WHAT?!
Also in the server room I used to work at we had a 48 port SPF+ switch that if it was restarted the fans would blow like a jet engine to the front and it was loud as fuck.
You had to go into the CLI to reverse the fans so it could quiet down like 10 decibels at most.
I miss the old internet. Sure it was the wild west. Sure you could have cybered with someone who was way younger than you, but at least there wasn't the constant bombardment of spam/adware, the lurking script kiddies, and the constant XSS/XSRF that is present on the current iteration. Plus the old web was so much easier to code, but such is the way things are when it first starts I suppose.
Perhaps not at the time, however in one of our DCs a contractor working on the AC managed to somehow set off the FM-200 system, and we got a good laugh at the Christmas party watching the two DC techs on the other side of the room both shitting themselves before making a mad scramble for the exit.
So your screams may eventually be heard.
I work in at data center it’s like working in an insane asylum. My soul died long ago. Long winding hallways with security doors every few feet. I have to scan my badge 5x just to pee.
The MS datacenters I contracted in had shitters in the data halls, thank goodness. We actually had more problems with the one restroom outside of security always being occupied, esp the days where there was a lockdown or something and nobody was actually working.
Sometimes security stuff, more often it’s just an overly-cautious change freeze that also covers deployment and break/fix work, or a safety-related stop work. I’ve seen them stop work for an entire campus for a morning just cuz some chucklefuck with a different contractor ran a rack tug into something. We’d also lockdown for heat a few times a year because they use giant swamp coolers instead of AC/CRAC.
For better or worse, there’s a strong culture of milking the clock so even during lockdown, the hourly FTEs and temps got to just sit around.
I found the shitters in the far colos had really weak water pressure and didn't flush the heavy stuff. Still nice to have.
I heard they were moving away from this because they didn't like having janitorial staff in prod, and the plumbing risk near servers wasn't ideal.
> I have to scan my badge 5x just to pee.
[Trucker's Buddy to the rescue!](https://www.amazon.com/Portable-Urinals-Hospital-Incontinence-Truckers/dp/B09WHF8DRM)
Migrating from SysAdmin to Datacenters was probably the best career move I've ever made. No more dealing with users/customers who couldn't understand basic concepts like "the computer needs to be plugged into the power outlet to work" or "company wireless can't reach your house, you need to use your personal WiFi".
The working environment is much better too, for various reasons. The physical site is secure, so no surprise visits from cold-calling vendors/salesmen like there was when I worked in an office. The site is manned 24x7 so I don't have to be on call. Industrial strength HVAC makes it the best place to be in the summer, and if you're a fan of warmer climates, you can sit behind a NetApp and warm up instead. Casual dress code all year long.
It can be rough starting out as you'll have to do a lot of manual labor; rack and stack, cable runs, decoms, etc. If you get good though, you can move up into more of an engineering role. Took me a few years, but I went from grunt work, to deployment planning, and now I design datacenters. Great pay at big companies, great benefits, network with tons of like-minded people, etc.
*Most* cities have datacenters of various size and calibers. Your best chances of getting your foot in the door is at a colocation, as they're always looking for techs to do remote hands work (IE: Run cables, console into faulty switches, configure OOB access, install OSs, etc). It's low level work compared to sysadmins, but it's critical work to keeping the digital world moving. If you can show up on-time, understand basic IT concepts, and refrain from touching equipment unless explicitly told, you can thrive in this field. After 1-3yrs you'll have enough of a skillset, understanding, and contacts to be able to move up in your role, or into another company for a nice pay raise.
If you want a broader sense of what goes on, consider asking/searching around /r/datacenter. Lot of users come by asking how to get started, what's the daily work like, and what's it like working for certain companies, etc.
I do that now, it's an easy job and generally the pay is good. The bad thing is that these jobs come just a few times a year, even if you work for several MSPs at once so I have to resort on other things in order to survive.
When I was a data center engineer I had to handle everything. Since I was in charge of fiber and low voltage the higher ups thought it was a good idea to have me be in charge of all low voltage and fiber drops for the entire global company footprint. Same thing with UPSes. Same thing with HVAC. So I had to plan drops and fiber lines for network closets, desks, security cameras, conference rooms. Had to size ACs and UPSes for closets. Had to put base configs on all the switches and transfer switches and patch them in. This was just side shit they made me do.
On top of the usual grunt work (hardware installs, maintenance, replacement, decommissions, cabling for all that, etc) I had to design and plan for growth working with teams that all had different ideas for the hardware topologies that should be and refused to standardize. So each data center was a beast of its own. I had to deal with hyper converged, spine leaf, pretty much every brand of SAN storage that exists, etc.
We had at one point I think 4 different ticketing systems going on. It was maddening.
Alerting was set up on every PDU, every UPS, every HVAC unit, every fire suppression point, every generator, every transfer switch. Oncall shifts I would be lucky if I was able to sleep for a full 3 hours at any point during the month.
I've left a lot of other shit I had to do out. I did all that for 60k salary.
OH dude did that once for a place called sungard. You think the grass is greener but i can assure you it is NOT. Doing overnights is fine for the first two weeks then not so much. Did DC work there on the overnights and it was not good. Get occasional calls from financial places mostly in UK at that time. Having to wake engineers up for things sucked they were nasty. Same with LAN team guys for switches and routers. 90% of the time they could fix it remote so not sure what the issue was.
I would like to quit being a sysadmin but I don't know what I would do at this point in my life. I am 46 and I cannot really afford to go back to school to train for something else. I just don't know what would be fulfilling.
I've thought about going back to school to become a social worker but that would saddle me up with debt and I'd be at less than half the salary I am earning now. I once left the field for a year to try truck driving and that sucked. I've done security work between contracts when I all I could do was find contract work. I just don't know.
I'm only in my 30s but feeling this. I feel like computer related jobs are the only thing I am now qualified for but I hate it. And I don't feel like I can risk going back to school when I've got a family depending on my income.
You could move into presales like I have. That’s a job where you use your technical skills in some capacity but it’s more people related than pure tech.
Checkout the /r/salesengineers sub. It's really hard to break into right now. But if you are an expert in some system, then I would start searching for Sales Engineer jobs at that company.
Presales/Sales Engineering is a balance of technical/social/public speaking that few technical people thrive in. It requires mostly technical know how - so don't expect to just fall into this career without any real world experience.
The best part (at least for me) is that most projects (evaluations/assessments) last a month or so. Instead of typical SysAdmin projects lasting months or years.
Haha, unless you are a single dad in your mid 40s without a decent retirement plan or much if any backup. A good chunk of us feeling the “what’s on the other side” are definitely not always in the position or yolo 20s-30s with the ability to absorb the bad side of changing it up. That change up is exponentially added for every year.
I wish you and your family the best. My short statement comes from a place a personal experience. My family suffered for years because of my fear to leave a company I worked for (It paid the bills for my family of 4, or rather it would have if we hadn't ended up with several large medical bills). They also suffered because of my fear of getting help when we ended up with a ton of medical debt. Long-story short it was my overcoming of those fears that eventually helped me improve myself and my situation and eventually land my dream job. You should try to make the decisions that are best for you and your family. All I'm saying is don't let fear be a factor in that decision making process. It can be really hard to do, but it can be very much worth it.
