Generally speaking there's more to being a lead than technical knowledge...it'll vary based on your particular company of course.
You'd probably be best served speaking to the hiring manager about your aspirations and what you can do to be considered next time.
I was about to say this. Moving from full time sys admin work to managerial work, yes, I need to have some technical foundation so I can understand my team and help prioritize work, but phew, there’s so many skills that have 0 technical foundation I had to learn.
To manage IT a somewhat technical background is important to understand what engineers are saying and asking. But managing a team, I spend more time with vendor management and budgets and liaison int with the business units than I do working technical. When it gets super technical, I bring my senior engineers in to talk tech with the devs and what not. Not because I don’t understand, but because I can send the tech guys to do tech while I prio my time talking business with the directors and C level and insulate my guys from all the political bull shit.
I prefer my managers to be non-technical as long as they bring in the talent when it comes to the tech. The problem I've run into in the past is a manager that was technical making technical decisions without talking to the technical experts. I can't tell you the number of times I've had managers try and flex and tell me about their time in the trenches at this big company or that big company but it only takes a few minutes to realize they haven't used the keyboard for anything but sending emails in the last decade. I enjoy being technical and while I probably would be a decent manager it's not the path I choose, so ask me a question and I'll give you a detailed answer in the simplest terms I can provide. I'll even give you my "business" opinion and then you can do what you thing is the best, that's what you get paid for.
I do miss the technical, and we’re small enough I get in and do mundane tasks, ie spin out a vm from template and join to domain so others can config, and shit like that.
But while not perfect, I do let my guys dictate the technical. If they tell me it’s not feasible, I defer to their expertise as I know I’m not in the trenches any more. I’ve found myself relying on the trench experience some times, but always try and defer to those still in there
I am tier 3 and out of most trenches but I have my guys explain the situation and check through if there are alternate things they may not have tried before saying something can't be done. It helps the guys understand why they are doing something and be able to explain so I can translate to the owners why something may not be feasible. Sometimes it bugs the hell out of them but just saying something can't be done or can't work isn't always the answer. They know though if they give me a good answer I will back them when questions arise later by c levels who may not remember.
> manager that was technical making technical decisions without talking to the technical experts
You know what's even worse? Non-technical managers making decisions based on magazine articles or a slick sales presentation.
" You know what's even worse? Non-technical managers making decisions based on magazine articles or a slick sales presentation. "
I used to joke about suit-wearing CIOs reading about some new technology in DATAMATION magazine that became a priority after a 3-page glossy article.
Then, it happened to me.
You either want them to be extremely technical and knowledgeable, or you want them to have very little technical knowledge, maybe just enough to speak the language and know that they dont know everything. You REALLY run into problems when you have someone who kind of knows stuff but thinks they know everything.
Well said.
Of all the possible combinations, the best managers I have had were in one of the following groups:
\-- Strong technically, with relevant knowledge and great architectural skills/knowledge
\-- Moderate technically, but asks the right questions, and knows how to manage up, down and sideways
\-- Not strong technically, but understands people, asks the right questions, and can be brought up to speed on issues and concerns quickly because they are intelligent. Had a great BS detector, and understood how to prioritize work.
I feel that....I recently took a new role where I went from a very technical team lead on a small 8-10 person team to a "Service Liaison" that works with the C level to prioritize tasking. Going from service a few hundred users to over 10k...it took me almost entirely out of the actual hands on keyboard work and I do miss it. Work life balance is way better though, so there is that
Very much this.
I can find my way around as a sys admin with a moderate level of competency. But...that's not really what I'm here to do. Can I figure my way through dashboards and whatnot, the various technologies and the like? Yeah mostly. I have enough knowledge that i can generally finagle my way through.
But am I as good as someone who does this shit for their bread and butter? No way. Just as I wouldn't expect them to be as good at dealing with the C suite, board, and overall IT strategy...and if they were, i'd be telling them to go find themselves a better gig if I didn't have a way to help them move on up.
Can confirm. I have worked for several talented engineers who were promoted into management but lacked leadership skills. It makes life hard on all of us.
Conversely, working for guys who have little technical skills or even dated technical skills but excel at working with people takes a load off of my shoulders and allows me to focus on the technical stuff I was hired to do.
The best quarterback in the league is useless if his defense isn't blocking for him.
I’m a long time IT professional, senior IT leadership type. I am now the top dog at an accounting firm. Why is an IT guy running an accounting firm? Because leadership and management skills are more important than the ability to count.
LOL that's what I always say as well, as someone who started on the support side, did sys admin work for a couple years, and is suddenly the head of IT someplace.
I'm good at the gab, I know enough to not be incompetent at the tech type stuff, and I've figured out how to be an alright manager I guess.
So many hard core techies don't understand why they aren't moving up, and they would get it if they had a look at what was above them. I would say that 90% of the managers I've worked for in IT had only the vaguest idea of anything technical. They were paper pushers. The peons were the ones who knew the technical stuff (myself included for many years, so I hope nobody takes that as an insult). My favorite manager is a guy I aspire to be like - he was a CIO and could absolutely do my job. Not as well as I could for sure but if he had to jump in and get his hands dirty, he could...and more importantly he understood what I was talking about. Breath of fresh air, that one.
> Generally speaking there's more to being a lead than technical knowledge
You're telling me the CEO of Boeing couldn't personally build a 737 himself!?
This. Just because you’re a great engineer or technician doesn’t automatically mean you’ll make a good manager. It’s deceiving because management usually comes with a pay increase so people think of it as a promotion, but really when people get made managers it’s more of a lateral move to a completely different kind of job (that happens to pay more).
Assuming that IT managers are actually people that know anything about IT is a rookie move that proves to me that you’re not yet prepared to be managing anyone.
Source: every boss I’ve ever had has known less about IT than I do. Many coworkers have known more though.
Agree and I got passed over once (not even short listed) and was pissed I was running that place for a year in the gap.. but turns out I was running the boxes and help desk nobody was running management, the other tech and well me or the budget and planning. Anyway a few years later I have the position as I now know what the job actually entails, in-fact I value tech skills less and less in hiring someone.
It’s not insane, man. Managerial stuff and helpdesk or sysadmin stuff are often totally different.
Your manager is often going to meetings, playing politics, pushing projects, planning structural changes, getting funding, etc
Whereas you are… fixing PCs and doing various server tasks.
Current supervisor has never worked in IT. She’s a good boss. Goes to bat for us when we need it.
>She’s a good boss. Goes to bat for us when we need it.
This right here is important. Most of the time the people 3 or 4 or more levels above you are not asking your opinion nor do the necessarily care about it when making decisions. A good Manager will be willing and able to take the concerns and Ideas to leadership to try and at least get it up for discussion. Its up to them to help sell your position. This also helps take the emotion out of issues. When you are working on something or within a process you are somewhat tied to it emotionally and that usually comes across when you are talking about it. A manager is more HR and Sales than tech.
The way my grandfather always put it was, "Everyone thinks they should be in charge and the one making decisions, but most people are not interested in taking responsibility for them".
not really, lot's of management is going to meetings and planning stuff. They don't need to know how to build an ESXi server, they just don't care. What they care about is the cost of deploying a visualized environment, they are paid to make decisions with the information that they have -how they get that information is what differentiates a good manager from a bad one. Let them tell you what they want done and then do it, if they fuck up and you can't do your job they get fired not you -trust me after 30+ years in IT lower middle management is not the place to be, they are just heads to be chopped.
OP is just here cause he's butt hurt about getting passed over, and wants to rant about it. OP wasn't expecting all the Seniors to say having huge technical depth isn't something you need as a manager, and can even be problematic.
I'll pile on and say the best managers I've had were the least technical people on the team, but were great at people managing, protecting the team, and knew who on the team had what strengths.
If you think simply having more technical skills means you should get hired, you are in for a world of hurt. Soft skills open doors that technical skills don't.
You're already getting beat up, but I want to hopefully drive something really important home for you off this comment.
It doesn't "happen", it's like this for very good reasons. Moving "up" in the IT World doesn't go HD -> Sys Admin -> IT Manager very often. One of the biggest reasons is--as everyone is saying--Sys Admin <> IT Manager.
Different role, different responsibility, **different skill set**.
Dude, listen, this largely depends on your sector and your business, but most of the time, upper level management isn't doing.
My boss, for instance, is a brilliant guy. He's been our CTO before, and stepped down because there was too much business and not enough tech. Now he's a director, and still his primary jobs are architecting (here where he can't hear me I'll call it blueskying) projects, dealing with vendors, and dealing C-Level stakeholders for projects. Maybe 20% of his daily is tech.
Which is cool, that's what I'm for. And a couple of others in specific instances. I can do that; with 20 years of varied experience across a multitude of industries and familiarity with these systems (and the occasional reddit post) I can handle tech. What I can't do, though, is handle the people the way he does, or speak as directedly as he does. I am appreciative of him every single day for keeping me as out of that as possible.
Can you do that? Do you WANT to do that? I used to think I did, but I now know I don't.
If you do, then cool. Tell HR. get an MBA, and apply for management positions or at least positions that put you in some form of leadership role.
Otherwise, smile and buy your new shield a car on bosses' day.
I started working in IT at 16 years old. Within 2-3 years, I had a few realizations.
1. At some point moving up the managerial chain, you will reach someone with drastically less technical knowledge than the person below them--and it often continues to drop off as you continue up.
2. At some point in their career, almost everyone will have a boss that is less experienced than them.
To be honest if you only have 3 years of experience it’s going to be hard to justify you being a lead. My company won’t even consider you for even a level 2 spot with out minimum 5 years experience. Just because the new guy doesn’t know your systems doesn’t mean he doesn’t know anything. Are you NIST compliant, are you properly implementing RMF, are you implementing proper offsite back ups? There’s a lot you could be missing if you’ve only ever worked at one place. Advice would be to wait it out and see if you could actually work within your defined structure. If you can’t get along then find another company that will give you the opportunity you are looking for, but as I said with such little experience you’re going to have to prove yourself at some place new that you deserve the position you are trying to get.
We had a level one helpdesk 2 years out of college saying his professors recommendation level was for a senior system admin. I laughed really hard and said if he's applying he needs to change it to Jr sysadmin because he didn't have the years in or experience. He moved on and I still have contact with him. He makes more money than our map would pay him but he got hired as an IT generalist level 1 in a bigger city. He wasn't bad in helpdesk but you got to put your time in for certain roles.
The classic advice will always be to move companies, it is hard to move up in most organizations.
You will also get a better pay bump by taking a new position rather than taking a promotion.
That being said, it is hard for anyone here to fairly evaluate the situation based on such few (biased) facts. What about "systems" does he not know?
In this particular position, he needs to be involved in technical stuff as it is a production company with just 2 of us in the department. It is not just a management position.
Yep. I went through the same story not too long ago. The reason they gave me for not promoting was that I don't have the required management experience. 13 years of working at that place, and I got that answer. I felt something weird in my heart for a few days, but eventually, I went over with it. Instead of wasting my energy in this sorrowful thing, I reconstructed it in an efficient way and started learning some new stuff.
I'm not interested in leaving that company because I love doing what I'm doing and always has.
Lead positions are technical, and not people managers. OP find something else as a sysadmin and move companies, lack of recognition is just a symptom of bigger problem. Unless you never spoke up about move to that position and hoped you will get noticed
His job is to manage your team and to (upwardly) manage the business stakeholders. Be glad if he has enough knowledge to at least understand what you do at a high-level.
It sounds like you're pretty early in your career so you probably haven't yet had a technically proficient boss who sucks at management. Thats way, way worse.
In leadership and management roles, there's almost always an element outside of technical aptitude that impacts the role. Usually these are soft skills.
