Anyone stuck in a job where you're getting dumber and dumber?

Rockets34Life

That's the case for me....made a mistake taking this desktop administrator job (which ended up being just senior level help desk) and not learning a damn thing.

It just feels like I'm clocking in, doing repetitive crap, and clocking out everyday.

I want to improve my skills after hours, but it's tough when you have a 8-month old. I get up everyday at 6:30a, feed my daughter, get ready and go to work from 8-5, pick my daughter up from daycare at 5:30, be home at 6p and watch her til' 7:30p. Then my wife comes home and we have to take care of my daughter until 10pm when she goes to bed. That gives me every night just a little over an hour to relax from the day and start over the next day. Weekends....well, that's taken up by my daughter and my wife. Just don't know where to find the time.

I'm trying to get out of this help desk/desktop support pigeon-holed crap of a field and move on to system/network administration.

What do I do?

P.S. - For anyone who cares, I didn't get the healthcare gig...

jamesbrown

Rockets34Life wrote: »

That's the case for me....made a mistake taking this desktop administrator job (which ended up being just senior level help desk) and not learning a damn thing.

It just feels like I'm clocking in, doing repetitive crap, and clocking out everyday.

I want to improve my skills after hours, but it's tough when you have a 8-month old. I get up everyday at 6:30a, feed my daughter, get ready and go to work from 8-5, pick my daughter up from daycare at 5:30, be home at 6p and watch her til' 7:30p. Then my wife comes home and we have to take care of my daughter until 10pm when she goes to bed. That gives me every night just a little over an hour to relax from the day and start over the next day. Weekends....well, that's taken up by my daughter and my wife. Just don't know where to find the time.

I'm trying to get out of this help desk/desktop support pigeon-holed crap of a field and move on to system/network administration.

What do I do?

P.S. - For anyone who cares, I didn't get the healthcare gig...

I'm in the same boat as you. It seems like most company I apply to wants to interview me for a desktop support/help desk kind of role because I really don't have that much experience as a sys Admin.

I'm thinking you might want to get a much experience with servers or networking. That's the only way you can get out. A lot of this compnay wants people to have maybe 3-5 years of experiences as a sys Admin.

I would like to hear what other guys have to say..

Rockets34Life

That's the problem - getting that experience. Telling companies that you built servers at home and worked on networking at home doesn't cut for experience unless it's work-related.

phantasm

Home Lab != Production Network/Environment

That's the biggest catch 22 in the business. Too make it you need experience, but hardly anyone wants to give you experience.

That's why it took me 7yrs to land my first IT job. I could do the work, but with nothing on the resume I was always passed over. My advice, keep studying and cert up. Maybe go back to school if you can justify it. That's what I ended up doing. Got my AS, no IT job. Worked for Comcast installing cable, went back for my BS. Landed first IT job and CCENT. Moved on to second IT job and finished the BS and CCNA. Left there and onto my 3rd IT job, did the Sec+ and working on CCNP and an MS degree.

If you want it bad enough... you have to work hard for it.

Oh and as for your family situation. Hate to say it... but suck it up. I did all that while my wife was in an MS program and we had a baby. I'd pull 12hr plus days at work and come home and take care of the little one. Right now he's 4, but I'm up at 0430 for work and home between 5 and 6pm. Then it's dinner with the family, bath time, bed time and then studying for a few hours. I get to bed by 10pm if I'm lucky and do it all over again the next day. You need to want to move away from it bad enough to do what needs to be done. That's the only way it'll happen. Best of luck though.

Heny '06

Deaded helpdesk black hole, once your in its hard to get out. Kepp pushing you will make it out.

chrisone

In all honesty i do not believe that any job makes you dumber. If you do not strive to succeed , to educate yourself, or have the drive to perform your job duties more efficiently, then that solely hangs on your own shoulders.