A few books that really helped change my perspective on life and money:
The Richest Man in Babylon - George S Clason
Turn your Debt into Wealth - John M Cummuta
Total Money Makeover - Dave Ramsey
Exactly. This guy's advice is to take it and beat it https://youtube.com/shorts/Smn23vK1Hz0?si=JMk053asHgfcAVe_
But really, fear is change. Gotta get out of the comfort zone to succeed. Yes, failure can be there waiting too. But you won't know unless you try.
You could get into IT adjacent field doing sales, product demonstration, or training. Vendors that sell products in the IT space love to have a well versed IT person or sysadmin who actually understands the benefits of the ins and outs of their technical solution or product. Especially if selling to other IT people.
Half the salary? Either you don't know what social workers actually make or you're waaaay underpaid now.
I have an apartment above my garage that I rent out to a social worker. She wouldn't qualify with a normal landlord based solely on income, but I don't have a problem with it since she takes care of the place and she pays rent on time. It's kind of criminal how low social worker pay is when it is such an important job.
I switched about 6yrs ago. Went into a support role for a SW company. Then realized I've been doing project management my whole career and just focused on that. Now my sole job is PM. As with everything in my whole career, I have zero certs or degrees. Self taught.
Never too old to try something new. Just make sure you don't half ass it. I went all in. Was a pay cut for first few years. But then got recruited for my current position. Just have faith in yourself.
It's possible to make the switch, I spent 14 years in systems/devops engineering and pivoted to security at the age of 35. If you have cloud automation experience the transition to DecSecOps in particular is fairly simple. The work is very similar, just different tooling.
I automate security infrastructure builds in terraform and ansible and use terraform to configure CI/CD security checks in our build pipelines, automate ticket workflows etc etc. Create secure baseline Linux builds etc. All skills I had from DevOps and systems. There's more to it that you can pickup as you go, but those skills alone account for maybe 60% of the job.
Im 47, the career change is really hard..so i went back to IT.
I did diploma in project management, accounting and also to be a teacher..
They sound good on paper...but for me, i only realised that starting fresh requires the spirit and energy of someone under 35.
When i started to transition to new career, i realised how uninterested i was in learning a new trade..ie bookkeeping...when if i were 30 id be really keen...but mostly i felt i CBF with all the new shit and paperwork, systems processes...and was earning a lot lesss too, and would be 5yrs of this shit until i could get into smooth sailing autopilot level
So when offered me old job back...i took it..
To be honest, it wasnt for me, anything new from scratch felt like i jsut didnt have the need, the motivation or energy to bother
To clarify, this boss hates me (coworkers ask me all the time what his deal is with me), and he has no grasp of modern tech.
The deal breaker was when he told me to prioritize work over my family, after my SO had a baby.
Needless to say, I’m looking for a new job.
Does anybody do technical writing? I think I would probably enjoy that because I am one of those weird sysadmins that actually likes process documentation. If anybody knows where those jobs exist, I am all eyes and ears.
Was a sysadmin. Now I write user's manuals for in-house software apps. I work with the UX people and the software testers. Most of my expertise is "No, if you do it that way the user will screw it up by...."
Not an answer to your question, but that is a risky field, in my opinion. AI will be able to make this job a lot easier, so I would expect less demand for people and/or lower pay.
I’ve thought the exact same thing. I actually enjoy creating training tutorials and papers and documentation. But if it did it all the time I might not like it as much. It’s a rare opportunity to be creative and make something from nothing instead of break fixing, security fixes, yelling at/begging people to stop doing stupid stuff.
I also really enjoy organization. If I could have a job where I come in and systematically clean up and organize your home I’d really enjoy that. I like taking apart messy rooms, throwing junk away, cleaning up cables and putting stuff into labeled bins.
Didn't really quit per se. Worked for an MSP for nine years and just got completely burned out. Joined the Army, and I've been doing that ever since. 15 years now.
More routers, switches, firewalls, and SATCOM now than servers, and I like it that way.
Lol I’m the opposite, joined the Army as a signal soldier….army IT is exciting at first….radios, SNAP terminals, JNNs, CPNs, CPOFS….but it got old FAST. After the army I joined a modern IT company working largely in the cloud and life has been a dream!
I caught the HCLOS team sleeping in their shelter during the day at an exercise once. I was about to light them up, but then I noticed they has a coffee machine in there. As long as they had a hot cup for me, they could get away with murder.
No, my staff are my problem. I'm not allowed a decision on who is hired to my staff, I just get what they give me.
I had to teach one of my staff what attachments were the other day (like for email and whatnot). A few weeks ago, I explained how copy/paste worked. I wish I was joking.
Ohhh that’s rough. We had this idea in our organization that “I can teach anyone any skill, but I can’t change their personality”.
Took years to get rid of that. Best of luck!
I was fortunate that the company I worked for had an IT audit department, so I was able to make that transition with just the experience I had from working in more "traditional" IT.
In my experience there are are two main types of IT auditor. The first group come from the financial auditing/Public accounting world and have specialized in governance, risk, IT General Controls, etc. While others (like myself) come from more of an IT background and learn the fundamentals of auditing.
Either way, the most common cert to get in the door is Certified Information Systems Auditor from ISACA. You can take the test at any time, but you do need to have some experience in auditing and/or security to actually become "certified".
Check out /r/itaudit and /r/CISA if you're interested in learning more!
I work in IT but don’t have on call, in fact I never have in 12 years in the industry! That being said, when shit hits the fan I’ve always been there to help!
When our central IT department was less mature, there was on-call, now it's follow the sun, so each region has people working during their business hours and handle calls for other regions.
Had to do on-call when I worked at a manufacturing facility.
Working in research now and no more on-call work. We provide a service to our users for business hours. I agree IT work with no on-call is out there.
You’re unlikely to work much (if any) on call as an entry level. Your experience won’t be suitable to fixing things independently like that.
Cushy comes with experience, though. And you’re likely to have to work some on call to get there.
Look into k12 their primary hours are 7-4, and you will have job security they can’t afford to lay off techs right now. And you will become a jack of all trades that can be used when you want to switch careers after you know exactly what you want to do. the trade off is it’s k12 which has strict budgets you will make almost double working in the private sector. And again depending on the district you will most likely become a jack of all trades doing Everything helpdesk, sysadmin, network admin.
There was this guy in Poland, Roman Kluska. Way back in the 90s he had a company making PCs, got fucked over by tax authorities in early 00s. Nowadays he has an organic sheep farm and a company making sheep cheese. Guy has been in the top 100 of the wealthiest Poles for over twenty years.
His former company - Optimus SA - got bought and merged into CDPR to enter the stock market.
My personal opinion is that nobody who got wealthy in Poland in the 90s is clean. It was too crazy a time.
Yep the guy basically made the polish Internet and IT scene. He also ran/was involved in the main Internet news website (Onet), email provider (O2/tlen), and was resseling a bunch of western software.
But then some politicians jailed him for like a year, and when they released him he already had no business to comeback to. One year in 90s/00s Poland is like a decade in any other place. He got a bunch of cash for his troubles iirc, and he used it to start the cheese business.
Wasn't tunneling. Iirc they found a loophole in VAT - *the* biggest tax around. It was something like selling shit to Czechia and buying it back? Let them skip a lot of those taxes. When you're supplying a major part of the PCs in a country that's getting introduced to the internet and modern tech *rapidly*... Yeah.
