When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator
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@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
I wasn't attempting to imply that IT doesn't get involved hiring other IT, just that that's very far from the norm in the real world as a general rule. It certainly happens, just not nearly as much as some seem to think it does. I've never once interviewed with IT anywhere from government agencies to Fortune 100 enterprises, or SMBs. Sure there must be many that do have IT hire IT, but it's the exception in places that understand how to not be dumb, which is sadly less common than it should be. That was more the point I was making.
In the SMB, where there would normally only be one IT person (and if there isn't only one, that's another issue causing the same problem here) there really can never be IT hiring IT unless an outside IT firm is brought in to do that (I do that stuff if anyone cares.) But outside of the SMB, I've never seen anywhere that had non-IT hire IT except at IBM, where it was the head of department bringing in a CIO level person so a little different. Literally, never seen any company from 1,000 people (totally, not IT) or larger that didn't have IT hiring IT.
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@scottalanmiller said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
Since SMBs are fighting most MSPs for the same talent.. what makes MSPs automatically superior to the SMBs they serve, especially since they don't have any more resources than the SMBs do to fight for said talent (perhaps even less)?
A few things...
- Infrastructure. They are professional IT organizations, not lone IT people in another organization. This totally changes the IT value proposition in every imaginable way.
- Ladders. They is a career path.
- They can earn dramatically more because they leverage specialties that SMBs cannot on their own.
- Variety that SMBs cannot offer.
- IT hired by IT. SMBs have generally zero ability to identify and hire good IT because they have no IT without them. MSPs don't have this issue. The degree to which the is advantageous is enormous.
Reverse it. SMBs have no advantages to IT hiring except that they often offer the ability to "do less". If you are non-competitive and looking for an easy ride doing very little, internal SMB IT is the most likely (but no guarantee) of being able to find this. Enterprises tend to keep you really busy and use metrics to watch this. MSPs need to service customers and keep density rates up. But internal IT in an SMB is often overlooked and forgotten. So that one aspect may lure many an IT pro to a long, low key career without upward mobility.
But for anyone looking for career growth and opportunity, education, advancement, peers, mentorship, income, challenge, variety - the SMB lacks in all areas. They have nothing to offer a talented, ambitious IT person vis a vis an MSP.
I must have really lucked out. Most of the stuff you said you don't get with an SMB is something I get or made happen here. I am ambitious and have tackled the vast majority of projects myself and I get paid pretty well. I would like to move on at some point but I drive a lot of what happens here so it keeps me learning and growing my skill set. It definitely helps that the company is growing and also looking to increase efficiency of workflows, by way of technology.
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Reverse it. SMBs have no advantages to IT hiring except that they often offer the ability to "do less". If you are non-competitive and looking for an easy ride doing very little, internal SMB IT is the most likely (but no guarantee) of being able to find this. Enterprises tend to keep you really busy and use metrics to watch this. MSPs need to service customers and keep density rates up. But internal IT in an SMB is often overlooked and forgotten. So that one aspect may lure many an IT pro to a long, low key career without upward mobility.
But for anyone looking for career growth and opportunity, education, advancement, peers, mentorship, income, challenge, variety - the SMB lacks in all areas. They have nothing to offer a talented, ambitious IT person vis a vis an MSP.
This. ^^^^
It finally sunk into me not long before I joined ML that I could easily "do what I do" at my SMB and never develop new skills or really sharpen the ones I have without finding outside stuff to do / try / learn.
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@scottalanmiller MSPs do not provide great opportunity for advancement near as appealing as a solid SMB does for Internal IT. As you stated, and it is the same for Enterprise, both are very focused upon efficiency and staying active. Neither of those anywhere leaves much room for anything else but repetition. The argument is back-asswards, because Enterprise IT is concerned with efficiency and repeatability, not creativity. MSPs are concerned with efficiency and customer density, not creativity or versatility unless they are pretty explicitly to improve efficiency or density. Both are cold places for anyone who doesn't already know what they want to specialize in, because both are all about specialists, and people who like them only care about specializations. Enterprises suffer from their size, because while they might be efficient, they're very rarely particularly creative, because doing anything quickly or with a high amount of change is increasingly difficult the larger the scale becomes.
