When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator
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Personally MSPs are not for me. As mentioned on here, you can learn many different skills working for MSP, but you are likely to do more work than enterprise and get paid less. Not to mention that you are multiple customers emergency response team. So there are alot of late hour fires that you may not see in Enterprise or SMB. You will see fires across many customers and many different specialties.
Now when you do have these late hour fires for Enterprise, you are expected to get things up and running very quickly due to the amount of money at stake. That is why specialization is so important here.
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@irj said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
As far as SMB, The lack of pay, long hours, and almost no appreciation has definitely turned me off to ever looking for a SMB job ever again. I can look at these past employers and see how vastly I was underpaid and overworked. I saw one of your earlier posts talk about how you are on the bottom of the pay scale and are fine with that. Can I ask you a question? WHY!?
He answered your why - because he has nearly no stress, and a flexible schedule.
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@dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@irj said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
As far as SMB, The lack of pay, long hours, and almost no appreciation has definitely turned me off to ever looking for a SMB job ever again. I can look at these past employers and see how vastly I was underpaid and overworked. I saw one of your earlier posts talk about how you are on the bottom of the pay scale and are fine with that. Can I ask you a question? WHY!?
He answered your why - because he has nearly no stress, and a flexible schedule.
I'm not sure... you'd probably get that in the enterprise as well. Every admin I talk to who works in larger organizations then me has said they have a fairly stress free work environment and their hours are extremely flexible. Including things like being able to work from home, or on the road, without too much forethought.
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@irj said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
As far as SMB, The lack of pay, long hours, and almost no appreciation has definitely turned me off to ever looking for a SMB job ever again. I can look at these past employers and see how vastly I was underpaid and overworked. I saw one of your earlier posts talk about how you are on the bottom of the pay scale and are fine with that. Can I ask you a question? WHY!?
Not sure to whom this last question was directed.
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@coliver said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@irj said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
As far as SMB, The lack of pay, long hours, and almost no appreciation has definitely turned me off to ever looking for a SMB job ever again. I can look at these past employers and see how vastly I was underpaid and overworked. I saw one of your earlier posts talk about how you are on the bottom of the pay scale and are fine with that. Can I ask you a question? WHY!?
He answered your why - because he has nearly no stress, and a flexible schedule.
I'm not sure... you'd probably get that in the enterprise as well. Every admin I talk to who works in larger organizations then me has said they have a fairly stress free work environment and their hours are extremely flexible. Including things like being able to work from home, or on the road, without too much forethought.
Well I know we here that from Scott all the time. But I don't specifically know people outside of ML that work for fortune 500 companies beyond the one I always mention - and the friend who is back there now - yeah, talk about stress, ridiculous amounts of hours (60+) with what appears to be minimal flexibility. He has gotten to work from home when his kid is sick, but that's about it.
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@irj said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
I have worked for SMB, MSPs, and Enterprise companies throughout my career. I have found the best fit for me was Enterprise. The pay is considerably higher, Training is always budgeted and encouraged, the hours tend to be much more flexible, and you are treated better.
I loved my enterprise time. For me, the extra challenges and adventure of MSP life is worth it, but boy is there a toll to pay compared to enterprise life. But still better than SMB.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@irj said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
As far as SMB, The lack of pay, long hours, and almost no appreciation has definitely turned me off to ever looking for a SMB job ever again. I can look at these past employers and see how vastly I was underpaid and overworked. I saw one of your earlier posts talk about how you are on the bottom of the pay scale and are fine with that. Can I ask you a question? WHY!?
Not sure to whom this last question was directed.
IRJ was quoting @tirendir, so I assumed him.
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@irj said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
Personally MSPs are not for me. As mentioned on here, you can learn many different skills working for MSP, but you are likely to do more work than enterprise and get paid less. Not to mention that you are multiple customers emergency response team. So there are alot of late hour fires that you may not see in Enterprise or SMB. You will see fires across many customers and many different specialties.
Now when you do have these late hour fires for Enterprise, you are expected to get things up and running very quickly due to the amount of money at stake. That is why specialization is so important here.
This is true, MSP might be better than SMB, but unless your MSP is the size of an enterprise [IT department] you must take on some pains from the smaller scale.
