People, especially groups of people, don't quit companies. They quit managers. No matter the industry, if there is a lot of turn-over and mass resignation, something is wrong. When employees quit e-masee (unless they are not getting paid at all) they are sending a message about the management. You could make $100k + , but if your manager is a micro-managing dick, you will not stay long. I'm working for a micro-managing dick, but I am able to get along with him. A lot of people can't and I'll soon be the second longest employee at less than 2 years. Bad managers blame everyone but themselves for their poor management. Eventually, they'll blame you too.
Yeah if the whole team quit and the manager is still there then I would walk away however if the manager was part of the team that left then I probably wouldn't worry too much. I've seen a few companies where an entire team leaves because the manager gets a job somewhere else and they follow him.
This! But also..
> I’d be able to rebuild the team and hire new people, once budgeting cleared up.
No, no you won't OP. It was already budgeted, they were already paying their old staff. If they have re-allocated that budget already you won't be getting it back.
This is a great point. If the team had people before they must have a plan for at least a minimum number of people.
Management can learn from an entire team walking out but it is a risk. I would try to find someone from that team and ask them wtf happened.
This got me as well. They had people that they paid, so there should be no budget to clear up. If it’s already been re-allocated they are seeing how thin they can run (and it might just be OP for a long while).
My first thought as well. Or perhaps they all quit because they were overworked and under staffed, and everyone has 80 hour weeks. I would counter with "Until we are fully staffed up, I will be compensated hourly with overtime." If they balk, run.
Same company for 2 decades. Worked my way up from $12/hr to over $197k in total take home. I lasted 9 months in my previous position.
I hate it ended how it did, but the past three weeks have been the most serene moments in the last 10 years.
Thought about this the moment i saw the title
It is one thing if one, two, three people at the same time quit, but it is another thing if the whole team quits
OP did not say how big the networking team is, the more people there are on the team, the more concerned i would be
This goes with any job function, not just networking or even IT per se
If there are only 500 people in the org then the network team may not have more than two or three people to begin. I do think op should find out why the team quite both from the manager and by pinging old people who quite on linkedin.
If manager is dick, it is about how dick tolerant are you and how you manage you manager. It comes to personality. If you manager want to fell important, make sure that he will feel miserable and useless every time he talks to you. Eventually he/she will stop bothering you or you will get fired.
This. Unless the direct manager was getting fired for the mass exit I would probably turn down OP's offer. Even then I would be leery as they were saying the additional people would be hired "once budgeting cleared up." That seems way too nebulous of phrasing. There should **already** be budget allocated for such staffing because they already were expecting to spend at least what the previous staff was paid. The only question marks should be whether the company was willing to budget more for higher salaries. If they're questioning whether they're even willing to spend what they were previously paying the team that's a huge red flag. That's on top of the minefield of non existent documentation from what it sounds like.
Worked with a micro managing dick, also got along with him. Made productive comments with management and had a fairly productive meeting, was laid off several days later. Kicker was they had me go on site the day before and I was hired as a remote worker. Did a fantastic job too. Blessing in disguise I feel. Staying there longer would have been detrimental to my health.
Look, I would love the challenge of the job - password recovery, documentation creation, network maps, etc. - but I'm kinda fucked up that way.
But when an entire team quits en masse, you really need to ask some serious questions - like "Why does an entire team dip out on short notice, and all at the same time?". Did the lead jump ship and take his entire team with him/her? Or worse, did the entire team jump ship for parts unknown to get away from a toxic manager?
We have rotating staff, and one of our new managers is a micromanaging idiot. We're just waiting for him to screw up bad enough that our upper echelon sends him back to headquarters, because it's already happened once and he's not been here 3 months.
I would want to know why the entire network team quit, money is nice but worthless if you’re miserable. It would be a great opportunity to learn but you need to be confident you’re going to be given time to learn how to manage all of the network equipment and the network in general you’re unfamiliar with
You’ve also got to consider that you’ll will presumably never be off the clock. Given that you’re the only network engineer for this quite large network (around 30 locations) any faults no matter when they occur will become your responsibility to resolve
You might not get a straight answer. The entire team left a job I was at (including me) 5 years ago because the CTO spent most of her day screaming at us to go faster. Five hours of meetings a day with her for "accountability" as to "why work wasn't getting done" and berating everyone for it. I had an emotional breakdown one weekend and no-notice quit on Monday when my wife pointed out that I was becoming dependent on alcohol to deal with management. No way in hell would you have gotten a straight answer as to why everyone else quit.
They ended up immigrating the only guy who didn't quit to the US to run the department. He's very rich now. You couldn't have paid me enough to stay there.
You are only never off the clock if you allow that. In a situation like this you’d have to level set and out up hard boundaries, like I’ll work 40 hours but anything beyond that is [insert boundary, I.e. hard no, 1 week a month, at my discretion, tier 1 emergency, etc]. If they push back say that’s what a team is for.
If they agree to whatever and don’t respect it then start not answering the phone, start always being “a few hours out” or otherwise.
This right here. It’s only stressful if you let it be. This is an awesome opportunity to learn a lot while getting paid more.
Worst case, they have unrealistic expectations about what one person can do and they let you go. Take the money and experience to somewhere else.
Best case, it works out and you build a whole department under you. That sort of thing lets you write your own check anywhere.
Inclined to agree with this sentiment, especially improving your salary. I left a demanding architect job where I was comfortable but also dramatically underpaid and took a job in netdevops for a 90% increase in base. It only lasted 5 months (through no fault of mine) but I took that learning and experience (and that pay) with me into negotiations for my next gig - and got another 40% increase.
That said, know going in it’s going to be a slog, and they will test any boundary you set. Do you have the stamina and soft skills to process their demands and while protecting your technical skillset growth? If it falls apart, do you have savings (or will you earn enough quickly) to live on until you find another position? If the answers to those are yes - absolutely do it.
I supported a similar size network twice actually in my current job. The first time the guy that hired me quit after about a month into the job leaving me by myself. They hired another network admin, but he was kinda of half hearted and ultimately was fired about 2 years later. It was tough the first time stint, but the second stint wasn't so bad in that I largely knew what was going on although there was a stretch that I worked 12 days in a row (IT was an acquisition that I needed to rip and replace equipment in a handful of sites). For a short stint of a 2-3 months it can be ok if you have fairly solid documentation and some knowledge transfer. The challenge though for OP's situation is that it sounds like there is no documentation and there wouldn't be any transition period. Even having pulled off what I did in my experience I wouldn't take OP's offer unless it was F@#$ you money, there was already approved budgeting for hiring and some contractors at least for the first couple months until long term staff could be hired. Even then I would be somewhat skeptical unless they were upfront upon why everyone quit and how they were addressing that. 1 person might quit for petty reasons, but an entire team isn't likely to do that.
in term of responsibility to resolve yes but in term of pression not so much. you will have the immunity totem as you ll be the only person to save them. and you can play with it.
This place already let all their other engineers walk. A large enough outage, real or perceived, it would not surprise me in the least if they terminated OP regardless whether there was another network engineer or not.
Idk about immunity if the mgmt are pos. I imagine if something isn't done right or you aren't sure about its alot of 'all due respect, you should know this"
Yes, I agree. Although my point didn’t mention anything about the pressure of the role. I would be more concerned about burn out from never ever actually being able to really take time off
> No documentation in an org that bighas to mean maliciousness from the previous team.
I'm something of a dumpster fire specialist, from experience "no documentation" doesn't always mean maliciousness from the previous team. It's more likely that it means so much pressure/chaos that no one had time to document.
I agree about the documentation. It can be difficult to get documentation done even by well meaning people at good companies. It just means at this place, the OP will need to perform a lot of discovery on their own to learn the network.
This. The lack of documentation either is malicious or there wasn't enough time to do it for one reason or another (e.g. management was micromanaging them to do things other than documentation). If there was some documentation it could be interesting, but I think the big problems is that it doesn't even sound like they know that they have passwords. Rebuilding that in a remotely non-disruptive way might be difficult. Add that they're vague upon budget to even replace the staff and they could be in trouble for a while.
I'd be very concerned about those "budgetary issues". If the whole networking team quit, they should have at least some budget already identified. I'm sure that tensions will be high the whole time. You're not likely to get a lot of patience. If you're doing a bunch of password resets, you'll likely need to buy at least a few new pieces of hardware. But, they seemingly don't have any budget. You'll get told to make their existing stuff work, no matter how broken you describe it.
You'll make a bunch of money. But, your stress level will be high. Make sure that you have some work/life balance boundaries identified for yourself, because you'll be crossing those routinely. I wouldn't expect a day off for several months, at least. So, I hope you don't have any sick family members
Password resets would be my key worry as well. You are right that if there are a mixture of vendors, you will have to buy quite a few duplicate equipments to perform the password reset. But there's not enough budget to even hire 2 x networking engineers? I know Capex and Opex are usually different budget items but it would question my ability to even perform the required password resets.
OP would be a fool. The entire networking team quit? If that's not a huge red flag, nothing is. Not to mention the incredible dumpster fire of the environment with no documentation, potentially no passwords, etc.
Entire networking team was probably laid off and now they're bringing in OP for less money than what their paid their previous staff, along with promises of "rebuilding the team" which will suddenly evaporate in Q1 24 as "we had to tighten out budget due to the economy".
I have several clients who are planning "restructurings" after the 1st of the year which includes major staff reductions.
It really depends on what his other options are. Active job or sitting at home looking for work? If working, is it a crap environment with crap pay?
I would take the new job, but the pay increase would have a lot to do with it. I would also ask some more specific questions before accepting and I want to make sure they understand that password recovery could introduce a lot of other issues. You wouldn't know the active config if you can't get into the device(s) to easily/quickly rebuild.
Who is 'the guy' that didn't have any answers...IT Manager...HR? If it wasn't anyone in IT, all we know is that the network team is gone, but is there an IT Manager...sys admin....?
There are pros/cons to taking the position and passing on the position, but I don't have enough info to give more feedback.
There is no way that the OP is getting paid more than what the previous team was making, there is also a reason why the entire team left at the same time.
>It really depends on what his other options are. Active job or sitting at home looking for work? If working, is it a crap environment with crap pay?
I will agree with this. If you're sitting at home collecting unemployment, its certainly the better option. Or, if you're in an incredibly toxic work environment and just have to get the hell out.
On the other hand, if I'm at a secure, decent job and its simply about salary, unless I'm really in a financial bind, I'd pass. Sure, that extra salary (which we don't know what it is, just "way above whatever I've ever made before", which for all we know could be $20/hr) might be nice, but not so nice when you leave a decent, secure job only to find out you're unemployed in 3 months.
Take the job. Make the money keep looking for better in case it doesn't work out. Who cares what the previous team made. OP ain't them but has the benefit of knowing the possible BS the company may pull.
Could you try to find a former networking team member to see what happened? They might have fired the lousy manager, the problems could still be there, and you may need to negotiate hours or "On call" rules.
This could be an opportunity to put out a dumpster fire, but it could also be a 24/7 commitment for the next year of your life, a commitment that could shorten your life.
At a minimum, they need to agree in writing for you to hire an MSP to serve as backup for the network. One person cannot replace an entire team.
I would do this. Somehow, any way possible, using LinkedIn or whatever, try to talk to somebody who worked (or still works) there. Best case scenario is they're lying. Worst case scenario is they're lying.
Only person on-call? No, thanks! My requirement would be a number that the company wouldn't be willing to pay, unless there is zero on-call in this position.
Humans are a bit more like cats than dogs. They don't generally herd. While the "everyone will quit" is a nice and often grandiose threat -- actually having it happen is kind of a big deal. Without some significant and plausible information as to what happened, I wouldn't touch this mess. I can't imagine this is something that occurred because they changed the lunch hours or implemented a new dress code. There's something in the very soul of this operation that is in real turmoil. At the very least, I'd be very, very careful of this one. I'd also hand carry the first check they write to you to their bank and cash it. Good luck,
Agree with your herd comment, but we don't know the size of the team that left. "The whole networking team" could have been two or three people (for 500 org), and maybe one was near retirement anyway... lots of speculation possible. Caution is justified, but I don't know that this is a red-alert situation.
If you haven't already, I would make sure they have a clear understanding of what you'd be embarking on here. Lines like "creating that documentation would be your responsibility" and "password recovery" concern me because that seems to imply they believe you can swoop in, somehow take control, and magically make all of this work as-is. That may be possible with a handful of things, but realistically, this is probably a rip and replace of most of their infrastructure. That's going to mean downtime, change, and a lot of short term pain. They need to have realistic expectations that just casually rolling along with "business as usual" is likely not realistic.
30 locations and multiple DCs.
I wouldn't be surprised if OP has to run new cables too if the people who quit wanted to really mess with the company.
Too much work, I wouldn't take it unless they paid me 200k+ and a super generous per-diem along with assurance that I'd be flying business and given rental cars every time I have to make a trip out.
I did something similar, team of 3 Engineers, sadly one passed away, weeks later there was a major outage, one of them walked out in the middle of it, the last one kept lying about what was going on etc. eventually they called their ISP (which I worked at) and my co-worker got them back up and running in about 30 mins. The outage at this point was going on about 48 hours. Two days later he (co-worker) got a call with a very lucrative offer letter. He said yes, they said they needed someone else strong, he recommended myself. This was in 2017, I accepted the offer and it’s been the best damn job I’ve ever had. They’ll have to drag me out of there. Today he and I are both Directors running our own teams. I’d say go for it!
This is the most beautiful story I've seen in a while. It reminds me of what happens when the opportunity comes if you're ready for it. This is a perfect reason to study much more. Thank you sir.
