Dylan is the Marine Credit Union (MCU) Information Technology (IT) Business Applications Administrator. To describe his work, he said he is “in charge of the core system.” He oversees the IT side of things. “I’m loving it,” Dylan shared.
Dylan graduated in May of 2018 with a degree in Management Information Systems and started in October of the same year at the MCU help desk.
“It’s a lot of technology,” he said, “but the training program is dynamic. I learned from a great group of guys.” He said there are basics one needs to know about how the technology works, “but a lot of it is trouble-shooting. It’s almost like doing a puzzle.”
Dylan shared he always liked puzzles. “I do puzzles all the time,” he said. “Trying to fix issues is fun for me.” Even in high school, he said he enjoyed technology and computers and he liked working with people. Dylan shared that he feels “super lucky” to work with his team and that he has learned a lot from everyone.
“A lot of it boils down to everyone having their own niche,” Dylan added about his coworkers. “I think we all do a very good job of knowing who to go to with questions. We are very good at knowing who needs to be involved.”
The world of IT, Dylan said is tough. “Something’s going to break. You have to be flexible and prepared. We are very good at weeding out or forecasting issues we might see,” he added. “We have a good idea of the issues. It comes from experience … knowing how the technology works.”
At the beginning of his Wednesday afternoon interview, Dylan shared that meetings are important to IT. He said prior to COVID, they would learn pretty quickly when there was an issue. “Everyone was in the building,” he explained. “You could hear conversations.” Now that many things are home-based, “Meetings are very important,” he said. “It’s how we collaborate and solve issues.” Prior to COVID, Dylan said they would be in 3 to 4 meetings a week. Now they meet three times a day and Wednesdays all day.
“When COVID hit, I was still at the help desk,” Dylan explained. “We didn’t have anything in place for remote workers. Maybe one or two out of the 400 or 500.” He explained they had a sense of some things they were going to have to do in January and February before COVID hit. “It was a big shock,” he said. “Not a lot of the employees had laptops or had the ability (to work from home). We had to get laptops ready and cell phones and figure out how it was going to work. It was a lot of overtime.”
“A lot of people didn’t like the change,” he continued. “For many weeks we had high volumes of calls/tickets. It was tough.” But, Dylan said that MCU leadership “did a very good job. There were a lot of projects going on and we shifted priorities to get people set up at home and got the kinks worked out. Everyone has been good with all the challenges due to COVID,” he added.
In addition to his career, Dylan has served in the U.S. Army Reserves until November of this past year, completing his eight-year contract. His grandfather and uncles served as well and Dylan said the military was something he was always fascinated with. Dylan lives in the La Crosse area, is an avid hunter, and loves to be outside, “when it’s not 30 below.”