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@dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@irj said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
As far as SMB, The lack of pay, long hours, and almost no appreciation has definitely turned me off to ever looking for a SMB job ever again. I can look at these past employers and see how vastly I was underpaid and overworked. I saw one of your earlier posts talk about how you are on the bottom of the pay scale and are fine with that. Can I ask you a question? WHY!?
He answered your why - because he has nearly no stress, and a flexible schedule.
That doesn't make sense, though. Enterprise delivers lower stress than normal SMB and normally a more flexible schedule. And, as a general rule, the more you earn the more power you have to lower your stress and command your schedule.
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@coliver said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@irj said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
As far as SMB, The lack of pay, long hours, and almost no appreciation has definitely turned me off to ever looking for a SMB job ever again. I can look at these past employers and see how vastly I was underpaid and overworked. I saw one of your earlier posts talk about how you are on the bottom of the pay scale and are fine with that. Can I ask you a question? WHY!?
He answered your why - because he has nearly no stress, and a flexible schedule.
I'm not sure... you'd probably get that in the enterprise as well. Every admin I talk to who works in larger organizations then me has said they have a fairly stress free work environment and their hours are extremely flexible. Including things like being able to work from home, or on the road, without too much forethought.
Yup, exactly. All of those "IT is so hard" problems are almost entirely unique to the SMB. That "on call 24x7" stuff, that "not paid for me time", that "don't have someone to cover for me" is all SMB problems, not IT ones. I don't have that in the MSP world nor in the enterprise world. There are always exceptions, of course, but it's the exception, not the rule like in the SMB.
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@dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@coliver said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@irj said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
As far as SMB, The lack of pay, long hours, and almost no appreciation has definitely turned me off to ever looking for a SMB job ever again. I can look at these past employers and see how vastly I was underpaid and overworked. I saw one of your earlier posts talk about how you are on the bottom of the pay scale and are fine with that. Can I ask you a question? WHY!?
He answered your why - because he has nearly no stress, and a flexible schedule.
I'm not sure... you'd probably get that in the enterprise as well. Every admin I talk to who works in larger organizations then me has said they have a fairly stress free work environment and their hours are extremely flexible. Including things like being able to work from home, or on the road, without too much forethought.
Well I know we here that from Scott all the time. But I don't specifically know people outside of ML that work for fortune 500 companies beyond the one I always mention - and the friend who is back there now - yeah, talk about stress, ridiculous amounts of hours (60+) with what appears to be minimal flexibility. He has gotten to work from home when his kid is sick, but that's about it.
Is it a real Fortune 500? The ones you mention regularly are always very borderline enterprise (just under the normal definitions in terms of size) and for other reasons didn't seem to act like enterprises and typically are located in rural places (this leans companies away from enterprise) and tend to be coming up from smaller (so new to enterprise thinking.)
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@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@coliver said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@irj said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
As far as SMB, The lack of pay, long hours, and almost no appreciation has definitely turned me off to ever looking for a SMB job ever again. I can look at these past employers and see how vastly I was underpaid and overworked. I saw one of your earlier posts talk about how you are on the bottom of the pay scale and are fine with that. Can I ask you a question? WHY!?
He answered your why - because he has nearly no stress, and a flexible schedule.
I'm not sure... you'd probably get that in the enterprise as well. Every admin I talk to who works in larger organizations then me has said they have a fairly stress free work environment and their hours are extremely flexible. Including things like being able to work from home, or on the road, without too much forethought.
Well I know we here that from Scott all the time. But I don't specifically know people outside of ML that work for fortune 500 companies beyond the one I always mention - and the friend who is back there now - yeah, talk about stress, ridiculous amounts of hours (60+) with what appears to be minimal flexibility. He has gotten to work from home when his kid is sick, but that's about it.
Is it a real Fortune 500? The ones you mention regularly are always very borderline enterprise (just under the normal definitions in terms of size) and for other reasons didn't seem to act like enterprises and typically are located in rural places (this leans companies away from enterprise) and tend to be coming up from smaller (so new to enterprise thinking.)
Now who's looking at semantics? You looked them up, you know they are on the fortune 500 list. If you're on the list, you're on the list.
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@dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@coliver said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@irj said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
As far as SMB, The lack of pay, long hours, and almost no appreciation has definitely turned me off to ever looking for a SMB job ever again. I can look at these past employers and see how vastly I was underpaid and overworked. I saw one of your earlier posts talk about how you are on the bottom of the pay scale and are fine with that. Can I ask you a question? WHY!?
