Hello, my name is John Kinkade but I actually go by my middle name Tyler. My Dad is also named John as his first name and my mother wasn’t keen on calling me junior, so instead I was always called by my middle name. I grew up in mid Missouri what most people would call the “country” but I always felt like growing up it was a mix of city living and country living. We weren’t necessarily farmers, although we did raise cattle for a few years for meat only, not for a living. We did own a tractor but it was more for general use around the property and not necessarily for livestock. My high school school had a graduating class of over 600 people, which is not a small town vibe sort of school. I suppose I grew up in between the two worlds, I spent nights out in the woods freezing my butt off in a sleeping bag, but also stayed up all night slamming Mountain Dews with my friends playing the newly released game on our original Xbox’s with cables pulled throughout the house to system link them together, that was hitting the shelves called Halo. I guess looking back I was destined to go down an “IT” profession.
After a mediocre finish to high school, emphasis on mediocre, I decided to try and work full time at a steel beam manufacture and go to school full time in the evenings for Computer Information Systems degree. Life has taught me since then this was not a good idea… After two years of schooling and nearly $30k in student load debts, I had nothing to show for it, and a 2.2 GPA. I knew I needed to do something drastic to kickstart myself into doing something. I decided to join the Navy in their Nuclear Propulsion Program, because it sounded cool! This would be one of the best decisions I have ever made to date in my life. I have no doubts in my mind, that if I wouldn’t have left the world I was in at the time, I would have ended up in terrible trouble of some sorts. Decisions of the bad variety were being commonly made in those two years of my life.
After less than a year in the Navy I married my high school sweet heart. We are still married to this day after 16 years. We welcomed four children into our lives during my time in the Navy. 3 girls and one boy, and the boy is the youngest. I was stationed in Charleston, SC for 2 years for schooling, then 5 years in Kings Bay, GA onboard a submarine, then another 2 years after that back in Charleston as an instructor teaching Reactor Theory, before finally separating from the Navy after 9 years. It was a bittersweet separation, as I will always miss the comradery but will never miss the politics of the military. To put this into perspective, I had a Supervisor after the Navy, tell me a story of being stationed down in the south east as a helicopter repair, on a base where there were no helicopters…. for 2 years! That story in my opinion explains how disconnected the “upper brass” (pentagon level leadership) can be from the sailor or infantryman just trying to make it day by day. Furthermore, I have yet to work for another organization that promoted purely based on the writings of a piece of paper, without actually interviewing an individual. This in my opinion is one of the biggest mistakes I saw made, but I digress.
After the Navy I found myself working for Nucor Steel, in one of their mills in nowhere Arkansas. I initally came in as a shift electrician, after 8 months had promoted up to a day electrician, and after another 6 months had promoted up to a lead electrician. Side note, I’ve always found that if you put in just a little more effort than what your job requires, you can stand out so easily. You don’t have to go the extra mile per say, just go the extra 10 feet is all I’m asking! That’s all it takes, because the majority of the people are just going through the motions until the next paycheck.
After 2 years in Arkansas I had the opportunity to transfer up to mid Missouri to help build a brand new steel mill for Nucor, right next to where I grew up. For the next 3.5 years, I pretty much didn’t see my family. Don’t get me wrong, I was making extraordinarily great money, especially for the cost of living for the area, but I was never home. I worked anywhere from 50 to 90 hour weeks with an hour drive each direction, which meant at least another 10 hours of driving maybe 12 – 14 if we worked on the weekends. My final breaking point was on my birthday in 2022. I got home late, my wife was stressed out from also working and having to take care of the kids pretty much by herself for the last 13 years while I was in the Navy and Nucor, so I ended my birthday with a night of reflection of how our lives needed to change.
Insert drastic change number 2! The following Monday after that night I put in my two weeks notice with Nucor. I had at this point already applied and been accepted by OSU but hadn’t started classes yet. I left Nucor with no job, and no idea how I was going to support my family. I had enough money saved for us to last for a few months, but that was it. After a month or so of looking for jobs and applying I got what would be a huge break and great opportunity. I accepted a job at the State of Missouri that was a 75% pay cut from leaving Nucor to get my foot in the door with software development. I was hired on as a associate developer in asp.net C#. I had never developed in C# or MVC or web applications in general. The programming experience I had was all in PLC (Programmable Logic Controllers) while at Nucor, and they are a different beast all together. I was there for only 6 months before being picked up by a private company as a Application Developer in C# asp.net again. I’ve talked to my current supervisor about why he hired me, being so green with no degree, and his response was because you said you found what you wanted to do with your life and it showed. What he meant by this was I often joke around now that it took me 35 years to figure out what I wanted to do in life. And once you find that, the sky is the limit! It has been so easy for my to excel now. I study materials at school at night and then apply them during the day at work.
Since I left Nucor I have become far more connected with my wife and children. I don’t usually miss games or recitals or concerts anymore, I’ve missed enough! We moved houses that was more beneficial to our family, I stopped using all tobacco or nicotine products, and no longer keep alcohol in the house, meaning I’ll have a beer or two once a month instead of 6 a night. I feel like I’ve improved in every facet of my life, because I started filling my glass with the important stuff first, vice trying to fill it with money first. I guess the moral of this about me rant is that, don’t give up, don’t settle, and keep looking until you find that passion that makes getting up and going to work everyday a beautiful morning for the right reasons!
Thanks,
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