From Y2K to today: A career reimagined

When Patty Hakala talks about her early days in tech, she does it with a spark. She remembers the morning of December 31, 1999 vividly: “I was up at 4:00 a.m. with the rest of my team to check on some of our international customers weathering the changeover to 2000,” she said. “I started the day with Y2K and ended it having a baby.”

Patty looks back on that moment as both a milestone in her early engineering career and the start of a meaningful chapter at home. She chose to step away from the field to raise her daughter, confident that she would return when the time was right. The industry evolved rapidly during those years, as tech always does, but Patty never saw that as a barrier. When she was ready to re-enter the workforce more than a decade later, she approached the challenge with determination, curiosity, and the same problem-solving mindset that first drew her to engineering. 

Patty had an engineering degree, but she knew that wouldn’t be enough. “The things I knew ten years ago don’t even apply anymore,” she said. So in 2014, she rebuilt her technical foundation from scratch. Armed with free software and stacks of library books, she taught herself the “new age of technology”, which included virtual machines, UNIX, and Linux systems administration.

Over the next eight years, Patty earned her security clearance, deepened her training, and steadily worked her way back into the industry she loved. That journey ultimately led her to Centil in Colorado, where she joined the team six months ago as a Systems Engineer. 

Today, Patty manages the entire infrastructure for Project Forge, supporting virtual computers and ensuring that critical systems stay connected to satellites. She keeps operations running smoothly, maintains security, and makes sure the technology behind the scenes is always ready for the mission. 

Her path back into tech wasn’t linear, easy, or guaranteed, but it was hers. And she’s quick to offer advice to anyone trying to reenter the field or start fresh. 

“Never stop learning,” Patty said. “The tech field is like being on an escalator, it’s going down, and if you don’t keep learning you won’t be able to step up.” 

Her story proves that stepping up is always possible, even after years away. Continuous learning isn’t just her philosophy; it’s the reason she’s here.