Jacob Poot
Currently: working with a farming business in England on data integration and a cybersecurity assessment.
Twelve years in IT, ten of them at the same company: OGD, a Dutch IT services provider of 1,300 people. I started as a junior and worked through most of the organisation.
Three of those years were in Totaalbeheer: the department that provides IT management to OGD's client companies. Several clients at once, one day a week each, on site, responsible for their entire IT function. Different sectors, different sizes, different messes. It is exactly what I do now, and it is where I learned that the answer is almost never a product.
After that I moved to OGD's own IT and helped build it from the ground up. A team of four, serving 1,300 people across five sites. First hands-on, then as team lead over 35 people in four specialist teams, and as product owner. I left for two years of consultancy, including a cloud migration for one of the largest health insurers in the Netherlands. Then they asked me back to run, as IT Manager, the environment I had helped build.
Four people for thirteen hundred users is about 325 each. That worked partly because it was an IT company (those users solve a lot themselves) and partly because the organisation was right: standardisation, documentation, and processes nobody had to work around. The second half transfers, and it is exactly what I now sell.
And I have not become one of those managers who stopped opening a terminal. Seven-plus years of hands-on systems administration sits underneath all of it, in a 24/7 high-availability estate. I read the configuration myself. Suppliers notice.
That environment was certified to ISO 27001 and ISAE 3000. I built the controls as a systems administrator and then spent five years watching whether they were genuinely being followed, which is a different and much harder job than writing them. It is also where I learned that a control nobody performs is worse than no control, because it produces a document that says you are safe.
Too big to do IT on the side. Too small to hire someone for it full-time. That gap is where I spend my week.
- 2022 – 2026IT Manager, OGD ict-diensten — the environment I had helped build, 1,300 people, 5 sites
- 2020 – 2022Consultant, BAUHAUS ArtITech — including a cloud migration for one of the largest health insurers in the Netherlands
- 2016 – 2020Team lead and Product Owner — 35 people across 4 specialist teams, OGD
- 2014 – 2019IT trainer — hardware, networking, Windows Server Management
- 2014 – 2018Systems engineering — VMware, Veeam, SQL, Azure, Microsoft 365
Those OGD roles ran alongside each other rather than one after the other. I was teaching while administering systems, and later while leading teams and running a product portfolio.
12 Microsoft certifications listed as active on my Microsoft transcript, with no expiry date, including MCSE: Cloud Platform & Infrastructure and MCSD: Azure Solutions Architect. Microsoft retired both programmes in 2021; certifications already earned remain. Transcript on request. Cisco CCNA and Citrix (2014–2017). Former Microsoft Certified Trainer. Dutch and English.
On working remotely: I did the same while employed: eight months at a distance, then back in the same job. The thinking, the reporting and the supplier management travel fine over a video call; the on-site week is for what genuinely needs a room.
I also teach, and I still enjoy it more than almost anything else I do. Microsoft mostly, but soft skills too: I hold a bachelor's degree in social pedagogical care work, which is where I learned to guide people before I learned to manage systems.