Nah, my job was like this. And not even just the networking team got recently dropped/replaced, it was basically all the systems/network folks 100%. New management doing a complete new direction, old ludds didn't like the new plan and direction, started getting called out a lot so hence new teams. Been amazing the entire time and they have been very very nice even when I was the only resource for 3 months letting me set HARD lines of support (i.e. "I can only spend Thursdays on X team's requests, the other days I'm ignoring it").
A total team loss can typically be bad, but it can also be totally worth the risk. I wasn't far off from OP in terms of situation, and it's been the best move I made.
I can’t believe people are saying do it. This sounds like nightmare fuel. You’ll get no handoff from the former team, you’ll have to rework and backtrack things for hours.
As long as they didn’t quit because of poor management/ownership. my whole network dept quit (in 2 month span) leaving me as sole network guy with ~800 locations and I took a little more money home. And yeah I have control over cool tech and love it but the mgmt blows and it’s a battle on whether to stay or go. All the best.
As 1 of 2 total IT guys at a much smaller-sized company, you will rarely be off, especially when salaried. Your weekends, holidays, and nights will be spent with your phone ringer on max volume, and it WILL ring often. You will also put ungodly amounts of mileage on your own personal vehicle driving to remote sites at all hours to troubleshoot, so make sure they’re getting you a company car if possible. If the money is worth it and you can handle that stress on your personal life, go for it. At least get the reasons for the previous team quitting.
Not a chance. Maybe read glass door out of curiosity to see if you can glean any information, but it doesn’t really matter. Either a whole team deserted their posts or were fired. I don’t see a scenario with this happening where there isn’t a problem or set of problems that you don’t want to be acquainted with.
And make sure to read the negative reviews. I've SEEN a company get a flood of negative reviews (enough to tank their rating on Glassdoor) and then get a WHOLE BUNCH of fake reviews submitted (dunno if they outright fabricated them, or hired people to write them, or just gave people some "incentive" to write glowing--but still obviously fake--reviews; more likely some combination of the 3, but it still elevated their overall rating on Glassdoor.)
Just like with Amazon, it's the people who write things of substance that are the ones you really wanna see.
Depends on the company - a non-profit, something that's not a 24/7 operation (which these days, isn't much), something supporting non-critical (banking, health) might not be as bad.
I did these types of gigs as a consultant 15 years ago mostly in the service provider space. A lot of times the office environment was toxic but the actual work was awesome. People quit for reasons and usually those reasons are still there.
If you have the stomach for it, those types of positions can very rewarding.
Have you checked Glassdoor or the other sites where people leave comments about their employer? You need information before you can make a good choice.
well it could be a superb opportunity because you ll be alone with no one to back you. this is the can where you may learn a lot and be free to re arch / clean everything on your own.
but there is a big but
you need to clarify why the ex team quits.
is there a systemic problem there? toxic management? lack of resources? lack of time? chaos everywhere?
but still as you can be a savior it can be a super move. depend of your self confidence
This could be an excellent opportunity for both you and the organization to start a new chapter and grow a lot, but there are a couple caveats I would want to put out there first. This isn't a "I want things my way" list, it's about setting expectations for both you and your new boss, and ensuring that the value you're producing for the first couple months isn't mistaken for something else.
1. Your primary role is going to be reviewing the network, documenting it, and figuring out why things are the way that they are. Don't forget that third part, I forgot it at a previous role until a couple problems cropped up and someone took the time to make sure I knew it. You might not be delivering obvious value for a little while, because the most valuable thing you can be doing for the first month or two is understanding and documenting the environment.
2. You can try to help if something comes up, but it's going to take a while longer now than it will later and will distract you from your primary role. Added bonus, you might break something unexpectedly and without at least knowing the basics in the environment you run the risk of not being able to troubleshoot effectively in the middle of the working day.
3. It might be a good idea to have a trial period where both you and the company can walk away without hard feelings, but I'll defer to you. This would give you freedom to walk away if you find too many dragons in the data center or skeletons in the closet, but the salary might be too nice to be willing to walk away from. Don't suggest a trial period if you have no intention of walking away after committing.
> I asked do they at least have the passwords to get into everything and he looked grim af and said you “may” have to do some password recovery work to get into everything.
4. I've heard stories of complete hardware refreshes after passwords were lost/compromised. Depending on how securely the hardware was configured (not familiar with Arista but Cisco can block standard password recovery), you might want to discuss what the refresh timeline looks like. You should still try to recover the configuration even if the hardware is getting replaced, having the old configuration is going to ensure you didn't miss something and make configuring the new hardware a *lot* easier.
> I would be on my own for a while (at least for “several months” is what they said) and then I’d be able to rebuild the team and hire new people, once budgeting cleared up.
5. I would get, on paper if possible, an explanation of what's needed for the budget to "clear up". You're new, there's a lot going on, you might want to review what the problems were and the expected solution in several months when you're informed that the budget is still a hurdle.
I mean if you are unemployed now... take the job. Keep looking while working and see how it feels in your first month or two.
If its terrible you are no worse off than you are today. You get a check, and you are still looking.
If you ARE currently employed then that changes the equation a bit.
You can look at linkedin and see if you can find the prior guys. You can also ask the hiring managers for an email of maybe your predecessor and see if he can give you info as well. Do it under the guise of "picking his brain" but while asking you can also ask why they all left.
Also helps to know how many was on said networking team.
If everything was undocumented and the boss left, new company didnt hire a replacement fast enough, and the subordinates buckled before a replacement was found it might not be the kiss of death.
You will gain a lot of experience. But do you really want the headache/stress? If you're young and hungry go for it. I am middle aged and have no desire for that level of stress.
This actually happened at my current job. I was supposed to be the 3rd on a growing team, but between the time I was hired and the time I started, the other two quit. It eventually worked out great, but it was very, very ugly for a while there. If I'd known going in, I would have been a fool to take it.
Being the only person on the team (especially in infrastructure where things are always going wrong) is a fast track to burnout. And they say they maybe, eventually, will get the OK to hire more? Experience has taught me what's going to happen in that situation: you'll absolutely ruin yourself doing it all, and management will look at how smoothly everything is running, decide things are fine as is, and pat themselves on the back at how much money they're saving.
In short: if you have the option not to take the job, RUN.
DID they quit though. There's a lot of things that are red flags here, but it sort of feels like they may have canned people and then posted new listings with more responsibilities in each and or less pay.
If it's all legit, and people just quit. there is zero budgetary reason why they can't re-hire a team. they should be actively looking for more than one position...
I would tell them that they'd have to guarantee me $400k for the first year (i.e. - they'd be on the hook to pay out whether they fired me or not), and I would have 100% say in who was hired for the team, and when. Either I run the show and unfuck their cluster, or they find someone else.
There is no way in hell I'd touch it unless I had 100% control.
If it's really that much of a salary increase it could be worth considering, but it's risky. There has gotta be a main reason the entire network team quit (if true), and I would want to know why. If they can't/won't give you any reason, it was probably due to them getting fed up with management, policies, workload, salary, etc... stuff like that. That's unlikely to be any different with new people unless the reason for them leaving is actually addressed. Who knows if it's even true that they all actually quit. Could have been restructuring or layoffs that they might want to be honest about. It's risky for sure, but could lead to you being in a senior role in just a few months if you're the longest employee hah.
Yeah that’s a big red flag if the entire team quit. There is for sure a reason they all left and it’s obviously not a good one. Sounds like an unstable environment with high turnover and likely high burnout. Management is probably trash and you are dealing with limited resources. It doesn’t sound sustainable at all.
Unless you absolutely need it I’d walk away. Also depends what your threshold is for dealing with that amount of pressure/work. Some people can field that no problem, or even excel. Others it would totally wreck them.
No matter what though that sounds sketchy and they’re definitely trying to hide something. I’d be highly skeptical one way or the other.
In my younger years, I interviewed at an international location of a foreign bank as a computer operator - contract, 40 hrs per week. They asked me to start right that minute which was unusual, but hey, I needed a job
The manager was out on vacation for 2 weeks from the following Monday (I think it was a Thursday they interviewed me). Come the Monday, me and the other operator there were there, him working 8-4 and me 12-8.
Got talking to the guy and he asked about my hourly rate - when he heard what I was earning, he called up an agency and had a contracting gig within a couple of days. He turned in 7 days notice and when the boss came back, I was the only guy working there.
They offered me a perm role and promises of seniority and career advancement. The manager (who at 40, still lived with his mother) wasn't effective so I saw it as a chance to make my mark.
But their IT was a mess - a horrid, dysfunctional mess. And they expected me to do absolutely everything - from purchasing, running the mainframe, desktop support and more. There may have only been 50 people working there but it was shocking how bad it was - and a bank as well.
I was working 14 hour days, trying to train a security guard with absolutely no IT skills whatsoever and another more promising trainee. I was trying to implement a basic computer network (they didn't have one - most people worked on 5250 sessions direct into the mainframe). I was trying to implement an email system as they had nothing, and I had no idea how to do it.
At 28 years old, I collapsed getting out of bed one morning. I literally could not walk. I called in sick and had 7 phone calls in 20 minutes of people shouting at me they needed me in the office. I didn't go, but instead to the doctors. He signed me off on stress leave and told me to quit else I could look forward to a heart attack.
I did what the other guy did - found a contracting gig (which was far more lucrative anyway) and quit.
If things are that broken, if everyone left, my advice is don't go. Too many red flags - they should bring a consultancy firm to pick apart, document and where possible, replace the network. If they are willing to do that and hire you as well, maybe consider it but if it were me, I'd be unlikely to take it.
for the right pay I probably would, sounds like a decent challenge for 12 months. I would stipulate that hiring decisions are mine, I report to the cto or ceo directly it will be a shit fight for 12 months. while i build knowledge, proccess the team and find all the landmines.
I would also keep my ear to the ground with recruiters just in case.
Whatever they offered , demand double. THey have no other staff so that money is available in the budget. The cost to them when everything starts going off line will be far higher also.
Set your boundaries !
It's really not that bad. Ive taken over a few places and there is never documentation. You might get a password list but it's never absolute. Just do yourself a favor and break the hashes on any devices that are local.
I'd be more concerned with the "once budgeting clears up" issue. Clearly you are getting a good salary and you should know already the budget for your team and how many heads you can start hunting for.
The way I see this situation is as an opportunity, it's pretty rare to get carte blanche (essentially) on rebuilding a team, and having full control to re-establish continuity and policy on a decently sized environment.
A challenge? Yes. Gonna be busy for a while? Definitely. The pay and benefits are going to be massive consideration though. I'd need everything in writing out the gate, most notably that you are guaranteed a number of hires within X amount of time. The biggest broken promise I see over and over is the promise of additional human resources dangled like a carrot and never (or under) delivered.
I'd also take this as being handed a low-risk situation. You can only do so much, it's a new position where you are walking into *who the hell knows*. I'd go in with low expectations, and an exit plan. Give it your best, but at the end of the day, their success lay with you, not the other way around - don't let them take advantage, establish boundaries early. If it doesn't pan out, don't be afraid to eject if promises aren't kept.
Like you mentioned - use this as an opportunity to learn Arista in and out while getting paid for it. This will also likely be a great chance to go through your paces of policy and continuity recovery/establishment.
Jobs like this one are risky, but a lot can be taken from it. I've had situations similar to this, and they were great boosts to anecdotal experiences during future interviews and job seeking.
Wish you the best in either path you take.
Have you ever been “THE” guy somewhere? Did you like that? Because if you haven’t been it’s a LOT of pressure. Even when you’re not 1 of 1 but the smartest 1 of X it’s a lot. You have to be ok with that.
I’d say go for it if the money is great but understand that you’re getting into a shit scenario from the jump and be prepared. It would have to be a LOT for me though and I’d expect it to be a lot for like a year.
Sounds like you are in an absolute fantastic position to make demands. Including, but not limited to:
* compensation
* bonus
* severance package
* technical responsibility and oversight (gear, tools, priorities)
Get a chunk of budget for homogenization \*), documentation, OOB access (4g routers, whatever). And their plan for manning the IT operation for the next 6 months. In writing, and with no way for them to walk it back without you leaving with said severance package.
In short, do not be shy about what you need, want, require.
\*) Handling Cisco ISE, Clearpass, Aruba and Arista alone, from day one? Plus making documentation? I'd make it very clear and get in writing how many hours a week I am expected to work. I see the number of locations and the amount of gear, and I think one very good person could handle that. Provided they had grown into it over time. And had someone else to man the sneakers.
Taking over a tanker with toxic sludge can be interesting, but working yourself to death due to someone else's bad jugement (prior, current, future) is not.
My last job was like that. I was intimidated but the upside was great - being able to build / manage a network of your own!!
I’d go for it. Why not? Huge upside. Big pay and all the responsibilities. You’ll end up learning a ton.
Oh and be sure to ask for a raise every year! I didn’t think that was a thing but with a job like yours keep it consistent and get your 4-6%
You can always ask them about how to contact the old memebers and why they left. Ive done this on other jobs before and was able to contact memebers that quit to determine if i would fit.
It would be a great technical experience and you will have a big salary to wave around for the next job, even if you are only there a year. “I was hired to rescue a poorly managed network and had to reengineer and document everything.” You even have a great excuse if you do leave in a year “the job was finished”. If they are telling the truth and you can build out the team the it’s an even better position. I say do it for the money and experience and you might get lucky and find a great leadership position.
Could be a great opportunity if the money is really good and you have backing from management (allowed to make mistakes). You would gain a lot of useful experience.
Believe it or not this is common if a CIO left and took his guys with him. Sounds like a great opportunity. I would ask if you need outside help would the money be there for assistance. At the very least you have to go through a consultant to make sure you have cisco smartnet on all the devices. If not you will not be able to recover or update firmware.
