Have you ever thought about changing your career path? Would you ever leave a long, successful career to follow your dreams in a completely different field?
Well, that’s exactly what Ioannis Gkourtzounis did when his career journey took an unconventional turn from sales to IT.
Ioannis, now a successful Senior DevOps engineer, wanted to share the experience and knowledge he gained during his career transition with those who are just starting out in the IT industry. With the help of Pumble, Ioannis created a community that guides newcomers through the challenges of the IT world and connects people of similar interests from all over the world.
We reached out to Ioannis and talked about his motivations and achievements as well as the challenges he encountered during his transitional period and about his experience building an IT community.
We also talked about his experience with Pumble, where Ioannis shared:
- How he found Pumble,
- What his favorite Pumble features are,
- What sets Pumble apart from other communication tools, and
- Who he would recommend Pumble to.
Let’s dive in.
- Ioannis chose Pumble to create his online IT community because it offered everything he needed for free.
- The stand-out feature for Ioannis is Pumble’s unlimited free chat history.
- Ioannis and his community mostly use channels to communicate, with various channels for different topics.
- They also communicate via direct messages and threads.
- For Ioannis, Pumble serves as a platform for sharing knowledge and building a community of like-minded people.
Table of Contents
Introduction to Ioannis: His career path
Ioannis Gkourtzounis is a Senior DevOps engineer, with a particular interest in Kubernetes, CI/CD, and Cloud Native technologies. However, that wasn’t his first area of expertise.
As Ioannis puts it, his career path was a bit unconventional:
“My career path was kind of strange. The reason is that everything seemed good at first, but there were some hidden obstacles. I started working in the sales industry, getting to know many people and creating meaningful connections with customers and people in my work. But this was like a temporary dream. Real life kicked in, and I found myself in a difficult spot when that company let me go.”
But, Ioannis took this opportunity to change careers and enter into the world of IT. He went out of his comfort zone in his pursuit of a new challenge:
“I decided to do a U-turn and I entered the IT industry. I started working as a Quality Assurance Engineer. This allowed me to acquire the skills I needed to evolve. I gained important technical and theoretical knowledge and I went on to a CI/CD specialist role. Now, I am a successful DevOps Engineer, specializing in containers and Kubernetes. I can say that being inside my comfort zone when working in sales was a hidden obstacle that prevented me from working in IT — something that I always wanted but never dared to chase.”
A difficult decision that paid off in the end
The transition wasn’t easy, and Ioannis had to give up many things he had already grown accustomed to in order to pursue his dream:
“I went to a college that was essentially a department of the University of Northampton in my country. I had to devote myself 100% in order to get a BSc in Computing, so I moved back to my parent’s house and studied for the next few years without going out or hanging out with friends. I wanted to gain knowledge and be the best, so I decided not to work — just dive into studying.”
In the end, his hard work paid off. Ioannis earned his degree in Computing and went on to develop an app. He also had the opportunity to present his work publicly.
These experiences allowed Ioannis to enter the QA field:
“After 2 years, I got my bachelor’s degree in Computing and developed a web app and an android application about an electric vehicle management system for my dissertation project. This turned into a publication and I presented my work at the Smart Agents conference in Bergen, Norway. I also earned 2 ISTQB certifications that allowed me to enter the Quality Assurance field more easily.”
Ioannis’s success was a result of his hard work and devotion. It’s also a testament to his passion for the IT field.
What challenges has Ioannis faced in his professional life?
Switching career paths often comes with challenges — which is why we were interested in hearing about the obstacles Ioannis encountered in his path.
Challenge #1: Picking an area of interest
The first challenge Ioannis faced when he made the switch to IT was deciding which area of the field interested him the most.
Doing freelance work helped him get a better understanding of the different roles he might want to take:
“The biggest challenge when starting to work in the IT field is that the IT field seems like a massive forest — you don’t know where to start and you don’t know where you are going.
The first thing to do is choose an area that interests you most. After a short period of doing some development projects for remote customers via Upwork while studying, I earned my ISTQB certifications. These proved valuable because they gave me a very good theoretical understanding of the processes inside a Scrum development team, the role of Quality Engineers and Test Automation Engineers.”
