Overgeneralized and overworked. Unsure of next step. Long rant!

What am I whining about... I have a stable job, right

I have been with my current company since August 2006 as the lead systems admin. GREAT company. Also I have been blessed to have as good a fit for my manger as I can imagine – one who both fits in to the role perfectly, and whose management style meshes with me better than anyone that I have worked for. Also, from what I can surmise, unless the business takes a huge step backward or totally **** their strategy for something totally different, my job is secure for a couple years minimum.

However, I am burning out and I am starting to realize that I have shifted too far toward being an IT Generalist in my current role, and I am expected to “own” so many technologies and too much “environment” for one person to reasonably handle. We have, relative to the size of the company (500 employees), a huge infrastructure… I haven’t counted in a while but we have at least 170 instances of Windows Servers, a dozen VMWare servers, a production network layout that would be fitting a company many times over larger than us. But, we’ve had to trim out a bunch of staff and we’re down to two helpdesk, one manager who doubles as an iSeries admin and JD Edwards developer, one network engineer, one Jr. admin, and myself on the network team, not counting my boss. Because of our serious lack of human resources, I am no longer able to develop value-added improvements to our existing network applications and infrastructure, and it is impossible for me further develop my skills in any one area because I am a rapid-fire, project executing machine and have no time to actually administer, benchmark, research improvements, etc for a technology once it’s put into place. I’ve turned into more of the de-facto infrastructure architect, which is where I want to be I think… but here is what I have had to architect in the past 15 months - just off the top of my head:

- Totally new Active Directory for our sister offices in Asia.
- Upgrade company to Exchange 2007
- Implement Enterprise Vault
- complete SAN redesign (It’s just a CLARiiON CX3-40 with 4 switches, but it was not well maintained, almost nothing was set up correctly, and the way storage was allocated was just wrong…)
- Ongoing physical to virtual migration at all of our offices
- Migrated from 3-server MSVS 2005 to ESX 3.5, then upgrade to 4.0. Fully implemented vCenter with HA/DRS, then added servers to host our new Citrix farm and to host VM's at all of our remote sites.
- Complete redesign proposal of SharePoint to include planning placement of each server role, database planning, planning addition of several Extranet sites, integration with SQL Reporting Services. Will be implementing this very soon.
- Consolidation of 12 SQL Server standalone installations of differing versions and editions onto a multiple instance cluster (ongoing)
- Implement Office Communications Server 2007
- Upcoming implementation of Microsoft IAG
- Implement Operations Manager 2007 infrastructure, develop custom management packs to capture relevant data for alerting and performance and availability benchmarking

Everytime I am asked to plan and execute something as in the above list, I end up taking on the management and execution of the entire project from soup to nuts with very little exception. I own the project plan. I own the infrastructure design, I interview the business consumers if a needs analysis is required, I create and enforce any security policies, I develop the monitoring solution, backup and DR plan, and I create the operational, configuration, and administrative documentation. I analyze the storage capacity and performance requirements and provision accordingly, since I am also the SAN admin. I own testing and validation too.

So for the most part, when I am tasked with something like in the list above, I see it through to completion, and based on whatever research I have done and mockups I have done in our lab, I’m confident that everything is set up optimally at the time we go to production. Everything starts out rock solid. The big problem is that once the threshold of project completion is reached, I never really get to do any further work on that implementation unless a) something breaks or b) it’s time to plan the next major upgrade. It either gets dumped on my jr. admin (where it usually falls off into oblivion), or, most usually, becomes officially mine to administer, but gets neglected because, well, I’m really the only one that has enough general knowledge to be the infrastructure guy and I’m good at it, and there’s always another thing on the back burner ready to come to the front. So my stuff does not get the TLC it deserves. I lose track, forget stuff, my cup overflowing with the here and now. Even still, we rarely have outages, stuff continues to run, but things could be much improved if I had the capacity to do so.

We don’t have the proper staff to manage our environment and it is too costly for the company to outsource us, because of the vastly disproportionate number of server instances and network applications we have on our network. They’re not going to find a company to replace me, the jr. guy, and our network engineer and not have it cost a lot more money. I know, because my boss showed me the analysis he was required to do on the subject (yeah, that was really cool of him). They won’t give us any more headcount, so our group has adjusted by approving a LOT of training, and a small amount of money to bring in a partner occasionally... or else none of us would be able to turn out the level of work we do.