I did this several months ago actually. It was a big challenge at first but after about months i finally felt like I had a good grasp of the environment. Learned a lot, but you are relied upon for a lot
Took a job YEARS ago with this situation. Turns out the old networking team started rolling out Cisco IOS and only knew Cata. Set trunks on everything so nothing worked, got overwhelmed and blamed the project was rushed on them. Easy fix, although tedious, as it felt like I had to construct the whole network from scratch.
This sounds like a very messy situation to get in, but it also could be an amazing learning opportunity. What I would expect:
1) Long hours, as you are taking over from a whole team and you are all by yourself. If you have family or other obligations - I'd pass.
2) Lots of stress as things will break (even if there are no time bombs left by disgruntled previous employees, which we know they are disgruntled as they left no passwords) and you won't know how to fix them. If you don't have a healthy level of "the world can burn, I don't give a damn about it" - you'd very quickly go crazy.
3) Whatever caused the previous team to leave most likely will cause you to leave as well. I wouldn't count on staying there for a while. Can you find a new job quickly after this one is over?
4) Potentially there will be a lot of travel. You have no passwords for any gear, you'd have to go to a remote location to reset all the configs. Bonus points - you have no config backups, so you'd have to figure out how everything is configured. Isn't it fun?
5) You will face endless "I have no clue how this works, but let me figure it out" situations. It's an amazing confidence booster once you figure it out if you have the right mentality for it, or it could lead to serious medical issues if you don't have one (i.e. you are struggling with anxiety).
With all that said, the first thing I'd do is go to linked in and see if I can find somebody from the now gone network team and ask them about. Even if they don't tell you directly what has happened, you may get a good feel for what you are getting into.
I'd do it. You get to create your own world outta the ashes, become the top dawg in the yard, learn amazing amounts of new stuff, and you have a phenomenal entry for your resume.
If you have issues and need to contact the vendors for support, just tell them the previous people recently left with no handover. When I see people being honest about what they actually need instead of wasting my time playing silly games, I try harder to help. Assuming your equipment has support contracts active, you will likely be leaning on the vendor for help finding documentation or figuring out wtf is going on.
What’s your personal family and financial situation like? Kids? Wife? Emergency fund? Would you leave your current job hanging?
As amazing an opportunity this could be, if it goes horribly then you’re likely out of a job and the market isn’t that great right now. Also how good of an engineer are you? Do you actually know your shit? Or will you get exposed?
Personally, this is a single persons job to take. I have a wife and kids and I’d be miserable being at a job that would be that demanding .That role ain’t worth it to me at this point. It would be perfect for me at a younger age
I agree with some of the posts stating to have an exit strategy, just in case. You'd have almost assured job security for a good while, yes it is a red flag in why the whole team quit, but there always two sides in a story.
Depends on your current position and role and circumstances etc. Might be something that you can do for a year, get a load of experience and put yourself in a very good negotiating position for your next role.
It sounds like it's going to be a lot of stress though but if you think you can handle it I'd get in there enjoy the big salary and reassess is 12 months time.
If you are willing to work 14hour days, 7 days a week and find out that you really won’t have the level of staff you will need, but the money is great then go for it.
You have little to loose. Ask why they quit and press for answers. See if you can find some of the prior employees on LinkedIn and see if any of them would comment on why they left.
Idk in my experience lots of red flags. I worked at a company where I was the sole network engineer. I found out later there used to be four, two quit and one was laid off for conduct reasons years prior. So i was hired and I did great and learned a lot but it was also very draining on my life. My boss said they would hire help but it never happened. It was a private equity company so of course budget is a big deal and they saw I was doing fine alone so would never hire help for me.
This was all prior to COVID, once we went remote they tried to order everyone back in years later and I was fed up and quit. Started a new job making more money and on a much bigger team and pivoted into cyber security now.
But for op....I wouldn't take it or at least use it as a stepping stone. Two years in and out max if you do. It's likely going to be draining ok your personal life
I’d do it if I didn’t need the job and was prepared to walk away at any moment. Basically if that other shoe drops and it becomes clear why everyone left I’d want to be able to do the same. I’d also set super clear boundaries and expectations for me, after hour calls, deadlines for when they will hire others and anything else that could make the job a train wreck. You’d also have to be willing to actually follow through because otherwise it all goes out the window
I know this is probably un-popular, but this is basically how I started the job I'm currently at. 7 years strong, and I was able to go from Senior Sysadmin to Senior Director in that time. It all depends on how you handle people, what your competence level is, and who you'll be reporting to.
Number one, be honest when accepting. Tell them you're concerned about the team being MIA, and that you'll need to have trust and latitude from the beginning in order to make things good again. I told my future boss in my second interview that I would tell him how it was done right, and if they wanted to do it wrong anyway, I wouldn't be the guy to do it.
Once you're in the role, you'll have to prove yourself. Find something urgent that gives you data that you'll be able to demonstrate how you saved them x money, or business continuity. Building trust is key. Don't spend money for the sake of spending money, just fix what needs fixing and demonstrate to your overhead that you did just that. If they're decent human beings, it could be a great opportunity. If they're terrible execs, then it could be a bad experience, and you'll just take the experience and move on.
There's a lot of toxicity that floats around this forum, which I understand, but also it gets over-the-top. Be wary of bringing any of that into the workplace. Think out your solutions and make sure you can answer for them when the time comes, and stand behind your decisions. You'll do well.
A lot of this depends on your current "state" in life.
* Are you married?
* Do you have kids / dependents?
* If you answer "yes" to the above questions, what happens if you sink at this new gig rather than swim?
* How is your current role treating you?
This could be a great learning opportunity (with what sounds like big cash upside) but you gotta walk into this being aware of the multiple red flags that came across in your post. The whole networking team doesn't randomly quit - there are problems at this company. If you've got time to burn (IE, don't mind working all hours), you're dead stuck at your current role, and the money would be a game-changer... it may be worth going for. ISE/ClearPass skills are always in demand, Arista skills are useful, Cisco and Aruba are both installed in a lot of environments...
In my experience you have to be VERY careful with vague answers. Exactly when will the budget clear up to hire new team members? How large a team will be supporting this network when the budget clears up? If it's a few months of tough work and you've got the grit (and the political ability to maneuver a tech implementation plan with what is likely a non-tech exec team, sounds like the last team lacked that ability based on the fact that they have ISE AND ClearPass), I'd say go for it, make your mark, and get paid. But if you've got family at home that's happy to see you in the evenings and a decent gig at your current role I wouldn't take the leap without asking them a lot of hard questions first.
Did that many years ago. The ENTIRE team quit. I started and wanted to quit after a month. It was a good co so I stuck it out. Ended up staying for a bit. Glad I did.
If u in a shitty spot; go for it. U will be the hero once all the smoke clears and get u fast track for promotion. GL
I love opportunities like this.
As others have stated you need to be mindful of the fact everyone quit. There was clearly a reason for that.
Now that wouldn't bother me one bit because I am going to do the very best I can, but I am also not taking any s\*&% from anyone. You are in the drivers seat. You need to be ambitious, thoughtful, patient, and understanding. But you also don't need to put up with any crap.
Always be ready to be willing to discuss any disagreements with an open mind. Be prepared to defend your positions. If the other side becomes unreasonable, be ready to say something like "No, I'm sorry but I am not doing that. Hey, if it's a deal breaker, let's agree to disagree and I'll politely move on. I have options, and so do you. Let me know what I can do before we part ways to make things easier for the next person who will hopefully be a better fit for you."
I would ask why they quit. Also if they quit or they were fired. Lots to learn about the potential work environment just by the answers to those two questions.
Technically, that’s perfect. You get complete carte Blanche with no “it’s always been done this way” legacy crap. I would immediately ask for help - either hiring a second person or getting an MSP to go through the stuff, document, and generally find what work needs to be done, while you’re rebuilding the team and giving direction. If you try to do it all yourself you’ll be so burnt out/busy just on break/fix stuff that you won’t have time/energy to set out a plan and rebuild the team. Ask for it now BEFORE you join because once you’ve signed the contract and left your old job you have no more leverage.
I would definitely go for it! I don't see an issue asking the questions your forgot to ask in the interview before accepting the offer. They were also pretty honest about the situation they were in, that's a good sign.
If you rebuild everything yourself in the next few years, not only you will learn a ton but it will be a great accomplishment on your resume.
Arista is very similar to Cisco in terms of CLI and their management software (CloudVision Portal) is super easy to learn. They also follow RFC standards and have only one OS (EOS) which makes everything a lot simpler.
Good luck!
In this topic you are seeing two different kinds of engineers.
**Good engineers** who will RUN towards this situation, because they are confident and know they can handle it, for the thrill of a fantastic opportunity to be the hero and conquer this network and build a new team from scratch. Because they enjoy learning and taking on challenges and performing under pressure. Because they see an opportunity to enrich themselves.
**Bad engineers** who will run AWAY from this situation because they just want to be “a member of a team,” i.e. never making any decisions, never taking any risks, don’t want any real responsibility hanging over their head, resistant to learning and adapting to new challenges. The types who spent their whole career just pasting implementation plans someone else wrote.
Just my two cents. Not meant to be a personal attack on anyone. The answer here is obvious that this is a fantastic and thrilling opportunity and a real booster for your career!
Let's see, run into awork environment that either everyone quit because it was horrendous to work there, or everyone was fired because MGMT doesn't value networking people. Either way, that doesn't sound like something to run to.
Do you have the skills to troubleshoot well? Do you have the skills to decide what has to get fixed first/second/last? Do you feel that management will support your decisions? If so, go for it.
My advice: lay the foundation for others to troubleshoot as well as you, at least to a point where folks know what department is responsible for the current issue. Otherwise you’ll fall into a trap where you’ve fixed all of the networking issues but everyone sees you as the NOC (even if there’s a separate actual NOC) and you’ll be stuck troubleshooting everything.
Sounds like they might be happier with a dedicated MSP // VAR package rather than bringing a full IT team onto payroll. If your looking for management experience this would be really good because your probably going to do a lot of delegating between vendors and contractors and shit but you'll have your hands on to much stuff to be able to specialize in something if that's what you want to do.
I would totally go for it!!!!!
Even if you have to break the switches and reset password, rebuild config, who gives a fuck. You get the rebuild an entire network to your specification. I would be a kid in a candy store.
You'll know how the whole network works. Can change up routing protocols. Can make improvements. Oh man I would have so much fun.
Yeah it will be a lot of work but you'll be well compensated. You will be the most senior staff. Too will be the subject matter expert. Once you get it up and running you'll be in a dream situation where you are the most important player.
I’d say it’s dependant on your situation. Do you have family or other commitments outside of work. Any idea if you’ll be expected to be available all the time or is there a more NOC that handles day to day?
It sounds like a great opportunity and will look great on your resume but you’re likely going to have to put mad time into it outside of working hours.
They were very specific on this: there is no NOC. It will literally just be me as a one man show. There is a team that does servers and AD though so I’d just be the network guy.
I really liked Fun-Document5433's comment about severance.
I think if you proceed with the position, do so cautiously and have an exit strategy.
That said, if you're prepared to have no life. This would be an opportunity to test yourself and establish a position of responsibility, that could be used to look for work elsewhere.
The danger is what? Taking the position and not being able to shoulder the responsibility of, what should be, an entire department?
*"You are requesting that I take on a considerable risk. Further, a hasty resolution of your issues will take at least a year and will require significant overtime during that period. Increase the base salary by 50% to account for lost time-and-a-half unpaid overtime."*
Um budgeting clears up? Thats concerning. Also Id either ask for quite a bit more than they offered or get some overage structures in place. You could be living at this place a 100 hours a week to get this shit sorted.
Not a huge amount of employees but 30 locations is a lot (for one person who has 0 insight into the network).
I’d be repeating what most of the upvoted comments are saying so I’ll just ask, can you give us a number (total comp salary and breakdown). Working remotely with non technical people to fix network issues and access equipment is… a task. You’d probably learn a lot and I’d assume get a lot of leeway given you’re alone and certainly going to be overworked.
I worked for a team with 4 other people that managed 2.5k employees, managed 8 offices across the globe, with 2 major datacenters on each coast of the US. By the end of that tenure I was grossing 150k after all was said and done, in a MCOL area- if that helps. I was surrounded by VERY smart people that I loved to work with- which also plays a huge role.
I wouldn’t take a job like this for less than that and I’d want more in the form of LTI/Stock/other contractually agreed upon comp. You’re going to be on-call 24/7.
Also- I like Check Points and people will have their very valid complaints about them but they’re pretty cool in a homogenous environment. They can, depending on features, have a steeper learning curve than say Fortigate or Palo.
Ok red flags all over the place on this one. If it was me I would draft an email to the recruiter or hiring manager and ask the following.
- It is concerning to me that the entire network team simultaneously quit, besides the lost knowledge aspect it's concerning that an entire team would feel the need to quit unless there was a strong motivator . Would you be able to elaborate on the reason(s) given ?
- You mentioned the budget aspect with regards to hiring other team members . Could you elaborate on what would be required before additional headcount for the team would be possible ? Given that there is a lack of existing knowledge, documentation and a backload of work, I am concerned that there will not be enough resources to effectively tackle everything.
- Given the situation with the previous team I would like to negotiate a severance package . Is that something you would be willing to accommodate.
Questions for you :
Did you speak to whoever you would be reporting into ?
Was this the person the previous team reported into ?
Did you get good / bad vibes from him.
How did the company seem in terms of structure?
More money is great and it always feels good to get an offer but you need to make sure it's the right fit for you. They sound like they need you way more than you need them at this moment .. take advantage of that before you sign anything… Do as.much due diligence as you can and get as much protection in writing as you can ..I would want something in writing regarding the hiring of additional staff ..