He answered your why - because he has nearly no stress, and a flexible schedule.
I'm not sure... you'd probably get that in the enterprise as well. Every admin I talk to who works in larger organizations then me has said they have a fairly stress free work environment and their hours are extremely flexible. Including things like being able to work from home, or on the road, without too much forethought.
Well I know we here that from Scott all the time. But I don't specifically know people outside of ML that work for fortune 500 companies beyond the one I always mention - and the friend who is back there now - yeah, talk about stress, ridiculous amounts of hours (60+) with what appears to be minimal flexibility. He has gotten to work from home when his kid is sick, but that's about it.
Is it a real Fortune 500? The ones you mention regularly are always very borderline enterprise (just under the normal definitions in terms of size) and for other reasons didn't seem to act like enterprises and typically are located in rural places (this leans companies away from enterprise) and tend to be coming up from smaller (so new to enterprise thinking.)
Now who's looking at semantics? You looked them up, you know they are on the fortune 500 list. If you're on the list, you're on the list.
I thought that they were below the list. I must be remembering a different one. I thought they were in the 2,000 range. We looked up more than one company. Was this one like 490 something?
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@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@coliver said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@irj said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
As far as SMB, The lack of pay, long hours, and almost no appreciation has definitely turned me off to ever looking for a SMB job ever again. I can look at these past employers and see how vastly I was underpaid and overworked. I saw one of your earlier posts talk about how you are on the bottom of the pay scale and are fine with that. Can I ask you a question? WHY!?
He answered your why - because he has nearly no stress, and a flexible schedule.
I'm not sure... you'd probably get that in the enterprise as well. Every admin I talk to who works in larger organizations then me has said they have a fairly stress free work environment and their hours are extremely flexible. Including things like being able to work from home, or on the road, without too much forethought.
Well I know we here that from Scott all the time. But I don't specifically know people outside of ML that work for fortune 500 companies beyond the one I always mention - and the friend who is back there now - yeah, talk about stress, ridiculous amounts of hours (60+) with what appears to be minimal flexibility. He has gotten to work from home when his kid is sick, but that's about it.
Is it a real Fortune 500? The ones you mention regularly are always very borderline enterprise (just under the normal definitions in terms of size) and for other reasons didn't seem to act like enterprises and typically are located in rural places (this leans companies away from enterprise) and tend to be coming up from smaller (so new to enterprise thinking.)
Now who's looking at semantics? You looked them up, you know they are on the fortune 500 list. If you're on the list, you're on the list.
I thought that they were below the list. I must be remembering a different one. I thought they were in the 2,000 range. We looked up more than one company. Was this one like 490 something?
OK I just looked them up, right now they are 840 something.
So not 500, but 1000, still pretty good list. -
@dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@coliver said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@dashrender said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@irj said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
As far as SMB, The lack of pay, long hours, and almost no appreciation has definitely turned me off to ever looking for a SMB job ever again. I can look at these past employers and see how vastly I was underpaid and overworked. I saw one of your earlier posts talk about how you are on the bottom of the pay scale and are fine with that. Can I ask you a question? WHY!?
He answered your why - because he has nearly no stress, and a flexible schedule.
I'm not sure... you'd probably get that in the enterprise as well. Every admin I talk to who works in larger organizations then me has said they have a fairly stress free work environment and their hours are extremely flexible. Including things like being able to work from home, or on the road, without too much forethought.
Well I know we here that from Scott all the time. But I don't specifically know people outside of ML that work for fortune 500 companies beyond the one I always mention - and the friend who is back there now - yeah, talk about stress, ridiculous amounts of hours (60+) with what appears to be minimal flexibility. He has gotten to work from home when his kid is sick, but that's about it.
Is it a real Fortune 500? The ones you mention regularly are always very borderline enterprise (just under the normal definitions in terms of size) and for other reasons didn't seem to act like enterprises and typically are located in rural places (this leans companies away from enterprise) and tend to be coming up from smaller (so new to enterprise thinking.)
Now who's looking at semantics? You looked them up, you know they are on the fortune 500 list. If you're on the list, you're on the list.
I thought that they were below the list. I must be remembering a different one. I thought they were in the 2,000 range. We looked up more than one company. Was this one like 490 something?
