Improving current skills vs learning new skills

Obviously a tough question to ask but what skills do you look to upgrade when you are already employed?

I'm currently in a level 2 service desk position doing mostly AD account/group creations, file permissions/shares and Lotus Notes/Blackberry escalation issues. Long term I'd like to be doing work with either SCCM or Citrix. Seeing as how I'd have very little chance at working with similar technology in my current company I've been thinking about focusing on related skills either Windows scripting or advancing my AD knowledge.

If you've been in a similar boat would you suggest learning skills that interest you or stick to things that would help improve your current job situation?

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undomiel

I would definitely recommend advancing your AD knowledge as it will do you nothing but good as long as you remain in a Windows environment. I consider most of that just maintenance of your current skill set though. Improving your skill set would be taking the time to learn Citrix on your own, or picking up scripting. Which I would also definitely recommend learning scripting well before you move onto more advanced systems. The knowledge will benefit you immensely in the long run and will simplify your job when you can condense hours of work into a few minutes.

Bl8ckr0uter

I agree with Un. From your cert path it seems like improving you AD knowledge will come naturally. Play to your strengths and strengthen your weaknesses. If you want to be a better tech (and ultimately get to Tier III or Engineering) find out what they know and learn it (but don't let on too much, some people will get the wrong impression by you learning more. "Job security" is something people always get strange about).

You should do some learning of alternative skills but only some that will compliment your current skillset or get you closer to your dream job. Learning Java is great but it could be wasted effort if you have no plans to do anything with development. Scripting is something that will benefit all IT pros however. I am currently trying to teach myself python (its the l337 thing to do lol).

instant000

Repo Man wrote: »

Obviously a tough question to ask but what skills do you look to upgrade when you are already employed?

I look to upgrade skills that can transfer easily, and would lead logically to my next position.

I'm currently in a level 2 service desk position doing mostly AD account/group creations, file permissions/shares and Lotus Notes/Blackberry escalation issues. Long term I'd like to be doing work with either SCCM or Citrix. Seeing as how I'd have very little chance at working with similar technology in my current company I've been thinking about focusing on related skills either Windows scripting or advancing my AD knowledge.

Scripting lends itself well to anything admin related. Advancing AD knowledge is always smart, as Windows is not going away from Active Directory anytime within the next few years. I would advise going after the scripting. If you really break it down, AD is nothing more than a database (yes, I am over-simplifying it).

If you've been in a similar boat would you suggest learning skills that interest you or stick to things that would help improve your current job situation?

Why can you not do both? For example, the work with scripting and Active Directory lends itself well to most future things involving windows.

If I could make a recommendation, I would say to seek Powershell.

I guess I'm fortunate, in that I want to learn things that will help me in my "next position." I had a co-worker asking me why I would bother reading CISSP book, with his reasoning that I couldn't possibly use it in my current job, and my explanation is that I was doing it for my next job, and I'd done a lot of security work in the past, and it just made sense that if I had idle time at work, to spend it learning, rather than seeing how much bandwidth I could eat up on Youtube.

You mention wanting to go after SCCM, and Citrix. You currently do work with user accounts and file permissions, and whatnot, and you're looking at scripting and more AD knowledge.

I can tell you this much: Knowing more about scripting and AD can only help you with Citrix. In my past job, I dabbled in Citrix, from 4.0 to 6.0 of their Presentation Server to XenApp product, and knowing scripting is quite useful there. There are several maintenance tasks you can make easier for yourself, by scripting them out. I wrote quite a few scripts for my 4.0 PS farm, and was looking forward to writing some for the 6.0, prior to changing jobs. And, with regards to AD skills, group policy depends a good bit upon throroughly understanding how your directory structure is laid out, as well as what OU's and/or groups are affected by your policy, depending upon how you set your policy. Also, a lot of the configuration for XenApp is done from within a group policy plug-in. Based upon this, it would serve you well to get familiar with this.

You may think, great, scripting and AD knowledge play well into Citrix, but what about SCCM? Well, if you want to make configuration of a Windows environment, without understanding the directory/OU structure of that environment, you have another thing going, bro. In the SCCM Technet that I have read for 2007 and 2012, and important consideration appears to be involving extending the Schema. I'll admit that I just skimmed this over while preparing this post, and would go back and read over it, if I had to implement it myself, but suffice to say that there's an entire section devoted to planning how you will use AD with SCCM, which makes AD a more basic, ground level skill. It lends itself well to application all over the place.

Just to ease your mind:

SCCM and Powershell

The PowerShell Guy : SCCM and PowerShell series using my PowerShell WMI explorer

Citrix and Powershell

XenApp 6 PowerShell SDK XenApp - Citrix Community

Tag: powershell Citrix Community

SCCM:

System Center Configuration Manager 2007

(Technet has a wealth of information in it, that is appreciated, and other vendors would do well to make their documentation easily discoverable like so.)

Citrix:

Knowledge Center Home - Citrix Knowledge Center

(You don't say what in particular about Citrix ... they have quite a few products now ...) I'm most familiar with their Presentation Server/XenApp product, but they've really branched out now into VDI, for example, though their calling card for most techies is their use of ICA on top of MS Terminal Services.

So, yeah, go ahead and work on scripting and Active Directory. I recommend Powershell.

Repo Man

instant000 wrote: »

I look to upgrade skills that can transfer easily, and would lead logically to my next position.

Internally my next position would either be a Lotus Notes Admin, Windows Admin or Desktop Engineer. As much as I'd like these roles, and the most likely candidate to be promoted to them internally, I don't feel I'm knowledgeable enough yet for any of them. Externally I'd probably be looking at a similar job unless I ramp up my admin skills ten fold.

Scripting lends itself well to anything admin related. Advancing AD knowledge is always smart, as Windows is not going away from Active Directory anytime within the next few years. I would advise going after the scripting. If you really break it down, AD is nothing more than a database (yes, I am over-simplifying it).

This is how I feel and why I'm leaning towards learning scripting.

Why can you not do both? For example, the work with scripting and Active Directory lends itself well to most future things involving windows.

My study time outside of work has been limited lately and I generally study better when I focus on one subject. I know it would be a great thing to learn both but my mind would wander in a thousand directions. I often have issues just picking a subject to learn due to over analyzing.

If I could make a recommendation, I would say to seek Powershell.

I think I just may do this.

(You don't say what in particular about Citrix ... they have quite a few products now ...) I'm most familiar with their Presentation Server/XenApp product, but they've really branched out now into VDI, for example, though their calling card for most techies is their use of ICA on top of MS Terminal Services.

Presentation Server/XenApp would be my main interest as well.

So, yeah, go ahead and work on scripting and Active Directory. I recommend Powershell.

Thanks for the advice.