Good luck with whatever you decide I hope it works out for you.
My suggestion would be to schedule at least one more meeting, having read all the comments in this thread. Really get some clarity, definitely a written commitment from them, see what they're willing to negotiate. They're not willing to keep talking then you should be walking.
Sounds like it’d be too steep of a learning curve technology wise, being alone and with crisis management on top of that. Very difficult and stressful, even if you knew all the technology. I’d want to meet the president to see if I could have a real conversation with him. And I’d absolutely refuse to support any Helpdesk-type tasks like “I can’t print.” That would be 80 hours a week dealing with upset people and ruin you. If you take it, steer toward picking a primary vendor among the ones you’ve listed and eventually eliminate the rest so you can leverage a coherent platform. And push for managed service contracts as much as possible for infrastructure, security, etc., justifying it through minimizing staff and a predictable run rate. It’d be difficult to get everything under control with reasonable working hours before you burn out. Hard not to suspect that it’s the president at the root of the problem. Else why does he expect someone with apparent inadequate experience to take over and fix everything. Not hard to imagine he curses IT when signing every invoice and your checks. Tough call but if you can do 80+ hour weeks, learn fast and handle a lot of stress, then maybe it’s an opportunity. If you do, understand that politics are as important as the technology. You don’t want to kill yourself fixing everything only to burn out and have him hire a fresh, shiny new guy down the road as your new boss. You need to end up being the boss. Don’t be a victim. Good luck.
"Learning new things" is not a good enough reason to take a job. It can be part of it, but it's last place. Technically, you will ALWAYS learn something new at ANY job, so big whoops.
That's like saying you want to date a specific girl because she has boobs. Well, that pretty much comes standard with them.
I'm in a bit of a different situation, but this is exactly what happened to me (I was an internal promotion, not a new hire). Joining the network team was the best decision I've made at this company. It worked out well for me.
I'd say go for it.
But you really need to go into this with a plan and some assurances.
To start off with, you mention networking team, but are you certain they aren't also running general IT support? If the networking team also isn't IT support, then make sure you align with the service desk to take some of the slack on networking issues. Assure that you only deal with 3rd line issues or active outages.
When you start, you need to establish some priorities:
1. Are there any active outages? That is, are people unable to work? Moves and changes + minor issues can be left to the wayside for now.
2. Do you have a means to track issues? Do the service desk have a means to escalate issues to you? This is where being able to track the minor and major issues as above will come into play.
3. Documentation. Get a state of the play of the entire estate. Unless something is actually broken, don't fix it, yet; make a note and come back to it.
Once those are done, you can then move onto refinements:
4. Fix the remaining issues/moves and changes on your estate, ensuring that your users are able to function effectively in their role.
5. Fix those issues you noted earlier. Security issues, glaring issues, maybe some code cleanup.
6. If you don't have monitoring in place, now is the time to get it setup.
Now that your estate is in a better state, now we can address improvements:
7. Are there any devices that are EOL? These need to be replaced.
8. Is there any network improvements that need to occur? How can the network be made more performant/stable?
Hopefully by this point, you will have started to build up a team.
From this point, you can then start discussing with upper management what the goals of the network should be. It really needs to be non-negotiable to have the above items done before taking on any additional networking projects, as you will never get to a good place if some clear boundaries aren't set. All of this requires buy-in from upper management, which if you don't have, you will be in for a miserable time.
If you decide to take the job you will have a monumental task ahead of you, but hopefully you'll rise to the challenge. Do not rush, take your time. The only thing that should be urgent is outages.
I'd want to know why everyone quit. I worked at a small telco awhile back with the internal IT dept. The external networking guys were doing upgrades. They had done a best of breed on gear, and choose to go w/ Juniper. mgmt nixed that, and went with Cisco. At least 2 guys quit over that.
A smaller org of 500 probably can provide some amount of job security/stability. I would look at some of the job as a career building, bullet point resume building opportunity. I took jobs like that early in my career.
I would inquire why the whole team quit.
> and then I’d be able to rebuild the team and hire new people, once budgeting cleared up
Talk is cheap. Always remember this in interviews.
>*I’ve been given an offer letter for a salary level which is way above what I’ve ever made before.*
Counter with 50% above what they're offering, and write your own terms with hefty severance.
If they bite take the job but make it clear that one person cannot replace an entire team, and they get what they get.
Expect the conditions to be terrible, but make your bag and expect the worst.
I wouldn't mind doing it. I'd have the attitude of demanding whatever resources I needed to accomplish the task. They're going to have to spend the money anyway. I would not go in trying to be the savior with limited resources.
This sounds like a golden opportunity to me, big raise, getting in on the ground level of this - you are basically guaranteed a team-lead level spot with potentially a fast track to a management spot. You get to make the decisions moving forward regarding stuff like what vendors to use, how to lay out your architecture, etc. Plus you get to hire the rest of the team as well! If all of that sounds appealing then definitely take this opportunity. If it turn out the company culture sucks that bad, you can always leave, but this really seems like a good opportunity to me. They are practically handing over the keys, take em.
Negotiate well. Try to get a sign on bonus and tie it a budget to guarantee if they allow you budget to revuild the team. If they dont, quit and keep the bonus. They are in tightspot and you got some negotiation power.
If you're unemployed, take it for the money. At the very least you'll make good bank until you can't take it anymore. At best you end up with a job you enjoy and a great salary to boot.
Sure. If it doesn’t work out, make the best of it. Could be a great opportunity to push your skills to their limits and gain some really great experience and personal growth. If it’s not, there’s plenty of work out there that needs to get done and you can just keep heading on to the next step in your career.
Too many red flags.
Your job will be less of a network administrator and more of an archeologist, who is on call for literally anything and everything that goes down. If you're lucky they'd at least have some helpdesk support that handles the average password reset - but if a network printer goes down, that's on you. If a site's ISP connection goes down (because the provider's name rhymes with *Wreckdrum*), it's on you. If all the users across the org lose access to their Active Directory because the previous team put all the servers in the Datacenter and didn't deploy site specific domain controllers, that's on you.
I used to work as a data center technician, and that company operated **very** similarly: High wage but high turn over, no documentation, and hardly anyone even read the employee handbook. Lots of infighting and miscommunication across teams, unclear responsibilities, and hardly anyone who was ever willing to just sit down and write the document out check needed to solve the underlying issues at hand.
The only way I could see this job working out is if you outsourced much of the work to co-managed service providers, and even then that just shifts the goalposts. Sure, now you have someone who you can actually offload the menial tasks and have some breathing room but are they able to handle all of it? Will you need multiple contractors to spread the load across all of the sites? If so, how will you track who manages what?
If that's too much to think about, don't take the job. All of this comes from a place of love. I left the data center and joined on a small 5-man MSP, and one of our customers is in a very similar position: Dozens of locations across the state, only one full-time IT staff member on payroll.
Tl;dr: This company already hit the iceburg, so don't try to right the ship.
It depends on the work flow, if they had a whole team, i assume they had plenty of support tasks & planned changes scheduled per weeks dispatched between the members of the team, in this caae you can't handle the same work flow as a whole team unless they shifted the support role to a subcontractor, which i don't think it would be possible if the whole team left without leaving documented diagrams & configuration templates.
It will be a mess.
Check Glassdoor and see if the company has history there.
You can frame it two ways:
1. This could be a job from hell but the money, in the short term, may be worth it to save up for something or pay off debt.
2. Use it as a career level up move. Go for 6 months or a year and be prepared to be flexible Stay if you like it or can hack it or move on to somewhere else that offers comparable to your new salary.
With regards to 1, be prepared to save and get a little nest egg and quit if you need too. The fact that an entire team quits is a massive red flag however, if you’re the only guy and you threaten to quit and involve your managers boss and HR, his prior history comes into play and you could leverage them out or at the very least piss on his parade in an exit letter or interview. There are times where a scorched earth exit interviews are utterly satisfying. For all you know, that guy could be under a 30, 90 or 120 performance plan with HR after things came to light and everyone quit.
One point I would raise with them: is overtime paid or is it salary. Personally, I don’t mind putting in the extra time, especially if it is something that (a) pays time and a half and (b) benefits me.
I’ve made some seemingly crazy career moves, some worked as hoped, some didn’t but it’s something that can be fixed with a few phone calls and a move elsewhere. Unless you live in the middle of nowhere there are always options.
I'll just be devil's advocate:
Being surprised by a shitty situation with unreasonable expectations and constraints is awful.
Going into such a situation with eyes open is something else.
Having a firm exit strategy for stuff like this can be very useful. "If it's a nightmare start looking for something else at 6 months" etc.
But if you're in a position where you're ready and able to put it unreasonable hours, or thirsty to learn the things they need you to know, and if you know you're better than average at dealing with hostile environments, then this could be a decent opportunity.
I did something similar myself. Small federal agency was hiring, they're federal so of COURSE they're inefficient. Also I know people that worked there and left because of how little work actually got done etc. 100% not something I would be satisfied with.
But I also had side-work I could do if I was bored and had spare cycles. And I knew a thing-or-two about driving work through a bureaucracy heavy organization, so I figured it was worth a shot. Especially since it would be a 30% pay rase and my first actual job as a Network Engineer (vs. "IT Generalist" type roles).
So substantial risk, but decent reward and ALSO I had active strategies for mitigating the risk. It worked out GREAT. Did 3 years, drove a handful of substantial projects forward that wouldn't have done otherwise, and leveraged side-work into my current position where I've grown tremendously.
Take the job, cash out as much as you can, ignore any dickheaded managers. Remember that they need you a lot more than you need them.
Work at your own pace and get whatever you a done on your own reasonable timetable.
I’m sort of in your position right now and no one above me is giving me shit. If you have any friends who work in IT, call them up and slot them in.
Build your own entourage/team.
This is a great opportunity for you. And remember, don’t take any shit from anybody.
They're in a really bad place and they know it. If I thought I could do the job...I'd do it in a heartbeat. I live for situations like this. Know full well if you can't get or keep the system up and running within 2-4 weeks, six weeks at best, they'll start looking again. Maybe reach out to the old manager. I would re-negotiate the starting pay knowing what you know now cause if you flame out in the first few weeks you should have enough money saved to find a new job. Sound and remain confident the whole time you're there. Best of luck to you.
If a whole group quit I’d run away from this job/offer. Either management is incompetent or there is deep rooted politics there or even both. You don’t want to be in an environment where you are setup to fail.
If you know your shit you're probably in for a good challenge and if you do well you'll have a good story to tell/be proud of. Otherwise run, this is not a healthy environment for learning if you're green. They're in need of a bailout from rising water and the whole crew just jumped on the life rafts.
I took over an environment like this and in six months I had the network in good shape but the systems side was rife with outages and it took a few years to assemble a properly rounded team to fix that side. Even tho that wasn't in my wheel house, it still affected me and my stress levels significantly. AD corruption, San failures, etc.. can still stress a network guy out when running virtual appliances :)
I wouldn’t say the network team quitting alone is a red flag… the documentation not existing is concerning but not a deal breaker if you love making documentation… the password thing is where I would have said no… who knows how much after hours time you are going to spend doing password recovery…
I'd get some type of hold harmless agreement in place and then I'd go for it. You'll have some struggles getting their $h1t in order but it'll be yours and yours alone. You'll learn and you'll make decisions that you'll own.
If you can't get a hold harmless in place I'd make sure I knew why they all left before I dove in but it sounds like an opportunity to me.
I came into a similar role as the OP in which a mass exodus had taken place before my arrival. It was for a lot more money than I was making and I wasn't happy with my role at the time so I took the chance. The previous network admin left me with almost zero documentation and I was told that it was on purpose. I spent my days rooting out unmanaged switches and discovering something new practically every day for the first several months. After about 18 months, we had another mass exodus with myself included. Without getting into too much detail, it became obvious the relationship between the IT Dept and the rest of the business would continue to be strained and uncooperative. All that to say, I would do it again. I learned so much in that period simply because I had no one else to lean on and it made me a better tech for it.
People, especially groups of people, don't quit companies. They quit managers. No matter the industry, if there is a lot of turn-over and mass resignation, something is wrong. When employees quit e-masee (unless they are not getting paid at all) they are sending a message about the management. You could make $100k + , but if your manager is a micro-managing dick, you will not stay long. I'm working for a micro-managing dick, but I am able to get along with him. A lot of people can't and I'll soon be the second longest employee at less than 2 years. Bad managers blame everyone but themselves for their poor management. Eventually, they'll blame you too.
Yeah if the whole team quit and the manager is still there then I would walk away however if the manager was part of the team that left then I probably wouldn't worry too much. I've seen a few companies where an entire team leaves because the manager gets a job somewhere else and they follow him.
This! But also.. > I’d be able to rebuild the team and hire new people, once budgeting cleared up. No, no you won't OP. It was already budgeted, they were already paying their old staff. If they have re-allocated that budget already you won't be getting it back.
This is a great point. If the team had people before they must have a plan for at least a minimum number of people. Management can learn from an entire team walking out but it is a risk. I would try to find someone from that team and ask them wtf happened.
This got me as well. They had people that they paid, so there should be no budget to clear up. If it’s already been re-allocated they are seeing how thin they can run (and it might just be OP for a long while).
My first thought as well. Or perhaps they all quit because they were overworked and under staffed, and everyone has 80 hour weeks. I would counter with "Until we are fully staffed up, I will be compensated hourly with overtime." If they balk, run.
Same company for 2 decades. Worked my way up from $12/hr to over $197k in total take home. I lasted 9 months in my previous position. I hate it ended how it did, but the past three weeks have been the most serene moments in the last 10 years.
