Cloud sysadmin researching positions without on-call support (or minimal)

thekid007

Hi all,

It's been some time since I've posted here - I tried searching the threads here but could not find much regarding the advice I am seeking. The past 5 or 6 years, I got more experience being a Sysadmin. 

I was a Linux/VMWare analyst for about 2 years, had a short stint with a company for ~6 months in Devops, then the past 3 years I've been doing Cloud support (AWS, a bit of Linux, Azure, Windows, some bash and powershell but not a whole lot). Unfortunately the current place only been able to put to use some devops tools recently.

Here's the deal, my real passion is music. I like IT but I consider more a skill to put food on the table. The previous few positions have had on-call rotations. It's not that bad (2 weeks every 4 weeks), but I know I am the kind of person I like having my evenings and weekends free.

I have considered developing into more senior linux/devops positions (I love linux), but I know that is going to come with more on-call duties. I hate on call, and my body doesn't handle it well.

I am wondering what kind of roles anyone may able to suggest regarding IT roles with minimal/less on call roles. Does that even exist in Ops? Should I try to go more into Dev? 

My current company is involved in the accounting industry, so I've considered something like being an IT auditor - but I'm wondering if anyone has first hand experience with it and whether there is a lot of on-call with it.

Appreciate any advice!

scasc

With IT Auditing in an accounting firm (depending on which one - big 4, top 10 etc) normally you have busy season which is roughly from Sept-Jan where the workload is manic. Again, depends on sector you have been deployed to, but hours can be quite unsocial during this period (especially if working in FS, have heard Corporates better). After this season hours pretty standard. You may not like working in this area as you are hands on so ask yourself before committing to this, can you see yourself writing reports, defining gaps to standards/policies/legislation, articulating the risk to the gaps found etc. All conceptual. 

Operation roles do have on-call, especially during emergency changes, migration windows, critical updates etc etc. In dev, I have not really seen as no need - I could be wrong but I have never seen. Same goes for BA roles/PM roles etc.