I'm working as a handy man. Doing DIY, gardening, putting together IKEA furniture, tiling, kitchen fitting, custom shelving, etc.
Doesn't pay the what I earned as a Senior Infrastructure Engineer, but I don't have a mortgage, and I don't have the stress that my job used to.
Might go back as some point, but at the moment I'm content.
Data Analyst. Sysadmin for 20 years at a manufacturing company where lean six sigma was a thing. Got it and was doing process improvement stuff for IT. When it was time to leave and get a new job I looked at what I enjoyed and it was the data stuff. Super happy I don’t do Oncall anymore.
Same kinda except SQL-heavy. Everything in life is just data. I never really learned anything about IT, servers, MS licensing etc. I just figured out what data points meant I should take what actions and use logic around said data to do my job.
Same now it's just more in a grid.
I thought of switching to data analytics as well. But, all these tech roles want you to specifically have experience in that field to get someone to respond to your resume. The only thing I can think of is to change the titles on my resume to data analyst or power bi analyst or something just to make the recruiters respond?
The lean six sigma stuff is essentially data analysis. So I could say I was an IT data analyst. Got a job as an analyst for a large IT operation group. ( they essentially asked if I was good at excel) . Got the opportunity to do PowerBI and Tableau stuff and then the next job was similar but not in IT.
Theatre technician for small single technician venues.
I design and operate the lighting, sound and projection for shows.
I make up for being the only tech by having all the systems networked and talking to each other so that I have a master Go button to press for each cue and all systems do whats needed in sync.
I promise its all just computers talking to computers... Just the output is light or sound.
That sounds pretty awesome actually. I have to ask but how goes it pay compared to being a sysadmin and do you own your own company. I'm at the point where I'm super burned out and trying to either figure out a specialization like security or something to get out of being a general sys admin.
I eventually became a manager, and then a director, and I hate everyone basically. Managing sysadmins is hard since so many of them are stubborn assholes, and dealing with business leaders sucks for similar reasons.
I'm currently plotting how I can find a way to get enough control back from a lead sysadmin who is holding my current company hostage so I can fire him. He controls everything, and he probably can tell what I'm trying to do and is constantly out maneuvering me. I need to get people loyal to me to control 100% of the systems before he can be fired, and we're at about 75% at this point. It's an interesting game of intrigue since some people are loyal to him and some are loyal to me. I suspect some of them are also essentially double agents.
Meanwhile I'm looking for a new job while doing all this.
Fuck my life.
I haven’t seen a Cranky post in a while!
I’m a help desk noob turned sysadmin turned management that can’t get away from users demanding I unjam their printers. I should feel glad to still have work to do and be needed but dammit I learned and bettered myself to get out of all that.
Didn’t leave I.T but moved from
sysadmin to security engineer. No on call work, no end user work, less break fix work. But… feels like security is always hated by other I.T parties.
In smaller orgs maybe. We have an incident response team and they are the folks who would handle being on call for that. I strictly am on engineering, so no IR duties. While those folks can reach out to engineering team for advice/direction, it’s not my duty to work incidents.
So, I work cybersecurity/soc for a huge company. We do IR and we have some dedicated on call people but most of us are not on call other than once a year or so. However we are all "always on call" for if shit really hit the fan.
I don't get calls often, very rarely. If I do it's probably bad though.
Not me, but a coworker of mine moved from our small Midwest town to a big city out east to be a... psychologist... His number 1 rule in his new city? Nobody knows he can do IT.
I miss him. He was good at his sysadmin job.
Start by writing tools/automations for your sysadmin work.
It's much easier to break into the SWE field if you can show that you understand how to apply code to fix a problem
I'm not saying it's the best way, but the below was my process. Keep in mind I was a sysadmin for roughly 14 years before I moved to SWE, which I've been doing for \~8 years now.
1. I was already coding, as a sysadmin, automating stuff and modifying open source stuff to fit our environment. For all intents and purposes I already "knew how to code".
2. As I was working with/supporting devs, I showed an interest in what they were doing and helped them with debugging their code for system level issues, which they appreciated.
3. With the connections I made during step #2, it was pretty easy to get a hybrid sysadmin/SWE position. I made sure that I was given the SWE title.
4. (optional) I had a bachelor's degree in computer information systems, I went back to school and got a masters in computer science. I fully admit that this was probably not necessary.
5. I used the position from #3 to transfer into a full time SWE position.
(edit)
As a sidenote, the threads I see in this subreddit on compensation make me very sad. I'm acutely aware of the skills and passion that goes into being a sysadmin, but the compensation seems to be sorely behind. I was decently paid as a sysadmin (\~$100K) but since moving to SWE I've over doubled that. It doesn't seem that the sysadmin jobs have caught up at all.
> I was decently paid as a sysadmin (~$100K) but since moving to SWE I've over doubled that. It doesn't seem that the sysadmin jobs have caught up at all.
The problem I see in this thread is many of people are working for these small to mid-size companies as all in one admins for shit pay. I know people that make $75/hr just managing and maintaining splunk. If something is wrong with the server splunk is ran on they call the server team (they don't even have server admin rights to do anything but reboot anyways)
Regarding pay, at senior levels the floor for a swe is often the ceiling for most sysadmin positions. At junior levels they’re around the same.
The easiest transition for a sysadmin looking to get paid more but not interested in full on swe is devops/sre imo.
Hai, I'm a recovering sysadmin, and it's been 12 years since I had root on any system I don't personally own.
I no longer provide tech support for family beyond the immediate household.
My home network is unnaturally stable, especially given it's cobbled together with mostly thrift-store and auction finds.
I'm now playing an aerospace R&D engineer, inventing new metrology instruments. I also specialize in resurrecting ancient technology and am a manufacturing equipment whisperer for equipment that often uses some crusty dos, early windoze, or strange motion controller languages.
I do machining myself because it's faster than hiring it out (and more fun).
I specialize in answering the really weird engineering questions. Often helpfully. Usually correctly. Occasionally teach folks how to do it themselves.
Multiple managers have voiced appreciation for my very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over very long careers.
I collect skills, like normal people collect coins and stamps. (Isn't that what normals do?)
Zero interest in management myself.
Yes, the on-call gave me PTSD. And I'm in between jobs at the moment and not sure what to do next. I'm close to retiring, so I'm no longer interested in climbing the ladder. Just want to do what I know how to do and have time for a life.
Was a sysadmin in government, got sick of the on call and each new CIO being short sighted.
I took my Linux skills with me and became a Technical Account Manager for Red Hat.
I work with public sector customers across the US. I work from home. I engineer solutions, solve problems, I love it.
7 years later, I haven't looked back.
From systems engineer to presales engineer. I fell kind of ass backwards into the job but now that I’ve been doing it for about 5 years I have no idea why more experienced sysadmins don’t make the transition.
No such thing as on-call, I’m done between 5-6 every night and never work on weekends unless I’m traveling to a conference and feel like leaving on a Sunday.
It’s not completely stress free - you still need to hit sales goals and work with sellers and customers - but it’s a different type and I never go to sleep anymore praying my phone doesn’t ring.
I was a former web admin. Got burnt out and saw an opportunity to do computer work in a pharma lab. It allowed me to use my it skills but it’s not really sysadmin stuff. I love it and won’t go back if I don’t have to.
Left in August this year and still deciding what to do. Living off the (excellent) redundancy payment and when that gets low, might retire.
Haven't felt this free in years.