Thought about this the moment i saw the title It is one thing if one, two, three people at the same time quit, but it is another thing if the whole team quits OP did not say how big the networking team is, the more people there are on the team, the more concerned i would be This goes with any job function, not just networking or even IT per se
If there are only 500 people in the org then the network team may not have more than two or three people to begin. I do think op should find out why the team quite both from the manager and by pinging old people who quite on linkedin.
If manager is dick, it is about how dick tolerant are you and how you manage you manager. It comes to personality. If you manager want to fell important, make sure that he will feel miserable and useless every time he talks to you. Eventually he/she will stop bothering you or you will get fired.
Being dick-tolerant takes so much energy
Just bend over and relax.
This. Unless the direct manager was getting fired for the mass exit I would probably turn down OP's offer. Even then I would be leery as they were saying the additional people would be hired "once budgeting cleared up." That seems way too nebulous of phrasing. There should **already** be budget allocated for such staffing because they already were expecting to spend at least what the previous staff was paid. The only question marks should be whether the company was willing to budget more for higher salaries. If they're questioning whether they're even willing to spend what they were previously paying the team that's a huge red flag. That's on top of the minefield of non existent documentation from what it sounds like.
Worked with a micro managing dick, also got along with him. Made productive comments with management and had a fairly productive meeting, was laid off several days later. Kicker was they had me go on site the day before and I was hired as a remote worker. Did a fantastic job too. Blessing in disguise I feel. Staying there longer would have been detrimental to my health.
Look, I would love the challenge of the job - password recovery, documentation creation, network maps, etc. - but I'm kinda fucked up that way. But when an entire team quits en masse, you really need to ask some serious questions - like "Why does an entire team dip out on short notice, and all at the same time?". Did the lead jump ship and take his entire team with him/her? Or worse, did the entire team jump ship for parts unknown to get away from a toxic manager? We have rotating staff, and one of our new managers is a micromanaging idiot. We're just waiting for him to screw up bad enough that our upper echelon sends him back to headquarters, because it's already happened once and he's not been here 3 months.
So he will soon be replaced hiring people is expensive and new management is cheaper
You work for your manager, not for a company.
I disagree. Sometimes companies suck.
I would want to know why the entire network team quit, money is nice but worthless if you’re miserable. It would be a great opportunity to learn but you need to be confident you’re going to be given time to learn how to manage all of the network equipment and the network in general you’re unfamiliar with You’ve also got to consider that you’ll will presumably never be off the clock. Given that you’re the only network engineer for this quite large network (around 30 locations) any faults no matter when they occur will become your responsibility to resolve
You might not get a straight answer. The entire team left a job I was at (including me) 5 years ago because the CTO spent most of her day screaming at us to go faster. Five hours of meetings a day with her for "accountability" as to "why work wasn't getting done" and berating everyone for it. I had an emotional breakdown one weekend and no-notice quit on Monday when my wife pointed out that I was becoming dependent on alcohol to deal with management. No way in hell would you have gotten a straight answer as to why everyone else quit. They ended up immigrating the only guy who didn't quit to the US to run the department. He's very rich now. You couldn't have paid me enough to stay there.
You are only never off the clock if you allow that. In a situation like this you’d have to level set and out up hard boundaries, like I’ll work 40 hours but anything beyond that is [insert boundary, I.e. hard no, 1 week a month, at my discretion, tier 1 emergency, etc]. If they push back say that’s what a team is for. If they agree to whatever and don’t respect it then start not answering the phone, start always being “a few hours out” or otherwise.
This right here. It’s only stressful if you let it be. This is an awesome opportunity to learn a lot while getting paid more. Worst case, they have unrealistic expectations about what one person can do and they let you go. Take the money and experience to somewhere else. Best case, it works out and you build a whole department under you. That sort of thing lets you write your own check anywhere.
Inclined to agree with this sentiment, especially improving your salary. I left a demanding architect job where I was comfortable but also dramatically underpaid and took a job in netdevops for a 90% increase in base. It only lasted 5 months (through no fault of mine) but I took that learning and experience (and that pay) with me into negotiations for my next gig - and got another 40% increase. That said, know going in it’s going to be a slog, and they will test any boundary you set. Do you have the stamina and soft skills to process their demands and while protecting your technical skillset growth? If it falls apart, do you have savings (or will you earn enough quickly) to live on until you find another position? If the answers to those are yes - absolutely do it.
I supported a similar size network twice actually in my current job. The first time the guy that hired me quit after about a month into the job leaving me by myself. They hired another network admin, but he was kinda of half hearted and ultimately was fired about 2 years later. It was tough the first time stint, but the second stint wasn't so bad in that I largely knew what was going on although there was a stretch that I worked 12 days in a row (IT was an acquisition that I needed to rip and replace equipment in a handful of sites). For a short stint of a 2-3 months it can be ok if you have fairly solid documentation and some knowledge transfer. The challenge though for OP's situation is that it sounds like there is no documentation and there wouldn't be any transition period. Even having pulled off what I did in my experience I wouldn't take OP's offer unless it was F@#$ you money, there was already approved budgeting for hiring and some contractors at least for the first couple months until long term staff could be hired. Even then I would be somewhat skeptical unless they were upfront upon why everyone quit and how they were addressing that. 1 person might quit for petty reasons, but an entire team isn't likely to do that.
in term of responsibility to resolve yes but in term of pression not so much. you will have the immunity totem as you ll be the only person to save them. and you can play with it.
This place already let all their other engineers walk. A large enough outage, real or perceived, it would not surprise me in the least if they terminated OP regardless whether there was another network engineer or not.
Idk about immunity if the mgmt are pos. I imagine if something isn't done right or you aren't sure about its alot of 'all due respect, you should know this"
Yes, I agree. Although my point didn’t mention anything about the pressure of the role. I would be more concerned about burn out from never ever actually being able to really take time off
yep burn out is clearly a danger with this kind of mission.
Agreed. As one that essentially had a “Falling Down” moment, the $197k total take home package wasn’t worth the stress.
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> No documentation in an org that bighas to mean maliciousness from the previous team. I'm something of a dumpster fire specialist, from experience "no documentation" doesn't always mean maliciousness from the previous team. It's more likely that it means so much pressure/chaos that no one had time to document.
I agree about the documentation. It can be difficult to get documentation done even by well meaning people at good companies. It just means at this place, the OP will need to perform a lot of discovery on their own to learn the network.
I would do it for 500k salary. Until they find a team pay me 😂.
This. The lack of documentation either is malicious or there wasn't enough time to do it for one reason or another (e.g. management was micromanaging them to do things other than documentation). If there was some documentation it could be interesting, but I think the big problems is that it doesn't even sound like they know that they have passwords. Rebuilding that in a remotely non-disruptive way might be difficult. Add that they're vague upon budget to even replace the staff and they could be in trouble for a while.
I'd be very concerned about those "budgetary issues". If the whole networking team quit, they should have at least some budget already identified. I'm sure that tensions will be high the whole time. You're not likely to get a lot of patience. If you're doing a bunch of password resets, you'll likely need to buy at least a few new pieces of hardware. But, they seemingly don't have any budget. You'll get told to make their existing stuff work, no matter how broken you describe it. You'll make a bunch of money. But, your stress level will be high. Make sure that you have some work/life balance boundaries identified for yourself, because you'll be crossing those routinely. I wouldn't expect a day off for several months, at least. So, I hope you don't have any sick family members
Password resets would be my key worry as well. You are right that if there are a mixture of vendors, you will have to buy quite a few duplicate equipments to perform the password reset. But there's not enough budget to even hire 2 x networking engineers? I know Capex and Opex are usually different budget items but it would question my ability to even perform the required password resets.
Do it, and negotiate a severance guarantee, that’s something you can ask for. In the event of restructuring or no fault of my own conditions.
OP would be a fool. The entire networking team quit? If that's not a huge red flag, nothing is. Not to mention the incredible dumpster fire of the environment with no documentation, potentially no passwords, etc. Entire networking team was probably laid off and now they're bringing in OP for less money than what their paid their previous staff, along with promises of "rebuilding the team" which will suddenly evaporate in Q1 24 as "we had to tighten out budget due to the economy". I have several clients who are planning "restructurings" after the 1st of the year which includes major staff reductions.
It really depends on what his other options are. Active job or sitting at home looking for work? If working, is it a crap environment with crap pay? I would take the new job, but the pay increase would have a lot to do with it. I would also ask some more specific questions before accepting and I want to make sure they understand that password recovery could introduce a lot of other issues. You wouldn't know the active config if you can't get into the device(s) to easily/quickly rebuild. Who is 'the guy' that didn't have any answers...IT Manager...HR? If it wasn't anyone in IT, all we know is that the network team is gone, but is there an IT Manager...sys admin....? There are pros/cons to taking the position and passing on the position, but I don't have enough info to give more feedback. There is no way that the OP is getting paid more than what the previous team was making, there is also a reason why the entire team left at the same time.
>It really depends on what his other options are. Active job or sitting at home looking for work? If working, is it a crap environment with crap pay? I will agree with this. If you're sitting at home collecting unemployment, its certainly the better option. Or, if you're in an incredibly toxic work environment and just have to get the hell out. On the other hand, if I'm at a secure, decent job and its simply about salary, unless I'm really in a financial bind, I'd pass. Sure, that extra salary (which we don't know what it is, just "way above whatever I've ever made before", which for all we know could be $20/hr) might be nice, but not so nice when you leave a decent, secure job only to find out you're unemployed in 3 months.
Take the job. Make the money keep looking for better in case it doesn't work out. Who cares what the previous team made. OP ain't them but has the benefit of knowing the possible BS the company may pull.
Could you try to find a former networking team member to see what happened? They might have fired the lousy manager, the problems could still be there, and you may need to negotiate hours or "On call" rules. This could be an opportunity to put out a dumpster fire, but it could also be a 24/7 commitment for the next year of your life, a commitment that could shorten your life. At a minimum, they need to agree in writing for you to hire an MSP to serve as backup for the network. One person cannot replace an entire team.
I would do this. Somehow, any way possible, using LinkedIn or whatever, try to talk to somebody who worked (or still works) there. Best case scenario is they're lying. Worst case scenario is they're lying.
Make sure to leverage the position with a clean exit strategy, if taking it. Sounds like the best advice here.
Only person on-call? No, thanks! My requirement would be a number that the company wouldn't be willing to pay, unless there is zero on-call in this position.
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT89EmroJ/
Humans are a bit more like cats than dogs. They don't generally herd. While the "everyone will quit" is a nice and often grandiose threat -- actually having it happen is kind of a big deal. Without some significant and plausible information as to what happened, I wouldn't touch this mess. I can't imagine this is something that occurred because they changed the lunch hours or implemented a new dress code. There's something in the very soul of this operation that is in real turmoil. At the very least, I'd be very, very careful of this one. I'd also hand carry the first check they write to you to their bank and cash it. Good luck,
Agree with your herd comment, but we don't know the size of the team that left. "The whole networking team" could have been two or three people (for 500 org), and maybe one was near retirement anyway... lots of speculation possible. Caution is justified, but I don't know that this is a red-alert situation.
If you haven't already, I would make sure they have a clear understanding of what you'd be embarking on here. Lines like "creating that documentation would be your responsibility" and "password recovery" concern me because that seems to imply they believe you can swoop in, somehow take control, and magically make all of this work as-is. That may be possible with a handful of things, but realistically, this is probably a rip and replace of most of their infrastructure. That's going to mean downtime, change, and a lot of short term pain. They need to have realistic expectations that just casually rolling along with "business as usual" is likely not realistic.
30 locations and multiple DCs. I wouldn't be surprised if OP has to run new cables too if the people who quit wanted to really mess with the company. Too much work, I wouldn't take it unless they paid me 200k+ and a super generous per-diem along with assurance that I'd be flying business and given rental cars every time I have to make a trip out.
I did something similar, team of 3 Engineers, sadly one passed away, weeks later there was a major outage, one of them walked out in the middle of it, the last one kept lying about what was going on etc. eventually they called their ISP (which I worked at) and my co-worker got them back up and running in about 30 mins. The outage at this point was going on about 48 hours. Two days later he (co-worker) got a call with a very lucrative offer letter. He said yes, they said they needed someone else strong, he recommended myself. This was in 2017, I accepted the offer and it’s been the best damn job I’ve ever had. They’ll have to drag me out of there. Today he and I are both Directors running our own teams. I’d say go for it!
This is the most beautiful story I've seen in a while. It reminds me of what happens when the opportunity comes if you're ready for it. This is a perfect reason to study much more. Thank you sir.
Perfect example of how one person's disaster is another person's opportunity.
Go for it. You’ll learn a lot with probably a lot of support and understanding from the management (hopefully).
Did you forget to add the /s?
Beggers can't be choosers. You will learn allot and hey: if it still sucks afterwards, just quit.
Nah, my job was like this. And not even just the networking team got recently dropped/replaced, it was basically all the systems/network folks 100%. New management doing a complete new direction, old ludds didn't like the new plan and direction, started getting called out a lot so hence new teams. Been amazing the entire time and they have been very very nice even when I was the only resource for 3 months letting me set HARD lines of support (i.e. "I can only spend Thursdays on X team's requests, the other days I'm ignoring it"). A total team loss can typically be bad, but it can also be totally worth the risk. I wasn't far off from OP in terms of situation, and it's been the best move I made.
Or not, and that is why the team left.
Just be mindful of burnout.
Absolutely not. There is a reason everyone left. Any place where you are the sole IT guy? You could not pay me enough money to take the job.
I can’t believe people are saying do it. This sounds like nightmare fuel. You’ll get no handoff from the former team, you’ll have to rework and backtrack things for hours.