Anyway, I am getting tired of working like this, and I guess I’m struggling with what my next step will be. I came in the door at this company with a core skill set of Active Directory, Wintel Servers in general, and about intermediate level Exchange admin experience. A solid mid-level admin I’d say with some rough areas. I figured I’d get some SAN exposure, plus be able to take my existing skills to the next level and maybe add a couple other new things to my repertoire.

Today, I feel like I’m only marketable as (in order) 1) the “get a guy that does everything so we can save some money” guy; 2) just another mid-level systems admin in a position lateral or worse than what I have now; or 3) the “infrastructure” guy, doing what I do today, minus owning the day to day admin responsibilities, for which there would be other staff to handle. The last option would actually be OK with me, but I wonder if that job really even exists in the real world, today. I have also thought of gearing my work and studies toward getting a job with a service company… like an VMWare/EMC or Microsoft partner… but at this time, I just don’t think I’m deep enough in any one area to be able to get a job like that. I’m certainly capable, but can’t get any of this other stuff off my plate to be truly top notch at anything.

So… I’m really just ranting here. Not really expecting any advice, but figured maybe some of my TE brothers and sisters could identify with my struggle.

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Comments

veritas_libertas

Okay, so I am new to IT and anyone can correct me if they want. It sounds like you have years of experience in IT. Why not try to move into management somewhere

sambuca69

Sounds to me like you need a Guinness.

GAngel

veritas_libertas wrote: »

Okay, so I am new to IT and anyone can correct me if they want. It sounds like you have years of experience in IT. Why not try to move into management somewhere :

Since when is middle management this great big ideal. Frankly a true specialist has a far better deal.

60/70/80 hr weeks, Senior management who don't have a clue but still give you unattainable goals, Stupid employees you "have to deal with". 24/7 on call in reality, No time to actually do what interests you. Listening to a bunch of idiots tell you there "vision" which is nothing more than BS. pmp,itil, etc jargon that doesn't actually mean anything. Other useless middle managers who's only interest is in there own career not in a stable company. Contrary to proper belief also the first to be let go to save costs. I've got a laundry list.

Middle management sucks C-Suite or specialist is where the best work life balance and money is.

veritas_libertas

GAngel wrote: »

Since when is middle management this great big ideal. Frankly a true specialist has a far better deal.

60/70/80 hr weeks, Senior management who don't have a clue but still give you unattainable goals, Stupid employees you "have to deal with". 24/7 on call in reality, No time to actually do what interests you. Listening to a bunch of idiots tell you there "vision" which is nothing more than BS. pmp,itil, etc jargon that doesn't actually mean anything. Other useless middle managers who's only interest is in there own career not in a stable company. Contrary to proper belief also the first to be let go to save costs. I've got a laundry list.

Middle management sucks C-Suite or specialist is where the best work life balance and money is.

Hey, I was just making a suggestion based upon my limited experience. I do know of managers that like their jobs.

Hyper-Me

I am in a very very similar position to you, and because of that and other things I am actively looking for a new position.

We are rolling out active directory to a large number of sites. Instead of doing many at a time and getting it complete, the other SysAdmin and I must hold the technicians hands and help them migrate each users local profile to a domain profile and then bind the machine, and then fix any issues the binding caused (permissions, software, etc). The big issue here is that any decent Tier 2 desktop support person should be able to do these tasks with no issue, but only a couple of the dozen of them can. Stack on top of that the fact that most of them (the worst ones) make about 50% more a year than I do because they have been there longer (public sector). Its absolutely ridiculous and I'm fed up because of it.

Add all that in with the fact that we are deploying several applications that use AD for authentication and the only 2 people who have the skillset to impliment them properly are me and the other Sys Admin, but we can't devote the R&D time we need to properly do it because we are holding every one elses hands.

Then, stack all that one to the fact that once I got this position I was in discussions with my superiors for an appropriate raise for the job, discussions which began in February and nothing has come of them yet. They keep telling me there is no money, but in those 9 months have hired 6 additional staff to do menial jobs and they make as much as I do.

I'm bitter, to say the absolute least.

dynamik

I think you're selling yourself a bit short. I'm continually impressed with your level of knowledge

Claymoore

What you need is more staff and better defined roles and reponsibilities, but I don't think you are going to get either. Looks like it is time to move on before you burn out. I've been there and it took me years to recover and actually care about my work again.