The problem is very similar to what my father often remarks about college degrees in the fields where they're actually important like engineering, and polymer science. The statement goes a bit like this: People with Bachelors Degrees know a little about a lot of things. People with Masters Degrees know a lot about a few things. People with PHD's know so much about one thing that they can hardly understand anything else. Specialization is generally at the expense of versatility, not in any way an automatic compliment. Generalists make better specialists than the inverse, because Generalists already know a broad variety of things. Specialists can do one thing very well, and the more specialized they are, the more they are likely to know about their specialty, and typically the less they know about what is outside of it unless they have to directly interact on a frequent basis. Take them outside of their specialty, and ask them to do something unrelated..... good luck, because the longer they operate in their specialty, the more likely they will forget more and more outside of it, no differently than IT generalists doing highly specialized work.
For task that span a variety of disciplines with IT takes one decent guy a few hours to do by themselves in an SMB, you may end up having to get multiple individuals to accomplish it through an MSP who has to share every single individual in the organization with multiple other organizations, which actually means that the whole process gets done far faster, for a lot less money, and arguably no less effectively by your generic SMB IT admin in many cases. Sure, the SMB Admin may have to spend more time researching before doing the job... but between Google, Youtube, and a handful of IT support sites, there's extremely little that an Admin for an SMB can't do just as well or better for their organization than an MSP can. The thing is, most SMBs don't need any great level of specialization to do what they need to do... so... why hire an industrial, high-voltage substation maintenance technician to wire up some regular old electrical outlets and light switches? Most SMBs don't need a specialist, which is why most SMBs don't hire them. MSPs are absolutely valuable, but it's arrogant to suggest that SMBs shouldn't hire their own IT or they're bad businesses where IT is concerned. Maybe you just don't understand their IT needs well enough to understand why your opinion is incorrect?
MSP infrastructure is only a benefit if the SMB's needs actually align with the MSPs configuration. A specialist by definition doesn't get variety lol, if they get variety, then they're not specialists.. so no, your statement about MSP specialists getting variety is absolutely false unless you're talking about the capacity to change specialties within the organization, which every IT Generalist in every SMB does already, so not a pro there. There's a variety of specializations available in an MSP, but no different than in an Enterprise.. there's absolutely zero guarantee you will ever get to switch out of the specialization you are in. As previously stated, Enterprises and MSPs are focused on efficiency, not what their staff want to do so much. If you're good at what you do, they are all going to weigh the loss of your good job at what you do, with what you might be able to accomplish in another role. Whether or not you are allowed to move isn't going to be much different either way, where in an SMB, there was never even a question there... the IT staff does it, period. So I'm not really certain how it is that MSP laborers somehow get to do more as specialists than SMB as generalists. A Specialist by definition will never see as much variety as a generalist.
It feels to me like the problem is a lack of appreciation for generalists. I'de point out, that most of the best folks in an organization aren't specialists, but generalists. They tend to know a little about a lot, which also includes knowing when to talk to specialists about specialized things. The two both have their places, which interestingly enough seem to be with generalists either being near the top of the totem pole, or near the bottom (with pay to match) while specialists fill in most everything in between.
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@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@scottalanmiller MSPs do not provide great opportunity for advancement near as appealing as a solid SMB does for Internal IT.
SMBs have only one role, typically. MSPs have many. How does any SMB offer any advancement, ever? Outside of the SMB itself growing, which they rarely do.
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@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
The argument is back-asswards, because Enterprise IT is concerned with efficiency and repeatability, not creativity.
Have you worked in the enterprise? This is as backwards as it gets. I've never worked in an enterprise that didn't prize and reward creativity. That's one of the benefits - freedom, resources and support for looking at creative solutions. Which explains why nearly all of those kinds of things come from the enterprise space in the first place. That's where innovation is normally happening.
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@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
MSPs are concerned with efficiency and customer density, not creativity or versatility unless they are pretty explicitly to improve efficiency or density.
I can tell you working in the MSP space, this is backwards. Not even kind of what it is like. Creativity is a huge factor. Just asked @gjacobse who had a support call with me today and we spent the whole time being creative for the customer.
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@scottalanmiller How do you advance from doing everything?