No matter how crappy the job , you can always learn about your environment or produce better methods of dealing with your every day tasks. Most likely you do not work 24/7 so i know somewhere in there you can squeeze in one hour 5 days out of 7. Just change your daily routing , reorganize yourself, start to reorganize your approach at work, start studying to increase your own technical skills. The drive you give yourself pays off ten folds in the future. I dont mean for my reply to be rude or harsh, i hope it comes off more as a hard motivational tip. I dont know you but yet believe in your ability to kick ass!

MrRyte

Have you explained the situation to your bosses? Will they allow you to study during downtime?

ThePrimetimer

Rockets34Life,
I know exactly what you mean with not having any time to study due to family and a newborn (mines 10 months.) It does make it hard as there is only a certain amount of time in one day.

What I would suggest doing is talking with your wife and letting her know that your wanting out of this job and you need to do this, this, etc.. and ask her for some help with the little one. I followed this same path and talked to my wife letting her know that I wanted to go bigger and better and explained to her that in this industry, you need to keep on top and learn. My wife is now a stay at home mom and understands what I need to do to provide for us, so she really helps out with my son, which I am indebted to her for.

I am currently attending WGU and working 40hrs a week. I get up around 6:30 or 7 with my wife and son and have just enough time to get ready to leave for work. Get home around 6:30 and spend an hour or 2 with them, then its study time. What I've had to give up is the amount of time I sleep (Mountain Dew has become a very close friend ). I only get about 6, maybe 7 hours a sleep a night and do it all over again.

The reason I'm doing this is the future. I know where I wanna be in 5 years, but in order for me to get there, I need to focus on the now and the work it entails. Keep your head up and like others have said, keep giving it your best shot and that new job will definitely come along. You may have to sacrifice some family time now for family time in the future.

Good Luck!

onesaint

Rockets34Life, it's like what ThePrimetimer said, lack of sleep is the key. I drink 4-5 cups of coffee a day (not 6 though, that's just plain unhealthy.:)) and sometimes toss in a soda for kicks.

I'm up at 6:45 take the kids to school, come home prepare for work and go from 9:00am - 7:00pm-ish. Then I'm home bound for time with the kids until their bed time at 9:00-9:30. Eat dinner and then on to studying (focus!). It's sometimes hard to stay sharp till 1-2:00am. Still, there is a five year plan. I want to be out of SMBs and into an enterprise environment with a more refined role than systems administrator. So, there is much to be done.

What to do, you ask? Talk with your wife and see if you can take 1-2 nights a week and one day on the weekend to study for certs (trade her for days were you take your daughter out). Grab a book and read during lunch (or CBTs). Listen to audio books on the way to and from work. download flash card apps for you phone to use in the restroom, elevator, or while waiting for clients. Find creative tasks to take on in down time at work (Pick up IIS, power shell, PHP, mediawiki, CCNA, etc). Try to offer your assistance on projects out of your department. Immerse yourself in something or some new cert to advance your position. It might take a bit longer than you would like, but you'll be advancing your career and still investing in your family's well being.

Kids can be demanding, so you'll have to share the load, but you can't simple stop advancing. Find creative ways to utilize your time (what little of it there is). Ok, it's 1:29am, time to clock out!

billyr

Why do you put your 8 month old to bed at 10pm ?
Get the daycare centre to limit the day time naps and try for an earlier bed time.

powerfool

I felt that way at my current job when I was strictly doing packet analysis. Now that I am also engineering our Exchange 2010 environment, I get to touch enough diverse products that my brain feels used again.

keenon

it can happen. I know from my own experience with this same situation. start studying during any down time for a new certification. this will keep your mind going while your deciding if your leaving or staying with this rust station.

Devilry

Buddy make time to improve your skills after work! I have a 9 month old son and a 4 year old son, lights out at 8PM, because studying is the priority. Maybe you can slowly get your daughter to bed earlier.

At your work, is there anyway you can volunteer with other departments after hours or weekends to do higher level projects to gain experience so you can list those projects on your resume?

tpatt100

billyr wrote: »

Why do you put your 8 month old to bed at 10pm ?
Get the daycare centre to limit the day time naps and try for an earlier bed time.