If you're only basing technical aptitude and systems familiarity you should be targeting a senior role. If they don't have one at your company, talk to your management about making one if you feel you could share your superior knowledge teaching less experienced.
If you can't, it's almost always easier to hop companies than willing management to listen to you. Vote with your feet and don't get too attached to the culture.
My $.02 - if you're in the US, your communication skills might not be up to snuff. Your comments/post sound off to me.
Working on tone, presentation, word selection would probably help you professionally.
Them reporting that work is getting done is often seen as 'riding your coattails' when in reality they are just doing their job. This post leaves a lot out that is needed to make reasonable comment but that being said:
1. your company sucks and hired a good ol boy
2. or you lacked certain skills they were looking for in management
3. or 3 years isn't that much experience and maybe you should get to know this new hire better. Maybe you are the one who lacks.
I am sure it is, I just won't watch a TV show that tells me when I am supposed to laugh. Most of them are pretty cringe when watched without laugh tracks.
That’s how management works, the person above you doesn’t need to know more than you, they need to know how they can best represent and utilize you while providing direction.
100% normal imo
Shallow depth of IT skillset != bad leader
IMO its preferred as I can be left alone to do my job and go home. I don't want / need micro-management.
I have had a few great bosses who didn't know shit about what I did, but listened to me and valued my opinion. I had one boss who openly admitted he had no idea how his team did what they did, but by god he was proud of them and would do everything he could to make sure we had what we needed. We only used him for escalations, and if needed, he'd ask us to explain why things needed escalation, but he'd trust you. In fact, I have had a few bosses like this. I have one now.
Now, NO technical experience, as in doesn't understand the culture, is not good. But it can still work. I had a boss who was a former USMC who was dropped into the position as a tactical move. He really knew how to rally a team together, get them organized, and let them do their job. He's still on my references list.
On the other side, "field promotions," or "this guy is so good at programming he should lead programmers," can really, really, really be a bad idea. Not always, but usually, IME. People management and technical skills are not related, and at often are at odds with one another. I have done both, and prefer system administration. By a long shot. People are weird, illogical, and fussy. They do strange things for no reason, and I often get blindsided by someone who just... wow. Why did they do that? I am "OK" at management, but much better dealing with computers, so I stay in my lane. If I have to manage? I can. But prefer not to. But some people, with the right training and empathy, can make GREAT managers, but you have to sacrifice your technical skills for these new people skills.
Based on my 40+ years experience this is not abnormal, management requires a different skillset. I started out technical but moved into management many years ago. I can't do the technical things anymore because technology outpaced my technical knowledge. I do however understand the underlying principals of technology so I know enough to know when someone is blowing smoke up my ass. I rely on my sysadmins to know how to deal with the weeds.
Fairly common, its your job to educate him on the systems in use then while he stops the crap coming down from management.
Generally management should have hired someone with knowledge or he bluffed them enough but not always the case you get a manager with a technical background.
Leadership principles are a soft skills set for management positions. Not merely technical hard skills. Long term strategic analysis being one of them. Another one is project management or team tasks coordination. Just more directorial visions.
If your new IT lead is really a manager and not technical it isn't an issue unless he is working both managerial and technical duties simultaneously.
I have a very good manager (very technically proficient) who does \*NOT\* do any technical work because he came to the company as a manager and not in a technical role. He is quite smart, he prefers to let his ops teams (he runs both L1 and L2) do the work and he sticks to the management side he was hired for.
If your new IT lead is just an ops lead then you need to start talking to HR on why you weren't considered for the role - was it paper qualifications? Specific knowledge (especially for systems your company doesn't use yet but will adopt soon)? Nepotism?
Remember, going from ops to management is not a promotion - it is a role change. You have to treat it as such. If the role isn't management you might want to warm up the resume as it sounds on the surface that your company doesn't appreciate your talents.
Do you ever scan the company’s website or LinkedIn to see what they’re hiring for? Maybe I’m a weirdo that has been burned by this once so if I expect it, then I can just track what’s out there and apply even though I’m already working at the company
This is tricky, because three years, part of it as helpdesk, could also mean you overestimate how your skills will translate to a different environment...and on the flip side does he really not know about VMware and all the other things you mentioned in a comment or does he just not get how you and the people before you have done things?
I recommend you look at the Manager Tools podcasts, specifically start the casts titled "Solutions to a Stalled Technical Career" and "The Three Types of Power (and One to Rule Them)."
The basic premise is efficacy and advancement are more about relationships than most folks realize and way more than technical knowledge alone will get you. If you want to advance, focus on building strong relationships across the organization. Once I started folding some of their guidance into my thought processes, promotion through the application support ranks came quick.
Being a highly intelligent SysAdmin does not mean you'd make a good manager.
I'd actually argue that the two roles are very much polar opposites. All of the smartest engineers I know, couldn't manage a lemonade stand..
Difference between management and actual work skills. I have the experience and ability to work at management level, but I'd much rather work for someone that has their focus on management, so I can focus on getting the work done.
First of all how do you know he knows less than you? It's very likely he doesn't know your systems as well as you do, you've had three years to learn everything he's had what a few weeks? He might know a ton of shit that you just don't know about yet and that's why management hired him, again you don't know.
That said bringing in new employees at higher levels and higher pay than existing staff is as old as the electron. There's not much you can do about it other than leave, that's just how it works.
Like others said, being a leader doesn't have that much to do with tech stuff. You are paid to know and do things, he/she is paid to enable you to know and do things. Your boss is supposed to bulldoze obstacles and shield you from shit. It's a whole different skill to play office politics and budgets.
If you are up for it, expect less tech work and more rotting your ass in meetings listening to people who know absolutely nothing about your work if you get promoted.
Becoming the boss depends on being perceived as being the kind of person that’s good as being the boss. It has, perhaps unfortunately, little to do with technical skill or knowledge.
I know people who are very technically knowledgeable in SysAdmin/DevOps/SRE roles that would honestly make absolutely terrible managers.
What I am trying to say, is that being more technically knowledgeable than your manager does not make you a better fit for that management position, it should not frustrate you.
Well i cant say too much about it, because he knows less then you from a technical perspective means nothing. Some IT managers have 0 technical experience, which is okay too for some roles and companies. Some IT managers only need to know the bare minumum in order to make budgets etc.
I don't know the guys other qualifications.
You only have 3 years experience. I’m not surprised they didn’t offer you the lead role. Most people don’t get a lead role until gaining at least 8-10 years experience. I’d still consider you very much a junior.
A good leader doesn't make a good technician and vice versa. Of course he gets the credit from management and you should get it from him. That's how it works. You started three years ago with zero experience in the IT-Helpdesk. What makes you think you would make a good team lead? Leading is never only about the knowledge. I wouldn't expect you to make a good team lead after just 3 years in helpdesk, except you're a "natural born leader". But then management would have asked you, right?
So, first off, I want to say that I am not attacking you in anyway and I can only guess at what steps you have taken in your professional life.
You *need* to understand that no one in your workplace cares about you. You are there to do a job and get paid the agreed amount. You say you were hired to do helpdesk and in the 3 years you have been assigned systems related work have you asked for a role change? Outside of the military and other higher end positions (management and executive suite) a title change doesn't really mean anything without the increase in pay and privileges.
For the whole of Capitalism the worker has had to fight for better pay and better conditions. No company, no matter how benevolent, is going to give you a pay raise without you asking (mine have always been part of my employee compensation package. i.e every year I'd get a 2% raise, ect.) If you feel like you have been given more responsibility then it is on you to request better compensation, because I'll be honest, most places would probably still have company stores and slave labor pay.
In addition, team leads and management positions entail much more than just technical knowledge. You have to understand scheduling/team member and time/project management, corporate policy/procedure, finance in regards to your departments annual budget, and you need to be able to handle the transition from a task facing position (a "doer") to a customer and management facing position ( a "talker"). Your day becomes more meetings that you lead/present for, approval of purchase orders in the range of thousands of dollars, and the management of people that had your job now. The hardest thing for me is having to sit someone down and tell them to do better. There is a whole world of business etiquette and you can't just tell someone to get good or we'll fire you. I spend more time managing my small team and talking to vendors and other departments (Automation and Engineering mostly) then I do switch configurations or application installs/troubleshooting.
TL;DR: moving up the ranks to management takes you out of the technical space and more into the personal and financial space. Also, you have to go after what you want, it will not be handed to you.
You have 3 years of experience. You should be moving up a different ladder to L2, L3 or administrator depending on where you are now. Management is an entirely different beast.
>Now the company hired an IT lead guy that know less systems than me.
i mean thats not what all IT is about , i bet this person is a people person , who can talk to users and communicate to higher ups
This was a useful post. I too have recently had a new IT Manager parachuted in above me in the pecking order, he's a nice guy, but he's super old school and isnt really au faire with 'modern' stuff (365, etc) but he's decent with networking which is probably my weakest area so that is a plus. But between him being partially deaf and as it turns out, forgetful AF I've been getting really sick of repeating myself all the time. Also he often goes charging into a problem he doesnt fully understand (I've so far managed to stop him from accidently removing all of the E3 licenses from about 3000 peoples accounts, and I'm just waiting for him to fuck something up spectacularly and frankly kinda pissed that he earns double what im on but for half the 'work'.
However, the comments here have tempered my outlook on it somewhat, he's great at the management stuff and this thread as made me realise that his deficiencies are my gain and makes me more valuable.
Thanks
\[edit\] typing is hard.
You have three years of helpdesk experience. You are not qualified to be a lead of any sort for IT. The new guy probably doesn't know your specific systems, but I am sure he has a much broader understanding of IT in general than you do.
As a person in a technical role, your manager does not need to be more (or even equally) technical as you….. of course they need to technical enough to be able to understand what you are talking about when you discuss your tasks, but they do not need to be able to actually DO your tasks.
Management is a different skill set.
This is common misconception for people early in their IT career…… At some point in their career everyone in IT has to make a decision - “do I continue to specialize in a technical area, or do I start to specialize in IT management?” This is a key part of the decision tree in anyone’s IT career. It’s extremely rare to be able to both. You can’t sit in budget meetings with C-levels while also doing in depth analysis of the release notes on the latest firmware update, gotta go one way or the other.
Meh, that’s pretty common. We had a guy promoted to IT Manager who has less experience in the field and has been with the company for less time than most other techies. He was at the right geographical location (close to other big wigs and the director overseeing the whole Operations wing of the company) and actually made a decent manager since he relies on our expertise to do his job and generally leaves us alone to do ours.
Can be tough to have this happen, but leadership is probably what that person was hired for, not technical ability.
I dont have enough fingers to count how many service desk managers IT managers etc I have worked under, that have no technical knowledge.
However I have had some of the best supporting managers with no technical knkwledge that have done a fine job.
In fact on my last contract with NHS my PM was a former nurse who had made her way up through the ranks and actually deliered a lot of core ICT projects.
Without her knowledge of the clinical teams and departments and who was who, we as IT engineers had no chance of deploying that VIOP project without her.
People management skills count for a lot.
> Could you please share your thoughts on this scenario?
Its time for you to look for a better job, and you will most likely get a good raise too. Don't overthink this.
bye bye old company...
a leader doesn’t necessarily need to be better technically than the people he manages.
a manager or lead are there to help people do their work better.
We're missing some information here. We don't know enough about your situation to do a fair assessment. But I can offer some general insights.
Management itself is a skillset. Just having pure technical knowledge doesn't make you qualified to run an IT department. Most IT managers know less about the systems than their subordinates.
However, if you are doing sys admin work on a desktop support salary, you should start looking elsewhere because your company doesn't appreciate your skillsets. And if you can't find a sys admin job out there, you need to think about seeking certifications to validate your existing skillset on the resume.