This is literally the argument of how you advance from SMB IT to MSP IT. You cannot advance from doing everything, while as MSP IT, you will never do that, therefor there is a logical path for advancement. -
@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
Enterprises suffer from their size, because while they might be efficient, they're very rarely particularly creative, because doing anything quickly or with a high amount of change is increasingly difficult the larger the scale becomes.
There is a logic to this, but I've not seen that become a big factor in big business. Enterprises tend to have the resources and knowledge as to the importance of building in creative time to allow staff to be creative. That's why they have creative work spaces and all kinds of programs to invest in creativity in the work place. They provide time and resources for this kind of stuff. Yes, they scale makes it difficult to turn the ship around, but it also makes it easy for people to test theories and ideas. Even big ones.
I've worked across the space from the smallest of SMBs to the biggest of enterprises and while there is some creativity everywhere, the degree to which it is commonly encouraged and empowered in the enterprise far outstrips what is common in the SMB. SMBs have to fight fires and deal with politics, enterprises have managers and teams to make sure you have free time and resources to go after tackling problems in ambitious and creative ways.
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@scottalanmiller I probably worded my statement poorly, and by the way I have worked in Enterprise. Enterprise might prize and value creativity, but it's because it's very difficult to effect in an Enterprise environment. When was a rollout at the Enterprise level anywhere remotely as fast or as simple as in an SMB? Value is directly related to scarcity. Practical creativity in the Enterprise is difficult to achieve, because it's increasingly more difficult to implement the larger the scale gets.
When SMBs don't value creativity, it's most often because either they already enact plenty of it, or they're just dumb (both are more likely in that space than in the Enterprise).
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@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@scottalanmiller How do you advance from doing everything?
This is literally the argument of how you advance from SMB IT to MSP IT. You cannot advance from doing everything, while as MSP IT, you will never do that, therefor there is a logical path for advancement.So the advancement from SMB is into the MSP space? I mean, sort of. But MSPs have entry points, too. SMB isn't "below" MSP, it is just less efficient.
MSP isn't really its own thing, it's really just an isolated large business IT department. So shares characteristics with large business IT departments naturally.
Doing "everything" means you are not able to focus on the high level work. As long as someone is stuck doing everything they are trapped with at least one foot at the entry level and much of their time spent context switching.
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@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
When SMBs don't value creativity, it's most often because either they already enact plenty of it, or they're just dumb (both are more likely in that space than in the Enterprise).
Granted. SMBs have a bigger dynamic range of everything. That is very true. Enterprises have a mediating effect.
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Some examples of where big enterprises use big time creativity for huge tech gains, though, include companies like IBM, Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, the Wall St Investment Banks (not consumer banks), Hedge Funds, big oil and so forth. These are huge, huge entities that "dance". Creativity drives them and they really do respond.
I was a senior manager at IBM and let me tell you, that is a company that can freaking dance. Propose a wild and crazy project and you might have a new team the same day. I got into IT because of a Fortune 20 taking on a dare to reinvent how they thought of the database space.
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Literal conversation at IBM in 2000: "So we are talking about doing this software development project, I'll need resources to do that as I don't have that on my team today. There is a guy I've worked with a lot over the last few years that is local, really good and available that I'd like to bring on."
"Oh okay, that sounds good. Get me a resume and stuff and we'll talk about it."
"Well, he is available now. I'd hate to have him get snatched up by someone else while we were looking things over and considering the project."
"Right, makes sense, have him here Monday."
Actual IBM conversation. Hired a 10x developer on that one sentence and kicked off a project that reinvented how IBM did their large system manufacturing bringing all outside software in house.
