what should I learn? In my experience most manifestations of hostility stem from fear. I worked in a place where there was an operations team - that team sat in an area just outside the datacenter and had all the monitoring and alarm lights in their faces. I find that good troubleshooting skills and critical thinking is harder to come by. so keeping an eye here ends up being pretty useful for my job a lot of times. This is a huge point that people in here need to try to understand better. Personally, I sum it up a lot shorter.... A good tech takes two things: pride and initiative. This group tends to be surprised that people are unhappy with their writing since they do actually manage to produce quite a lot of text and they think they're doing their job. This is such an important aspect, I was hired 5 years ago as a help desk employee and from day one I profiled myself as much more than that and started to learn all the products we use with AND without help from our System/Network engineers and as a result after a matter of weeks I was off the helpdesk and doing the interesting stuff! You will also take on more networking and sysadmin responsibly as well as learn more of the business side of things. This happens especially if you're very good at the helpdesk thing. Your points are dead on, showing initiative and willingness to learn will move you up. Far, far too many techs do not understand this and get hung up on the right "IT" way to do things or whatever else. One thing I see in some organizations is that they see someone as only a certain level, especially if they stay there a while. 😂, [–]J_de_SilentioTrusted Ass Kicker 10 points11 points12 points 2 years ago* (1 child). I was curious what web server you guys manage here" will be considered someone who is curious and they'll be willing to tell you more about what they know. From what you've said already you're going to do just fine mate. Don’t be discouraged, work out how your strengths can serve you. I do try to learn as much as I Can... Was preparing for comptia a+. The first point, writing, is the reason I really value my degree. [–]Jeffbx 6 points7 points8 points 2 years ago (7 children). The Sysadmins don't get OT so by working only 5 extra hours a week (catching up on projects, cleaning up older tickets, etc.) Community members shall conduct themselves with professionalism. I have made training available at work for my team, but it wasn't until recently that we've set annual training goals for the team, that way they have an external motivator to expand their knowledge rather than being solely dependent upon their internal drive, which will highly vary per person. I did that to the point where I knew the fix or a path to troubleshoot to hand off in escalations. Sometimes hearing the truth is difficult, especially if they see themselves doing some of the things described above. [–]tavernauUser and packet wrangler. It helped no end. [–]cmbezln 1 point2 points3 points 2 years ago (0 children). I'm curious because demanding training is a very blue collar thing to do. If you came to him and asked for help, you’d better make damn sure you told him the issue clearly, and clearly helped him understand not only what you did for troubleshooting, but why you did it and what you were looking for help next. The trend that I see is the smaller the company and the more aligned with tech their business is, the more competent their admins are. I've seen how Enom.com survived a 10gb/s ddos to their DNS vips. [–]caller-number-four 8 points9 points10 points 2 years ago (0 children). Help desk people should always learn, but need to remember not to think something is above them. I wrote a shit ton in those classes, had to concisely and critically communicate complex ideas, and I had a lot of constructive criticism regarding writing style, ability to communicate ideas, and ability to critically evaluate topics. How do you logically think through the problem), Homelab setup? They are paid to do, not to think. [–]doubleUseeHelpdesk and Jr. Sysadmin 5 points6 points7 points 2 years ago (1 child), Whoever puts the most exclamation points after 'URGENTT!!' Serious answer: stay on top of new technologies, don't avoid the cloud out of some sense of paranoia about privacy, if you're not in a technology company (vs office environment) look for jobs at that kind of company. When interviewing I had to stop myself visibly cringing if a candidate immediately answered the CEO without giving it any thought. Someone like you describe will immediately realize the need to prioritize an issue affecting only one user. Network blogs, news and network management articles. I'd suggest it's "Don't come to me with problems, come with solutions." ), Do you really understand where you are in your skillset? One thing I became aware of early was that I was never going to be the engineer I thought i would be and also aspired to be. System administrators where I've worked are pretty much the top as far as technical jobs in the IT department. [–][deleted] 1 point2 points3 points 2 years ago (0 children), [–]oldmanlogan76 1 point2 points3 points 2 years ago (0 children). "In the short run that's a savings, in the long run, we could save more by using best practices now because....". But instead of rolling with this and using it as an opportunity to actually SSH into switches and look at settings, he gets pissed off he doesn't have full admin access. Don't get me wrong, these people are good at the jobs they do, but when it comes to trying to help with things that they haven't worked on before, they seem to attribute symptoms or solutions to things that don't make sense. You need to diagnose and treat the problem, not just what is seen at the surface. Sysadmin 2 points3 points4 points 2 years ago (2 children). MY ACCOUNT. The network is stable . YouTube Known Issues. how