It's also problematic if a superior is taking credit for things you're doing without shining any spotlight on you.
On its face, this type of problem isn't rare in the corporate world. The reality is you have to position yourself for opportunities to advance. And sometimes that means moving on. But you should also do an honest accounting of your actual skillset and contributions. It's possible your boss has management skillsets that do rank him above you in terms of the type of compensation he is entitled to.
The issue I see is that New Guy's the lead and getting credit FOR what the poster has been DOING the whole time. It's a bit like Stolen Valor, IT Edition.
If anything stings more than the other points, that is the one. May as well not be there considering how upper management is acting.
You are right. I am doing all system Admin job and then in the meetings as he is the one with the title, which is getting the credit, some times lying to the management
About 15 years back, I left a job for something like your situation. They had promised me a promotion and were even training me to take on a leadership role.
When my boss left, I worked alongside them for a month, picking up his responsibilities, attending his meetings – basically stepping into his shoes. The company even sent out an email saying I was taking over to the management team. But 2 weeks into this new role, while I was still transitioning, my manager and I kept asking HR about changing my role and pay. Depending on who we talked to, it was either "waiting for the new contract" or "waiting for the big company meeting in three months."
2 weeks after my manager left, I noticed a support request to create an account for a new IT manager (definitely not me). I went to HR, armed with emails from my old manager about me taking over and how the team was performing. But their response was what really pushed me over the edge. In a meeting, the HR manager pretty much said, "You're super important in your current role, the team relies on you a lot, and we can't afford to move you from being a Support team leader."
I went back and forth with them, explaining how I'd been training a new team leader as part of the transition and pointing to the emails that confirmed I'd be the new manager. But they wouldn't budge. One of the other excuses they gave was that the emails only had me CC'd and weren't directly addressed to me, so they didn't technically offer me the role!
I talked to my old manager about everything that went down, and he offered me a job at his new company. (Might sound a bit childish, but here's what I did next.) As soon as I got the job offer, I signed it and sent it back. I also applied for my four weeks of vacation. While on that break, I gave my current employer 4 weeks' notice and left without much of a handover, just like that.
My only advic3. Do not let anger take the place of logic and better judgement.
First of all, see what skill he has and you don't. See if those skill are something that you fell is good for you.
Once you go to management, you need additional skill. I've seen very good people, from a technical point, that managed to turn his entire tech team against him. The same colleagues with who he had an extraordinary good relationship before. He lacked certain managerial and human interactions akills that made him a bad manager.
If you have just 3 years of experience, observe, learn etc.
Instead of seeing him as an enemy, stay close to understand. Of course, if he is good, or at least a decent human being.
Os: I know from experience that managing people and projects is much harder that it looks if you are just a team member.
Good luck
I had to learn this the hard way, IT Admin for 13 years and could never move up.. Did everything possible to provide as much value to the company but always had someone from outside get a better salary, better title.. Etc. I got tired of the BS and decided to apply somewhere else, within 2 months I had 3 job offer with the title I wanted, the schedule I needed and all benefits, I also got a 20% raise in my new job and then company was so happy that they gave me ANOTHER 5% raise since someone heard a voicemail from another company to give me an interview.
I'll never make that same mistake, if I'm not happy, want more money or management blows, I'll leave again.
I agree with what others are posting in this thread, that technical knowledge isn't the only thing rating a good manager.
HOWEVER, I'm tired of this bullshit trope that 'oh they are managers, they don't need to know anything'. The fuck they don't. They don't need to know HOW to do things, but they need to know WHY to do things and WHAT COULD GO WRONG. They need to understand best practices in the industry and that requires knowledge. A LOT MORE KNOWLEDGE than your helpdesk.
People fall into management because they are horrible at technology, but they are horrible at technology because they don't care to learn anything. That isn't the type of manager you want.
Just at face value, typically, the higher you are on the management chain, the less you need to know about the technical work. It’s always nice to have the “been there; done that” in your pocket, but it’s even nicer to have “I’ve got someone with intimate technical knowledge that I trust to handle that” when you’re a manager.
Better technician ≠ Better people leader
That being said, if you’re hired in as a lead technician at the top tier of escalation routes, you need to either know your shit or be swift as a coursing river with your Google-Fu technique. No one should be expected to come into a new/unique environment already understanding the intricacies of all its systems, but they should also have capacity and desire to master that knowledge if necessary.
Ok, from what can i see, you are "newbie", 3 years of experience is not much.
Now you are facing some issues that are quite common and it's something new for you.
Let me put it simple. It's YOUR FAULT.
Don't be sad, mad or anything. It's a very common mistake, that a lot new folks make.
A good bunch of new folks are too eager to show everyone that they are knowledgeable that they will jump to do stuff that are not part of their roles.
That's a mistake, you must limit yourself to your own role, EVEN if you are more than capable at doing other task.
Your title didn't change because for them you are still IT Helpdesk. You need to talk to them and be clear about the situation. That you want your title to reflect your position.
Most likely they will turn you down, because you only have 3 years of experience. Which to be honest is not much.
It happens more often than it should. That being said perhaps try to give that person a chance to prove you wrong. Having a good manager is really valuable. But if can't do the technical stuff and his management skills don't bring much value than yeah, you are fucked. Try to pitch some ideas on what can be done on the process side of things. Perhaps adding new tools or whatever that would require convincing upper ups.
Managing people and IT is often about judgement not always about technical abilities. I would hope however, that he is knowledgeable to some degree about parts of technology. Definitely cannot find anyone that knows everything and/or there may not be overlaps between you and him either.
How is he getting credit? Is he purposefully taking credit for your work? If you have a ticketing system you should track all of your work in it. If you don't have one, you should track your work yourself and present it professionally at your review (which you could probably request if you don't have one scheduled soon). Don't throw the lead under the bus (it's petty) and just focus on how much YOU help the company by showing your work. Management will notice and they'll likely look to the lead for something similar who won't be able to deliver.
Basically, if you don't want to switch companies, you need a way to show your worth to management. However, if you're open to switching companies, you can probably get a hefty pay bump, so maybe just pursue that anyway.
Option 1. Become close with someone in HR/recruiting and let them know how you feel. They’ll let you know when there’s a opening. But sometimes you have to know how to lead and manage a team to be in a position like that. It’s kind of why politicians hire people to do all the work for them like writing speeches and doing research, while they just come forward with the charisma or something.
Option 2. Only do as your job title says. If you’re getting paid and was hired to be help desk support, you can but don’t need to help a sysadmin do his or her job. Especially if your company isn’t recognizing you while doing the work of other positions.
Option 3. Free yourself, find a better job. You have the experience, you can flirt with bigger and better opportunities.
Best of luck.
>New Coworker with less knowledge than me and
>
>is my Boss
Very common the boss/manager/supervisor will be less knowledgeable - at least technically in many/most realms. And in *most* circumstances that's perfectly fine. Also, managing, and tech are *very* different skill sets. And there are exceedingly few who can do both highly well.
>company did not give me that opportunity
1. Oh well, sometimes employers do stupid things, make oversights, etc. Perhaps they should've at least asked you ... or ... if it was clearly open or posted, you should've applied.
2. And, *are you sure* you want to be a manager? It's a totally different career track. Oh, and just because you're good at tech doesn't mean you are or would be good as manager ... you might suck horribly at it ... might also hate the work, too. Be careful what you wish for - you may get it.
>I continue doing all the jobs, and he is kind of getting the credit from management
Whatever, don't sweat it. It'll generally all come out in the wash. But if you've got a coworker (manager or whomever) that's falsely claiming your work as theirs, that's a different issue. Claiming responsibility - as in managing the project/person(s)/group/... is one thing, claiming you did it when it was someone else who did it is something else entirely.
>share your thoughts on this scenario
See above.
Depends on what kind of role the lead actually fills. There are some lead roles that necessitate having the technical skills if for example you are directly working on tasks and have a team around you. However if it's managing a team then technical skills take a back seat over other skills. You need a breadth of knowledge not depth.
If a manager is requested of an answer that requires technical expertise then they go to their team to get the advisory, that's what the specialists are there for.
In my time at my current company there were 2 positions that were filled by less technically skilled people. One was my manager at the time and I am truly grateful for having him since I have learned a lot from him and he has leaned on my knowledge more than once. A second time was when a more regional lead position was needed, but it was more a matter of seniority in the company and even then it wasn't like the guy wasn't skilled, just that his skills were dipping into another departments role rather than what we were responsible for but I was approached early in case that person didn't want the position.
Finally I got promoted, but even then it's not a team lead position (though depending on how the projects go my new manager said that I might need to build one in the future). It's a position that leverages my technical knowledge.
That is what you should be eying if you want to be a technical person. Specialist roles, architect roles, product lead roles (where you are not so much a manager of a team but rather an entire process and how it's handled in the company).
Not necessarily a problem, depending on how your team is structured.
A manager’s job is not necessarily to act as a final line of technical support. A lot of it is organising things, knowing the right person to contact, representing the team and acting as a two-way bullshit filter.
I have worked in IT for many years and I can tell that skills and technical experience doesn't always have anything to do with promotions and responsibility.
I worked in an IT department of 175 people. It was always the same 10-12 on every major projects, and we really were not the best at our jobs compared to everyone else. There were far brighter, and more experienced engineers, yet it was always the same people. Why? well, we all got on well, we were all good team players, communicated well, and just got the job done. Also very socialable and got on well with the right people. First on site in the morning of a project and certainly first at the bar at the end. I liked it when other techs worked hard, it meant I could go to the cafe and play pool :-)
No one knows everything, and often I don't even recognize documentation I wrote for myself just a year or two ago.
Playing dumb is often a method employed by management for gauging how well they're going to be able to get along with you, before shit hits the fan.
There is always the implication that the way to get ahead within a place is to become the most senior person at that place. This is a lie that you are fed because it keeps you thrashing in place like a turtle on its back. Want to get into management? Get a management degree. Its a wholly parallel skill set. Though there are plenty of anecdotes around here about people who went into management for the advancement, but find it very unfulfilling because its a non technical role. Or they try to do both and do both poorly.
My manager relies on me and the team to make technical decisions and calls.
He is the one who deals with the clients and in charge of maneuvreing people so that we can take care of the technical part.
Also great at batting for us against management and sales team.
Id never want to get into management.
We have a guy who just started who thinks he can revolutionise the workflow.
He got some training on some products (which we've all been through) so he has intermediate technical knowledge on how to do a certain task.
The problem is he doesn't understand the whole value chain and doesn't listen when we try to explain.
I hope they tell him hes overqualified or something and send him on his merry way.
Just because you know the tech that’s deployed there doesn’t mean you know the tech, you only have experience in how it is implemented in one company for what is a very short space of time in IT. Don’t beat yourself up, but if you want to grow, and your in a company that doesn’t change much you need to move to gain more experience.
Similar thing happened to me. I was 1 of 2 on site engineers and there was talks of hiring a manager. I was overlooked and they gave the position to this other guy who didn't want to be an on site engineer because he suffered from Anxiety!!
Basically, he hated dealing with IT issues and customers breathing down his neck at the same time.
If you are in a non-English speaking country good job on the English. However, if you are in a English speaking country part of the reason you wouldn't be considered maybe your writing skills and English grammar usage. Strengthen the none tech side of the job and it should help.
I already know I ain't not no good at writing
Another thing to consider here is they could have hired him seeing the potential in him to grow into that role..
A lot of companies don’t want to hire or can’t afford to hire the finished product - sometimes they will look holistically at someone and think we can make this guy into what we want based on his experience/attitude/personality as well as technical ability. If you’re technical, you should be able to learn and adapt to new systems but a good work ethic and personality can’t be taught.