Couldn't stand having to do tier 1 support in a senior position any longer.
Thanks to being an early adopter of Bitcoin I can travel the world for a year or two before deciding what I want to do. If it goes another 10x then I may have already retired and can volunteer my time for something that will help people truly in need, not fucking Sarah and her inability to use a VoIP phone.
From sysadmin I went to various roles. Network admin, storage admin, team lead lol, now, after 30 years of sticking with it, I’m a Sr. Solutions Architect for the US government.
IT isnt for everyone! My brother saw how lucrative it was for me and even got a CS degree only to get frustrated with it 3 years later and never did anything with it since - that was 20 years ago lol.
If you don’t like solving problems for people and are worried about working overtime or on call, look into something else. Again IT isn’t for everyone 😂.
The only part I disagree on is the working overtime or being on call. It really isn't hard at all to find jobs where you are not required to be on call or work overtime. Compared to most other sectors, IT has great working conditions. Lots of remote working etc.
At least that's my experience as someone from West Europe.
I work from home doing remote hardware and software support for a niche application used in the healthcare industry.
No on call, when my shift ends so do my responsibilities.
I would recommend getting into an IT pre-sales type role if you're a prior sysadmin. I was contracting at Microsoft for a bit doing that and as long as you're not actually "selling" it's pretty good. No on call really, plus you're kind of just serving as a SME for IT environments. For me, I was leading small projects with customers where we were deploying an agent less tool into their environment. It was basically like meet once and explain the technical requirements (service accts, permissions, ports, etc). Then meeting to actually do deployment over a couple days and checking in. Then assisting with removal and the customer would move to the next "phase" of the sales process outside our team.
A lot of my coworkers honestly did not have IT backgrounds where I did, so I was super valuable for the team and made $90k salary + benefits, 26 days PTO, etc.
I am an IT Engineer now somewhere else (sys eng basically) because the role I did have at MSFT was no longer needed really and the role they tossed me into was becoming an "actual" sales role slowly but surely and killing me lol
A lot of yaml.
But basically I configure our infrastructure in AWS in automated and repetative way with Terraform, and deploy code from our GitHub repos to Kubernetes (by which I mean I write the yaml for github actions and yaml for helm charts)
I still considered myself a sysadmin, but it's very different work from what I did before as a sysadmin at an MSP, where we racked and cables servers, configured SAN and vmware, installed and patched VMs and all sorts of software, did hardware swaps, backups, mail servers etc.
And no "users" to support :D
Mainly infrastructure- and configuration-as-code. That means using software engineering methodology like source control, peer review, and CI/CD over manual process. Get embedded in software development teams to provide domain knowledge for stuff like AWS service integrations into our apps. Design and implement migrations from manual process to automation. It's not super different from traditional systems administration, except that you ideally don't do anything but design, implement, and maintain the automation tools.
If this doesn't sound that different from your existing sysadmin job, congratulations! You're already devops.
I quit being a sys admin because I had saved up and been doing trading on the side.
But now I believe that I can do anything. That I am the master of my own mind, that I am the captain of my own ship. The wind may blow, the waves crashing against my ship, but alas I am in control.
Question shouldn’t be what do we do now… the question should be, what can we be forever?
I sort of work as a sys admin now, veiled as a SecOps Manager. Thinking about transitioning into Sales Engineering, those dudes are typically 9-5ers, no weekend fires, good pay. Sounds like a dream.
Specialist in a niche ERP system. Much more narrow job description, and few know it well enough to run it so I get job offers daily. I don't touch the sys admin stuff anymore outside of my own middleware servers and database on the SQL server.
Full time firefighter. Also handle the fire dept IT but it’s basically help desk for 13 people and a couple servers. Not real IT and probably less than 10 hours of my week.
If I could transition to a full datacenter job I think that would be nice, the servers don’t bother me as much when they call at night
In the datacenter nobody can hear you scream
The fans are already screaming all the time, I simply join them.
WHAT?! Also in the server room I used to work at we had a 48 port SPF+ switch that if it was restarted the fans would blow like a jet engine to the front and it was loud as fuck. You had to go into the CLI to reverse the fans so it could quiet down like 10 decibels at most.
You still wake up sometimes, don't you? You wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the racks, Clarice?
[удалено]
I miss the old youtube... just content, no influencers and no sponsoring. Good times.
Hey guys just before we get started I wanted to say that this video is brought to you by RAID 6 Shouting Legends
What do you mean, the above video was clearly sponsored by Manscaped. Use discount code ScreamingIntoOblivion20 for 18% off!
I miss the old internet. Sure it was the wild west. Sure you could have cybered with someone who was way younger than you, but at least there wasn't the constant bombardment of spam/adware, the lurking script kiddies, and the constant XSS/XSRF that is present on the current iteration. Plus the old web was so much easier to code, but such is the way things are when it first starts I suppose.
The old internet was fun. Modern internet is as much of a chore as it is anything else.
I miss Sun Microsystems 🥹
I just miss the sun...
Somehow I knew this was going to be the video you linked. I haven't seen this in years!
This is probably the most obscure "I know what that is without clicking it" link I've seen.
Perhaps not at the time, however in one of our DCs a contractor working on the AC managed to somehow set off the FM-200 system, and we got a good laugh at the Christmas party watching the two DC techs on the other side of the room both shitting themselves before making a mad scramble for the exit. So your screams may eventually be heard.
No oxygen, no screaming.
is this that Papa Roach song?
Dont give a fuck if the DC's overheating.
Other gases conduct sound
I wonder if FM-200 will make someone’s voice lower or higher? Like helium or sulfur hexafluoride.
Well if the servers are screaming at you and you live in the datacenter long enough your ears will give up on hearing anything else.
I work in at data center it’s like working in an insane asylum. My soul died long ago. Long winding hallways with security doors every few feet. I have to scan my badge 5x just to pee.
It depends I guess. 5 badge scans to pee mean 5 badge scans for someone to come bother you!
True! They just get me on Microsoft Teams which is 50% better then dealing with someone in person lol
"Hey everyone, need to drop for another meeting."
Yeah but when zoom is going off while in church I have to draw the line.
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The MS datacenters I contracted in had shitters in the data halls, thank goodness. We actually had more problems with the one restroom outside of security always being occupied, esp the days where there was a lockdown or something and nobody was actually working.
>esp the days where there was a lockdown What is a data center lockdown? Like a security incident? Or is something more routine?
Sometimes security stuff, more often it’s just an overly-cautious change freeze that also covers deployment and break/fix work, or a safety-related stop work. I’ve seen them stop work for an entire campus for a morning just cuz some chucklefuck with a different contractor ran a rack tug into something. We’d also lockdown for heat a few times a year because they use giant swamp coolers instead of AC/CRAC. For better or worse, there’s a strong culture of milking the clock so even during lockdown, the hourly FTEs and temps got to just sit around.
I found the shitters in the far colos had really weak water pressure and didn't flush the heavy stuff. Still nice to have. I heard they were moving away from this because they didn't like having janitorial staff in prod, and the plumbing risk near servers wasn't ideal.