The first step is identifying your next set of career goals and you have already started that. Take what you would most like to do and what you would least like to do and make a list. Some of these likes and dislikes will conflict and you will have to compromise on a few. For example, you would love to design Exchange implementations, deliver POCs around those designs and not have to bother with the daily care and feeding, but don't want to travel. Working for a large national consulting firm won't fit your goals because of the travel, but a local systems integrator would be an option.

Consider your experience and flexibility a help, not a hindrance. I don't think you can plan for an infrastructure project today without considering virtualization, and you have VMWare experience. VMs aren't installed in a vacuum and you know how to configure the virtual server on the front-end and the storage on the back-end. Even if you don't feel you know enough to be an 'expert' in any of these fields doesn't mean you aren't valuable. Just being able to talk to the different teams in their native language can go a long way to improving cooperation and getting things done. Also, if you know more than one type of technology then you can be assigned to more than one type of project. Sort of a combination of your #1 and #3 above.

Pash

I guess in the ideal world you would have project managers giving you the enginerring side and dealing the flow of the projects. I guess thing's are becoming a big boiling pot and we are expected to put up or shut up.....it's a harsh reality at the moment.

I can totally relate to your situation dude. We have prince 2 certified people in our company who are fairly well organised but like to shift the engineering work straight away as well as having my own whole projects on from the get go. Quotation from suppliers - to - ticking that final box to say customer agreement received.

Like you I hate not being able to go back and re-visit stuff I have setup to improve it or upgrade it to something better. But I don't work in a single shop, so my time is an asset and its used for new work not old work that is....well.....working. But you ar gaining valuable experineces from these projects, its a very nice list to be honest!

dynamik wrote: »

I think you're selling yourself a bit short. I'm continually impressed with your level of knowledge

Ill join andy in saying that.

Turgon

GAngel wrote: »

Since when is middle management this great big ideal. Frankly a true specialist has a far better deal.

60/70/80 hr weeks, Senior management who don't have a clue but still give you unattainable goals, Stupid employees you "have to deal with". 24/7 on call in reality, No time to actually do what interests you. Listening to a bunch of idiots tell you there "vision" which is nothing more than BS. pmp,itil, etc jargon that doesn't actually mean anything. Other useless middle managers who's only interest is in there own career not in a stable company. Contrary to proper belief also the first to be let go to save costs. I've got a laundry list.

Middle management sucks C-Suite or specialist is where the best work life balance and money is.

Spot on. A lot of companies are drowning in project managers with technical specialists feeling run over. The head shed changes and the new vision is set. They hire their buddies, passover the timeserved people who want the promotion, set about offshoring and redefining everything, introduce all kinds of procedures and start to reduce everything to something measurable to get a great pie chart. Lots of talented people leave. Company share price dives. Head shed gets paid a lot of money to leave quietly. Another bunch comes in. Rinse and repeat. At least thats one perception of what happens in larger companies and one held by many permies I have worked with.

To the original poster, it might be time to look around and get a TDA role where you can delegate.

UnixGuy

Hats off for you !

I can see a lot of bright side there.

Your experience is really diverse...and deep enough (IMHO). You can specialize in any specific area and do just fine !

Also, it seems you got a lot of trainings, which is priceless....and your company depends on you to execute full projects...this is an experience people would kill for ! It's not easy to get this kind of exposure.

You can work in any area now, and become expert in it. You have the necessary background/exposure..so no need to worry.

As for Service Providers/Partners, you are EXACTLY what they want. They need someone who have Mid-high Level exposure to lots of areas, so they can push you to become expert in one area. I joined a partner as a Jr., and worked my way up. Now I'm looking for a kind of job like yours, to diversify my experience.

ally_uk

Sounds like you are worth your weight in gold and have plenty of experience why don't you setup your own company? and work for yourself?

GAngel

Turgon wrote: »

Spot on. A lot of companies are drowning in project managers with technical specialists feeling run over. The head shed changes and the new vision is set. They hire their buddies, passover the timeserved people who want the promotion, set about offshoring and redefining everything, introduce all kinds of procedures and start to reduce everything to something measurable to get a great pie chart. Lots of talented people leave. Company share price dives. Head shed gets paid a lot of money to leave quietly. Another bunch comes in. Rinse and repeat. At least thats one perception of what happens in larger companies and one held by many permies I have worked with.

To the original poster, it might be time to look around and get a TDA role where you can delegate.