Challenge #2: Keeping up with technology
Ioannis is always looking for ways to expand his skills and improve, so when he encountered a challenge in the form of an unfamiliar technology, he took it in stride.
The pivotal moment in his career happened when his company at the time sent him to a conference in Lisbon. This was the time he discovered Kubernetes, which later became his area of expertise:
“While working in Munich for a year as a Senior QA Engineer, my company booked me a ticket for ‘DevOps World 2019’ in Lisbon. This was a pivotal moment in my career. I found out about Kubernetes and how it can be used to manage containerized applications.”
Instead of viewing the unfamiliar technology as a problem, Ioannis accepted the challenge. The newfound knowledge inspired him to study and evolve further.
Ioannis worked on expanding his skills for the next couple of years, and eventually moved on to a DevOps role:
“The next step was to move to a DevOps role. For the next 2 years, I devoted myself to studying after work, in order to earn 3 very important certifications for Kubernetes:
- CKAD (developer),
- CKA (administrator), and
- CKS (security specialist).
The knowledge I gained allowed me to pass technical interviews and, since then, I have worked on many Kubernetes-related projects as a DevOps Engineer. I think the message here is to always strive to evolve.”
Challenge #3: Remote vs hybrid mode of work
Another challenge for Ioannis was picking between remote and hybrid work models.
In his experience, remote working often can’t compare to face-to-face interaction and real-time communication. His current model of work is four days in the office and one day remotely.
“At this point, I must say that I am a fan of on-site working. It is clear that, in the last 5 years, the product quality of remote work companies has dropped significantly, thus they had to lay off a lot of people. Quality and high-value software always come from co-located small teams, with members that truly communicate and trust each other. Day-to-day and face-to-face communication is really important to me. So, I now work 4 days in the office and 1 day remotely each week. And I think this is a good balance.”
Ioannis believes in the power of real-life communication, the safety, and trust that grows within teams in the office:
“Remote work is good, but it’s not always a substitute for real-life teamwork. In the office, your coworkers are sitting right behind you and you can ask them anything at any time. When working fully remotely you can send a message, but the reply might come hours later.”
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How did Ioannis discover Pumble?
After switching careers and going through the transition period, Ioannis felt that he had gathered a lot of knowledge and experience that he wanted to share.
He came up with the idea to help others who are just starting their IT journey by creating a community where they can share experiences and ideas.
“The reason that I use Pumble is that I wanted to create a community to share my knowledge and help people entering the IT field. It’s likely they will have many of the same questions I had. Let’s say that newcomers can see the big forest but they don’t know where the small trails may lead them.”
In his search for the perfect tool that will help him guide others through the forest that is the IT field, he found Pumble:
“I was searching for an easy-to-use platform for my needs. I was thinking about a Slack alternative — a platform that can be free to use as I am starting out. My research showed that Pumble was the only platform that offered me the following:
- Easy to set up a community and manage users,
- Easy to start using by downloading an app and using it just like Slack — no need to learn new menu items or options, and
- Allows the history of all messages while being 100% free.”
After careful consideration, Ioannis decided to use Pumble as his platform for an online IT community.
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To find out more about the ways you can share information in Pumble, follow the link below:
How Pumble helped Ioannis to build an IT community
Ioannis had two goals in mind when he started thinking about creating a community — sharing knowledge and bringing people together:
“The goal was to:
- Have an easy way to manage an online community,
- Share my experience working in the IT field, and also
- Bring people together so they can share their advice and experiences.”
As Ioannis testifies, Pumble has proven to be a great tool for him and his community:
“My experience so far has been great, most notably because:
- Setting up was easy and quick,
- The user administration section is easily visible in the web version, and
- The mobile app is fast, reliable, and stable.”
After the quick and easy setup, Ioannis started sharing the news with his new community:
“I set up an administrator account, a community, added my channels, and started sharing the community to LinkedIn. The goal for me is to bring together as many people as possible, offer help, and also have them help each other.”
What are the advantages of Pumble over other communication tools?
During his research, Ioannis found that Pumble was the only tool that offered all the features he needed for free.