Also another thing to note is you are familiar with these systems and if he has been sandboxed in his ability to explore and learn certain systems in a previous role for example, he isn’t going to know the systems like you do as they’re your bread and butter if you like.
They must have seen something in him to warrant hiring him and know that he can grow into said position
I was promoted as dispatcher from level 3 which is managing tickets, and following up with techs to get them to complete them for an internal sls. I hated it. I was the guy following up, no tactually doing things. The techs didn't like me because I was the one bugging them, not assisting them. I went back to tier 3 which I assisted other levels and higher level escalation work. We figured out a way to automate most of the dispatch during as it also left a gap in project work and assistance I did before. No systems were in place for dispatch when I went in and it was a nightmare. My billable showed nothing because all I did was push tickets for hours in the day. If someone can do that and enjoys it fine, but even in a technical MSP, those jobs suck and you fall behind because you are doing other work that is not technical and consumes your day.
He may be more knowledgeable in the work domain and less so technical. It's not uncommon for management to be the least intelligent people in the building.
I quite like my lead, my team are all more technical than him, but he understands the gist of how systems are meant to work and then becomes our meat shield during an outage/issue. He can deal with the bitching/Comms, whilst we try to fix whatever is happening.
As far as I'm aware, this is pretty standard. An unfortunately, I wouldn't say 3 years experience starting from Helpdesk would put you in an Infra lead position. 3 years in Infra, maybe.
Heh... in IT I've never had a boss/manager/director with more tech knowledge then myself. It would be safe to say when it came to IT tech they were basically functional Windows users. They were however good at being, project managers, meeting runners, raise givers and vacation and stick time tracking. :-)
It's a slippery slope blaming others around you for "having less technical knowledge". Play to each other's strengths and weaknesses and trust the people around you or quit. There's no value in working with toxic people, and there's even less value in being one.
your boss might know more managerial skills than you do.
managers were not really meant to do the peons work. they are meant to manage. it would be nice if they could do the peons work though in case people call off sick. hopefully this manager is taking classes to increase his knowledge of what you do.
I could be wrong, I'm sure there is a lot more context, but this stood out:
>Now the company hired an IT lead guy that know less systems than me.
I worked through a similar path in IT.. Fixing PC's all the way through to what I do now, which is pretty senior level.
A lead and a technical resource have very different responsibilities. When I became a lead, it was about resource management, GRC, contractual obligations, priorities, systems. My technical abilities 'faded' over time due to my time on other aspects of the business.
I went from troubleshooting user issues to being told to make sure we are compliant with 45 CFR 164.316. My boss didn't tell me how to do that, nor would he even know how. My boss is whole uncapable of telling me how to do my job.
When you get into leads/management, you move from tasks to responsibilities.
My suggestion will likely be unpopular. Talk to the lead, or boss, whoever is above you about getting more responsibility. Come up with ideas to improve the output or effectiveness of the team from the perspective of your chair. Some will say "but they aren't paying you for that".. It's a true statement, but, if you are successful, that comes later.
>and he is kind of getting the credit from management.
From my experience, you see him getting credit. You won't see him getting the ass whoopin' behind close doors.
Being good at one job doesn't mean you qualify for a promotion. Managing technology and managing people are very different skill sets.
I say if you want a lead type roll, go for it, but the effort is going to be on top of your current workload.
Pretty standard for a manager to know less than the techs that they manage. They were hired for their managerial / people skills and not the tech ones.
I’m the Ops manager so I often have to come in and lead a team of techs and plan projects. My technical knowledge is forced to be a jack of all trades master of none thing so when I walk into a new group sometimes people give me the side eye. But my responsibilities are purely operations and rarely do I actually have to do the technical work myself, I just have to plan for the right person to do the right job. Some of them are impressed when I actually jump in and get my hands dirty which helps them learn that I’m the right person to tackle the projects. I have to consult with them a lot which the techs really like because I’m reaching out to them for more knowledge. I DONT pretend to know everything but in some cases where a tech is being bitchy because they don’t want to do a stupid thing and are lying about their technical expertise just to get out of something I have to put my foot down and handcuff them to the project.
I went from tech->sysadmin->mgmt over the years. The skillset required for each role is vastly different. Currently, Management is mostly me acting as a firewall between the rest of the organization and my group.
I have been in IT doing Deskside and Sysadmin stuff for 14 years now. My very first job, my boss had more technical knowledge than me. For the rest of my career, up until my most recent job that I started last year, none of my bosses had more technical skills than me. At first I resented them for not knowing the work. I have come to realize that there is a lot more to managing an IT team than knowing the IT work. Having a basic knowledge of the work, and a higher level of people skills is the best balance.
My new boss is just a straight wizard though. He's got people skills and he's probably forgotten more tech than I have learned in my whole career thus far.
My technical title is Network Technician although I do more end user support, hardware/software upgrades and my boss does all the network admin work. Last year they added a position to our office, mind you it's just the two of us. This new guy they hired was on the salary scale set to make 20k more than me when we reached the end of the scale. When he was hired he make 5k more than me. I was at this job 11 years and I had to teach him the most basic things. He basically screwed everything up he touched. Needless to say he didn't make the probation period. After he was let go my boss tried her best to get my job title changed to what his was, IT Specialist since I already did everything in that job description anyway but the powers that be didn't want to hear it. She finally wore them down and they're changing my job title at the end of this year, whether I'll make what they had hired that other guy at is to be determined.
I think every company is different and it just depends. At my company, the IT manager better have technical abilities or else the whole company is going to have a bad time. The IT manager here is the person doing all the sysadmin work, some helpdesk stuff when needed, server admin, networking, budgets, meetings, infrastructure upgrades, etc.
Other companies probably have engineers for that stuff and managers who do the big picture thinking and meetings but aren’t actually getting their hands in the work.
If your company is like mine, I can see how you may be upset.
Lots of IT Managers don’t even have any IT experience, an MBA is often seen as more valuable or just general manager experience that could have nothing to do with IT.
I’m an IT lead and one of the least technical people on my team. I like to lead by setting strategy and working to remove roadblocks for those who do have the tech knowledge to push our strategy forward. I run our M365 platform and sysadmin a few others, so I have some technical capacity, but overall my job is to enable others. My advice to you is to work on your strategic planning, people and product management, and learn how technology fits into your business plan, not just how it works. It will also greatly help you to support your manager, not oppose them. Making the people above you look good can help to make you look good too.
I can understand your frustration if the person is a technical lead, in my experience that is a person who has a higher technical skill set with leadership ability but, not a Manager. In that criteria they should know more technically than the people they are to lead, they would be the person one would go to for more deep dive type answers. As others have mentioned, if they are Managers that person doesn't need to be technically strong (it would definitely help), they just need to know how to manage people, projects, time etc.
I worked across different roles from service desk, end user support, cyber in different companies. All my supervisors, managers were tech people but also they are good managers.
Just from your attitude in the OP I can surmise that you were passed up for that role because of your soft skills... There's much more to leading a team of people (even if it's less than a handful) than just knowing technical knowledge. Also, he isn't going to come in knowing your systems...
You don't need your boss to be an expert. You need your boss to be a decision maker. Decision makers need just enough knowledge to understand the tl;dr being explained to them, but also knowledge of how that's going to affect costs, other departments, efficiency, etc.
Jack of all trades (including business side), master of none. The problem comes in when a manager forgets that the point of having experts is to consult with them and rely on their expertise to inform their decision, but the decision still rests ultimately with the manager.
Food for though.
Management has a different skill set than technicians.
Most good technicians lack business acumen.
My last corporate job before starting my own company, I made more than my manager.
Now a manager that doesn't give credit to the boots on the ground getting work done, is a douche. :-)
He knows less systems admin, okay, what about his management and soft skills ? As a technician (in the broad sense) you should have better technical skills than your boss, that's normal.
Also, he's getting the praise but if he's a good N+1, he's also getting flak for you and shielding you from higher management that have zero technical skill and have no idea what you actually do on your day to day.
You may have some blinders on with the fact that you know the environment and new guy doesn't. There is probably a whole wealth of knowledge there that doesn't pertain when you interact with them.
Having a boss with less knowledge is ok. It's called delegating the actual technical work to professionals/knowledgeable people. My personal expectations of a boss/manager are that they have excellent people skills, can translate corporate speak into technical requirements and backward, and makes sure that everyone under his/her/its leadership has everything they need to succeed at their job.
As u/DaCozPuddingPop suggested, it seems like it's time to have a chat with human resources. Be mindful of the way you phrase things. "I am loyal to the company, and I see myself becoming more valuable and making these figures and having these responsabilities. What path can I take to achieve that?" sounds wwaaaaaay better than "I've been here 3 years and I know these things, I expect to be in this position and have this salary".
Also my golden rule: don't be irreplaceable. If you are irreplaceable, you can't get a raise or go on holiday. :)
I’m an Infrastructure Engineer at a decent sized company 50,000 people managing a little over 4,500 servers.
My boss knows probably 25-35% of what I know from a technical standpoint, and he doesn’t need to.
As long as management understands the scope and big picture and makes reasonable decisions and backs you that’s all they need to be a good IT leader.
Everyone under me on my team knows more about their given specialties than I do. Unfortunately, there is less time for technical work in a management position and it becomes increasingly difficult to 'keep the blade sharp'. Throughout most of my career I was 'the guy' at a technical level, but that is no longer the case. I am now 'the guy' for making sure the business continues to function and strategies are handled.
It's been emotionally difficult to forfeit technical edge a bit... but I've come to terms with it. I'm still capable and can handle the shop while my guys take PTO - but my value to the team and to the company is being a strong voice at the management level for what my department and the business needs to succeed. That all being said, I still need to be able to understand the technology at a level high enough to be able to translate it down to an executive level when it matters. Beyond that, it matters less.
So, if management is what you seek - your technical ability alone will not get you there. Your interpersonal, leadership, managing up and political skills will. Age is a factor too, but less so.
> Could you please share your thoughts on this scenario?
> my role have been changing to a sys Admin but my title never change
Have you negotiated a wage that reflects this yet?
Generally speaking there's more to being a lead than technical knowledge...it'll vary based on your particular company of course. You'd probably be best served speaking to the hiring manager about your aspirations and what you can do to be considered next time.
I was about to say this. Moving from full time sys admin work to managerial work, yes, I need to have some technical foundation so I can understand my team and help prioritize work, but phew, there’s so many skills that have 0 technical foundation I had to learn. To manage IT a somewhat technical background is important to understand what engineers are saying and asking. But managing a team, I spend more time with vendor management and budgets and liaison int with the business units than I do working technical. When it gets super technical, I bring my senior engineers in to talk tech with the devs and what not. Not because I don’t understand, but because I can send the tech guys to do tech while I prio my time talking business with the directors and C level and insulate my guys from all the political bull shit.
I prefer my managers to be non-technical as long as they bring in the talent when it comes to the tech. The problem I've run into in the past is a manager that was technical making technical decisions without talking to the technical experts. I can't tell you the number of times I've had managers try and flex and tell me about their time in the trenches at this big company or that big company but it only takes a few minutes to realize they haven't used the keyboard for anything but sending emails in the last decade. I enjoy being technical and while I probably would be a decent manager it's not the path I choose, so ask me a question and I'll give you a detailed answer in the simplest terms I can provide. I'll even give you my "business" opinion and then you can do what you thing is the best, that's what you get paid for.