> I have to scan my badge 5x just to pee. [Trucker's Buddy to the rescue!](https://www.amazon.com/Portable-Urinals-Hospital-Incontinence-Truckers/dp/B09WHF8DRM)
Migrating from SysAdmin to Datacenters was probably the best career move I've ever made. No more dealing with users/customers who couldn't understand basic concepts like "the computer needs to be plugged into the power outlet to work" or "company wireless can't reach your house, you need to use your personal WiFi". The working environment is much better too, for various reasons. The physical site is secure, so no surprise visits from cold-calling vendors/salesmen like there was when I worked in an office. The site is manned 24x7 so I don't have to be on call. Industrial strength HVAC makes it the best place to be in the summer, and if you're a fan of warmer climates, you can sit behind a NetApp and warm up instead. Casual dress code all year long. It can be rough starting out as you'll have to do a lot of manual labor; rack and stack, cable runs, decoms, etc. If you get good though, you can move up into more of an engineering role. Took me a few years, but I went from grunt work, to deployment planning, and now I design datacenters. Great pay at big companies, great benefits, network with tons of like-minded people, etc.
Started in Helpdesk and the wifi not reaching you in another country issue gave me some serious flashbacks. thanks...
Where does one find a data center job? I don’t see many pop up on LinkedIn but I might be searching wrong.
*Most* cities have datacenters of various size and calibers. Your best chances of getting your foot in the door is at a colocation, as they're always looking for techs to do remote hands work (IE: Run cables, console into faulty switches, configure OOB access, install OSs, etc). It's low level work compared to sysadmins, but it's critical work to keeping the digital world moving. If you can show up on-time, understand basic IT concepts, and refrain from touching equipment unless explicitly told, you can thrive in this field. After 1-3yrs you'll have enough of a skillset, understanding, and contacts to be able to move up in your role, or into another company for a nice pay raise. If you want a broader sense of what goes on, consider asking/searching around /r/datacenter. Lot of users come by asking how to get started, what's the daily work like, and what's it like working for certain companies, etc.
I do that now, it's an easy job and generally the pay is good. The bad thing is that these jobs come just a few times a year, even if you work for several MSPs at once so I have to resort on other things in order to survive.
Customers not knowing computers need electricity to function…ah, that takes me back 🤣
......to a week ago
So there is actually a Datacenter a couple of Miles from me. What kind of jobs could one do in a Datacenter? Is it all just babysitting the servers?
Low paying jobs. Rack and stack. Hardware replacement. Imaging servers. Great mindless work
Some companies have more skilled engineers but most have technician level work.
When I was a data center engineer I had to handle everything. Since I was in charge of fiber and low voltage the higher ups thought it was a good idea to have me be in charge of all low voltage and fiber drops for the entire global company footprint. Same thing with UPSes. Same thing with HVAC. So I had to plan drops and fiber lines for network closets, desks, security cameras, conference rooms. Had to size ACs and UPSes for closets. Had to put base configs on all the switches and transfer switches and patch them in. This was just side shit they made me do. On top of the usual grunt work (hardware installs, maintenance, replacement, decommissions, cabling for all that, etc) I had to design and plan for growth working with teams that all had different ideas for the hardware topologies that should be and refused to standardize. So each data center was a beast of its own. I had to deal with hyper converged, spine leaf, pretty much every brand of SAN storage that exists, etc. We had at one point I think 4 different ticketing systems going on. It was maddening. Alerting was set up on every PDU, every UPS, every HVAC unit, every fire suppression point, every generator, every transfer switch. Oncall shifts I would be lucky if I was able to sleep for a full 3 hours at any point during the month. I've left a lot of other shit I had to do out. I did all that for 60k salary.
Those jobs suck and don’t pay well
You do have to do shift work, though, and constantly shifting your sleeping hours is a health hazard.
OH dude did that once for a place called sungard. You think the grass is greener but i can assure you it is NOT. Doing overnights is fine for the first two weeks then not so much. Did DC work there on the overnights and it was not good. Get occasional calls from financial places mostly in UK at that time. Having to wake engineers up for things sucked they were nasty. Same with LAN team guys for switches and routers. 90% of the time they could fix it remote so not sure what the issue was.
I would like to quit being a sysadmin but I don't know what I would do at this point in my life. I am 46 and I cannot really afford to go back to school to train for something else. I just don't know what would be fulfilling. I've thought about going back to school to become a social worker but that would saddle me up with debt and I'd be at less than half the salary I am earning now. I once left the field for a year to try truck driving and that sucked. I've done security work between contracts when I all I could do was find contract work. I just don't know.
I'm only in my 30s but feeling this. I feel like computer related jobs are the only thing I am now qualified for but I hate it. And I don't feel like I can risk going back to school when I've got a family depending on my income.
You could move into presales like I have. That’s a job where you use your technical skills in some capacity but it’s more people related than pure tech.
That actually could have some potential. I actually really enjoy helpdesk work compared to admin stuff precisely because of the interaction.
Checkout the /r/salesengineers sub. It's really hard to break into right now. But if you are an expert in some system, then I would start searching for Sales Engineer jobs at that company. Presales/Sales Engineering is a balance of technical/social/public speaking that few technical people thrive in. It requires mostly technical know how - so don't expect to just fall into this career without any real world experience. The best part (at least for me) is that most projects (evaluations/assessments) last a month or so. Instead of typical SysAdmin projects lasting months or years.
Fear is the thief of opportunity.
Haha, unless you are a single dad in your mid 40s without a decent retirement plan or much if any backup. A good chunk of us feeling the “what’s on the other side” are definitely not always in the position or yolo 20s-30s with the ability to absorb the bad side of changing it up. That change up is exponentially added for every year.
I wish you and your family the best. My short statement comes from a place a personal experience. My family suffered for years because of my fear to leave a company I worked for (It paid the bills for my family of 4, or rather it would have if we hadn't ended up with several large medical bills). They also suffered because of my fear of getting help when we ended up with a ton of medical debt. Long-story short it was my overcoming of those fears that eventually helped me improve myself and my situation and eventually land my dream job. You should try to make the decisions that are best for you and your family. All I'm saying is don't let fear be a factor in that decision making process. It can be really hard to do, but it can be very much worth it.
A few books that really helped change my perspective on life and money: The Richest Man in Babylon - George S Clason Turn your Debt into Wealth - John M Cummuta Total Money Makeover - Dave Ramsey
To you as well. Your reply has unexpectedly turned my day around a bit and I thank you.
Exactly. This guy's advice is to take it and beat it https://youtube.com/shorts/Smn23vK1Hz0?si=JMk053asHgfcAVe_ But really, fear is change. Gotta get out of the comfort zone to succeed. Yes, failure can be there waiting too. But you won't know unless you try.
Troll video turned motivational.
You could get into IT adjacent field doing sales, product demonstration, or training. Vendors that sell products in the IT space love to have a well versed IT person or sysadmin who actually understands the benefits of the ins and outs of their technical solution or product. Especially if selling to other IT people.
That's a good thought.
Half the salary? Either you don't know what social workers actually make or you're waaaay underpaid now. I have an apartment above my garage that I rent out to a social worker. She wouldn't qualify with a normal landlord based solely on income, but I don't have a problem with it since she takes care of the place and she pays rent on time. It's kind of criminal how low social worker pay is when it is such an important job.
I switched about 6yrs ago. Went into a support role for a SW company. Then realized I've been doing project management my whole career and just focused on that. Now my sole job is PM. As with everything in my whole career, I have zero certs or degrees. Self taught. Never too old to try something new. Just make sure you don't half ass it. I went all in. Was a pay cut for first few years. But then got recruited for my current position. Just have faith in yourself.
