in servicing blue collar customers and helping them with production. So they're kinda shooting themselves in the foot doing it. And I had a long talk with Arrow Tech about this afterwards because they asked me how I got hired on so fast. So I would say do not discount where you're coming from or what fields are changing out of, because those are skills and experiences and correlations that can really take off for you later. 


Peter 12:20

And how could people get in touch or what are some links you'd like to share?


Mike 12:29

I'm on LinkedIn, Mike Agerbeck, last name AGERBECK. Probably one best way to get a hold of me. I still talk to Billie and still have a bit of a presence at Dakota County because that's what allowed me to take those career path and it's taken off. So I feel like I'm obligated to try and support anyone who's following in my footsteps. I know I don't want to make it sound cliche, but I was the guy who was putting the pepperoni pizzas at one o'clock in the morning, staring at the ceiling and asking if there's anything else for life. Now I'm paying for my daughter to go to college. There's a huge disconnect there then I wouldn't have had if I hadn't started down the path and it wasn't the community college that I got me there. It was DCT showing me that there is a different way to go. 


Peter 13:15

So what advice would you give current students or people that want to transition careers just like you did?


Mike 13:21

Well, there's a couple of things they're saying we have in the Rangers and normally it applies to our training, more of a military bent, but I've found that it applies to just about everything that I do. Whether it's at a job, going to an interview, looking at different roadmaps, how I want to try and get to a goal. And that is slow is smooth and smooth is fast - means you don't go rushing in. And then if anything goes wrong, you have to back pedal. And give yourself a little more time to get acclimated to what you're seeing, what you're doing and it doesn't mean that you take forever. I mean, sometimes you can't get around having to take time. My two-year and four-year degree took me almost nine years between the custody battles and not making much of a living. All right. Still got it done. And if I had tried rushing one route here, one route there, could have ended up that I never gone back to school. Right? So slow is smooth, smooth is fast, that's the first one. And the second thing, don't discount what you know. There's a lot of times we say we're changing tracks or we're moving from one group to another, one career path to another. That doesn't mean that that experience you have doesn't matter for anything. You might not find that your current role doesn't put much faith into it. I mean, I have a security clearance with the government. I haven't used it since I left the military. That doesn't mean that I should just discount it, not talk about the fact that I have one. Right? Those kinds of things. Don't discount that. And then I would say the last part is don't be afraid to continue learning. It's not that all I get done with school and then I get my job- I walk in the first day and I don't have to learn anything anymore- That's absolutely wrong. You never stop. I mean, the first thing you're going to get is the company policies and going through their on-boarding process. And this is going to be your mentor, who’s going to show you the ropes around here. Well, you're still learning. We're still going through things. So if you think that once you get done with school, I'm going to get this job and that's the end of the road and I just show up everyday- that's not really what happens. What you do is you get yourself an education. And then you learn how to actually apply that education into day-to-day and there's plenty of room for learning more things. So that would be my three things I telling anybody changing it. 


Peter 15:37

That's great advice. So Mike, I find your story really inspiring and thanks for being on Talking Technicians.


Mike 15:46

I appreciate being here. Thank you.


Peter 15:49

Bye now.


Mike 15:51

Bye.


Peter 15:52

Talking Technicians is produced by MNT-EC, the Micro Nano Technology Education Center, through financial support from the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education grant program. 


Opinions expressed on this podcast do not necessarily represent those of the National Science Foundation. 


Join the conversation. If you are a working technician or know someone who is, reach out to us at info@talkingtechnicians.org. We are always looking out for great guests to share more stories with you.