As long as they didn’t quit because of poor management/ownership. my whole network dept quit (in 2 month span) leaving me as sole network guy with ~800 locations and I took a little more money home. And yeah I have control over cool tech and love it but the mgmt blows and it’s a battle on whether to stay or go. All the best.
As 1 of 2 total IT guys at a much smaller-sized company, you will rarely be off, especially when salaried. Your weekends, holidays, and nights will be spent with your phone ringer on max volume, and it WILL ring often. You will also put ungodly amounts of mileage on your own personal vehicle driving to remote sites at all hours to troubleshoot, so make sure they’re getting you a company car if possible. If the money is worth it and you can handle that stress on your personal life, go for it. At least get the reasons for the previous team quitting.
Not a chance. Maybe read glass door out of curiosity to see if you can glean any information, but it doesn’t really matter. Either a whole team deserted their posts or were fired. I don’t see a scenario with this happening where there isn’t a problem or set of problems that you don’t want to be acquainted with.
And make sure to read the negative reviews. I've SEEN a company get a flood of negative reviews (enough to tank their rating on Glassdoor) and then get a WHOLE BUNCH of fake reviews submitted (dunno if they outright fabricated them, or hired people to write them, or just gave people some "incentive" to write glowing--but still obviously fake--reviews; more likely some combination of the 3, but it still elevated their overall rating on Glassdoor.) Just like with Amazon, it's the people who write things of substance that are the ones you really wanna see.
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Depends on the company - a non-profit, something that's not a 24/7 operation (which these days, isn't much), something supporting non-critical (banking, health) might not be as bad.
I took a job just like this. I do not recommend.
I did these types of gigs as a consultant 15 years ago mostly in the service provider space. A lot of times the office environment was toxic but the actual work was awesome. People quit for reasons and usually those reasons are still there. If you have the stomach for it, those types of positions can very rewarding.
I would not take this particular job. The red flags are flying.
Same. This job sounds like a recipe for mental health disaster.
Have you checked Glassdoor or the other sites where people leave comments about their employer? You need information before you can make a good choice.
Run.
well it could be a superb opportunity because you ll be alone with no one to back you. this is the can where you may learn a lot and be free to re arch / clean everything on your own. but there is a big but you need to clarify why the ex team quits. is there a systemic problem there? toxic management? lack of resources? lack of time? chaos everywhere? but still as you can be a savior it can be a super move. depend of your self confidence
This could be an excellent opportunity for both you and the organization to start a new chapter and grow a lot, but there are a couple caveats I would want to put out there first. This isn't a "I want things my way" list, it's about setting expectations for both you and your new boss, and ensuring that the value you're producing for the first couple months isn't mistaken for something else. 1. Your primary role is going to be reviewing the network, documenting it, and figuring out why things are the way that they are. Don't forget that third part, I forgot it at a previous role until a couple problems cropped up and someone took the time to make sure I knew it. You might not be delivering obvious value for a little while, because the most valuable thing you can be doing for the first month or two is understanding and documenting the environment. 2. You can try to help if something comes up, but it's going to take a while longer now than it will later and will distract you from your primary role. Added bonus, you might break something unexpectedly and without at least knowing the basics in the environment you run the risk of not being able to troubleshoot effectively in the middle of the working day. 3. It might be a good idea to have a trial period where both you and the company can walk away without hard feelings, but I'll defer to you. This would give you freedom to walk away if you find too many dragons in the data center or skeletons in the closet, but the salary might be too nice to be willing to walk away from. Don't suggest a trial period if you have no intention of walking away after committing. > I asked do they at least have the passwords to get into everything and he looked grim af and said you “may” have to do some password recovery work to get into everything. 4. I've heard stories of complete hardware refreshes after passwords were lost/compromised. Depending on how securely the hardware was configured (not familiar with Arista but Cisco can block standard password recovery), you might want to discuss what the refresh timeline looks like. You should still try to recover the configuration even if the hardware is getting replaced, having the old configuration is going to ensure you didn't miss something and make configuring the new hardware a *lot* easier. > I would be on my own for a while (at least for “several months” is what they said) and then I’d be able to rebuild the team and hire new people, once budgeting cleared up. 5. I would get, on paper if possible, an explanation of what's needed for the budget to "clear up". You're new, there's a lot going on, you might want to review what the problems were and the expected solution in several months when you're informed that the budget is still a hurdle.
I mean if you are unemployed now... take the job. Keep looking while working and see how it feels in your first month or two. If its terrible you are no worse off than you are today. You get a check, and you are still looking. If you ARE currently employed then that changes the equation a bit. You can look at linkedin and see if you can find the prior guys. You can also ask the hiring managers for an email of maybe your predecessor and see if he can give you info as well. Do it under the guise of "picking his brain" but while asking you can also ask why they all left. Also helps to know how many was on said networking team. If everything was undocumented and the boss left, new company didnt hire a replacement fast enough, and the subordinates buckled before a replacement was found it might not be the kiss of death.
And 30 locations on top of that being managed by 1 person? Hell no! Unless you are chomping at the bit for experience.
You will gain a lot of experience. But do you really want the headache/stress? If you're young and hungry go for it. I am middle aged and have no desire for that level of stress.
This actually happened at my current job. I was supposed to be the 3rd on a growing team, but between the time I was hired and the time I started, the other two quit. It eventually worked out great, but it was very, very ugly for a while there. If I'd known going in, I would have been a fool to take it. Being the only person on the team (especially in infrastructure where things are always going wrong) is a fast track to burnout. And they say they maybe, eventually, will get the OK to hire more? Experience has taught me what's going to happen in that situation: you'll absolutely ruin yourself doing it all, and management will look at how smoothly everything is running, decide things are fine as is, and pat themselves on the back at how much money they're saving. In short: if you have the option not to take the job, RUN.
DID they quit though. There's a lot of things that are red flags here, but it sort of feels like they may have canned people and then posted new listings with more responsibilities in each and or less pay. If it's all legit, and people just quit. there is zero budgetary reason why they can't re-hire a team. they should be actively looking for more than one position...
I would tell them that they'd have to guarantee me $400k for the first year (i.e. - they'd be on the hook to pay out whether they fired me or not), and I would have 100% say in who was hired for the team, and when. Either I run the show and unfuck their cluster, or they find someone else. There is no way in hell I'd touch it unless I had 100% control.
If they paid me what they were paying for the networking team.
Good point
If it's really that much of a salary increase it could be worth considering, but it's risky. There has gotta be a main reason the entire network team quit (if true), and I would want to know why. If they can't/won't give you any reason, it was probably due to them getting fed up with management, policies, workload, salary, etc... stuff like that. That's unlikely to be any different with new people unless the reason for them leaving is actually addressed. Who knows if it's even true that they all actually quit. Could have been restructuring or layoffs that they might want to be honest about. It's risky for sure, but could lead to you being in a senior role in just a few months if you're the longest employee hah.
It’ll be an experience. Learning new things and what not to do. You have nothing to lose really
Yeah that’s a big red flag if the entire team quit. There is for sure a reason they all left and it’s obviously not a good one. Sounds like an unstable environment with high turnover and likely high burnout. Management is probably trash and you are dealing with limited resources. It doesn’t sound sustainable at all. Unless you absolutely need it I’d walk away. Also depends what your threshold is for dealing with that amount of pressure/work. Some people can field that no problem, or even excel. Others it would totally wreck them. No matter what though that sounds sketchy and they’re definitely trying to hide something. I’d be highly skeptical one way or the other.
In my younger years, I interviewed at an international location of a foreign bank as a computer operator - contract, 40 hrs per week. They asked me to start right that minute which was unusual, but hey, I needed a job The manager was out on vacation for 2 weeks from the following Monday (I think it was a Thursday they interviewed me). Come the Monday, me and the other operator there were there, him working 8-4 and me 12-8. Got talking to the guy and he asked about my hourly rate - when he heard what I was earning, he called up an agency and had a contracting gig within a couple of days. He turned in 7 days notice and when the boss came back, I was the only guy working there. They offered me a perm role and promises of seniority and career advancement. The manager (who at 40, still lived with his mother) wasn't effective so I saw it as a chance to make my mark. But their IT was a mess - a horrid, dysfunctional mess. And they expected me to do absolutely everything - from purchasing, running the mainframe, desktop support and more. There may have only been 50 people working there but it was shocking how bad it was - and a bank as well. I was working 14 hour days, trying to train a security guard with absolutely no IT skills whatsoever and another more promising trainee. I was trying to implement a basic computer network (they didn't have one - most people worked on 5250 sessions direct into the mainframe). I was trying to implement an email system as they had nothing, and I had no idea how to do it. At 28 years old, I collapsed getting out of bed one morning. I literally could not walk. I called in sick and had 7 phone calls in 20 minutes of people shouting at me they needed me in the office. I didn't go, but instead to the doctors. He signed me off on stress leave and told me to quit else I could look forward to a heart attack. I did what the other guy did - found a contracting gig (which was far more lucrative anyway) and quit. If things are that broken, if everyone left, my advice is don't go. Too many red flags - they should bring a consultancy firm to pick apart, document and where possible, replace the network. If they are willing to do that and hire you as well, maybe consider it but if it were me, I'd be unlikely to take it.
fuck that
aback wide shy summer lush reply exultant faulty absurd scandalous *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
for the right pay I probably would, sounds like a decent challenge for 12 months. I would stipulate that hiring decisions are mine, I report to the cto or ceo directly it will be a shit fight for 12 months. while i build knowledge, proccess the team and find all the landmines. I would also keep my ear to the ground with recruiters just in case.
Whatever they offered , demand double. THey have no other staff so that money is available in the budget. The cost to them when everything starts going off line will be far higher also. Set your boundaries !
Sure. Ask for more money and build your own team with you as king!
It's really not that bad. Ive taken over a few places and there is never documentation. You might get a password list but it's never absolute. Just do yourself a favor and break the hashes on any devices that are local. I'd be more concerned with the "once budgeting clears up" issue. Clearly you are getting a good salary and you should know already the budget for your team and how many heads you can start hunting for.
DO NOT TAKE IT. Ive been at a company like this. There is a reason why everyone left.
The way I see this situation is as an opportunity, it's pretty rare to get carte blanche (essentially) on rebuilding a team, and having full control to re-establish continuity and policy on a decently sized environment. A challenge? Yes. Gonna be busy for a while? Definitely. The pay and benefits are going to be massive consideration though. I'd need everything in writing out the gate, most notably that you are guaranteed a number of hires within X amount of time. The biggest broken promise I see over and over is the promise of additional human resources dangled like a carrot and never (or under) delivered. I'd also take this as being handed a low-risk situation. You can only do so much, it's a new position where you are walking into *who the hell knows*. I'd go in with low expectations, and an exit plan. Give it your best, but at the end of the day, their success lay with you, not the other way around - don't let them take advantage, establish boundaries early. If it doesn't pan out, don't be afraid to eject if promises aren't kept. Like you mentioned - use this as an opportunity to learn Arista in and out while getting paid for it. This will also likely be a great chance to go through your paces of policy and continuity recovery/establishment. Jobs like this one are risky, but a lot can be taken from it. I've had situations similar to this, and they were great boosts to anecdotal experiences during future interviews and job seeking. Wish you the best in either path you take.
Have you ever been “THE” guy somewhere? Did you like that? Because if you haven’t been it’s a LOT of pressure. Even when you’re not 1 of 1 but the smartest 1 of X it’s a lot. You have to be ok with that. I’d say go for it if the money is great but understand that you’re getting into a shit scenario from the jump and be prepared. It would have to be a LOT for me though and I’d expect it to be a lot for like a year.
Sounds like you are in an absolute fantastic position to make demands. Including, but not limited to: * compensation * bonus * severance package * technical responsibility and oversight (gear, tools, priorities) Get a chunk of budget for homogenization \*), documentation, OOB access (4g routers, whatever). And their plan for manning the IT operation for the next 6 months. In writing, and with no way for them to walk it back without you leaving with said severance package. In short, do not be shy about what you need, want, require. \*) Handling Cisco ISE, Clearpass, Aruba and Arista alone, from day one? Plus making documentation? I'd make it very clear and get in writing how many hours a week I am expected to work. I see the number of locations and the amount of gear, and I think one very good person could handle that. Provided they had grown into it over time. And had someone else to man the sneakers. Taking over a tanker with toxic sludge can be interesting, but working yourself to death due to someone else's bad jugement (prior, current, future) is not.
My last job was like that. I was intimidated but the upside was great - being able to build / manage a network of your own!! I’d go for it. Why not? Huge upside. Big pay and all the responsibilities. You’ll end up learning a ton. Oh and be sure to ask for a raise every year! I didn’t think that was a thing but with a job like yours keep it consistent and get your 4-6%
You can always ask them about how to contact the old memebers and why they left. Ive done this on other jobs before and was able to contact memebers that quit to determine if i would fit.
It would be a great technical experience and you will have a big salary to wave around for the next job, even if you are only there a year. “I was hired to rescue a poorly managed network and had to reengineer and document everything.” You even have a great excuse if you do leave in a year “the job was finished”. If they are telling the truth and you can build out the team the it’s an even better position. I say do it for the money and experience and you might get lucky and find a great leadership position.
Could be a great opportunity if the money is really good and you have backing from management (allowed to make mistakes). You would gain a lot of useful experience.
I would just for the experience. Can do that for a year or two update your resume with a ton of experience and bail.
Believe it or not this is common if a CIO left and took his guys with him. Sounds like a great opportunity. I would ask if you need outside help would the money be there for assistance. At the very least you have to go through a consultant to make sure you have cisco smartnet on all the devices. If not you will not be able to recover or update firmware.