I'm currently in a shop that has about 1000 employees. Switched over to the PMBOK way of management. My dept of 52 is now a skeleton crew while the project "managers" continue to grow. I have 2 fulltime net admins who basically run themselves into the ground as there is no budget to bring in more. Meanwhile millions are spent on improvements to processes that were already great and the only thing we have to show for it is that everything takes longer and costs more. My day used to be filled with work now it's nothing but meetings talking about change without any change or anyone to actually do any change. We've outsourced most of our infrastructure and what's left is bare bones.

Turgon

GAngel wrote: »

I'm currently in a shop that has about 1000 employees. Switched over to the PMBOK way of management. My dept of 52 is now a skeleton crew while the project "managers" continue to grow. I have 2 fulltime net admins who basically run themselves into the ground as there is no budget to bring in more. Meanwhile millions are spent on improvements to processes that were already great and the only thing we have to show for it is that everything takes longer and costs more. My day used to be filled with work now it's nothing but meetings talking about change without any change or anyone to actually do any change. We've outsourced most of our infrastructure and what's left is bare bones.

Well perhaps that's what the Board of Directors wanted? They may be measuring things that now look good regardless of the difficulties you are facing.

There is a lot of this about. I have noticed it more since the dot.com days when all the salary chasers started every which way but loose to get into IT. The senior technical roles and the money for them has been collapsing to the centre for a number of years now and for one reason or another a lot of non technical as well as formally technical people have moved into Project Management. I'm not bashing Project Management, there is a need for some of it but not to the extent I have seen across the piece. One problem (like many disciplines) is there are many more Project Managers than there are good ones. But with so much measured against project performance these days (including techies's bonuses) a bad Project Manager is a hazard for everyone and if they mushroom and the processes mushroom with them, you can find you are moving further away from what you used to do at work. If you push back you can run into difficulties within the organisation. Because PM is deemed by many people to be easy far too many people try to become one.

In fact seriously effective Project Management is an art and not many people are really good at it. Another point is that the PMs generally earn more than most techs so again we are awash with them. At one previous shop I worked we were about to be bought out by a FTSE 100 that had gone through hard times and banking on our procurement. Sure enough, every spare PM in the new parent company was finding any excuse under the sun to 'pop up for a visit'. They wanted a piece of the action and had too much time on their hands.

There's not a lot you can do about this Im afraid. The big idea may now include lots of approval processes and little designs you have to generate for more and more things you used to just take care of. Lots of boxes ticked there and it makes for a great audit. You may be spending less time on certain things that you used to do that really helped your customers out but as it's not measurable it's not what you should be doing anymore. Instead of pitching in end to end to get the job right like you used to you might now be producing a design for one PM only for a different PM to be assigned it 6 months later (after all the meetings inbetween) and that PM will then call you because your name is on the design and he's desperate for your help. You did 50 designs since then for more PMs.

Better off to try and find ways to swim with the tide than against it.

blargoe

veritas_libertas wrote: »

Okay, so I am new to IT and anyone can correct me if they want. It sounds like you have years of experience in IT. Why not try to move into management somewhere :

I might find myself transitioning into that direction one of these days... that just not really an aptitude of mine, and I have no education or training in management either. I'm not in the "inside track" at my company to be promoted to a manager at this time, and I am not qualified to take a new job as a manager. Team leader, maybe.

Also, middle management really just doesn't appeal to me right now, some of the reasons have already been put out there by others on the thread.

blargoe

sambuca69 wrote: »

Sounds to me like you need a Guinness.

I was in some of the aforementioned training stayed up in a hotel that offered free beer in the dining area. I had to settle for a Heineken.

blargoe

Hyper-Me wrote: »

I am in a very very similar position to you, and because of that and other things I am actively looking for a new position.

We are rolling out active directory to a large number of sites. Instead of doing many at a time and getting it complete, the other SysAdmin and I must hold the technicians hands and help them migrate each users local profile to a domain profile and then bind the machine, and then fix any issues the binding caused (permissions, software, etc). The big issue here is that any decent Tier 2 desktop support person should be able to do these tasks with no issue, but only a couple of the dozen of them can. Stack on top of that the fact that most of them (the worst ones) make about 50% more a year than I do because they have been there longer (public sector). Its absolutely ridiculous and I'm fed up because of it.

Add all that in with the fact that we are deploying several applications that use AD for authentication and the only 2 people who have the skillset to impliment them properly are me and the other Sys Admin, but we can't devote the R&D time we need to properly do it because we are holding every one elses hands.

