My name is Derrick Milling and I’m the IT client support manager at USPS headquarters in Washington, DC.
My primary responsibility is providing IT support for the Postal Service’s leaders. My team assists about 65 people, including officers, vice presidents and their direct reports.
I usually begin my day at 6:30 a.m., but I’m never truly offline. I monitor everything and I have to be on top of system issues.
IT has been part of my life since I was 10 years old and my parents took me to see a Cray Supercomputer. It was the size of a warehouse. I said to myself, “I like that.”
I was a military brat. My mom was U.S. Navy and my dad was U.S. Army. I grew up in Germany. After I graduated from college, I joined the Army.
I became a Green Beret and I learned to speak Arabic. But even when I was in combat, I was still a computer geek.
My introduction to the Postal Service was as a contractor at the technical solutions center in Raleigh, NC. I became a career employee in 2010.
If you see me at headquarters, I’m the guy with the service dog. His name is Crypto.
I’m often running cables or pushing a cart of computers. There is always something to do. There is always something to monitor. There’s always a new project. I love it.
“On the Job,” a column on individual employees and their contributions to the Postal Service, appears regularly in Link.