do I do it too? 2 points3 points4 points 2 years ago (0 children). It's not the degree itself, in my opinion. Otherwise, the initial ten questions he would ask you were ones that made it apparent that you weren’t doing your job. As we move up in career progression, things I like for are: double check facts from resume or CV by asking questions that force you to demonstrate you understand it (did you lie or overstate yourself? I was given admin access to 0365, something nobody else with my title (admittedly a title I was doing work way above) had. [–]TheGoliard 2 points3 points4 points 2 years ago (1 child). If you ever hear "we need you to stay in x" and you really want to pursue x, that person is not going to help you. Have a BA in English. I'll ask a few users for some input, send a few demo's out and get feedback. I get a lot of techs that simply get a problem and walk over to me and tell me about it. I look at my old group now and it's the same 4 senior SA's who are extremely overworked and 100 contractors. Oddly, while I agree with you from a sysadmin context, I have seen otherwise when I approach management from a Solutions Architect context. I just finished a master's program whose slogan is "delivering business value through IT." [–]devonnull 1 point2 points3 points 2 years ago (0 children). However, other people on the team have not utilized those free resources. Often times if something is concisely written and presented to upper management/your team as a plan, it'll have to be explain in different ways to different people. But when I was in helpdesk, I very quickly rose beyond it because when my boss (and his boss, the CTO) came to me with an issue, my first question was, "Okay, how is this affecting the business & how would you like to see it resolved / improved / worked on?" We have windows Admins with almost 10 years of experience that refuse to attempt powershell without training. They only care how it will either make the company more money or save money. My CIO and IT manager see it as a waste of time if I don't at least articulate the business impact. Now I'm biased but go the linux route, set up a hypervisor like proxmox and just deploy and configure stuff, deploy containers, deploy VM's, get networking right, deploy a reverse nginx proxy, learn kubernetes/docker, learn a configuration management tool, there's tons of things to do. You need someone who knows what their doing to critique your writing and you need to write often. [–]vmeverything 2 points3 points4 points 2 years ago (1 child), TL;DR Im bored today and Im going to write my monthly cranky bitchfit, [–]joeyxlStudent 1 point2 points3 points 2 years ago (0 children). WWE Network Help. [–]abc123def456789 35 points36 points37 points 2 years ago (3 children). Admin showed you how to connect to the Cisco voice router and run some show commands? If you can't seem to get a leg up, improve your attitude. Im no hiring manager but I would think Desktop support roles look better on a resume then only helpdesk. And it doesn't even have to be outside learning, either. The number of helldesk guys who "Totally wanted to move up" but also completely refused to do some self learning is amazing. [–]BBizzmann 2 points3 points4 points 2 years ago (2 children). [–]Macmula 122 points123 points124 points 2 years ago* (7 children). I for one did not learn about WLC's or something like that for example, yet it pretty much always is a p1 when one goes down. I worked help desk for about a year or two before becoming an admin. Learn more about the world's leading VPN service. If there's no business value, IT is pointless. Most are just cattle, phone jockeys reading from kbase articles and would never see the salary increase external hires get even if they got bumped up. Rykker, fantastic post! Somedays it pays to have a good reputation in the industry... Minutes before Trump left office, millions of the Pentagon’s dormant IP addresses sprang to life. We got to a point a while back where we had a 2nd line queue 30-40 tickets long stretched over three of us. Sometimes there are posts about enterprise networking type hardware and software, a lot of stuff I usually dont deal with. Without a foundation to build on, an org is going to have really inconstant delivery overall, simply because they can't agree at the most basic level what needs to be done first. Mine was answering phone calls till my ear falls off, take lunch, have my other ear fall off, rinse and repeat the next day. Yet they're the same ones who get annoyed when their co-worker who took initiative to learn on their own is promoted ahead of them. So I'm wondering if this demand to be trained goes along with the people who didn't go to college. I think my community college does a pretty decent job at planning courses for the networking focus, but I think it could be a bit better. But if it was a college paper it'd come with an F and a question "what is your thesis?". We might have had one or two people with an infrastructure egineer title or something like that but that was rare. [–]R0B0T_jones 8 points9 points10 points 2 years ago (4 children). On projects where I need to travel and most hours are billable I can far surpass the going rate of a sysadmin. There are obvious items that are looked at for specific levels, however there are some items that I look at for all levels: What have you done on your own to increase your technical capabilities? I've been lucky in that my employer let me implement sccm/jamf across continents, am in charge of the AD/group policy, implemented 802.1X/PKI, become decently fluent in powershell, etc. There are times where I've made a hiring decision based on more of the above than current technical skill sets, even though there was a pretty good gap between the two technical skill sets. I'm very lucky and work for a company where technical