Everybody who ever worked in my IT department has been.....

fired! No matter what their position or skill set, whether help desk tech, sys admin or director. They just canned my director yesterday. The presidents of the company told me they liked me and not to worry

, what should I do? I have only been a systems administrator for 14 months. I think I should continue to cert up and plan on leaving for another job within the next 6 months. I would rather leave on my own terms then get axed and break the cycle there. I have been in IT for 8 years and just want some opinions from my more experienced colleagues.

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nice343

This what I have found in my IT career as a cisco voice and network engineer.

Management feel like they can fire anybody and replace you anytime they want.
So what you have to do as an IT professional is put yourself in a postion where it is impossible to be fired.

I manage 20 voice networks. If I get fired today, the company will be on its knees. Put yourself in a position where you can't be fired and also educate yourself. I am currently working on my CCVP. once I get it I am out of that b**tch. And when I quit I won't be quitting alone, I am stealing some customers with me to start my own internet and voice company

astorrs

How many employees in IT? I assume its a relatively small company since you mentioned speaking with the CEO.

What to do? Keep working on professional development and keep your eyes open for a golden opportunity/job (both of which you should always be doing anyway), then do your job and don't sweat it. For all you know they got rid of the others because after hiring you they realized they could do better than the staff they already had (I've been in a few of those companies!).

You could share your concerns with HR about the high attrition rate of IT employees, let them know you really like this job and ask them if there is anything about your performance thus far that you could improve on (at least you'll know where you stand). Does you company do 360 reviews or anything?

coax31

There are only two of us now in the department, small company is right. There is no one in the company qualified to give me a proper review as an IT professional. All I know is that the former director and I have implemented several new technologies successfully and have high uptimes on all systems, and managed the IT budget well.

blargoe

nice343 wrote:

This what I have found in my IT career as a cisco voice and network engineer.

Management feel like they can fire anybody and replace you anytime they want.
So what you have to do as an IT professional is put yourself in a postion where it is impossible to be fired.

I manage 20 voice networks. If I get fired today, the company will be on its knees. Put yourself in a position where you can't be fired and also educate yourself. I am currently working on my CCVP. once I get it I am out of that b**tch. And when I quit I won't be quitting alone, I am stealing some customers with me to start my own internet and voice company

astorrs

coax31 wrote:

There is no one in the company qualified to give me a proper review as an IT professional.

While they may not be able to rate your performance specifically as it relates to IT, they can still give you insight into how they perceive you - which should either set aside your concerns or give you something to work on, even if it just means educating them!

sprkymrk

nice343 wrote:

This what I have found in my IT career as a cisco voice and network engineer.

Management feel like they can fire anybody and replace you anytime they want.
So what you have to do as an IT professional is put yourself in a postion where it is impossible to be fired.

I manage 20 voice networks. If I get fired today, the company will be on its knees. Put yourself in a position where you can't be fired and also educate yourself. I am currently working on my CCVP. once I get it I am out of that b**tch. And when I quit I won't be quitting alone, I am stealing some customers with me to start my own internet and voice company

Wow, with your username I had a completely different picture of you.

undomiel

nice343 wrote:

This what I have found in my IT career as a cisco voice and network engineer.

Management feel like they can fire anybody and replace you anytime they want.
So what you have to do as an IT professional is put yourself in a postion where it is impossible to be fired.

I manage 20 voice networks. If I get fired today, the company will be on its knees. Put yourself in a position where you can't be fired and also educate yourself. I am currently working on my CCVP. once I get it I am out of that b**tch. And when I quit I won't be quitting alone, I am stealing some customers with me to start my own internet and voice company

Better be very careful about any contracts you signed and also checking state law. At the insurance company my wife works at there was a big shake-up, a number of people left and started their own company, took some customers with them, and now they're being sued for it and it looks good for the insurance company to win right now. So just make sure you've got all your i's dotted and t's crossed.

sir_creamy_

nice343 wrote:

This what I have found in my IT career as a cisco voice and network engineer.

Management feel like they can fire anybody and replace you anytime they want.
So what you have to do as an IT professional is put yourself in a postion where it is impossible to be fired.

I manage 20 voice networks. If I get fired today, the company will be on its knees. Put yourself in a position where you can't be fired and also educate yourself. I am currently working on my CCVP. once I get it I am out of that b**tch. And when I quit I won't be quitting alone, I am stealing some customers with me to start my own internet and voice company

Ohhhhh Snap!

HeroPsycho

My first permanent IT position was as a contractor, and out of nowhere, they cut every contractor about three months after I got there.

Ever since, I've been paranoid the other shoe will drop at every job I've been at, and it's a healthy fear. I'm always gearing up for new certs, new skills, new knowledge. Even if things are going well, you still be gearing up just in case.

nel

Just keep your head up and try not to get disheartened by it all. Keep getting your certs etc and you should always keep your eye out for a better role. It sounds like there's no long term future there so get what you can out of it learning wise and take it from there. As your a sys admin you should be getting some good experiance which will be great on your cv.

eMeS

coax31 wrote:

fired! No matter what their position or skill set, whether help desk tech, sys admin or director. They just canned my director yesterday. The presidents of the company told me they liked me and not to worry , what should I do? I have only been a systems administrator for 14 months. I think I should continue to cert up and plan on leaving for another job within the next 6 months. I would rather leave on my own terms then get axed and break the cycle there. I have been in IT for 8 years and just want some opinions from my more experienced colleagues.

I don't know anything more about your situation than you've provided here, but I can throw out a couple of possibilities.

Generally, when a situation such as this has occurred in an organization, 1 or both of 2 things are at play.

The first possibility is that president is a prick. In this case there is nothing that you can do about it. You either accept that this is the way things are and that it is a risk to you or you leave. IMO, this is often stated as the cause for situations such as this, but is rarely the actual problem. People who run companies want to do well and make money. If someone makes it to that level in an organization they don't generally just randomly fire people (at least not for long).

The second possibility (and more likely) is that the people that have been fired were very good at their IT jobs, but were not giving the leadership what was needed to achieve business goals. Usually the leadership guys need their IT to accomplish some business function as perfectly and at as low a cost as possible. However, they are not always good at communicating what they need, so it may appear that people have been randomly axed, where in reality the situation is that business goals were inhibited.

My advice to you is to enhance your business focus while you are in this role. Showing the leadership that IT is a tool that helps achieve business goals and showing measurable results to that effect will be a win-win-win for the business, the leadership, and you.

MS