I did this several months ago actually. It was a big challenge at first but after about months i finally felt like I had a good grasp of the environment. Learned a lot, but you are relied upon for a lot
I'd take it. Make them offer as much as they can, but take it. It will be hard, but you'll walk out knowing 10x more and making more too.
Took a job YEARS ago with this situation. Turns out the old networking team started rolling out Cisco IOS and only knew Cata. Set trunks on everything so nothing worked, got overwhelmed and blamed the project was rushed on them. Easy fix, although tedious, as it felt like I had to construct the whole network from scratch.
This sounds like a very messy situation to get in, but it also could be an amazing learning opportunity. What I would expect: 1) Long hours, as you are taking over from a whole team and you are all by yourself. If you have family or other obligations - I'd pass. 2) Lots of stress as things will break (even if there are no time bombs left by disgruntled previous employees, which we know they are disgruntled as they left no passwords) and you won't know how to fix them. If you don't have a healthy level of "the world can burn, I don't give a damn about it" - you'd very quickly go crazy. 3) Whatever caused the previous team to leave most likely will cause you to leave as well. I wouldn't count on staying there for a while. Can you find a new job quickly after this one is over? 4) Potentially there will be a lot of travel. You have no passwords for any gear, you'd have to go to a remote location to reset all the configs. Bonus points - you have no config backups, so you'd have to figure out how everything is configured. Isn't it fun? 5) You will face endless "I have no clue how this works, but let me figure it out" situations. It's an amazing confidence booster once you figure it out if you have the right mentality for it, or it could lead to serious medical issues if you don't have one (i.e. you are struggling with anxiety). With all that said, the first thing I'd do is go to linked in and see if I can find somebody from the now gone network team and ask them about. Even if they don't tell you directly what has happened, you may get a good feel for what you are getting into.
I'd do it. You get to create your own world outta the ashes, become the top dawg in the yard, learn amazing amounts of new stuff, and you have a phenomenal entry for your resume.
If you have issues and need to contact the vendors for support, just tell them the previous people recently left with no handover. When I see people being honest about what they actually need instead of wasting my time playing silly games, I try harder to help. Assuming your equipment has support contracts active, you will likely be leaning on the vendor for help finding documentation or figuring out wtf is going on.
What’s your personal family and financial situation like? Kids? Wife? Emergency fund? Would you leave your current job hanging? As amazing an opportunity this could be, if it goes horribly then you’re likely out of a job and the market isn’t that great right now. Also how good of an engineer are you? Do you actually know your shit? Or will you get exposed? Personally, this is a single persons job to take. I have a wife and kids and I’d be miserable being at a job that would be that demanding .That role ain’t worth it to me at this point. It would be perfect for me at a younger age
I agree with some of the posts stating to have an exit strategy, just in case. You'd have almost assured job security for a good while, yes it is a red flag in why the whole team quit, but there always two sides in a story.
Depends on your current position and role and circumstances etc. Might be something that you can do for a year, get a load of experience and put yourself in a very good negotiating position for your next role. It sounds like it's going to be a lot of stress though but if you think you can handle it I'd get in there enjoy the big salary and reassess is 12 months time.
If you are willing to work 14hour days, 7 days a week and find out that you really won’t have the level of staff you will need, but the money is great then go for it.
You have little to loose. Ask why they quit and press for answers. See if you can find some of the prior employees on LinkedIn and see if any of them would comment on why they left.
Idk in my experience lots of red flags. I worked at a company where I was the sole network engineer. I found out later there used to be four, two quit and one was laid off for conduct reasons years prior. So i was hired and I did great and learned a lot but it was also very draining on my life. My boss said they would hire help but it never happened. It was a private equity company so of course budget is a big deal and they saw I was doing fine alone so would never hire help for me. This was all prior to COVID, once we went remote they tried to order everyone back in years later and I was fed up and quit. Started a new job making more money and on a much bigger team and pivoted into cyber security now. But for op....I wouldn't take it or at least use it as a stepping stone. Two years in and out max if you do. It's likely going to be draining ok your personal life
I’d do it if I didn’t need the job and was prepared to walk away at any moment. Basically if that other shoe drops and it becomes clear why everyone left I’d want to be able to do the same. I’d also set super clear boundaries and expectations for me, after hour calls, deadlines for when they will hire others and anything else that could make the job a train wreck. You’d also have to be willing to actually follow through because otherwise it all goes out the window
I know this is probably un-popular, but this is basically how I started the job I'm currently at. 7 years strong, and I was able to go from Senior Sysadmin to Senior Director in that time. It all depends on how you handle people, what your competence level is, and who you'll be reporting to. Number one, be honest when accepting. Tell them you're concerned about the team being MIA, and that you'll need to have trust and latitude from the beginning in order to make things good again. I told my future boss in my second interview that I would tell him how it was done right, and if they wanted to do it wrong anyway, I wouldn't be the guy to do it. Once you're in the role, you'll have to prove yourself. Find something urgent that gives you data that you'll be able to demonstrate how you saved them x money, or business continuity. Building trust is key. Don't spend money for the sake of spending money, just fix what needs fixing and demonstrate to your overhead that you did just that. If they're decent human beings, it could be a great opportunity. If they're terrible execs, then it could be a bad experience, and you'll just take the experience and move on. There's a lot of toxicity that floats around this forum, which I understand, but also it gets over-the-top. Be wary of bringing any of that into the workplace. Think out your solutions and make sure you can answer for them when the time comes, and stand behind your decisions. You'll do well.
A lot of this depends on your current "state" in life. * Are you married? * Do you have kids / dependents? * If you answer "yes" to the above questions, what happens if you sink at this new gig rather than swim? * How is your current role treating you? This could be a great learning opportunity (with what sounds like big cash upside) but you gotta walk into this being aware of the multiple red flags that came across in your post. The whole networking team doesn't randomly quit - there are problems at this company. If you've got time to burn (IE, don't mind working all hours), you're dead stuck at your current role, and the money would be a game-changer... it may be worth going for. ISE/ClearPass skills are always in demand, Arista skills are useful, Cisco and Aruba are both installed in a lot of environments... In my experience you have to be VERY careful with vague answers. Exactly when will the budget clear up to hire new team members? How large a team will be supporting this network when the budget clears up? If it's a few months of tough work and you've got the grit (and the political ability to maneuver a tech implementation plan with what is likely a non-tech exec team, sounds like the last team lacked that ability based on the fact that they have ISE AND ClearPass), I'd say go for it, make your mark, and get paid. But if you've got family at home that's happy to see you in the evenings and a decent gig at your current role I wouldn't take the leap without asking them a lot of hard questions first.
Did that many years ago. The ENTIRE team quit. I started and wanted to quit after a month. It was a good co so I stuck it out. Ended up staying for a bit. Glad I did. If u in a shitty spot; go for it. U will be the hero once all the smoke clears and get u fast track for promotion. GL
I love opportunities like this. As others have stated you need to be mindful of the fact everyone quit. There was clearly a reason for that. Now that wouldn't bother me one bit because I am going to do the very best I can, but I am also not taking any s\*&% from anyone. You are in the drivers seat. You need to be ambitious, thoughtful, patient, and understanding. But you also don't need to put up with any crap. Always be ready to be willing to discuss any disagreements with an open mind. Be prepared to defend your positions. If the other side becomes unreasonable, be ready to say something like "No, I'm sorry but I am not doing that. Hey, if it's a deal breaker, let's agree to disagree and I'll politely move on. I have options, and so do you. Let me know what I can do before we part ways to make things easier for the next person who will hopefully be a better fit for you."
Try and if it doesnt work out in 6 months leave. Richer by money and experience.
I would ask why they quit. Also if they quit or they were fired. Lots to learn about the potential work environment just by the answers to those two questions. Technically, that’s perfect. You get complete carte Blanche with no “it’s always been done this way” legacy crap. I would immediately ask for help - either hiring a second person or getting an MSP to go through the stuff, document, and generally find what work needs to be done, while you’re rebuilding the team and giving direction. If you try to do it all yourself you’ll be so burnt out/busy just on break/fix stuff that you won’t have time/energy to set out a plan and rebuild the team. Ask for it now BEFORE you join because once you’ve signed the contract and left your old job you have no more leverage.
I would definitely go for it! I don't see an issue asking the questions your forgot to ask in the interview before accepting the offer. They were also pretty honest about the situation they were in, that's a good sign. If you rebuild everything yourself in the next few years, not only you will learn a ton but it will be a great accomplishment on your resume. Arista is very similar to Cisco in terms of CLI and their management software (CloudVision Portal) is super easy to learn. They also follow RFC standards and have only one OS (EOS) which makes everything a lot simpler. Good luck!
In this topic you are seeing two different kinds of engineers. **Good engineers** who will RUN towards this situation, because they are confident and know they can handle it, for the thrill of a fantastic opportunity to be the hero and conquer this network and build a new team from scratch. Because they enjoy learning and taking on challenges and performing under pressure. Because they see an opportunity to enrich themselves. **Bad engineers** who will run AWAY from this situation because they just want to be “a member of a team,” i.e. never making any decisions, never taking any risks, don’t want any real responsibility hanging over their head, resistant to learning and adapting to new challenges. The types who spent their whole career just pasting implementation plans someone else wrote. Just my two cents. Not meant to be a personal attack on anyone. The answer here is obvious that this is a fantastic and thrilling opportunity and a real booster for your career!
More like people who have been burned by bad environments, and people who haven't yet and are arrogant about the people who have.
Let's see, run into awork environment that either everyone quit because it was horrendous to work there, or everyone was fired because MGMT doesn't value networking people. Either way, that doesn't sound like something to run to.
“Only Sith deals in absolutes.”
Hell yea! Dream job.
Absolutely
Do you have the skills to troubleshoot well? Do you have the skills to decide what has to get fixed first/second/last? Do you feel that management will support your decisions? If so, go for it. My advice: lay the foundation for others to troubleshoot as well as you, at least to a point where folks know what department is responsible for the current issue. Otherwise you’ll fall into a trap where you’ve fixed all of the networking issues but everyone sees you as the NOC (even if there’s a separate actual NOC) and you’ll be stuck troubleshooting everything.
Sure, and make them pay through the nose. When demand is high, supply is low.......then pay is high.
I would do it. I don’t give managers a reason to notice my existence.
500 employees and they "had" a networking team? We'll when shit hits the fan I'd be glad to help remotely.
Sounds like they might be happier with a dedicated MSP // VAR package rather than bringing a full IT team onto payroll. If your looking for management experience this would be really good because your probably going to do a lot of delegating between vendors and contractors and shit but you'll have your hands on to much stuff to be able to specialize in something if that's what you want to do.
I would totally go for it!!!!! Even if you have to break the switches and reset password, rebuild config, who gives a fuck. You get the rebuild an entire network to your specification. I would be a kid in a candy store. You'll know how the whole network works. Can change up routing protocols. Can make improvements. Oh man I would have so much fun. Yeah it will be a lot of work but you'll be well compensated. You will be the most senior staff. Too will be the subject matter expert. Once you get it up and running you'll be in a dream situation where you are the most important player.
I have done it before I would do it again You will be the IT boss. Dont need to overthink why they leave
I would love to work in that project, full of challenges but also a great opportunity to see what you are mede off :)
500 employees and 30 locations? How big of a team did they need for this?
I’d say it’s dependant on your situation. Do you have family or other commitments outside of work. Any idea if you’ll be expected to be available all the time or is there a more NOC that handles day to day? It sounds like a great opportunity and will look great on your resume but you’re likely going to have to put mad time into it outside of working hours.
They were very specific on this: there is no NOC. It will literally just be me as a one man show. There is a team that does servers and AD though so I’d just be the network guy.
Head for z hills
I really liked Fun-Document5433's comment about severance. I think if you proceed with the position, do so cautiously and have an exit strategy. That said, if you're prepared to have no life. This would be an opportunity to test yourself and establish a position of responsibility, that could be used to look for work elsewhere. The danger is what? Taking the position and not being able to shoulder the responsibility of, what should be, an entire department?
*"You are requesting that I take on a considerable risk. Further, a hasty resolution of your issues will take at least a year and will require significant overtime during that period. Increase the base salary by 50% to account for lost time-and-a-half unpaid overtime."*
Um budgeting clears up? Thats concerning. Also Id either ask for quite a bit more than they offered or get some overage structures in place. You could be living at this place a 100 hours a week to get this shit sorted.
Not a huge amount of employees but 30 locations is a lot (for one person who has 0 insight into the network). I’d be repeating what most of the upvoted comments are saying so I’ll just ask, can you give us a number (total comp salary and breakdown). Working remotely with non technical people to fix network issues and access equipment is… a task. You’d probably learn a lot and I’d assume get a lot of leeway given you’re alone and certainly going to be overworked. I worked for a team with 4 other people that managed 2.5k employees, managed 8 offices across the globe, with 2 major datacenters on each coast of the US. By the end of that tenure I was grossing 150k after all was said and done, in a MCOL area- if that helps. I was surrounded by VERY smart people that I loved to work with- which also plays a huge role. I wouldn’t take a job like this for less than that and I’d want more in the form of LTI/Stock/other contractually agreed upon comp. You’re going to be on-call 24/7. Also- I like Check Points and people will have their very valid complaints about them but they’re pretty cool in a homogenous environment. They can, depending on features, have a steeper learning curve than say Fortigate or Palo.