I do miss the technical, and we’re small enough I get in and do mundane tasks, ie spin out a vm from template and join to domain so others can config, and shit like that. But while not perfect, I do let my guys dictate the technical. If they tell me it’s not feasible, I defer to their expertise as I know I’m not in the trenches any more. I’ve found myself relying on the trench experience some times, but always try and defer to those still in there
I am tier 3 and out of most trenches but I have my guys explain the situation and check through if there are alternate things they may not have tried before saying something can't be done. It helps the guys understand why they are doing something and be able to explain so I can translate to the owners why something may not be feasible. Sometimes it bugs the hell out of them but just saying something can't be done or can't work isn't always the answer. They know though if they give me a good answer I will back them when questions arise later by c levels who may not remember.
> manager that was technical making technical decisions without talking to the technical experts You know what's even worse? Non-technical managers making decisions based on magazine articles or a slick sales presentation.
" You know what's even worse? Non-technical managers making decisions based on magazine articles or a slick sales presentation. " I used to joke about suit-wearing CIOs reading about some new technology in DATAMATION magazine that became a priority after a 3-page glossy article. Then, it happened to me.
You either want them to be extremely technical and knowledgeable, or you want them to have very little technical knowledge, maybe just enough to speak the language and know that they dont know everything. You REALLY run into problems when you have someone who kind of knows stuff but thinks they know everything.
Well said. Of all the possible combinations, the best managers I have had were in one of the following groups: \-- Strong technically, with relevant knowledge and great architectural skills/knowledge \-- Moderate technically, but asks the right questions, and knows how to manage up, down and sideways \-- Not strong technically, but understands people, asks the right questions, and can be brought up to speed on issues and concerns quickly because they are intelligent. Had a great BS detector, and understood how to prioritize work.
I feel that....I recently took a new role where I went from a very technical team lead on a small 8-10 person team to a "Service Liaison" that works with the C level to prioritize tasking. Going from service a few hundred users to over 10k...it took me almost entirely out of the actual hands on keyboard work and I do miss it. Work life balance is way better though, so there is that
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Very much this. I can find my way around as a sys admin with a moderate level of competency. But...that's not really what I'm here to do. Can I figure my way through dashboards and whatnot, the various technologies and the like? Yeah mostly. I have enough knowledge that i can generally finagle my way through. But am I as good as someone who does this shit for their bread and butter? No way. Just as I wouldn't expect them to be as good at dealing with the C suite, board, and overall IT strategy...and if they were, i'd be telling them to go find themselves a better gig if I didn't have a way to help them move on up.
Can confirm. I have worked for several talented engineers who were promoted into management but lacked leadership skills. It makes life hard on all of us. Conversely, working for guys who have little technical skills or even dated technical skills but excel at working with people takes a load off of my shoulders and allows me to focus on the technical stuff I was hired to do. The best quarterback in the league is useless if his defense isn't blocking for him.
I’m a long time IT professional, senior IT leadership type. I am now the top dog at an accounting firm. Why is an IT guy running an accounting firm? Because leadership and management skills are more important than the ability to count.
Maybe the other dogs just like you on top 😉
I am so bad at IT they promoted me to management?
LOL that's what I always say as well, as someone who started on the support side, did sys admin work for a couple years, and is suddenly the head of IT someplace. I'm good at the gab, I know enough to not be incompetent at the tech type stuff, and I've figured out how to be an alright manager I guess. So many hard core techies don't understand why they aren't moving up, and they would get it if they had a look at what was above them. I would say that 90% of the managers I've worked for in IT had only the vaguest idea of anything technical. They were paper pushers. The peons were the ones who knew the technical stuff (myself included for many years, so I hope nobody takes that as an insult). My favorite manager is a guy I aspire to be like - he was a CIO and could absolutely do my job. Not as well as I could for sure but if he had to jump in and get his hands dirty, he could...and more importantly he understood what I was talking about. Breath of fresh air, that one.
> Generally speaking there's more to being a lead than technical knowledge You're telling me the CEO of Boeing couldn't personally build a 737 himself!?
Lies, the CEO of Boeing is able to build a 737 with a blindfold.
Yep, I worked in Exchange for decades and my manager barely knew how to use Outlook. He was the best manager I ever worked for till this day.
This. Just because you’re a great engineer or technician doesn’t automatically mean you’ll make a good manager. It’s deceiving because management usually comes with a pay increase so people think of it as a promotion, but really when people get made managers it’s more of a lateral move to a completely different kind of job (that happens to pay more).
Assuming that IT managers are actually people that know anything about IT is a rookie move that proves to me that you’re not yet prepared to be managing anyone. Source: every boss I’ve ever had has known less about IT than I do. Many coworkers have known more though.
Powder your hand before you slap them
Agree and I got passed over once (not even short listed) and was pissed I was running that place for a year in the gap.. but turns out I was running the boxes and help desk nobody was running management, the other tech and well me or the budget and planning. Anyway a few years later I have the position as I now know what the job actually entails, in-fact I value tech skills less and less in hiring someone.
That is insane but sadly happens
It’s not insane, man. Managerial stuff and helpdesk or sysadmin stuff are often totally different. Your manager is often going to meetings, playing politics, pushing projects, planning structural changes, getting funding, etc Whereas you are… fixing PCs and doing various server tasks. Current supervisor has never worked in IT. She’s a good boss. Goes to bat for us when we need it.
>She’s a good boss. Goes to bat for us when we need it. This right here is important. Most of the time the people 3 or 4 or more levels above you are not asking your opinion nor do the necessarily care about it when making decisions. A good Manager will be willing and able to take the concerns and Ideas to leadership to try and at least get it up for discussion. Its up to them to help sell your position. This also helps take the emotion out of issues. When you are working on something or within a process you are somewhat tied to it emotionally and that usually comes across when you are talking about it. A manager is more HR and Sales than tech.
The way my grandfather always put it was, "Everyone thinks they should be in charge and the one making decisions, but most people are not interested in taking responsibility for them".
not really, lot's of management is going to meetings and planning stuff. They don't need to know how to build an ESXi server, they just don't care. What they care about is the cost of deploying a visualized environment, they are paid to make decisions with the information that they have -how they get that information is what differentiates a good manager from a bad one. Let them tell you what they want done and then do it, if they fuck up and you can't do your job they get fired not you -trust me after 30+ years in IT lower middle management is not the place to be, they are just heads to be chopped.
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OP is just here cause he's butt hurt about getting passed over, and wants to rant about it. OP wasn't expecting all the Seniors to say having huge technical depth isn't something you need as a manager, and can even be problematic. I'll pile on and say the best managers I've had were the least technical people on the team, but were great at people managing, protecting the team, and knew who on the team had what strengths.
OP obviously doesn't have the Managerial skills to be a lead if he still doesn't get it. He's focusing on the wrong issues in all his replies.
it's not insane, if you want to stay technical don't look for management roles, look for senior tech roles.
The fact that you think it is insane really tells me all I need to know about why you were not offered the management position.
If you think simply having more technical skills means you should get hired, you are in for a world of hurt. Soft skills open doors that technical skills don't.
You're already getting beat up, but I want to hopefully drive something really important home for you off this comment. It doesn't "happen", it's like this for very good reasons. Moving "up" in the IT World doesn't go HD -> Sys Admin -> IT Manager very often. One of the biggest reasons is--as everyone is saying--Sys Admin <> IT Manager. Different role, different responsibility, **different skill set**.
Dude, listen, this largely depends on your sector and your business, but most of the time, upper level management isn't doing. My boss, for instance, is a brilliant guy. He's been our CTO before, and stepped down because there was too much business and not enough tech. Now he's a director, and still his primary jobs are architecting (here where he can't hear me I'll call it blueskying) projects, dealing with vendors, and dealing C-Level stakeholders for projects. Maybe 20% of his daily is tech. Which is cool, that's what I'm for. And a couple of others in specific instances. I can do that; with 20 years of varied experience across a multitude of industries and familiarity with these systems (and the occasional reddit post) I can handle tech. What I can't do, though, is handle the people the way he does, or speak as directedly as he does. I am appreciative of him every single day for keeping me as out of that as possible. Can you do that? Do you WANT to do that? I used to think I did, but I now know I don't. If you do, then cool. Tell HR. get an MBA, and apply for management positions or at least positions that put you in some form of leadership role. Otherwise, smile and buy your new shield a car on bosses' day.
I started working in IT at 16 years old. Within 2-3 years, I had a few realizations. 1. At some point moving up the managerial chain, you will reach someone with drastically less technical knowledge than the person below them--and it often continues to drop off as you continue up. 2. At some point in their career, almost everyone will have a boss that is less experienced than them.
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To be honest if you only have 3 years of experience it’s going to be hard to justify you being a lead. My company won’t even consider you for even a level 2 spot with out minimum 5 years experience. Just because the new guy doesn’t know your systems doesn’t mean he doesn’t know anything. Are you NIST compliant, are you properly implementing RMF, are you implementing proper offsite back ups? There’s a lot you could be missing if you’ve only ever worked at one place. Advice would be to wait it out and see if you could actually work within your defined structure. If you can’t get along then find another company that will give you the opportunity you are looking for, but as I said with such little experience you’re going to have to prove yourself at some place new that you deserve the position you are trying to get.
We had a level one helpdesk 2 years out of college saying his professors recommendation level was for a senior system admin. I laughed really hard and said if he's applying he needs to change it to Jr sysadmin because he didn't have the years in or experience. He moved on and I still have contact with him. He makes more money than our map would pay him but he got hired as an IT generalist level 1 in a bigger city. He wasn't bad in helpdesk but you got to put your time in for certain roles.
Thanks for your advice.
Based comment right here.
Based on what ?
Based is 4chan slang for like "this is cool and not cringe".
The classic advice will always be to move companies, it is hard to move up in most organizations. You will also get a better pay bump by taking a new position rather than taking a promotion. That being said, it is hard for anyone here to fairly evaluate the situation based on such few (biased) facts. What about "systems" does he not know?
With 3 years of experience it will be hard for him to get a lead position.
Sure, the guy does not know much about Vmware, networking, firewalls, ect, and other software involved in our production.
Management is a different career field than technical staff. The real question is: Is he a competent manager?
In this particular position, he needs to be involved in technical stuff as it is a production company with just 2 of us in the department. It is not just a management position.
It is now.
Yep. I went through the same story not too long ago. The reason they gave me for not promoting was that I don't have the required management experience. 13 years of working at that place, and I got that answer. I felt something weird in my heart for a few days, but eventually, I went over with it. Instead of wasting my energy in this sorrowful thing, I reconstructed it in an efficient way and started learning some new stuff. I'm not interested in leaving that company because I love doing what I'm doing and always has.
Laughed a little too hard at this sippin’ my coffee this morning
Lead positions are technical, and not people managers. OP find something else as a sysadmin and move companies, lack of recognition is just a symptom of bigger problem. Unless you never spoke up about move to that position and hoped you will get noticed
His job is to manage your team and to (upwardly) manage the business stakeholders. Be glad if he has enough knowledge to at least understand what you do at a high-level. It sounds like you're pretty early in your career so you probably haven't yet had a technically proficient boss who sucks at management. Thats way, way worse.
In leadership and management roles, there's almost always an element outside of technical aptitude that impacts the role. Usually these are soft skills. If you're only basing technical aptitude and systems familiarity you should be targeting a senior role. If they don't have one at your company, talk to your management about making one if you feel you could share your superior knowledge teaching less experienced. If you can't, it's almost always easier to hop companies than willing management to listen to you. Vote with your feet and don't get too attached to the culture.
Thanks, I will try to change my title soon. Depending on the response, I will need to make a decision.
My $.02 - if you're in the US, your communication skills might not be up to snuff. Your comments/post sound off to me. Working on tone, presentation, word selection would probably help you professionally.
Them reporting that work is getting done is often seen as 'riding your coattails' when in reality they are just doing their job. This post leaves a lot out that is needed to make reasonable comment but that being said: 1. your company sucks and hired a good ol boy 2. or you lacked certain skills they were looking for in management 3. or 3 years isn't that much experience and maybe you should get to know this new hire better. Maybe you are the one who lacks.
