Boss leaving

BigTone

I'm 2 months in to my role as a network administrator at a big school. A lot of infrastructure. ~100 switches, 250+ wireless points, vblock, VOIP. All cisco shop. VMware - 100 servers or so. All kind of backups, email archiving, etc.

Watercooler talk is that my "manager" more or less the guy I'm learning everything from. The "Network Manager" will be looking to leave once he gets his 8 years and is vested at the end of the year, but he won't leave until all summer projects are completed. As you can see with the above architecture that leaves me with a lot on my plate and every second of his time I have will be squeezing out knowledge from him.

They've been awesome and are putting me through MCSA/CCNA/apple GSX classes, but I'm wondering... Say hypothetically this does happen in.. September/October. I'll have been at this job for about 6 months give or take. Given the way they have restructured the developers department after a manager left, I don't think I'll be getting another "manager' I don't even know if I'll be getting another coworker. It may all fall on me and then they will leverage a MSP more that they have been using for projects we don't have time for. I'm wondering at this hypothetical point if I have a case to ask for more money.

I don't want to seem greedy but at the same vein I don't want to seem like a push over and just let them **** extra roles on me that 2 of us were supporting without being acknowledged.

I guess I'm just reaching out to the community and seeing how to handle this in the most diplomatic way should/when it occurs.

kiki162

Learn as much as you possibly can. It's hard to predict how people are. Sometimes you try to work for a job knowing someone is leaving, going over and above, and then have management pick someone else. Or you could keep doing what you are doing, and they could pick you, and it happens when you least expect. I think you should steer away from it for now because you are still somewhat new. They may not hire someone, so again it's really hard to say or predict.

Your manager hasn't officially said that he's leaving, so regardless I'd soak in as much as you can regardless of what happens.

pramin

Prove yourself with new responsibilities and duties and then you can make a case for more money.

Nervous Interviewer

How big is your company? This will decide one of the following options: a new manager will come and take this position usually from an external applicant, they will offer it to one of you guys with less pay, or they will force it on someone without any extra pay at all. If it is a smaller company, say for example like one of my past jobs did this a lot and they were at thousand employees. If it is much larger, then expect one of the first two options.

The best advice I can give you is. Learn everything you can and take on as many responsibilities as possible until this person leaves. If you already have already learned everything, ask for even more to the point that you can barely handle it. You want them to offer you that position and no one else, no matter if it offers more or not. Because at that point, you are an asset to the company that will cost them dearly to lose you. That's when you can leverage more pay.