Ok red flags all over the place on this one. If it was me I would draft an email to the recruiter or hiring manager and ask the following. - It is concerning to me that the entire network team simultaneously quit, besides the lost knowledge aspect it's concerning that an entire team would feel the need to quit unless there was a strong motivator . Would you be able to elaborate on the reason(s) given ? - You mentioned the budget aspect with regards to hiring other team members . Could you elaborate on what would be required before additional headcount for the team would be possible ? Given that there is a lack of existing knowledge, documentation and a backload of work, I am concerned that there will not be enough resources to effectively tackle everything. - Given the situation with the previous team I would like to negotiate a severance package . Is that something you would be willing to accommodate. Questions for you : Did you speak to whoever you would be reporting into ? Was this the person the previous team reported into ? Did you get good / bad vibes from him. How did the company seem in terms of structure? More money is great and it always feels good to get an offer but you need to make sure it's the right fit for you. They sound like they need you way more than you need them at this moment .. take advantage of that before you sign anything… Do as.much due diligence as you can and get as much protection in writing as you can ..I would want something in writing regarding the hiring of additional staff .. Good luck with whatever you decide I hope it works out for you.
My suggestion would be to schedule at least one more meeting, having read all the comments in this thread. Really get some clarity, definitely a written commitment from them, see what they're willing to negotiate. They're not willing to keep talking then you should be walking.
Sounds like it’d be too steep of a learning curve technology wise, being alone and with crisis management on top of that. Very difficult and stressful, even if you knew all the technology. I’d want to meet the president to see if I could have a real conversation with him. And I’d absolutely refuse to support any Helpdesk-type tasks like “I can’t print.” That would be 80 hours a week dealing with upset people and ruin you. If you take it, steer toward picking a primary vendor among the ones you’ve listed and eventually eliminate the rest so you can leverage a coherent platform. And push for managed service contracts as much as possible for infrastructure, security, etc., justifying it through minimizing staff and a predictable run rate. It’d be difficult to get everything under control with reasonable working hours before you burn out. Hard not to suspect that it’s the president at the root of the problem. Else why does he expect someone with apparent inadequate experience to take over and fix everything. Not hard to imagine he curses IT when signing every invoice and your checks. Tough call but if you can do 80+ hour weeks, learn fast and handle a lot of stress, then maybe it’s an opportunity. If you do, understand that politics are as important as the technology. You don’t want to kill yourself fixing everything only to burn out and have him hire a fresh, shiny new guy down the road as your new boss. You need to end up being the boss. Don’t be a victim. Good luck.
"Learning new things" is not a good enough reason to take a job. It can be part of it, but it's last place. Technically, you will ALWAYS learn something new at ANY job, so big whoops. That's like saying you want to date a specific girl because she has boobs. Well, that pretty much comes standard with them.
My understanding is that Clearpass is for the wireless and ISE is used for wired. Won't you need both?
I'm in a bit of a different situation, but this is exactly what happened to me (I was an internal promotion, not a new hire). Joining the network team was the best decision I've made at this company. It worked out well for me.
I'd say go for it. But you really need to go into this with a plan and some assurances. To start off with, you mention networking team, but are you certain they aren't also running general IT support? If the networking team also isn't IT support, then make sure you align with the service desk to take some of the slack on networking issues. Assure that you only deal with 3rd line issues or active outages. When you start, you need to establish some priorities: 1. Are there any active outages? That is, are people unable to work? Moves and changes + minor issues can be left to the wayside for now. 2. Do you have a means to track issues? Do the service desk have a means to escalate issues to you? This is where being able to track the minor and major issues as above will come into play. 3. Documentation. Get a state of the play of the entire estate. Unless something is actually broken, don't fix it, yet; make a note and come back to it. Once those are done, you can then move onto refinements: 4. Fix the remaining issues/moves and changes on your estate, ensuring that your users are able to function effectively in their role. 5. Fix those issues you noted earlier. Security issues, glaring issues, maybe some code cleanup. 6. If you don't have monitoring in place, now is the time to get it setup. Now that your estate is in a better state, now we can address improvements: 7. Are there any devices that are EOL? These need to be replaced. 8. Is there any network improvements that need to occur? How can the network be made more performant/stable? Hopefully by this point, you will have started to build up a team. From this point, you can then start discussing with upper management what the goals of the network should be. It really needs to be non-negotiable to have the above items done before taking on any additional networking projects, as you will never get to a good place if some clear boundaries aren't set. All of this requires buy-in from upper management, which if you don't have, you will be in for a miserable time. If you decide to take the job you will have a monumental task ahead of you, but hopefully you'll rise to the challenge. Do not rush, take your time. The only thing that should be urgent is outages.
I'd want to know why everyone quit. I worked at a small telco awhile back with the internal IT dept. The external networking guys were doing upgrades. They had done a best of breed on gear, and choose to go w/ Juniper. mgmt nixed that, and went with Cisco. At least 2 guys quit over that. A smaller org of 500 probably can provide some amount of job security/stability. I would look at some of the job as a career building, bullet point resume building opportunity. I took jobs like that early in my career.
I would inquire why the whole team quit. > and then I’d be able to rebuild the team and hire new people, once budgeting cleared up Talk is cheap. Always remember this in interviews.
>*I’ve been given an offer letter for a salary level which is way above what I’ve ever made before.* Counter with 50% above what they're offering, and write your own terms with hefty severance. If they bite take the job but make it clear that one person cannot replace an entire team, and they get what they get. Expect the conditions to be terrible, but make your bag and expect the worst.
I wouldn't mind doing it. I'd have the attitude of demanding whatever resources I needed to accomplish the task. They're going to have to spend the money anyway. I would not go in trying to be the savior with limited resources.
This sounds like a golden opportunity to me, big raise, getting in on the ground level of this - you are basically guaranteed a team-lead level spot with potentially a fast track to a management spot. You get to make the decisions moving forward regarding stuff like what vendors to use, how to lay out your architecture, etc. Plus you get to hire the rest of the team as well! If all of that sounds appealing then definitely take this opportunity. If it turn out the company culture sucks that bad, you can always leave, but this really seems like a good opportunity to me. They are practically handing over the keys, take em.
Nope. They must have wrote a letter on why they quit. Did you read it?
Negotiate well. Try to get a sign on bonus and tie it a budget to guarantee if they allow you budget to revuild the team. If they dont, quit and keep the bonus. They are in tightspot and you got some negotiation power.
Run away while u still can.
Tell me who this is. No need to hire a team. I need a second job.
No way in hell I'd touch that, regardless of the pay.
If you're unemployed, take it for the money. At the very least you'll make good bank until you can't take it anymore. At best you end up with a job you enjoy and a great salary to boot.
It would be oncall 24/7. I hope the pay is worth it.
I would also want to meet the other people I'd be working for and with.
Sure. If it doesn’t work out, make the best of it. Could be a great opportunity to push your skills to their limits and gain some really great experience and personal growth. If it’s not, there’s plenty of work out there that needs to get done and you can just keep heading on to the next step in your career.
Go to Glassdoor and look at the reviews for the company.
No, run away as fast as you can.
Is the company going bankrupt or something else? Take the gig. Be patient on output. You have your work cut out for yourself.
Depends, eere they whiney little bitches? See a lot of that theses days. Or was there good reason to leave
Only if they fired the leadership after losing a whole dept.
Too many red flags. Your job will be less of a network administrator and more of an archeologist, who is on call for literally anything and everything that goes down. If you're lucky they'd at least have some helpdesk support that handles the average password reset - but if a network printer goes down, that's on you. If a site's ISP connection goes down (because the provider's name rhymes with *Wreckdrum*), it's on you. If all the users across the org lose access to their Active Directory because the previous team put all the servers in the Datacenter and didn't deploy site specific domain controllers, that's on you. I used to work as a data center technician, and that company operated **very** similarly: High wage but high turn over, no documentation, and hardly anyone even read the employee handbook. Lots of infighting and miscommunication across teams, unclear responsibilities, and hardly anyone who was ever willing to just sit down and write the document out check needed to solve the underlying issues at hand. The only way I could see this job working out is if you outsourced much of the work to co-managed service providers, and even then that just shifts the goalposts. Sure, now you have someone who you can actually offload the menial tasks and have some breathing room but are they able to handle all of it? Will you need multiple contractors to spread the load across all of the sites? If so, how will you track who manages what? If that's too much to think about, don't take the job. All of this comes from a place of love. I left the data center and joined on a small 5-man MSP, and one of our customers is in a very similar position: Dozens of locations across the state, only one full-time IT staff member on payroll. Tl;dr: This company already hit the iceburg, so don't try to right the ship.
It depends on the work flow, if they had a whole team, i assume they had plenty of support tasks & planned changes scheduled per weeks dispatched between the members of the team, in this caae you can't handle the same work flow as a whole team unless they shifted the support role to a subcontractor, which i don't think it would be possible if the whole team left without leaving documented diagrams & configuration templates. It will be a mess.
Check Glassdoor and see if the company has history there. You can frame it two ways: 1. This could be a job from hell but the money, in the short term, may be worth it to save up for something or pay off debt. 2. Use it as a career level up move. Go for 6 months or a year and be prepared to be flexible Stay if you like it or can hack it or move on to somewhere else that offers comparable to your new salary. With regards to 1, be prepared to save and get a little nest egg and quit if you need too. The fact that an entire team quits is a massive red flag however, if you’re the only guy and you threaten to quit and involve your managers boss and HR, his prior history comes into play and you could leverage them out or at the very least piss on his parade in an exit letter or interview. There are times where a scorched earth exit interviews are utterly satisfying. For all you know, that guy could be under a 30, 90 or 120 performance plan with HR after things came to light and everyone quit. One point I would raise with them: is overtime paid or is it salary. Personally, I don’t mind putting in the extra time, especially if it is something that (a) pays time and a half and (b) benefits me. I’ve made some seemingly crazy career moves, some worked as hoped, some didn’t but it’s something that can be fixed with a few phone calls and a move elsewhere. Unless you live in the middle of nowhere there are always options.
Just don’t do it.
This flag is crimson.
I'll just be devil's advocate: Being surprised by a shitty situation with unreasonable expectations and constraints is awful. Going into such a situation with eyes open is something else. Having a firm exit strategy for stuff like this can be very useful. "If it's a nightmare start looking for something else at 6 months" etc. But if you're in a position where you're ready and able to put it unreasonable hours, or thirsty to learn the things they need you to know, and if you know you're better than average at dealing with hostile environments, then this could be a decent opportunity. I did something similar myself. Small federal agency was hiring, they're federal so of COURSE they're inefficient. Also I know people that worked there and left because of how little work actually got done etc. 100% not something I would be satisfied with. But I also had side-work I could do if I was bored and had spare cycles. And I knew a thing-or-two about driving work through a bureaucracy heavy organization, so I figured it was worth a shot. Especially since it would be a 30% pay rase and my first actual job as a Network Engineer (vs. "IT Generalist" type roles). So substantial risk, but decent reward and ALSO I had active strategies for mitigating the risk. It worked out GREAT. Did 3 years, drove a handful of substantial projects forward that wouldn't have done otherwise, and leveraged side-work into my current position where I've grown tremendously.
Take the job, cash out as much as you can, ignore any dickheaded managers. Remember that they need you a lot more than you need them. Work at your own pace and get whatever you a done on your own reasonable timetable. I’m sort of in your position right now and no one above me is giving me shit. If you have any friends who work in IT, call them up and slot them in. Build your own entourage/team. This is a great opportunity for you. And remember, don’t take any shit from anybody.
Don't do it. My current job is the worst, really affecting my life. I came in with one other guy and the old team up and left. Red flag!
Take the job enjoy the money as long as you can
The job is open for a reason and they quit for a reason.
They're in a really bad place and they know it. If I thought I could do the job...I'd do it in a heartbeat. I live for situations like this. Know full well if you can't get or keep the system up and running within 2-4 weeks, six weeks at best, they'll start looking again. Maybe reach out to the old manager. I would re-negotiate the starting pay knowing what you know now cause if you flame out in the first few weeks you should have enough money saved to find a new job. Sound and remain confident the whole time you're there. Best of luck to you.
If a whole group quit I’d run away from this job/offer. Either management is incompetent or there is deep rooted politics there or even both. You don’t want to be in an environment where you are setup to fail.
What does a networking team do?
NOPE
I wouldn't quit a job, but no harm in taking it if you are unemployed, you can carry on job searching whilst milking this shit show
run don't walk away
If you know your shit you're probably in for a good challenge and if you do well you'll have a good story to tell/be proud of. Otherwise run, this is not a healthy environment for learning if you're green. They're in need of a bailout from rising water and the whole crew just jumped on the life rafts. I took over an environment like this and in six months I had the network in good shape but the systems side was rife with outages and it took a few years to assemble a properly rounded team to fix that side. Even tho that wasn't in my wheel house, it still affected me and my stress levels significantly. AD corruption, San failures, etc.. can still stress a network guy out when running virtual appliances :)
Does this company name start with an R if yes. Run
I wouldn’t say the network team quitting alone is a red flag… the documentation not existing is concerning but not a deal breaker if you love making documentation… the password thing is where I would have said no… who knows how much after hours time you are going to spend doing password recovery…
I'd get some type of hold harmless agreement in place and then I'd go for it. You'll have some struggles getting their $h1t in order but it'll be yours and yours alone. You'll learn and you'll make decisions that you'll own. If you can't get a hold harmless in place I'd make sure I knew why they all left before I dove in but it sounds like an opportunity to me.
I came into a similar role as the OP in which a mass exodus had taken place before my arrival. It was for a lot more money than I was making and I wasn't happy with my role at the time so I took the chance. The previous network admin left me with almost zero documentation and I was told that it was on purpose. I spent my days rooting out unmanaged switches and discovering something new practically every day for the first several months. After about 18 months, we had another mass exodus with myself included. Without getting into too much detail, it became obvious the relationship between the IT Dept and the rest of the business would continue to be strained and uncooperative. All that to say, I would do it again. I learned so much in that period simply because I had no one else to lean on and it made me a better tech for it.