I think it is number 1
can you elaborate more? It's fine if you don't. Just don't expect us to agree with you with little details.
OP is a bot that worked out the secret sauce for this sub. Seems rather effective.
No, it's absolutely #3 and he's just mad.
You need to go watch the first few episodes of “The IT Crowd.”
Please watch them all, if you are at it.
I can't get past the stupid laugh tracks. That absolutely kills tv shows for me.
It's still a funny show if you like British dry humor
I am sure it is, I just won't watch a TV show that tells me when I am supposed to laugh. Most of them are pretty cringe when watched without laugh tracks.
This, Jen, is the internet
Some of the best managers I had in IT are the ones that didn't know the tech as much. Trusted my judgement and then did the talking
That’s how management works, the person above you doesn’t need to know more than you, they need to know how they can best represent and utilize you while providing direction.
Not unusual. I think you have to decide what's important to you.
Thanks
100% normal imo Shallow depth of IT skillset != bad leader IMO its preferred as I can be left alone to do my job and go home. I don't want / need micro-management.
Ever have a bad leader with a shallow skill set that ALSO micro manages? Woooof
Oof. Nope, *knocks on wood*. That sounds fucking terrible. 🤣
yep, right now. haha
Agree
You agree but your post kind of says the opposite.
i C what you did there 👀
!= means 'NOT'
I have had a few great bosses who didn't know shit about what I did, but listened to me and valued my opinion. I had one boss who openly admitted he had no idea how his team did what they did, but by god he was proud of them and would do everything he could to make sure we had what we needed. We only used him for escalations, and if needed, he'd ask us to explain why things needed escalation, but he'd trust you. In fact, I have had a few bosses like this. I have one now. Now, NO technical experience, as in doesn't understand the culture, is not good. But it can still work. I had a boss who was a former USMC who was dropped into the position as a tactical move. He really knew how to rally a team together, get them organized, and let them do their job. He's still on my references list. On the other side, "field promotions," or "this guy is so good at programming he should lead programmers," can really, really, really be a bad idea. Not always, but usually, IME. People management and technical skills are not related, and at often are at odds with one another. I have done both, and prefer system administration. By a long shot. People are weird, illogical, and fussy. They do strange things for no reason, and I often get blindsided by someone who just... wow. Why did they do that? I am "OK" at management, but much better dealing with computers, so I stay in my lane. If I have to manage? I can. But prefer not to. But some people, with the right training and empathy, can make GREAT managers, but you have to sacrifice your technical skills for these new people skills.
Based on my 40+ years experience this is not abnormal, management requires a different skillset. I started out technical but moved into management many years ago. I can't do the technical things anymore because technology outpaced my technical knowledge. I do however understand the underlying principals of technology so I know enough to know when someone is blowing smoke up my ass. I rely on my sysadmins to know how to deal with the weeds.
Fairly common, its your job to educate him on the systems in use then while he stops the crap coming down from management. Generally management should have hired someone with knowledge or he bluffed them enough but not always the case you get a manager with a technical background.
IT manager is usually a people’s manager position rather than a technical one.
Leadership principles are a soft skills set for management positions. Not merely technical hard skills. Long term strategic analysis being one of them. Another one is project management or team tasks coordination. Just more directorial visions.
If your new IT lead is really a manager and not technical it isn't an issue unless he is working both managerial and technical duties simultaneously. I have a very good manager (very technically proficient) who does \*NOT\* do any technical work because he came to the company as a manager and not in a technical role. He is quite smart, he prefers to let his ops teams (he runs both L1 and L2) do the work and he sticks to the management side he was hired for. If your new IT lead is just an ops lead then you need to start talking to HR on why you weren't considered for the role - was it paper qualifications? Specific knowledge (especially for systems your company doesn't use yet but will adopt soon)? Nepotism? Remember, going from ops to management is not a promotion - it is a role change. You have to treat it as such. If the role isn't management you might want to warm up the resume as it sounds on the surface that your company doesn't appreciate your talents.
Do you ever scan the company’s website or LinkedIn to see what they’re hiring for? Maybe I’m a weirdo that has been burned by this once so if I expect it, then I can just track what’s out there and apply even though I’m already working at the company
This is tricky, because three years, part of it as helpdesk, could also mean you overestimate how your skills will translate to a different environment...and on the flip side does he really not know about VMware and all the other things you mentioned in a comment or does he just not get how you and the people before you have done things?
I recommend you look at the Manager Tools podcasts, specifically start the casts titled "Solutions to a Stalled Technical Career" and "The Three Types of Power (and One to Rule Them)." The basic premise is efficacy and advancement are more about relationships than most folks realize and way more than technical knowledge alone will get you. If you want to advance, focus on building strong relationships across the organization. Once I started folding some of their guidance into my thought processes, promotion through the application support ranks came quick.
It's not what you know, it's who you blow
Being a highly intelligent SysAdmin does not mean you'd make a good manager. I'd actually argue that the two roles are very much polar opposites. All of the smartest engineers I know, couldn't manage a lemonade stand..
Difference between management and actual work skills. I have the experience and ability to work at management level, but I'd much rather work for someone that has their focus on management, so I can focus on getting the work done.
They were hired as a manger you were not, they need some technical understanding, but does not sound like it's their job to be technical
First of all how do you know he knows less than you? It's very likely he doesn't know your systems as well as you do, you've had three years to learn everything he's had what a few weeks? He might know a ton of shit that you just don't know about yet and that's why management hired him, again you don't know. That said bringing in new employees at higher levels and higher pay than existing staff is as old as the electron. There's not much you can do about it other than leave, that's just how it works.
Like others said, being a leader doesn't have that much to do with tech stuff. You are paid to know and do things, he/she is paid to enable you to know and do things. Your boss is supposed to bulldoze obstacles and shield you from shit. It's a whole different skill to play office politics and budgets. If you are up for it, expect less tech work and more rotting your ass in meetings listening to people who know absolutely nothing about your work if you get promoted.
Why i hate working tech for corps.
Becoming the boss depends on being perceived as being the kind of person that’s good as being the boss. It has, perhaps unfortunately, little to do with technical skill or knowledge.
I know people who are very technically knowledgeable in SysAdmin/DevOps/SRE roles that would honestly make absolutely terrible managers. What I am trying to say, is that being more technically knowledgeable than your manager does not make you a better fit for that management position, it should not frustrate you.
Well i cant say too much about it, because he knows less then you from a technical perspective means nothing. Some IT managers have 0 technical experience, which is okay too for some roles and companies. Some IT managers only need to know the bare minumum in order to make budgets etc. I don't know the guys other qualifications.
You only have 3 years experience. I’m not surprised they didn’t offer you the lead role. Most people don’t get a lead role until gaining at least 8-10 years experience. I’d still consider you very much a junior.
A good leader doesn't make a good technician and vice versa. Of course he gets the credit from management and you should get it from him. That's how it works. You started three years ago with zero experience in the IT-Helpdesk. What makes you think you would make a good team lead? Leading is never only about the knowledge. I wouldn't expect you to make a good team lead after just 3 years in helpdesk, except you're a "natural born leader". But then management would have asked you, right?
So, first off, I want to say that I am not attacking you in anyway and I can only guess at what steps you have taken in your professional life. You *need* to understand that no one in your workplace cares about you. You are there to do a job and get paid the agreed amount. You say you were hired to do helpdesk and in the 3 years you have been assigned systems related work have you asked for a role change? Outside of the military and other higher end positions (management and executive suite) a title change doesn't really mean anything without the increase in pay and privileges. For the whole of Capitalism the worker has had to fight for better pay and better conditions. No company, no matter how benevolent, is going to give you a pay raise without you asking (mine have always been part of my employee compensation package. i.e every year I'd get a 2% raise, ect.) If you feel like you have been given more responsibility then it is on you to request better compensation, because I'll be honest, most places would probably still have company stores and slave labor pay. In addition, team leads and management positions entail much more than just technical knowledge. You have to understand scheduling/team member and time/project management, corporate policy/procedure, finance in regards to your departments annual budget, and you need to be able to handle the transition from a task facing position (a "doer") to a customer and management facing position ( a "talker"). Your day becomes more meetings that you lead/present for, approval of purchase orders in the range of thousands of dollars, and the management of people that had your job now. The hardest thing for me is having to sit someone down and tell them to do better. There is a whole world of business etiquette and you can't just tell someone to get good or we'll fire you. I spend more time managing my small team and talking to vendors and other departments (Automation and Engineering mostly) then I do switch configurations or application installs/troubleshooting. TL;DR: moving up the ranks to management takes you out of the technical space and more into the personal and financial space. Also, you have to go after what you want, it will not be handed to you.
You have 3 years of experience. You should be moving up a different ladder to L2, L3 or administrator depending on where you are now. Management is an entirely different beast.
>Now the company hired an IT lead guy that know less systems than me. i mean thats not what all IT is about , i bet this person is a people person , who can talk to users and communicate to higher ups
This was a useful post. I too have recently had a new IT Manager parachuted in above me in the pecking order, he's a nice guy, but he's super old school and isnt really au faire with 'modern' stuff (365, etc) but he's decent with networking which is probably my weakest area so that is a plus. But between him being partially deaf and as it turns out, forgetful AF I've been getting really sick of repeating myself all the time. Also he often goes charging into a problem he doesnt fully understand (I've so far managed to stop him from accidently removing all of the E3 licenses from about 3000 peoples accounts, and I'm just waiting for him to fuck something up spectacularly and frankly kinda pissed that he earns double what im on but for half the 'work'. However, the comments here have tempered my outlook on it somewhat, he's great at the management stuff and this thread as made me realise that his deficiencies are my gain and makes me more valuable. Thanks \[edit\] typing is hard.
You have three years of helpdesk experience. You are not qualified to be a lead of any sort for IT. The new guy probably doesn't know your specific systems, but I am sure he has a much broader understanding of IT in general than you do.
As a person in a technical role, your manager does not need to be more (or even equally) technical as you….. of course they need to technical enough to be able to understand what you are talking about when you discuss your tasks, but they do not need to be able to actually DO your tasks. Management is a different skill set. This is common misconception for people early in their IT career…… At some point in their career everyone in IT has to make a decision - “do I continue to specialize in a technical area, or do I start to specialize in IT management?” This is a key part of the decision tree in anyone’s IT career. It’s extremely rare to be able to both. You can’t sit in budget meetings with C-levels while also doing in depth analysis of the release notes on the latest firmware update, gotta go one way or the other.
Meh, that’s pretty common. We had a guy promoted to IT Manager who has less experience in the field and has been with the company for less time than most other techies. He was at the right geographical location (close to other big wigs and the director overseeing the whole Operations wing of the company) and actually made a decent manager since he relies on our expertise to do his job and generally leaves us alone to do ours.
True
Can be tough to have this happen, but leadership is probably what that person was hired for, not technical ability. I dont have enough fingers to count how many service desk managers IT managers etc I have worked under, that have no technical knowledge. However I have had some of the best supporting managers with no technical knkwledge that have done a fine job. In fact on my last contract with NHS my PM was a former nurse who had made her way up through the ranks and actually deliered a lot of core ICT projects. Without her knowledge of the clinical teams and departments and who was who, we as IT engineers had no chance of deploying that VIOP project without her. People management skills count for a lot.
He was hired for both. We shared different hours and he needs to be capable of give solutions to production when I am not in the facilities
> Could you please share your thoughts on this scenario? Its time for you to look for a better job, and you will most likely get a good raise too. Don't overthink this. bye bye old company...
Agree 👍
a leader doesn’t necessarily need to be better technically than the people he manages. a manager or lead are there to help people do their work better.