Really should not limit the nap time during the day, babies that age just sleep when they are tired. 10 pm is a bit late though, my son just turned 2 and is pulling me to take him upstairs to go to bed around 8pm.

eserfeliz

Rockets34Life wrote: »

That's the case for me....made a mistake taking this desktop administrator job (which ended up being just senior level help desk) and not learning a damn thing.

It just feels like I'm clocking in, doing repetitive crap, and clocking out everyday.

I want to improve my skills after hours, but it's tough when you have a 8-month old. I get up everyday at 6:30a, feed my daughter, get ready and go to work from 8-5, pick my daughter up from daycare at 5:30, be home at 6p and watch her til' 7:30p. Then my wife comes home and we have to take care of my daughter until 10pm when she goes to bed. That gives me every night just a little over an hour to relax from the day and start over the next day. Weekends....well, that's taken up by my daughter and my wife. Just don't know where to find the time.

Not to be too condescending/preachy (my wife gets all kinds of annoyed when people on the internet are like, "What I do with my kid is..."), but as the others have suggested, have you considered trying to get the baby down to bed a little earlier? It sounds like you could really user those two hours to get some self-study/education done. You might have a fight on your hands to establish a new schedule; talk with your wife and see whether or not you can work out an 8 PM bedtime when the time changes.

We're a single-income household with a little baby. I was working 40 hours a week as a Help Desk Analyst (five years), going to school part-time after our daughter was born (6 credit hours), finding time to spend with my wife and baby, and still managed to study for 3 certifications since our baby was born. I started my promotion to Network Analyst last week.

Another thing I did was go to my supervisor and ask for a greater role. When I was turned down for a senior help desk analyst position, I went to the CIO. When he turned me down to do extra, free work, I went to the development senior manager to see if he needed a junior programmer. When he turned me down, I went to the operations senior manager to see if he needed another network analyst. When he turned me down, I started to look for opportunities outside of my agency and I bided my time. After three months, a position unexpectedly opened up in the NOC. Who was in the interview? The two senior managers I had given my resume to and asked for a better position, along with the network manager, who I now report to. I was promoted over two guys senior to me. I was told that my interview was very strong and that I had a much better understanding of networking fundamentals than the rest. My CCNA studies ensured that I had the knowledge to pass the interview. Now I need to take the exam.

Everyone's situation is different. Depending on what the priorities are in your life (family, career, salary, education, leisure time, etc.), you may need to move some things around so that you might be able to move yourself forward. In the end, only you and your wife can decide what will be best for your family.

Anyway, sorry for the tl;dr. I wish you nothing but luck.

WiseWun

Rockets34Life wrote: »

That's the case for me....made a mistake taking this desktop administrator job (which ended up being just senior level help desk) and not learning a damn thing.

It just feels like I'm clocking in, doing repetitive crap, and clocking out everyday.

I want to improve my skills after hours, but it's tough when you have a 8-month old. I get up everyday at 6:30a, feed my daughter, get ready and go to work from 8-5, pick my daughter up from daycare at 5:30, be home at 6p and watch her til' 7:30p. Then my wife comes home and we have to take care of my daughter until 10pm when she goes to bed. That gives me every night just a little over an hour to relax from the day and start over the next day. Weekends....well, that's taken up by my daughter and my wife. Just don't know where to find the time.

I'm trying to get out of this help desk/desktop support pigeon-holed crap of a field and move on to system/network administration.

What do I do?

P.S. - For anyone who cares, I didn't get the healthcare gig...

And I thought I was the only one in this position. I too took a lesser role plus salary thinking the job/tasks would be easier since I started a masters degree but boy was I wrong! I have been promoted to helpdesk manager (no salary increase) and this is just taken over my life. No technical, just pure administrative role. I feel dumber and dumber everyday thinking did I go to school for this? I would be going nuts if it wasn't for my masters program and the training. My advice, do what makes you happy, don't settle for less.

Watch the link below, it will help you get motivated. For me , all this might change in the coming days.

Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address - YouTube

Rockets34Life

MrRyte wrote: »

Have you explained the situation to your bosses? Will they allow you to study during downtime?

There is downtime to this position at times, but they will find something for me to do that's meaningless and mindless.