Ioannis believes that, when you’re trying to build a community, accessibility is crucial:
“Pumble was the only platform that allowed me to start a community 100% free while offering chat history to all users. Slack and every other similar tool that I tested, required a paid subscription for this feature. When you’re starting a new community, you want it to be free. But it only makes sense to start free with a platform like that when the chat history is included in the free plan.”
So, thanks to the free plan in Pumble, Ioannis was able to create a community where everyone had access to all of the shared knowledge. What’s more, the entire community had no problem using the platform because it’s intuitive and user-friendly:
“As I’ve mentioned earlier, it was easy to set up, it is easy to manage users and use the chat functionalities because it is just like Slack — everyone already knows how to use it.”
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What are Ioannis’s favorite features of Pumble?
The accessibility and ease of use were what drew Ioannis to try Pumble, but we wanted to know which features made him stay.
Ioannis highlights these features of Pumble as his favorite and most useful:
- Channels,
- Direct messaging, and
- Threads.
“It is very easy to see different channels, post your questions, or send a private message to someone. Pumble saves all chat history, and that is a great feature for us. I would say that channels, direct messaging, and threads are the most useful features. We don’t use this as a traditional remote collaboration platform, but more as a community tool that allows easy communication between all of us.”
During our chat about his favorite way of communication in Pumble, Ioannis discovered a feature he wasn’t yet aware of — video calls:
“We mostly use chats, direct messaging, and threads. As a matter of fact, I did not know that someone could use video calls from within the Pumble app. We will surely try it!”
💡 Pumble Pro Tip
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Who would Ioannis recommend Pumble to and why?
Although Pumble is primarily used as a business communication tool, it can serve as a platform to build communities, with Ioannis and his IT community as an excellent example.
“We don’t use Pumble as a collaborative tool for remote working with colleagues. I know that this is what Pumble was made for, but it fits our use case perfectly as an online community platform.”
We asked Ioannis if he would recommend Pumble to others wanting to start their own communities. In his opinion, they don’t need to look any further:
“I would recommend Pumble to anyone starting a new online community. There is no need to go with a paid plan or a different tool since all you need to get started is already included in the Pumble free plan. It is also a great opportunity to test your idea and see if your online community can grow or not, without paying for each user just to have access to the chat history. If your community grows and you need more features, then you can move on to a paid plan.”
Therefore, Pumble has everything you need to successfully build an online community for free.
Future plans for Ioannis’s IT community
Ioannis is dedicated to his goal of helping people new to the IT world. His IT community offers newcomers everything they might need to get a head start on their new careers in the IT world:
“The objective is to gather as many people as possible and be helpful to each other. Everyone entering the IT field can benefit from a community like ours.
We have channels for:
- Career paths,
- IT certifications,
- Interview preparations,
- Job opportunities,
- Learning resources,
- Mentorship, and
- Resume reviews.”
With the help of Pumble, Ioannis strives to help those who are just starting out:
“Our community is ideal for the ‘freshers’ in the IT field and for people who want to get in. These people are already aware of the huge amount of options the IT field offers, but they don’t know where to start. This community is the perfect space where people can help each other and offer advice. Pumble provides us with what we need to communicate directly with a lot of people from all over the world.”
Conclusion: Pumble is more than a business communication app
Following your dreams can be an unpredictable and scary journey. However, we hope that Ioannis’s story has inspired you to make that change, take that untraveled path, and pursue your dreams, because it’s worth it.
Ioannis’s journey shows us that commitment and passion can take your life and career from good to great.
Furthermore, sharing the knowledge and experiences you’ve acquired along the way makes it that much more meaningful. With the help of Pumble, Ioannis has built an online community dedicated to helping those who are just starting out in the field of IT and who have the same questions and concerns that Ioannis himself once had.
Ioannis and his IT community show how Pumble can be a versatile tool, useful for more than just professional communication — it can be a platform where people can gather, learn, and support each other.
The parting words from Ioannis perfectly reflect his own journey, as well as Pumble’s potential for growth:
“Be strong and always strive to evolve!”
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If you relate to Ioannis Gkourtzounis’ customer story — try Pumble yourself.