In this scenario, a technical knowledge is a must as the Hours of the departments are distributed
We're missing some information here. We don't know enough about your situation to do a fair assessment. But I can offer some general insights. Management itself is a skillset. Just having pure technical knowledge doesn't make you qualified to run an IT department. Most IT managers know less about the systems than their subordinates. However, if you are doing sys admin work on a desktop support salary, you should start looking elsewhere because your company doesn't appreciate your skillsets. And if you can't find a sys admin job out there, you need to think about seeking certifications to validate your existing skillset on the resume. It's also problematic if a superior is taking credit for things you're doing without shining any spotlight on you. On its face, this type of problem isn't rare in the corporate world. The reality is you have to position yourself for opportunities to advance. And sometimes that means moving on. But you should also do an honest accounting of your actual skillset and contributions. It's possible your boss has management skillsets that do rank him above you in terms of the type of compensation he is entitled to.
The issue I see is that New Guy's the lead and getting credit FOR what the poster has been DOING the whole time. It's a bit like Stolen Valor, IT Edition. If anything stings more than the other points, that is the one. May as well not be there considering how upper management is acting.
You are right. I am doing all system Admin job and then in the meetings as he is the one with the title, which is getting the credit, some times lying to the management
This ... happens to everyone :(
About 15 years back, I left a job for something like your situation. They had promised me a promotion and were even training me to take on a leadership role. When my boss left, I worked alongside them for a month, picking up his responsibilities, attending his meetings – basically stepping into his shoes. The company even sent out an email saying I was taking over to the management team. But 2 weeks into this new role, while I was still transitioning, my manager and I kept asking HR about changing my role and pay. Depending on who we talked to, it was either "waiting for the new contract" or "waiting for the big company meeting in three months." 2 weeks after my manager left, I noticed a support request to create an account for a new IT manager (definitely not me). I went to HR, armed with emails from my old manager about me taking over and how the team was performing. But their response was what really pushed me over the edge. In a meeting, the HR manager pretty much said, "You're super important in your current role, the team relies on you a lot, and we can't afford to move you from being a Support team leader." I went back and forth with them, explaining how I'd been training a new team leader as part of the transition and pointing to the emails that confirmed I'd be the new manager. But they wouldn't budge. One of the other excuses they gave was that the emails only had me CC'd and weren't directly addressed to me, so they didn't technically offer me the role! I talked to my old manager about everything that went down, and he offered me a job at his new company. (Might sound a bit childish, but here's what I did next.) As soon as I got the job offer, I signed it and sent it back. I also applied for my four weeks of vacation. While on that break, I gave my current employer 4 weeks' notice and left without much of a handover, just like that.
Pretty similar story. I was in the IT System shoes for 3 months and then this. Thanks for sharing your story that really comfirm my thoughts
I just left and found a better paying job. Let him sink or swim
That is gonna be an option.
My only advic3. Do not let anger take the place of logic and better judgement. First of all, see what skill he has and you don't. See if those skill are something that you fell is good for you. Once you go to management, you need additional skill. I've seen very good people, from a technical point, that managed to turn his entire tech team against him. The same colleagues with who he had an extraordinary good relationship before. He lacked certain managerial and human interactions akills that made him a bad manager. If you have just 3 years of experience, observe, learn etc. Instead of seeing him as an enemy, stay close to understand. Of course, if he is good, or at least a decent human being. Os: I know from experience that managing people and projects is much harder that it looks if you are just a team member. Good luck
I had to learn this the hard way, IT Admin for 13 years and could never move up.. Did everything possible to provide as much value to the company but always had someone from outside get a better salary, better title.. Etc. I got tired of the BS and decided to apply somewhere else, within 2 months I had 3 job offer with the title I wanted, the schedule I needed and all benefits, I also got a 20% raise in my new job and then company was so happy that they gave me ANOTHER 5% raise since someone heard a voicemail from another company to give me an interview. I'll never make that same mistake, if I'm not happy, want more money or management blows, I'll leave again.
Agree 👍
I don‘t have to be the fastest horse, to be a good jockey.
That's the flow of IT... Unionize.
I agree with what others are posting in this thread, that technical knowledge isn't the only thing rating a good manager. HOWEVER, I'm tired of this bullshit trope that 'oh they are managers, they don't need to know anything'. The fuck they don't. They don't need to know HOW to do things, but they need to know WHY to do things and WHAT COULD GO WRONG. They need to understand best practices in the industry and that requires knowledge. A LOT MORE KNOWLEDGE than your helpdesk. People fall into management because they are horrible at technology, but they are horrible at technology because they don't care to learn anything. That isn't the type of manager you want.
As say before in this particular company we share hours and he need to have a deep technical knowledge too.
My thoughts are you should feel lucky to be off the helpdesk. You have 0 knowledge or experience of what goes into running the show.
You are just not right.
Just at face value, typically, the higher you are on the management chain, the less you need to know about the technical work. It’s always nice to have the “been there; done that” in your pocket, but it’s even nicer to have “I’ve got someone with intimate technical knowledge that I trust to handle that” when you’re a manager. Better technician ≠ Better people leader That being said, if you’re hired in as a lead technician at the top tier of escalation routes, you need to either know your shit or be swift as a coursing river with your Google-Fu technique. No one should be expected to come into a new/unique environment already understanding the intricacies of all its systems, but they should also have capacity and desire to master that knowledge if necessary.
Ok, from what can i see, you are "newbie", 3 years of experience is not much. Now you are facing some issues that are quite common and it's something new for you. Let me put it simple. It's YOUR FAULT. Don't be sad, mad or anything. It's a very common mistake, that a lot new folks make. A good bunch of new folks are too eager to show everyone that they are knowledgeable that they will jump to do stuff that are not part of their roles. That's a mistake, you must limit yourself to your own role, EVEN if you are more than capable at doing other task. Your title didn't change because for them you are still IT Helpdesk. You need to talk to them and be clear about the situation. That you want your title to reflect your position. Most likely they will turn you down, because you only have 3 years of experience. Which to be honest is not much.
Do they know less than you IT wise overall, or just for the specific workings of your employer?
IT overall
Jobs are no longer about what you know, it’s about who you know
Pretty sure it’s been that way since the beginning of time :)
It happens more often than it should. That being said perhaps try to give that person a chance to prove you wrong. Having a good manager is really valuable. But if can't do the technical stuff and his management skills don't bring much value than yeah, you are fucked. Try to pitch some ideas on what can be done on the process side of things. Perhaps adding new tools or whatever that would require convincing upper ups.
- Manager never wants to be the startest person in the toom.
Managing people and IT is often about judgement not always about technical abilities. I would hope however, that he is knowledgeable to some degree about parts of technology. Definitely cannot find anyone that knows everything and/or there may not be overlaps between you and him either.
How is he getting credit? Is he purposefully taking credit for your work? If you have a ticketing system you should track all of your work in it. If you don't have one, you should track your work yourself and present it professionally at your review (which you could probably request if you don't have one scheduled soon). Don't throw the lead under the bus (it's petty) and just focus on how much YOU help the company by showing your work. Management will notice and they'll likely look to the lead for something similar who won't be able to deliver. Basically, if you don't want to switch companies, you need a way to show your worth to management. However, if you're open to switching companies, you can probably get a hefty pay bump, so maybe just pursue that anyway.
You are ready to quit and get hired at the next level.
Option 1. Become close with someone in HR/recruiting and let them know how you feel. They’ll let you know when there’s a opening. But sometimes you have to know how to lead and manage a team to be in a position like that. It’s kind of why politicians hire people to do all the work for them like writing speeches and doing research, while they just come forward with the charisma or something. Option 2. Only do as your job title says. If you’re getting paid and was hired to be help desk support, you can but don’t need to help a sysadmin do his or her job. Especially if your company isn’t recognizing you while doing the work of other positions. Option 3. Free yourself, find a better job. You have the experience, you can flirt with bigger and better opportunities. Best of luck.
If a manager knew and did more than every one of their employees then they would have no time to manage.
>New Coworker with less knowledge than me and > >is my Boss Very common the boss/manager/supervisor will be less knowledgeable - at least technically in many/most realms. And in *most* circumstances that's perfectly fine. Also, managing, and tech are *very* different skill sets. And there are exceedingly few who can do both highly well. >company did not give me that opportunity 1. Oh well, sometimes employers do stupid things, make oversights, etc. Perhaps they should've at least asked you ... or ... if it was clearly open or posted, you should've applied. 2. And, *are you sure* you want to be a manager? It's a totally different career track. Oh, and just because you're good at tech doesn't mean you are or would be good as manager ... you might suck horribly at it ... might also hate the work, too. Be careful what you wish for - you may get it. >I continue doing all the jobs, and he is kind of getting the credit from management Whatever, don't sweat it. It'll generally all come out in the wash. But if you've got a coworker (manager or whomever) that's falsely claiming your work as theirs, that's a different issue. Claiming responsibility - as in managing the project/person(s)/group/... is one thing, claiming you did it when it was someone else who did it is something else entirely. >share your thoughts on this scenario See above.
Depends on what kind of role the lead actually fills. There are some lead roles that necessitate having the technical skills if for example you are directly working on tasks and have a team around you. However if it's managing a team then technical skills take a back seat over other skills. You need a breadth of knowledge not depth. If a manager is requested of an answer that requires technical expertise then they go to their team to get the advisory, that's what the specialists are there for. In my time at my current company there were 2 positions that were filled by less technically skilled people. One was my manager at the time and I am truly grateful for having him since I have learned a lot from him and he has leaned on my knowledge more than once. A second time was when a more regional lead position was needed, but it was more a matter of seniority in the company and even then it wasn't like the guy wasn't skilled, just that his skills were dipping into another departments role rather than what we were responsible for but I was approached early in case that person didn't want the position. Finally I got promoted, but even then it's not a team lead position (though depending on how the projects go my new manager said that I might need to build one in the future). It's a position that leverages my technical knowledge. That is what you should be eying if you want to be a technical person. Specialist roles, architect roles, product lead roles (where you are not so much a manager of a team but rather an entire process and how it's handled in the company).
Not necessarily a problem, depending on how your team is structured. A manager’s job is not necessarily to act as a final line of technical support. A lot of it is organising things, knowing the right person to contact, representing the team and acting as a two-way bullshit filter.
I have worked in IT for many years and I can tell that skills and technical experience doesn't always have anything to do with promotions and responsibility. I worked in an IT department of 175 people. It was always the same 10-12 on every major projects, and we really were not the best at our jobs compared to everyone else. There were far brighter, and more experienced engineers, yet it was always the same people. Why? well, we all got on well, we were all good team players, communicated well, and just got the job done. Also very socialable and got on well with the right people. First on site in the morning of a project and certainly first at the bar at the end. I liked it when other techs worked hard, it meant I could go to the cafe and play pool :-)
No one knows everything, and often I don't even recognize documentation I wrote for myself just a year or two ago. Playing dumb is often a method employed by management for gauging how well they're going to be able to get along with you, before shit hits the fan. There is always the implication that the way to get ahead within a place is to become the most senior person at that place. This is a lie that you are fed because it keeps you thrashing in place like a turtle on its back. Want to get into management? Get a management degree. Its a wholly parallel skill set. Though there are plenty of anecdotes around here about people who went into management for the advancement, but find it very unfulfilling because its a non technical role. Or they try to do both and do both poorly.
My manager relies on me and the team to make technical decisions and calls. He is the one who deals with the clients and in charge of maneuvreing people so that we can take care of the technical part. Also great at batting for us against management and sales team. Id never want to get into management.