Rockets34Life

chrisone wrote: »

In all honesty i do not believe that any job makes you dumber. If you do not strive to succeed , to educate yourself, or have the drive to perform your job duties more efficiently, then that solely hangs on your own shoulders.

No matter how crappy the job , you can always learn about your environment or produce better methods of dealing with your every day tasks. Most likely you do not work 24/7 so i know somewhere in there you can squeeze in one hour 5 days out of 7. Just change your daily routing , reorganize yourself, start to reorganize your approach at work, start studying to increase your own technical skills. The drive you give yourself pays off ten folds in the future. I dont mean for my reply to be rude or harsh, i hope it comes off more as a hard motivational tip. I dont know you but yet believe in your ability to kick ass!

For this position, the IT Manager and IT Supervisor are both idiots. Both of them, I have no idea how they got into their positions. I've just gotten to the point where I just do my job and leave. There is nothing about this position that I strive to make an extra effort to learn. There is no motivation to try for an open position. There is only 4 Help Desk personnel (me included) and 2 guys that handle our servers/network/Exchange. That's it. So what the hell am I supposed to do in this company? I've been busting my ass trying to look for another job, but with the criteria I've laid out, I haven't found the right one. Now I feel like instead of looking for another job, I really need to brush up on my current skills so I can stay up to date with the job market. This job seriously has just dumbed me down from my previous job and I feel like I'm starting over IT. I wish I was back at my previous job where I was learning stuff everyday since it was just me and one other lazy bastard that ran the Desktop Support dept.

I know from reading this thread I have to make time. I will just have to break down and try to tune out the rest of the world from 10p-11....11:30pm and study. But I really screwed up my chances of changing my family's life on one other issue. My wife currently works a 10:30a-7p shift. She usually gets shift differential on the 2nd half of her shift. She had a chance to move to 6a-2:30p, but because of my dumbass, I told her that we need the $ from the shift differential and to not take it. Now that my brain finally decided to show up in the past week, it made me realize that could of opened up time for me to study, take classes, get another part-time job, etc.

I just feel really f'd up right now.

Rockets34Life

ThePrimetimer wrote: »

Rockets34Life,
I know exactly what you mean with not having any time to study due to family and a newborn (mines 10 months.) It does make it hard as there is only a certain amount of time in one day.

What I would suggest doing is talking with your wife and letting her know that your wanting out of this job and you need to do this, this, etc.. and ask her for some help with the little one. I followed this same path and talked to my wife letting her know that I wanted to go bigger and better and explained to her that in this industry, you need to keep on top and learn. My wife is now a stay at home mom and understands what I need to do to provide for us, so she really helps out with my son, which I am indebted to her for.

She does know about it. She doesn't like it and she hates change. But even though I'm trying to advance my career, I'm trying to look out for my family. I would of been out of this job after the 1st 2 days....but because it's close to my daughter's daycare and the pay isn't bad, I'm stuck. My wife definitely doesn't want to be staying at home. I wouldn't mind, but my wife would be definitely against it. I could use the break from IT.

ThePrimetimer wrote: »

I am currently attending WGU and working 40hrs a week. I get up around 6:30 or 7 with my wife and son and have just enough time to get ready to leave for work. Get home around 6:30 and spend an hour or 2 with them, then its study time. What I've had to give up is the amount of time I sleep (Mountain Dew has become a very close friend ). I only get about 6, maybe 7 hours a sleep a night and do it all over again.

The reason I'm doing this is the future. I know where I wanna be in 5 years, but in order for me to get there, I need to focus on the now and the work it entails. Keep your head up and like others have said, keep giving it your best shot and that new job will definitely come along. You may have to sacrifice some family time now for family time in the future.

Good Luck!

You are very lucky you have someone at home to take care of your son. I wish I had that. I hate sending my daughter to daycare. I mean it helps her build social skills, but leaving her with people other than me and my wife, being around sick kids, and the $ I got to shell out each month, it really really sucks. I think because of this job and other issues I have going on, I just have this defeated feeling and just not motivated to move on to improve my IT self.