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@scottalanmiller I guess my take is that it's a little naïve to suggest the idea that an organizational system designed for big businesses is a good idea for small ones. It's inefficient to have a zillion specialists to do generalist tasks. Sure, scripting helps with grunt work... but generalists can get a whole lot of the same scripts for free just as easily as the specialists can. Both are necessary at some level in some circumstances, but I feel like generalists consistently get the shaft by specialists who seem to think they're somehow superior because of their specialization. A generalist could also be a considered someone who specializes in knowing some things about a LOT of disparate things. If you're planning a build, I'de MUCH prefer consulting a generalist for much of the design, and then specialists for tweaking each area; versus consulting a bunch of specialists and finding out come post-deployment, every individual segment of the system rocks while the whole system is ultimately almost unworkable. (seen it happen too many times to want to remember)
It seems to me, that the biggest benefit to MSPs is just that they have the capacity to manage at greater scale and level of efficiency.. but that doesn't necessarily mean that they can or will manage small-scale organizations in large numbers any better, or any cheaper than internal IT can for them individually. In case that wording sucks, Just because in theory, an MSP should be able to manage lots of small environments very well doesn't mean they will actually do so better than an internal IT staff can do for potentially less cost. MSPs start losing efficiency just as Enterprises do, when you introduce increasing levels of complexity, which requires more specialists, which drives up costs for everyone. There may eventually come a point where it's just not cost effective for many SMBs at that point to employ the MSPs available to them, and so hire Internal IT instead. MSPs can and should do it all better and cheaper in theory, but I'm not so sure that bears out in reality, which is ultimately all that really matters, right?
Also, don't get me wrong, there are always exceptions to the rules. I also realize that we are both probably among them in many ways, which is totally fine.
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For what it's worth, I do believe that an IT department of 1 is rarely ever the best solution. If an SMB hires internal IT, it should be because it's the best solution for their organization, and it needs to be enough IT capability to actually manage and operate their environment well. I like the enormous flexibility my current SMB environment affords me, to the point where I'm waiting on certain software vendors to make their solutions available for me to deploy... something I would have either had to create some complicated 3rd-party solution for at a likely steep cost, or would not be able to deploy for months or even years from now in any other setting.
Enterprise might get things sooner, but my deployment will be ultra-simple to deploy and manage; and I'll in many ways have comparable security to many much larger organizations, and far sooner than most other organizations of our size or type for quite some time. I can be an early adopter without having to invent the whole thing so to speak, which is fantastic for me.. and something I would likely never get to do in an Enterprise, and not for likely a year or two in an MSP. Granted, this is because I've built up a high level of trust with both my boss, and our board.. so I can do virtually anything I want with some reasonable justification. I've inquired at the MSPs in the area, and I'm where I am because none of them offer me anything remotely similar to what I have now, and some have even contacted me for consulting at times.
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@wirestyle22 said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@wrx7m said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@wirestyle22 said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@wrx7m said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@wirestyle22 One thing that I have been able to do is market myself here. Every time we have reviews, they give me x% of a raise and know that I am going to negotiate more. Only once did I not get what I asked for (this was at 90 days on the job) but I did get more than I had been given.
When dealing with people that manage you and don't have the first clue as to what you do, you have to make sure that they know, you know what you are doing and that you are doing a lot of it. The key is that you overwhelm them with the results of what you have been working on. Results aren't always as tangible. For instance, one of the first things I went through were the GPOs. I spent hours and hours looking at what was in place and went through and re did them. I printed out a copy of the domain-wide GPO and it was quite thick. Then I printed out Visio diagrams of the network infrastructure that I had mapped and revised. Then I was able to compile a list of accomplishments for the previous year and projects that I was currently working on or would be working on the next year. Each year I check them off and add more for the next.
You have to show them things in ways that they understand. Most of the time, it is printed on paper. Now I just stick to the accomplishments and projects lists and save the paper because they know the quality and volume of work that I do for them.
I've done this. It comes down to what they believe. One of my bosses said "We haven't had any issues. do we even need IT?" Not kidding. I even explained for over an hour, everything that I did to make that happen and she just chose not to believe me.
Well, in that case, you need to move on. They won't realize what they had until you are gone. I came here at a great time. After a list of people that didn't really know what they were doing or care enough to do it well then they tried the service provider and were desperate for someone to just make things work well. I almost didn't want the job because it was so much work at first. I was in over my head but I am glad I did. I would take this job again in a heartbeat.
I thought I would enjoy being a part of a team, but I actually prefer working alone. There is no communication here and I find so many things not documented and also completely mis-configured. I end up doing their job for them.
These two things have nothing to do with each other. so your are reacting to things incorrectly as usual.