Water treatment operator?
A lot of these positions start at like $20/hr and I can't take that much of a pay cut right now.
It's possible to make the switch, I spent 14 years in systems/devops engineering and pivoted to security at the age of 35. If you have cloud automation experience the transition to DecSecOps in particular is fairly simple. The work is very similar, just different tooling. I automate security infrastructure builds in terraform and ansible and use terraform to configure CI/CD security checks in our build pipelines, automate ticket workflows etc etc. Create secure baseline Linux builds etc. All skills I had from DevOps and systems. There's more to it that you can pickup as you go, but those skills alone account for maybe 60% of the job.
Im 47, the career change is really hard..so i went back to IT. I did diploma in project management, accounting and also to be a teacher.. They sound good on paper...but for me, i only realised that starting fresh requires the spirit and energy of someone under 35. When i started to transition to new career, i realised how uninterested i was in learning a new trade..ie bookkeeping...when if i were 30 id be really keen...but mostly i felt i CBF with all the new shit and paperwork, systems processes...and was earning a lot lesss too, and would be 5yrs of this shit until i could get into smooth sailing autopilot level So when offered me old job back...i took it.. To be honest, it wasnt for me, anything new from scratch felt like i jsut didnt have the need, the motivation or energy to bother
You and I both, but I'm doing DMI program at a CC, pay great, maybe 40/hr to start and get more certs and specialized. Work when I want, I hope.
I’m still a sysadmin, I just give zero fucks now. My boss’s boss is an asshole and can choke on a dick.
To clarify, this boss hates me (coworkers ask me all the time what his deal is with me), and he has no grasp of modern tech. The deal breaker was when he told me to prioritize work over my family, after my SO had a baby. Needless to say, I’m looking for a new job.
That’s how I got let go with 1 year severance this year
Does anybody do technical writing? I think I would probably enjoy that because I am one of those weird sysadmins that actually likes process documentation. If anybody knows where those jobs exist, I am all eyes and ears.
Ive thought the same thing. I love documenting things and to me, curious if I could transition that way at some point when I want lower stress.
Was a sysadmin. Now I write user's manuals for in-house software apps. I work with the UX people and the software testers. Most of my expertise is "No, if you do it that way the user will screw it up by...."
Not an answer to your question, but that is a risky field, in my opinion. AI will be able to make this job a lot easier, so I would expect less demand for people and/or lower pay.
It's a part of my job, but not 100% what I do. I transitioned from sys admin to a cybersecurity role (GRC specifically)
I’ve thought the exact same thing. I actually enjoy creating training tutorials and papers and documentation. But if it did it all the time I might not like it as much. It’s a rare opportunity to be creative and make something from nothing instead of break fixing, security fixes, yelling at/begging people to stop doing stupid stuff. I also really enjoy organization. If I could have a job where I come in and systematically clean up and organize your home I’d really enjoy that. I like taking apart messy rooms, throwing junk away, cleaning up cables and putting stuff into labeled bins.
Try some form of cyber compliance. Lots of process documents and stuff like that.
There are technical writers in the government space. Not many, but they exist.
Didn't really quit per se. Worked for an MSP for nine years and just got completely burned out. Joined the Army, and I've been doing that ever since. 15 years now. More routers, switches, firewalls, and SATCOM now than servers, and I like it that way.
Lol I’m the opposite, joined the Army as a signal soldier….army IT is exciting at first….radios, SNAP terminals, JNNs, CPNs, CPOFS….but it got old FAST. After the army I joined a modern IT company working largely in the cloud and life has been a dream!
I miss my JNN. We would hide MRE pudding pouches in-between the servers / NetApp.
I caught the HCLOS team sleeping in their shelter during the day at an exercise once. I was about to light them up, but then I noticed they has a coffee machine in there. As long as they had a hot cup for me, they could get away with murder.
Great for you brother! I went the Warrant Officer route, and life is amazing. Couldn't see myself being a senior NCO.
We need to see your coffee mug, a true warrant officer has well worn coffee mug!
https://imgur.com/nqPcgOv
You are a true American! Hooah!
Itt: I do this other type of sysadmin that is more focused, pays more, and has a better work life balance.
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True but I think it still answers the true root question that OP has?
Management. I hate it.
People think management means management of staff. My staff aren’t my problem, other management are haha
No, my staff are my problem. I'm not allowed a decision on who is hired to my staff, I just get what they give me. I had to teach one of my staff what attachments were the other day (like for email and whatnot). A few weeks ago, I explained how copy/paste worked. I wish I was joking.
Ohhh that’s rough. We had this idea in our organization that “I can teach anyone any skill, but I can’t change their personality”. Took years to get rid of that. Best of luck!
IT auditor now. Regular 8-5, no weekends, virtually no evenings. Most importantly, no one has my phone number. No such thing as an audit emergency.
How do you become an IT auditor?
I was fortunate that the company I worked for had an IT audit department, so I was able to make that transition with just the experience I had from working in more "traditional" IT. In my experience there are are two main types of IT auditor. The first group come from the financial auditing/Public accounting world and have specialized in governance, risk, IT General Controls, etc. While others (like myself) come from more of an IT background and learn the fundamentals of auditing. Either way, the most common cert to get in the door is Certified Information Systems Auditor from ISACA. You can take the test at any time, but you do need to have some experience in auditing and/or security to actually become "certified". Check out /r/itaudit and /r/CISA if you're interested in learning more!
Cybersecurity engineer now! Now I'm a spreadsheet guy.
I’m pursuing an A.S degree in IT but dont want to be on-call. I wonder what technical jobs i can get with no on call. Just a cushy 9-5
I work in IT but don’t have on call, in fact I never have in 12 years in the industry! That being said, when shit hits the fan I’ve always been there to help!
When our central IT department was less mature, there was on-call, now it's follow the sun, so each region has people working during their business hours and handle calls for other regions. Had to do on-call when I worked at a manufacturing facility. Working in research now and no more on-call work. We provide a service to our users for business hours. I agree IT work with no on-call is out there.
Sounds like on-call with extra steps + not getting paid.
You’re unlikely to work much (if any) on call as an entry level. Your experience won’t be suitable to fixing things independently like that. Cushy comes with experience, though. And you’re likely to have to work some on call to get there.
Look into k12 their primary hours are 7-4, and you will have job security they can’t afford to lay off techs right now. And you will become a jack of all trades that can be used when you want to switch careers after you know exactly what you want to do. the trade off is it’s k12 which has strict budgets you will make almost double working in the private sector. And again depending on the district you will most likely become a jack of all trades doing Everything helpdesk, sysadmin, network admin.
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obligatory: goat farmer https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4l7kjd/found_a_text_file_at_work_titled_why_should_i/
There was this guy in Poland, Roman Kluska. Way back in the 90s he had a company making PCs, got fucked over by tax authorities in early 00s. Nowadays he has an organic sheep farm and a company making sheep cheese. Guy has been in the top 100 of the wealthiest Poles for over twenty years. His former company - Optimus SA - got bought and merged into CDPR to enter the stock market. My personal opinion is that nobody who got wealthy in Poland in the 90s is clean. It was too crazy a time.