Then, stack all that one to the fact that once I got this position I was in discussions with my superiors for an appropriate raise for the job, discussions which began in February and nothing has come of them yet. They keep telling me there is no money, but in those 9 months have hired 6 additional staff to do menial jobs and they make as much as I do.

I'm bitter, to say the absolute least.

That would piss me off too. But you know what we always say around here, the only guaranteed money is when you come in the door somewhere. Otherwise you're at the whim of the company (or government or whatever). Your managers may be caring individuals and try to be fair, or the may not; but the bottom line is, the "company" couldn't give a rat's pa-toot.

I have to say this whole experience has caused me to learn the art of pushing back... diplomatically... when unrealistic or uneducated expectations are handed out.

blargoe

Claymoore wrote: »

What you need is more staff and better defined roles and reponsibilities, but I don't think you are going to get either. Looks like it is time to move on before you burn out. I've been there and it took me years to recover and actually care about my work again.

What is REALLY frustrating... we all see and understand that, but our new "yes-man" CIO is too much of a chickens**t to ask for anything that might (gasp!) add headcount or incur any additional expense. No matter how much justification you can prove as a long-term cost savings or risk avoidance. Meanwhile much of the rest of the company is adding a couple of people here and there now that the worst of the financial hit from the economy seems to be behind us, for our company anyway. The best we can ever do is, occasionally, bring in someone from the outside to help us validate our planning and execution for big projects and/or our current operating environment.

The first step is identifying your next set of career goals and you have already started that. Take what you would most like to do and what you would least like to do and make a list. Some of these likes and dislikes will conflict and you will have to compromise on a few. For example, you would love to design Exchange implementations, deliver POCs around those designs and not have to bother with the daily care and feeding, but don't want to travel. Working for a large national consulting firm won't fit your goals because of the travel, but a local systems integrator would be an option.

Figuring this out is something I have been trying to reconcile for a couple months now. And I do have a general view of the skills I would like to continue to develop (storage, virtualization) and maintain (AD, Exchange). My decision right now is... do I stick around and take advantage of certain things like the SAN Upgrade and Expansion we have planned for December, AD upgrade next spring, Exchange 2010 upgrade later in the year? I keep seeing things coming up on the horizon and say "now that would be a great notch to have on my belt". But I have to at some point turn it off.

Consider your experience and flexibility a help, not a hindrance. I don't think you can plan for an infrastructure project today without considering virtualization, and you have VMWare experience. VMs aren't installed in a vacuum and you know how to configure the virtual server on the front-end and the storage on the back-end. Even if you don't feel you know enough to be an 'expert' in any of these fields doesn't mean you aren't valuable. Just being able to talk to the different teams in their native language can go a long way to improving cooperation and getting things done. Also, if you know more than one type of technology then you can be assigned to more than one type of project. Sort of a combination of your #1 and #3 above.

I'll find a way to work it to my advantage, I hope.

blargoe

ally_uk wrote: »

Sounds like you are worth your weight in gold and have plenty of experience why don't you setup your own company? and work for yourself?

I think if I didn't have any other cares in the world, I'd do something like that or maybe spend my time looking for contracts that caught my interest, once I got up to a certain level of skill. Unfortunately, my family couldn't sustain me not having regular income for very long as I'm the sole income right now.

blargoe

Thanks everyone for your thoughts and kind words.

Turgon

blargoe wrote: »

What is REALLY frustrating... we all see and understand that, but our new "yes-man" CIO is too much of a chickens**t to ask for anything that might (gasp!) add headcount or incur any additional expense. No matter how much justification you can prove as a long-term cost savings or risk avoidance. Meanwhile much of the rest of the company is adding a couple of people here and there now that the worst of the financial hit from the economy seems to be behind us, for our company anyway. The best we can ever do is, occasionally, bring in someone from the outside to help us validate our planning and execution for big projects and/or our current operating environment.

Figuring this out is something I have been trying to reconcile for a couple months now. And I do have a general view of the skills I would like to continue to develop (storage, virtualization) and maintain (AD, Exchange). My decision right now is... do I stick around and take advantage of certain things like the SAN Upgrade and Expansion we have planned for December, AD upgrade next spring, Exchange 2010 upgrade later in the year? I keep seeing things coming up on the horizon and say "now that would be a great notch to have on my belt". But I have to at some point turn it off.

I'll find a way to work it to my advantage, I hope.

You are very reliant on your CIO's decisions. Everyone permanent is.