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@jaredbusch said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@wirestyle22 said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@wrx7m said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@wirestyle22 said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@wrx7m said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@wirestyle22 One thing that I have been able to do is market myself here. Every time we have reviews, they give me x% of a raise and know that I am going to negotiate more. Only once did I not get what I asked for (this was at 90 days on the job) but I did get more than I had been given.
When dealing with people that manage you and don't have the first clue as to what you do, you have to make sure that they know, you know what you are doing and that you are doing a lot of it. The key is that you overwhelm them with the results of what you have been working on. Results aren't always as tangible. For instance, one of the first things I went through were the GPOs. I spent hours and hours looking at what was in place and went through and re did them. I printed out a copy of the domain-wide GPO and it was quite thick. Then I printed out Visio diagrams of the network infrastructure that I had mapped and revised. Then I was able to compile a list of accomplishments for the previous year and projects that I was currently working on or would be working on the next year. Each year I check them off and add more for the next.
You have to show them things in ways that they understand. Most of the time, it is printed on paper. Now I just stick to the accomplishments and projects lists and save the paper because they know the quality and volume of work that I do for them.
I've done this. It comes down to what they believe. One of my bosses said "We haven't had any issues. do we even need IT?" Not kidding. I even explained for over an hour, everything that I did to make that happen and she just chose not to believe me.
Well, in that case, you need to move on. They won't realize what they had until you are gone. I came here at a great time. After a list of people that didn't really know what they were doing or care enough to do it well then they tried the service provider and were desperate for someone to just make things work well. I almost didn't want the job because it was so much work at first. I was in over my head but I am glad I did. I would take this job again in a heartbeat.
I thought I would enjoy being a part of a team, but I actually prefer working alone. There is no communication here and I find so many things not documented and also completely mis-configured. I end up doing their job for them.
These two things have nothing to do with each other. so your are reacting to things incorrectly as usual.
Being a team involves communicating efficiently and working together. How are they not related?
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@wirestyle22 said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@jaredbusch said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@wirestyle22 said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@wrx7m said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@wirestyle22 said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@wrx7m said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@wirestyle22 One thing that I have been able to do is market myself here. Every time we have reviews, they give me x% of a raise and know that I am going to negotiate more. Only once did I not get what I asked for (this was at 90 days on the job) but I did get more than I had been given.
When dealing with people that manage you and don't have the first clue as to what you do, you have to make sure that they know, you know what you are doing and that you are doing a lot of it. The key is that you overwhelm them with the results of what you have been working on. Results aren't always as tangible. For instance, one of the first things I went through were the GPOs. I spent hours and hours looking at what was in place and went through and re did them. I printed out a copy of the domain-wide GPO and it was quite thick. Then I printed out Visio diagrams of the network infrastructure that I had mapped and revised. Then I was able to compile a list of accomplishments for the previous year and projects that I was currently working on or would be working on the next year. Each year I check them off and add more for the next.
You have to show them things in ways that they understand. Most of the time, it is printed on paper. Now I just stick to the accomplishments and projects lists and save the paper because they know the quality and volume of work that I do for them.
I've done this. It comes down to what they believe. One of my bosses said "We haven't had any issues. do we even need IT?" Not kidding. I even explained for over an hour, everything that I did to make that happen and she just chose not to believe me.
Well, in that case, you need to move on. They won't realize what they had until you are gone. I came here at a great time. After a list of people that didn't really know what they were doing or care enough to do it well then they tried the service provider and were desperate for someone to just make things work well. I almost didn't want the job because it was so much work at first. I was in over my head but I am glad I did. I would take this job again in a heartbeat.
I thought I would enjoy being a part of a team, but I actually prefer working alone. There is no communication here and I find so many things not documented and also completely mis-configured. I end up doing their job for them.
These two things have nothing to do with each other. so your are reacting to things incorrectly as usual.
Being a team involves communicating efficiently and working together. How are they not related?
Because one isn't happening, so the other doesn't exist.
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@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
For what it's worth, I do believe that an IT department of 1 is rarely ever the best solution.
The problem of the SMB is that you have a complexity need of, say, ten IT people. But a capacity need of, maybe, .8 IT people. So you are always forced to either hire more people than you need for capacity or fewer than you need for capability.