In 5 years, I hope to have my house paid off and that my family can live comfortably. I hoping to save more money, have more time with my career/family, and actually get to stop and smell the roses.

Rockets34Life

billyr wrote: »

Why do you put your 8 month old to bed at 10pm ?
Get the daycare centre to limit the day time naps and try for an earlier bed time.

We have her on a schedule. It's great....when she goes to bed then, she sleeps through the night and so do we.

Rockets34Life

Devilry wrote: »

Buddy make time to improve your skills after work! I have a 9 month old son and a 4 year old son, lights out at 8PM, because studying is the priority. Maybe you can slowly get your daughter to bed earlier.

Does your 9 month old wake up early for feeding, like 4...5am? Or does he get in 10 hours of sleep?

I can't get up that early for my 8am shift at work.

Devilry wrote: »

At your work, is there anyway you can volunteer with other departments after hours or weekends to do higher level projects to gain experience so you can list those projects on your resume?

I could try to do that, but there is only 1 guy for servers/Exchange and 1 for networking. My dept. handles everything else. Not much to volunteer for.

tpatt100 wrote: »

Really should not limit the nap time during the day, babies that age just sleep when they are tired. 10 pm is a bit late though, my son just turned 2 and is pulling me to take him upstairs to go to bed around 8pm.

We did that so she would sleep through the night. Any earlier and we are looking at 4 or 5am for a feeding.

lsud00d

I understand everyone has different priorities, but mine is career first, family second...I'm well on my way to a great career and when I finally settle down, I'll be in a position to be a great provider!

Plus...it's great having the college lifestyle combined with a great salary

JockVSJock

Hey man, I feel your pain.

For the last 10 to 12 years, I have struggled trying to advance out of the help desk position into some sort of sys admin/network engineer position.

I've tried a number of things like some of the others on this thread to advance, like:

-Getting my Masters in MIS and not getting any hands on or real experience to back it, so basically I'm still in the help desk role. Basically the college oversold the degree and I fell for it
-Trying to home lab and putting that on my resume on to be told that only real world experience matters
-Trying to work as a business analysis which I wouldn't recommend, especially if you like technology

It also bothers me too to see the lazy employees, who aren't engaged or studying on their free time for certs/degrees to be mysteriously promoted to sys admins/network engineers.

What kills me the most is that I'm told that I have great people skills. DUH!!! You have to have that skillset in any type of job.

I just don't understand why the jump from help desk to sys admin/network engineer is so difficult for people who want to make that jump.

DevilWAH

My trouble is I can't settle in one thing, just like learning to much and want to know it all, Science, technology I love it all. studied science, works as one for 6 years, then helpdesk, after that network engineer, and now getting in to programming.

But never been sent on a course since i studied science, just read books and mucked around on the internet in the evenings sucking up any info I can.

The Baby thing is hard, ours is 16 months now, but for the first 7 months didnt sleep, I wrote that of for studying and just tried to keep up with reading and things (4am with her finaly asleep on my chest and book in hand was common). but to be honest looking after my little one was the best thing in the world. so what if I didnt have much time back then (see sleeps though now), I think the rewards of looking after a child far outway the benifits of study and career.

Career before family... No way, that way you end up spending you whole life striving to get some where, but don't enjoy the journey.

I say forget where you are trying to end up, and enjoy and make use of today.

lsud00d

Different strokes for different folks man

I'll settle down and have a family eventually...I'm not my parents generation where the primary goal is to start a family first...I'm in the young professional generation, where we get degrees, get jobs, have tons of play money, and have fun until our mid to late 20's...THEN settle down.

FWIW most of my cohort who have gotten married did it because the girl got pregnant, and the majority of them end up getting divorced within 3 years. I for one don't plan on getting divorced...one of the major reasons for the split is finances, but I will be financially secure by the time I get married...and we can take vacations multiple times a year, like I do right now I'm enjoying life too much to settle down.

MentholMoose

Rockets34Life wrote: »

I could try to do that, but there is only 1 guy for servers/Exchange and 1 for networking. My dept. handles everything else. Not much to volunteer for.