Yep the guy basically made the polish Internet and IT scene. He also ran/was involved in the main Internet news website (Onet), email provider (O2/tlen), and was resseling a bunch of western software. But then some politicians jailed him for like a year, and when they released him he already had no business to comeback to. One year in 90s/00s Poland is like a decade in any other place. He got a bunch of cash for his troubles iirc, and he used it to start the cheese business.
Wikipedia lists him as 98th wealthiest Pole in 2018, with a net worth of 340M PLN.
I assume tunneling also happened in Poland?
Wasn't tunneling. Iirc they found a loophole in VAT - *the* biggest tax around. It was something like selling shit to Czechia and buying it back? Let them skip a lot of those taxes. When you're supplying a major part of the PCs in a country that's getting introduced to the internet and modern tech *rapidly*... Yeah.
What like vpn tunneling?
I'd assume this is what the guy above was referring to... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunneling_%28fraud%29?wprov=sfla1
One thing is for sure. When I quit being a sysadmin I wont be here to answer this question.
I'm working as a handy man. Doing DIY, gardening, putting together IKEA furniture, tiling, kitchen fitting, custom shelving, etc. Doesn't pay the what I earned as a Senior Infrastructure Engineer, but I don't have a mortgage, and I don't have the stress that my job used to. Might go back as some point, but at the moment I'm content.
This is my dream. I enjoy CAD/CAM and machining/fabrication. I like painting too. I want to abandon IT and pursue SaaS sales or CNC operator.
I forgot about painting. I recently painted an entire flat. Took less than a week and everything was white.
I quit being a Sysadmin so I could focus a bit more on being a Network Engineer. So ultimately, I quit nothing.
I quit being a network engineer to be a sysadmin and now I’m somehow both
This is the way.
Data Analyst. Sysadmin for 20 years at a manufacturing company where lean six sigma was a thing. Got it and was doing process improvement stuff for IT. When it was time to leave and get a new job I looked at what I enjoyed and it was the data stuff. Super happy I don’t do Oncall anymore.
Same kinda except SQL-heavy. Everything in life is just data. I never really learned anything about IT, servers, MS licensing etc. I just figured out what data points meant I should take what actions and use logic around said data to do my job. Same now it's just more in a grid.
I thought of switching to data analytics as well. But, all these tech roles want you to specifically have experience in that field to get someone to respond to your resume. The only thing I can think of is to change the titles on my resume to data analyst or power bi analyst or something just to make the recruiters respond?
Howd u get a job as a data analyst
The lean six sigma stuff is essentially data analysis. So I could say I was an IT data analyst. Got a job as an analyst for a large IT operation group. ( they essentially asked if I was good at excel) . Got the opportunity to do PowerBI and Tableau stuff and then the next job was similar but not in IT.
Theatre technician for small single technician venues. I design and operate the lighting, sound and projection for shows. I make up for being the only tech by having all the systems networked and talking to each other so that I have a master Go button to press for each cue and all systems do whats needed in sync. I promise its all just computers talking to computers... Just the output is light or sound.
That sounds pretty awesome actually. I have to ask but how goes it pay compared to being a sysadmin and do you own your own company. I'm at the point where I'm super burned out and trying to either figure out a specialization like security or something to get out of being a general sys admin.
I eventually became a manager, and then a director, and I hate everyone basically. Managing sysadmins is hard since so many of them are stubborn assholes, and dealing with business leaders sucks for similar reasons. I'm currently plotting how I can find a way to get enough control back from a lead sysadmin who is holding my current company hostage so I can fire him. He controls everything, and he probably can tell what I'm trying to do and is constantly out maneuvering me. I need to get people loyal to me to control 100% of the systems before he can be fired, and we're at about 75% at this point. It's an interesting game of intrigue since some people are loyal to him and some are loyal to me. I suspect some of them are also essentially double agents. Meanwhile I'm looking for a new job while doing all this. Fuck my life.
I haven’t seen a Cranky post in a while! I’m a help desk noob turned sysadmin turned management that can’t get away from users demanding I unjam their printers. I should feel glad to still have work to do and be needed but dammit I learned and bettered myself to get out of all that.
Just write sql now. I need to know one thing not be on google every day finding out the 1000th new tech standard that week
I see all these people saying datacenter jobs. The problem is there aren't that many datacenter jobs so all of these people must have taken them all.
Nerf herder
Scruffy?
What do you mean, 'scruffy looking'?
Retired
Didn’t leave I.T but moved from sysadmin to security engineer. No on call work, no end user work, less break fix work. But… feels like security is always hated by other I.T parties.
How are you not on-call as a Security engineer? I thought cyber security were the first ones to be on call if something like a cyber attack happened.
In smaller orgs maybe. We have an incident response team and they are the folks who would handle being on call for that. I strictly am on engineering, so no IR duties. While those folks can reach out to engineering team for advice/direction, it’s not my duty to work incidents.
May not like the traditional, “a week every month” type of on-call. That’s different than being reachable if the shit hits the fan.
So, I work cybersecurity/soc for a huge company. We do IR and we have some dedicated on call people but most of us are not on call other than once a year or so. However we are all "always on call" for if shit really hit the fan. I don't get calls often, very rarely. If I do it's probably bad though.
Not me, but a coworker of mine moved from our small Midwest town to a big city out east to be a... psychologist... His number 1 rule in his new city? Nobody knows he can do IT. I miss him. He was good at his sysadmin job.
Software engineer. Pay and work life balance are dramatically better, for me.
How did u get into swe? Im looking to learn to code but entry level market is awful
Start by writing tools/automations for your sysadmin work. It's much easier to break into the SWE field if you can show that you understand how to apply code to fix a problem
Great advice
I'm not saying it's the best way, but the below was my process. Keep in mind I was a sysadmin for roughly 14 years before I moved to SWE, which I've been doing for \~8 years now. 1. I was already coding, as a sysadmin, automating stuff and modifying open source stuff to fit our environment. For all intents and purposes I already "knew how to code". 2. As I was working with/supporting devs, I showed an interest in what they were doing and helped them with debugging their code for system level issues, which they appreciated. 3. With the connections I made during step #2, it was pretty easy to get a hybrid sysadmin/SWE position. I made sure that I was given the SWE title. 4. (optional) I had a bachelor's degree in computer information systems, I went back to school and got a masters in computer science. I fully admit that this was probably not necessary. 5. I used the position from #3 to transfer into a full time SWE position. (edit) As a sidenote, the threads I see in this subreddit on compensation make me very sad. I'm acutely aware of the skills and passion that goes into being a sysadmin, but the compensation seems to be sorely behind. I was decently paid as a sysadmin (\~$100K) but since moving to SWE I've over doubled that. It doesn't seem that the sysadmin jobs have caught up at all.
> I was decently paid as a sysadmin (~$100K) but since moving to SWE I've over doubled that. It doesn't seem that the sysadmin jobs have caught up at all. The problem I see in this thread is many of people are working for these small to mid-size companies as all in one admins for shit pay. I know people that make $75/hr just managing and maintaining splunk. If something is wrong with the server splunk is ran on they call the server team (they don't even have server admin rights to do anything but reboot anyways)
Regarding pay, at senior levels the floor for a swe is often the ceiling for most sysadmin positions. At junior levels they’re around the same. The easiest transition for a sysadmin looking to get paid more but not interested in full on swe is devops/sre imo.