people can keep growing career-wise if they're willing to take on more responsibility, but very few places are set up like this. I've been in interviews, but between being "Helpdesk" and not having "corporate level" experience with a slew of technologies, I'm discarded. Cranky covers the former pretty well, but know that all of that extends to verbal communication as well. /S. [–]FyzzleSr. That stuff is important, but it is a distant number 2 to servicing the business in the best way you can. TECHNICAL SUPPORT. Are my future certifications really worthless? Plus, we’ll show you how to do these things, too. i work at my own pace and i hardly ever put in more than 35 hours a week..... 2. Don't take me out of what I'm doing to hold your hand step by step on how to handle a help desk call when you've been here for a year. Based on all your posts here, you see like far too much of a "cranky" jackass to spend time developing someone and cast them aside as soon as they stumble a little bit. The “how do I learn XYZ?” vs “I was messing with XYZ and here’s what I got working” really hits home. [–]caller-number-four 1 point2 points3 points 2 years ago (0 children). This is how I've doubled my pay in three years and am the only person on that team that made it into the admin level world. The majority of positions being hired for (at least where I am) are senior. This is a really interesting perspective, i haven't really thought of it that way. A known ticket-passer isn't going to move up. Rocking the boat should be avoided. What would you advise? We use cookies on our websites for a number of purposes, including analytics and performance, functionality and advertising. More appreciation could very well mean better money, which may go a long way to keeping you happy. I've had the displeasure of looking through the course syllabi for IT degrees at a number of universities and it boggles my mind at what a shotgun approach these programs take. As a graduate of Programmer Analyst, Network Systems Technology, Computer Science, and Business Administration who is making under 40K because there are no IT/CS jobs in this city and the few jobs there are require a decade of experience and extremely specific knowledge, this hits sooo close to home. First step is finding a job willing to actually train me (I'm really good at hearing back but also really good at being told 'we want more experience sorry'). [–]BBizzmann 2 points3 points4 points 2 years ago (14 children). [–]scotchtape22Netadmin 2 points3 points4 points 2 years ago (3 children). One is a WAP acting up. Initiative can be a little bit of a double edged sword, but it never hurts to ask to do something that may be of benefit or help to the company. I went from helldesk to JR admin in under two years mainly by sticking my fingers in everything. I don't just mean Windows or Linux system admin, either -- network or firewall or telecom or email/chat etc are all specialized fields you can make a career at. It has been my experience that someone who takes their own personal self development seriously and has excellent soft skills will pass the other person up in performance and ability to deliver solid solutions. I think a degree may not necessarily be a good indicator for this. [–]timallen445 0 points1 point2 points 2 years ago (2 children). Later this became a job as a pre-sales engineer at a network services/ data centre company. I hear people frequently expecting formalized training for something they can Google. They address technical issues as needed, providing high levels of customer service. [–]Flakmaster92 1 point2 points3 points 2 years ago (0 children). Might want to let them know ahead of time though. [–][deleted] 0 points1 point2 points 2 years ago (2 children). Employers laugh at homelabs. the help desk technician is tasked with triaging the issue. Fucking retards. I still haven't fully automated my personal website deployment. I wasn't blaming them. This is the only thing I really largely disagree with. [–]moofishiesStorage Admin 9 points10 points11 points 2 years ago (1 child). These are the people I see sitting in helpdesk during downtime when there’s no calls coming in who are sitting on their phones or browsing the web (which itself is just a general warning sign of immaturity and lack of work ethic that I’ve raised to my manager before but was told it was a petty concern. (IT changes quickly, you need to be able to adapt), SOFTSKILLS!!! If they truly love tech they will tell you everything and maybe show you. Setting up firewall rules and securing your lab? [–]scotchtape22Netadmin 2 points3 points4 points 2 years ago (0 children). Oh yeah I remember stumbling into one of those threads before now that I think about it.. Its strange because most of the large Enterprise places I've worked at or applied for actually require a bachelor's degree for higher level IT roles. All are fairly young, have less experience than me, and IMO are no more accomplished at their previous position at Help Desk or another Tier 2 position than I am. Once you've proposed (and explained) the 'correct' solution from an IT perspective, your job is done. Those people are the ones that eventually break away from help desk. There's nothing to read. "+" level certs are worthless. Have tried to do all the above points that you bring up ... with success in all. So many people jump in and argue about this because they made the jump without the degree and resent the possibility that its lack is holding them back. He complains because he dosent get any extra money, also because I won't pay for his training (will pay for certs). When there is an opportunity for that person to move up, you can bet I'm going to remember that about them. Click here to learn more. Few folks outside of IT care about the speeds and feeds of the new hardware or software you're proposing.