Look at your tickets and find ones that can be eliminated somehow, especially with scripting. Even if you have no admin rights anywhere or can't make any major changes yourself, if you write a script to automate something and can tell your boss, "hey you know those 50 tickets per week we get for XYZ problem? Well here's a script I wrote to eliminate them all", chances are it can be implemented. In other cases, things can be improved with low-cost purchases. Write proposals to buy things that would eliminate tickets. In the proposal, emphasize that it will "significantly enhance end-user productivity". Maybe there is no low-hanging fruit in your environment, but when you say you spend your time on "meaningless and mindless" tasks, I think "scriptable" tasks.

My first "real" IT job was a junior sysadmin position, initially a mix of desktop support and help desk. I spent every possible second of free time trying to find things to improve. It was an SMB environment and a mess, so it wasn't hard to find things, but it did take effort on my part to come up with appropriate solutions. This is how I went from having little free time at that job to having enough free time to take on more responsibility (and to justify it) and getting promoted to sysadmin. If there's truly nothing you can do in your current position, well at least you have a nice job title so start (or continue) applying elsewhere until you find something.

SteveLord

I can't believe people with only 1 kid feel they have "no time." Seriously? And you're able to put money away and get your house paid off in the near future? I am doing my best to hold back at the ridiculousness here.

If you're feeling "dumber", that is your issue. So work to fix it. Sometimes you can't always have a perfect world where everything is awesome at home AND at work. There's already a lot of politically correct advice here to get around that...so here's at least 1 brutally honest response to soak in.

onesaint

SteveLord wrote: »

I can't believe people with only 1 kid feel they have "no time." Seriously?

I remember when we had the first one, I would look at people with 2 or more kids and wonder how they did it. Now we have 2 and I look at folks like my eye doctor with 6 kids and am in awe.

Turgon

Rockets34Life wrote: »

That's the case for me....made a mistake taking this desktop administrator job (which ended up being just senior level help desk) and not learning a damn thing.

It just feels like I'm clocking in, doing repetitive crap, and clocking out everyday.

I want to improve my skills after hours, but it's tough when you have a 8-month old. I get up everyday at 6:30a, feed my daughter, get ready and go to work from 8-5, pick my daughter up from daycare at 5:30, be home at 6p and watch her til' 7:30p. Then my wife comes home and we have to take care of my daughter until 10pm when she goes to bed. That gives me every night just a little over an hour to relax from the day and start over the next day. Weekends....well, that's taken up by my daughter and my wife. Just don't know where to find the time.

I'm trying to get out of this help desk/desktop support pigeon-holed crap of a field and move on to system/network administration.

What do I do?

P.S. - For anyone who cares, I didn't get the healthcare gig...

Im in the same boat as you on the personal front with a 9 month old and a 4 year old. By the time the day is done there isn't the time or energy left to study.

advanex1

I have 3. There's always the time, you may not have the energy, but you have the time. Everything all depends on how bad you want something, if you want it bad enough, you sacrifice other things. If family time isn't okay for you to sacrifice, then it's sleep. It's all about balance and there is always time to get things done.

DevilWAH

SteveLord wrote: »

I can't believe people with only 1 kid feel they have "no time." Seriously?

It not a question of no time to do anything, Well for me anot any way, just I chose to do more things with the family, I would rather spend a few hours giving the little one a bath, reading her stories and putting her to bed, and generaly spending time with her and my wife then dive stright in to studying.

I would much rather spend my energy on time with my family than steamrolling my career.

SteveLord wrote: »

Sometimes you can't always have a perfect world where everything is awesome at home AND at work

True it might not always be perfect, but that does not mean it can't always be awesome, as they say life it waht you make of it, and its all about balance, OK your day to day job might not be great, so make it great, I spent time at my last job with the title of helpdesk support, while I was managing the whole UK network, becasue I made it my job. Compinies don't have you great jobs on a plate, you have to go out and find them.

After all, "True richness is not based on the amount of money that you have earnt, but on the quility of the time that you have spent."