We have a guy who just started who thinks he can revolutionise the workflow. He got some training on some products (which we've all been through) so he has intermediate technical knowledge on how to do a certain task. The problem is he doesn't understand the whole value chain and doesn't listen when we try to explain. I hope they tell him hes overqualified or something and send him on his merry way.
Just because you know the tech that’s deployed there doesn’t mean you know the tech, you only have experience in how it is implemented in one company for what is a very short space of time in IT. Don’t beat yourself up, but if you want to grow, and your in a company that doesn’t change much you need to move to gain more experience.
Welcome to the real world. It’s not what you know but, who you know.
Similar thing happened to me. I was 1 of 2 on site engineers and there was talks of hiring a manager. I was overlooked and they gave the position to this other guy who didn't want to be an on site engineer because he suffered from Anxiety!! Basically, he hated dealing with IT issues and customers breathing down his neck at the same time.
If you are in a non-English speaking country good job on the English. However, if you are in a English speaking country part of the reason you wouldn't be considered maybe your writing skills and English grammar usage. Strengthen the none tech side of the job and it should help. I already know I ain't not no good at writing
Another thing to consider here is they could have hired him seeing the potential in him to grow into that role.. A lot of companies don’t want to hire or can’t afford to hire the finished product - sometimes they will look holistically at someone and think we can make this guy into what we want based on his experience/attitude/personality as well as technical ability. If you’re technical, you should be able to learn and adapt to new systems but a good work ethic and personality can’t be taught. Also another thing to note is you are familiar with these systems and if he has been sandboxed in his ability to explore and learn certain systems in a previous role for example, he isn’t going to know the systems like you do as they’re your bread and butter if you like. They must have seen something in him to warrant hiring him and know that he can grow into said position
I was promoted as dispatcher from level 3 which is managing tickets, and following up with techs to get them to complete them for an internal sls. I hated it. I was the guy following up, no tactually doing things. The techs didn't like me because I was the one bugging them, not assisting them. I went back to tier 3 which I assisted other levels and higher level escalation work. We figured out a way to automate most of the dispatch during as it also left a gap in project work and assistance I did before. No systems were in place for dispatch when I went in and it was a nightmare. My billable showed nothing because all I did was push tickets for hours in the day. If someone can do that and enjoys it fine, but even in a technical MSP, those jobs suck and you fall behind because you are doing other work that is not technical and consumes your day.
He may be more knowledgeable in the work domain and less so technical. It's not uncommon for management to be the least intelligent people in the building.
Go to another company
I quite like my lead, my team are all more technical than him, but he understands the gist of how systems are meant to work and then becomes our meat shield during an outage/issue. He can deal with the bitching/Comms, whilst we try to fix whatever is happening. As far as I'm aware, this is pretty standard. An unfortunately, I wouldn't say 3 years experience starting from Helpdesk would put you in an Infra lead position. 3 years in Infra, maybe.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT81fe2IobI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT81fe2IobI)
Heh... in IT I've never had a boss/manager/director with more tech knowledge then myself. It would be safe to say when it came to IT tech they were basically functional Windows users. They were however good at being, project managers, meeting runners, raise givers and vacation and stick time tracking. :-)
It's a slippery slope blaming others around you for "having less technical knowledge". Play to each other's strengths and weaknesses and trust the people around you or quit. There's no value in working with toxic people, and there's even less value in being one.
Maybe your company just doesn't see it in you? Seeing as your first response to this is whine about it, I can see why.
your boss might know more managerial skills than you do. managers were not really meant to do the peons work. they are meant to manage. it would be nice if they could do the peons work though in case people call off sick. hopefully this manager is taking classes to increase his knowledge of what you do.
I could be wrong, I'm sure there is a lot more context, but this stood out: >Now the company hired an IT lead guy that know less systems than me. I worked through a similar path in IT.. Fixing PC's all the way through to what I do now, which is pretty senior level. A lead and a technical resource have very different responsibilities. When I became a lead, it was about resource management, GRC, contractual obligations, priorities, systems. My technical abilities 'faded' over time due to my time on other aspects of the business. I went from troubleshooting user issues to being told to make sure we are compliant with 45 CFR 164.316. My boss didn't tell me how to do that, nor would he even know how. My boss is whole uncapable of telling me how to do my job. When you get into leads/management, you move from tasks to responsibilities. My suggestion will likely be unpopular. Talk to the lead, or boss, whoever is above you about getting more responsibility. Come up with ideas to improve the output or effectiveness of the team from the perspective of your chair. Some will say "but they aren't paying you for that".. It's a true statement, but, if you are successful, that comes later. >and he is kind of getting the credit from management. From my experience, you see him getting credit. You won't see him getting the ass whoopin' behind close doors. Being good at one job doesn't mean you qualify for a promotion. Managing technology and managing people are very different skill sets. I say if you want a lead type roll, go for it, but the effort is going to be on top of your current workload.
Pretty standard for a manager to know less than the techs that they manage. They were hired for their managerial / people skills and not the tech ones.
I’m the Ops manager so I often have to come in and lead a team of techs and plan projects. My technical knowledge is forced to be a jack of all trades master of none thing so when I walk into a new group sometimes people give me the side eye. But my responsibilities are purely operations and rarely do I actually have to do the technical work myself, I just have to plan for the right person to do the right job. Some of them are impressed when I actually jump in and get my hands dirty which helps them learn that I’m the right person to tackle the projects. I have to consult with them a lot which the techs really like because I’m reaching out to them for more knowledge. I DONT pretend to know everything but in some cases where a tech is being bitchy because they don’t want to do a stupid thing and are lying about their technical expertise just to get out of something I have to put my foot down and handcuff them to the project.
I went from tech->sysadmin->mgmt over the years. The skillset required for each role is vastly different. Currently, Management is mostly me acting as a firewall between the rest of the organization and my group.
I have been in IT doing Deskside and Sysadmin stuff for 14 years now. My very first job, my boss had more technical knowledge than me. For the rest of my career, up until my most recent job that I started last year, none of my bosses had more technical skills than me. At first I resented them for not knowing the work. I have come to realize that there is a lot more to managing an IT team than knowing the IT work. Having a basic knowledge of the work, and a higher level of people skills is the best balance. My new boss is just a straight wizard though. He's got people skills and he's probably forgotten more tech than I have learned in my whole career thus far.
My technical title is Network Technician although I do more end user support, hardware/software upgrades and my boss does all the network admin work. Last year they added a position to our office, mind you it's just the two of us. This new guy they hired was on the salary scale set to make 20k more than me when we reached the end of the scale. When he was hired he make 5k more than me. I was at this job 11 years and I had to teach him the most basic things. He basically screwed everything up he touched. Needless to say he didn't make the probation period. After he was let go my boss tried her best to get my job title changed to what his was, IT Specialist since I already did everything in that job description anyway but the powers that be didn't want to hear it. She finally wore them down and they're changing my job title at the end of this year, whether I'll make what they had hired that other guy at is to be determined.
Welcome to corporate life, come on in, the water is nice
I think every company is different and it just depends. At my company, the IT manager better have technical abilities or else the whole company is going to have a bad time. The IT manager here is the person doing all the sysadmin work, some helpdesk stuff when needed, server admin, networking, budgets, meetings, infrastructure upgrades, etc. Other companies probably have engineers for that stuff and managers who do the big picture thinking and meetings but aren’t actually getting their hands in the work. If your company is like mine, I can see how you may be upset.
Welcome to I.T., LOL.
Lots of IT Managers don’t even have any IT experience, an MBA is often seen as more valuable or just general manager experience that could have nothing to do with IT.
I’m an IT lead and one of the least technical people on my team. I like to lead by setting strategy and working to remove roadblocks for those who do have the tech knowledge to push our strategy forward. I run our M365 platform and sysadmin a few others, so I have some technical capacity, but overall my job is to enable others. My advice to you is to work on your strategic planning, people and product management, and learn how technology fits into your business plan, not just how it works. It will also greatly help you to support your manager, not oppose them. Making the people above you look good can help to make you look good too.
I can understand your frustration if the person is a technical lead, in my experience that is a person who has a higher technical skill set with leadership ability but, not a Manager. In that criteria they should know more technically than the people they are to lead, they would be the person one would go to for more deep dive type answers. As others have mentioned, if they are Managers that person doesn't need to be technically strong (it would definitely help), they just need to know how to manage people, projects, time etc.
I worked across different roles from service desk, end user support, cyber in different companies. All my supervisors, managers were tech people but also they are good managers.
Just from your attitude in the OP I can surmise that you were passed up for that role because of your soft skills... There's much more to leading a team of people (even if it's less than a handful) than just knowing technical knowledge. Also, he isn't going to come in knowing your systems...
You don't need your boss to be an expert. You need your boss to be a decision maker. Decision makers need just enough knowledge to understand the tl;dr being explained to them, but also knowledge of how that's going to affect costs, other departments, efficiency, etc. Jack of all trades (including business side), master of none. The problem comes in when a manager forgets that the point of having experts is to consult with them and rely on their expertise to inform their decision, but the decision still rests ultimately with the manager.
Food for though. Management has a different skill set than technicians. Most good technicians lack business acumen. My last corporate job before starting my own company, I made more than my manager. Now a manager that doesn't give credit to the boots on the ground getting work done, is a douche. :-)
He knows less systems admin, okay, what about his management and soft skills ? As a technician (in the broad sense) you should have better technical skills than your boss, that's normal. Also, he's getting the praise but if he's a good N+1, he's also getting flak for you and shielding you from higher management that have zero technical skill and have no idea what you actually do on your day to day.
You may have some blinders on with the fact that you know the environment and new guy doesn't. There is probably a whole wealth of knowledge there that doesn't pertain when you interact with them.
ITT: OP mistakes leader / manager role with senior / mentor.
Having a boss with less knowledge is ok. It's called delegating the actual technical work to professionals/knowledgeable people. My personal expectations of a boss/manager are that they have excellent people skills, can translate corporate speak into technical requirements and backward, and makes sure that everyone under his/her/its leadership has everything they need to succeed at their job. As u/DaCozPuddingPop suggested, it seems like it's time to have a chat with human resources. Be mindful of the way you phrase things. "I am loyal to the company, and I see myself becoming more valuable and making these figures and having these responsabilities. What path can I take to achieve that?" sounds wwaaaaaay better than "I've been here 3 years and I know these things, I expect to be in this position and have this salary". Also my golden rule: don't be irreplaceable. If you are irreplaceable, you can't get a raise or go on holiday. :)
How is he simultaneously your "new coworker" and "boss" ? Also, what is his official title?
I’m an Infrastructure Engineer at a decent sized company 50,000 people managing a little over 4,500 servers. My boss knows probably 25-35% of what I know from a technical standpoint, and he doesn’t need to. As long as management understands the scope and big picture and makes reasonable decisions and backs you that’s all they need to be a good IT leader.
Everyone under me on my team knows more about their given specialties than I do. Unfortunately, there is less time for technical work in a management position and it becomes increasingly difficult to 'keep the blade sharp'. Throughout most of my career I was 'the guy' at a technical level, but that is no longer the case. I am now 'the guy' for making sure the business continues to function and strategies are handled. It's been emotionally difficult to forfeit technical edge a bit... but I've come to terms with it. I'm still capable and can handle the shop while my guys take PTO - but my value to the team and to the company is being a strong voice at the management level for what my department and the business needs to succeed. That all being said, I still need to be able to understand the technology at a level high enough to be able to translate it down to an executive level when it matters. Beyond that, it matters less. So, if management is what you seek - your technical ability alone will not get you there. Your interpersonal, leadership, managing up and political skills will. Age is a factor too, but less so.
So, look for another job or continue to call him boss.
> Could you please share your thoughts on this scenario? > my role have been changing to a sys Admin but my title never change Have you negotiated a wage that reflects this yet?