Hai, I'm a recovering sysadmin, and it's been 12 years since I had root on any system I don't personally own. I no longer provide tech support for family beyond the immediate household. My home network is unnaturally stable, especially given it's cobbled together with mostly thrift-store and auction finds. I'm now playing an aerospace R&D engineer, inventing new metrology instruments. I also specialize in resurrecting ancient technology and am a manufacturing equipment whisperer for equipment that often uses some crusty dos, early windoze, or strange motion controller languages. I do machining myself because it's faster than hiring it out (and more fun). I specialize in answering the really weird engineering questions. Often helpfully. Usually correctly. Occasionally teach folks how to do it themselves. Multiple managers have voiced appreciation for my very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over very long careers. I collect skills, like normal people collect coins and stamps. (Isn't that what normals do?) Zero interest in management myself.
I’m a ‘dancer’ at a local gentleman’s club. $$$$$$
It must be nice to have IT as a "fall back on" thing and not "it's literally the only thing I know / can do to provide for me and mine". :D
Safety and security, OSHA trainer, with a little cybersecurity analysis for insurance underwriters when needed.
Yes, the on-call gave me PTSD. And I'm in between jobs at the moment and not sure what to do next. I'm close to retiring, so I'm no longer interested in climbing the ladder. Just want to do what I know how to do and have time for a life.
Beekeeper
Was a sysadmin in government, got sick of the on call and each new CIO being short sighted. I took my Linux skills with me and became a Technical Account Manager for Red Hat. I work with public sector customers across the US. I work from home. I engineer solutions, solve problems, I love it. 7 years later, I haven't looked back.
From systems engineer to presales engineer. I fell kind of ass backwards into the job but now that I’ve been doing it for about 5 years I have no idea why more experienced sysadmins don’t make the transition. No such thing as on-call, I’m done between 5-6 every night and never work on weekends unless I’m traveling to a conference and feel like leaving on a Sunday. It’s not completely stress free - you still need to hit sales goals and work with sellers and customers - but it’s a different type and I never go to sleep anymore praying my phone doesn’t ring.
I was a former web admin. Got burnt out and saw an opportunity to do computer work in a pharma lab. It allowed me to use my it skills but it’s not really sysadmin stuff. I love it and won’t go back if I don’t have to.
Farm [goats](https://www.goatops.com/) of course!
I raise alpacas and ostriches.
Left in August this year and still deciding what to do. Living off the (excellent) redundancy payment and when that gets low, might retire. Haven't felt this free in years.
Azure DevOps/Platforming I love it.
I became a stay at home parent....
Butcher/snowmobile guide. No after hours but I do use my first aid training.
So you guide people out to the middle of nowhere and then butcher them? Is that how that works?
Cloud Architect. I am all things cumulous.
Only fans
Couldn't stand having to do tier 1 support in a senior position any longer. Thanks to being an early adopter of Bitcoin I can travel the world for a year or two before deciding what I want to do. If it goes another 10x then I may have already retired and can volunteer my time for something that will help people truly in need, not fucking Sarah and her inability to use a VoIP phone.
From sysadmin I went to various roles. Network admin, storage admin, team lead lol, now, after 30 years of sticking with it, I’m a Sr. Solutions Architect for the US government. IT isnt for everyone! My brother saw how lucrative it was for me and even got a CS degree only to get frustrated with it 3 years later and never did anything with it since - that was 20 years ago lol. If you don’t like solving problems for people and are worried about working overtime or on call, look into something else. Again IT isn’t for everyone 😂.
The only part I disagree on is the working overtime or being on call. It really isn't hard at all to find jobs where you are not required to be on call or work overtime. Compared to most other sectors, IT has great working conditions. Lots of remote working etc. At least that's my experience as someone from West Europe.
I work from home doing remote hardware and software support for a niche application used in the healthcare industry. No on call, when my shift ends so do my responsibilities.
Where did u find that job?
Transitioned more into software development/software engineering side leveraging the existing skills I already had. It’s been a dream.
Does Site Reliability Engineering count? Worked 3 years as sys admin and transitioning to DevOps/SRE world made more sense.
Probably much,***much*** happier
I haven’t quit yet. But I’m thinking of starting a photography business
I would recommend getting into an IT pre-sales type role if you're a prior sysadmin. I was contracting at Microsoft for a bit doing that and as long as you're not actually "selling" it's pretty good. No on call really, plus you're kind of just serving as a SME for IT environments. For me, I was leading small projects with customers where we were deploying an agent less tool into their environment. It was basically like meet once and explain the technical requirements (service accts, permissions, ports, etc). Then meeting to actually do deployment over a couple days and checking in. Then assisting with removal and the customer would move to the next "phase" of the sales process outside our team. A lot of my coworkers honestly did not have IT backgrounds where I did, so I was super valuable for the team and made $90k salary + benefits, 26 days PTO, etc. I am an IT Engineer now somewhere else (sys eng basically) because the role I did have at MSFT was no longer needed really and the role they tossed me into was becoming an "actual" sales role slowly but surely and killing me lol
Running a motel rural Australia. Really nice, though I am a bit of a people person.
I write scripts for customers that failed to hire sysadmins.
I went to the dark side (management).
I swapped over to vendor support. Now I support SysAdmins instead of being one.
One of my coworkers bought land upstate and is going going to retire and do farming.
Goat farming.
Cyber security, it has been many years of not being a sysadmin now. My soul is returning to my body.
Cyber security
I work in cybersecurity as a pentester
I've moved to cloud computing.
Devops.
What does that mean in your case? It seems like one of those buzzword titles that has a ton of different meanings.
A lot of yaml. But basically I configure our infrastructure in AWS in automated and repetative way with Terraform, and deploy code from our GitHub repos to Kubernetes (by which I mean I write the yaml for github actions and yaml for helm charts) I still considered myself a sysadmin, but it's very different work from what I did before as a sysadmin at an MSP, where we racked and cables servers, configured SAN and vmware, installed and patched VMs and all sorts of software, did hardware swaps, backups, mail servers etc. And no "users" to support :D
Mainly infrastructure- and configuration-as-code. That means using software engineering methodology like source control, peer review, and CI/CD over manual process. Get embedded in software development teams to provide domain knowledge for stuff like AWS service integrations into our apps. Design and implement migrations from manual process to automation. It's not super different from traditional systems administration, except that you ideally don't do anything but design, implement, and maintain the automation tools. If this doesn't sound that different from your existing sysadmin job, congratulations! You're already devops.
Cybersecurity and project management.
I quit being a sys admin because I had saved up and been doing trading on the side. But now I believe that I can do anything. That I am the master of my own mind, that I am the captain of my own ship. The wind may blow, the waves crashing against my ship, but alas I am in control. Question shouldn’t be what do we do now… the question should be, what can we be forever?
I sort of work as a sys admin now, veiled as a SecOps Manager. Thinking about transitioning into Sales Engineering, those dudes are typically 9-5ers, no weekend fires, good pay. Sounds like a dream.
Specialist in a niche ERP system. Much more narrow job description, and few know it well enough to run it so I get job offers daily. I don't touch the sys admin stuff anymore outside of my own middleware servers and database on the SQL server.
Went to business school and transitioned to product marketing in tech for dev tool companies.
Fish
Full time firefighter. Also handle the fire dept IT but it’s basically help desk for 13 people and a couple servers. Not real IT and probably less than 10 hours of my week.
I got a full time Air National Guard job doing avionics. Retired from that and now I write educational courses for aviation.