What next? Seeking Guidance System Admin Goal

Hello my TE brothers!

Let me say thanks first for all the advice in the past. I was able to accelerate my career from Help Desk to Junior System Admin/Desktop support in a little under 2 years. Now I am back seek more guidance so here is the low down...

I work for a small company with about 65 users and 25 servers. The only IT people consist of my boss, 3 programmers and myself. Not much training was provided by my boss but I am a quick study and self learner. The main issue is that there is not a lot to do as in Administration work. Everything pretty much runs itself and I find myself mostly doing desktop support. I am at the point where I don't think I am learning to do real system administrative work. I am 1/3 done with my 2012 MCSA that the company will reimburse me for and that's cool but if I never get to use the skill then what good is it.

Now to the point of the post. I need guidance on what skills a System Admin should have that's not covered in the MCSA. I don't know a lot of tech people so TE is my source for whats going on out there. When I say skills I mean core skills. I want to look for a real System Admin job that is challenging when I am done with my MCSA but I am lost determining what skill are essential. I don't want to be ill-prepared for that next job. It sucks because this company is great but I know I wont grow here but would love to retire working here.

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100k

like powershell scripts or do I need to learn some other language?

ThomasITguy

Learn to eat a bag of cheetos per day.... the puff ones... drink plenty of water, and sleep 8 hrs if you can... run a mile in the morning and dance at night.... lol jk

But powershell will help you out a ton! Im learning it myself in prep for my MCSA!

bgold87

Powershell is the first thing I would be working on. Getting a good understanding of storage, virtualization, even some basic networking and firewall knowledge will be beneficial. Learn about all the features that are available with the new OS's. I work mainly with Windows, and almost every person I see with 2012 and soon to be 2016 is only using the features that 2008 had. If you have a good handle on that, then you can help IMPROVE the infrastructure and help folks do their job functions easier.

As soon as I feel bored at work and understand that my learning has become non-existent it's time to go. You said you are a junior admin, so highlight all your main sys admin skills on you resume and leave off most of the desktop stuff you are doing and look for a more advanced position that will challenge you. Or perhaps learn about some new things that you think could help your current company. If you're out talking to end users and helping with the desktops, then I'm sure you hear all their complaints. Use that as leverage and get experience putting in these new features, equipment, etc.

Good Luck!

100k

Thanks for all the advice. So it looks like powershell is next for me after the MCSA.

Mike7

Depending on the environment, some of the new features you learned in MCSA 2012 may be applied to your work environment to improve productivity.

Group policies? Using WDS to install OS across network? Previous versions/shadow copies for keeping snapshots on your windows file server? What about search service? Disk depublication to free up disk space? SRP or Applocker to prevent users from running malware? Just some ideas.

100k

Took all the advice and have improved a good bit from last year. Got a nice raise and a 8% bonus. That's great and all but honestly this job is not challenging but the pay is great. My main concern is that there is not much to do and I feel if and when I leave here I will be way behind in skills and unable to command a similar pay. I know if I left to find a new more challenging and rewarding job I will need to take almost a 7k pay cut...

The company investment is in the software side and I am frequently relegated to desktop duties 60% of the time. I want to 100% move away from desktop support but this pay is so nice. Started the ICM course with SCC with the hope I can get some VMware gig after I cert up. Something inside me keeps telling me I need to leave and go somewhere that actually has a team of folks I can learn from and develop more but when I see my pay every week...Anyone been in this position before. It eats at me everyday almost like "you are wasting time" and we all know how valuable resource is.

Quench24

You gotta look into your own psyche and decide what energizes you.

If you want to develop more and use those skills on a daily basis, leave, get a new job.

If you like the money/your lifestyle, stay at current job while learning new skills.

100k

Thought about it long and hard (that's what she said). Going to start getting ready so as soon as I finish my vcp my resume goes out. I want to become an engineer and it wont happen here but I get paid like one. First world problems...