OK I just looked them up, right now they are 840 something.
So not 500, but 1000, still pretty good list.That's more like what I remembered. They were pretty far off the F500 and low on the F1000 and overall were not an enterprise behaving company. So not a good indicator because they were at a size where they were teetering on being big enough to be an enterprise, but were caught in the non-enterprise world. Hence why his experiences weren't like those in the enterprise space.
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Back to the OP, if I had to look at the most important skills that I've learned throughout my career, it has to be marketing myself and negotiating salary.
@scottalanmiller told me NEVER take less pay. Always take the job with the most pay and never look back at lower pay once you do. For some reason, it is a very difficult concept to comes to accept. Many IT people think they are worth less than the really are or are willing to accept lower temporary pay. When you do this you are your own worst enemy. Way too many IT people stay at $40-60k throughout their career. There is nothing wrong with $40-60k, but that should be for someone with less than 5 years experience.
As far as marketing, I haven't seen many IT tasks that I couldn't handle with a little bit training. So when in an interview I have the utmost confidence that I can handle anything. I never lie and say I have worked with a system that I have not worked with before, but after being in IT for 13 years there isn't much I haven't seen or at least put my hands on. Imagine this @wirestyle22 , you go the interview with a completion certificate for a course like this. You could have increased your pay big time.
https://www.udemy.com/advanced-mac-os-x/
What Will I Learn?
Learn How To Secure Your Mac
Learn How To Carry Out Advanced Tasks
Gain A Solid Understanding Of The Operating System
Learn How To Troubleshoot And Fix Complex Problems On The Mac OS -
@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@irj said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
Personally MSPs are not for me. As mentioned on here, you can learn many different skills working for MSP, but you are likely to do more work than enterprise and get paid less. Not to mention that you are multiple customers emergency response team. So there are alot of late hour fires that you may not see in Enterprise or SMB. You will see fires across many customers and many different specialties.
Now when you do have these late hour fires for Enterprise, you are expected to get things up and running very quickly due to the amount of money at stake. That is why specialization is so important here.
This is true, MSP might be better than SMB, but unless your MSP is the size of an enterprise [IT department] you must take on some pains from the smaller scale.
MSPs do offer value ,though. Especially for someone wanting to get their feet wet in IT or someone who enjoys new daily challenges.
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@irj said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
https://www.udemy.com/advanced-mac-os-x/
What Will I Learn?
Learn How To Secure Your Mac
Learn How To Carry Out Advanced Tasks
Gain A Solid Understanding Of The Operating System
Learn How To Troubleshoot And Fix Complex Problems On The Mac OSHonestly though @wirestyle22 imagine if you took that course before the interview and you could explain the process of securing a Mac or how to carry out advanced specific tasks such as automation and scripting which this class teaches you.
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Something that I learned from watching people fail at this (not in IT, just in jobs in general) is that there is a trend to take lower pay, lower responsibility jobs hoping to have more free time and more flexibility - thinking that it is a trade off. But in reality, it is not. It just makes you worth less in the eyes of the employer. It takes away your leverage - both in house and with other firms. The more you earn where you are, the more power you have to make that or more elsewhere. The more power you have to leave, the more incentive there is to give you flexibility to stay.
In the real world, people making six figures get way, way more flexibility, work from home, low stress, fun and challenging and just generally better job positions than people making, say, $50K. There are exceptions, of course, but in general with as much else equal as possible, the higher your salary, the more flexibility you will get with it. Soft benefits increase with hard ones.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
Something that I learned from watching people fail at this (not in IT, just in jobs in general) is that there is a trend to take lower pay, lower responsibility jobs hoping to have more free time and more flexibility - thinking that it is a trade off. But in reality, it is not. It just makes you worth less in the eyes of the employer. It takes away your leverage - both in house and with other firms. The more you earn where you are, the more power you have to make that or more elsewhere. The more power you have to leave, the more incentive there is to give you flexibility to stay.
In the real world, people making six figures get way, way more flexibility, work from home, low stress, fun and challenging and just generally better job positions than people making, say, $50K. There are exceptions, of course, but in general with as much else equal as possible, the higher your salary, the more flexibility you will get with it. Soft benefits increase with hard ones.
You get treated much better when making $100k vs $50k as well.
