How do you find the right employer?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@wirestyle22 said:
... specialize in VM's/Server Administration--like Domain Controllers, Exchange and SQL Databases. I think that these are the bare bones necessities of a small to mid size business typically (correct me if I'm wrong).
Lots of little companies running those things, and some have great reason to be, but this follows the "companies that are generally doing things poorly" comment. We could delve into the specifics of any individual company and we all know someone who needs AD, someone who needs on premises Exchange and someone who needs on premises SQL Server. But even already today, the chances are that if you are at least running Exchange on site, you are in the bottom quartile of businesses. There are special cases where on premises Exchange is absolutely the right answer, I'm not giving a blanket statement. But the majority of SMBs running Exchange are doing so because they are either just bad at IT, their IT person is doing things intentionally poorly in an attempt to technologically extort career stability from the company and/or someone is operating from an emotional position of fear and lack of understanding of IT. All bad things.
And that will just continue to get worse. As AD begins to pull back from a ubiquitous service, as being laden with SQL Server becomes less and less practical having those specific skills will more and more tie you to small, failing or at least poorly operated businesses. You can always get lucky and get a company that happens to use those and use them well, but the chances and opportunities will continue to get slimmer and slimmer.
So I should be getting Cloud certifications?
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@wirestyle22 said:
So I should be getting Cloud certifications?
Certifications are good but a good way of learning how to leverage it is to see if you can use it in your current environment.
Personally, certs don't tell me a huge amount about a candidate, too many bootcamp/shortcut options.
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Instead of thinking about specific certs or products, try to think bigger than that.
We're currently using email like this, how else could we use it?
Our data is stored as xyz, is there a better way to improve it?
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@wirestyle22 said:
If you were hiring for an exchange admin what would you be looking for?
IF I needed an Exchange Admin, I'd be looking for....
- Exchange experience, hopefully a lot of it. Almost certainly from the enterprise. Hopefully from an industry where production risk is well understood.
- Good ability to be flexible and able to move on to other skills as this one is unlikely to remain stable and I don't want to intentionally plan to hire for the short term (personal thing, not everyone is going to care about the long term viability of the relationship.)
- Lack of hubris and a good understanding of both Exchange and Office 365
- PowerShell automation skills, specifically as they apply to Exchange, but more broadly would be just fine.
- An understanding of licensing, costs and Exchange project needs.
- Certification from MS is nice, but minor. I have this, I know how little it means.
- Solid understanding of SMTP, MTA, relays, SPAM, phishing, other mail products, mail bagging, AV, etc.
- Knowledge of and understanding of DAG.
- The ability to understand and articulate the business needs and ramifications of decisions and pricing around email systems.
- Ability to interact well, efficiently and intelligently with other teams, especially the Windows Systems Administration group.
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@wirestyle22 said:
So I should be getting Cloud certifications?
Start with cloud experience. Certs are fine, but not a big deal. I know of no one who really uses certs in hiring.
Although yes, you should get some. I wrote several of the ones out there
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@scottalanmiller said:
Although yes, you should get some. I wrote several of the ones out there
Though with your time budget, if you had a choice between getting experience or getting certs.
Get the experience first.
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@wirestyle22 said:
I understand but If I want to get out I need to put myself on a path to realize my goals and gain the knowledge to transition from baby admin. I don't know what path that is.
We don't either BUT we can figure one (or more) out once you determine a career goal.
Try this exercise... within reason, where are you today and where would you like to be in a year, three years and five years? What kind of job, what kind of duties and what kind of technologies do you wish you were working with?
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What kind of money/benefits/perks/Time off do you want in the future too.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@wirestyle22 said:
I understand but If I want to get out I need to put myself on a path to realize my goals and gain the knowledge to transition from baby admin. I don't know what path that is.
We don't either BUT we can figure one (or more) out once you determine a career goal.
Try this exercise... within reason, where are you today and where would you like to be in a year, three years and five years? What kind of job, what kind of duties and what kind of technologies do you wish you were working with?
If I could do anything I would be working with File Servers, VM's and maybe even Media streaming. I find them all to be interesting. At the same point I don't really care. My primary concern is to put myself in a strong position to provide for my family ultimately. I will do what I need to do period.
One Year: I'd like to be much stronger than I am today in my knowledge. I don't think I would make a transition within a years time but if I were given the opportunity of course I would take it.
Three Years: I would have "finished" my education in my given career path and started applying to much higher end jobs. I use quotations because as we all know we are never done.
Five Years: I would have a few years of experience as a higher end sysadmin.
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@wirestyle22 said:
If I could do anything I would be working with File Servers, VM's and maybe even Media streaming. I find them all to be interesting. At the same point I don't really care. My primary concern is to put myself in a strong position to provide for my family ultimately. I will do what I need to do period.
File Servers I see as phasing out very quickly. Already I see them dropping very quickly. Like AD, we phased ours out in the past few years. They just don't make sense like they used to.
VMs are ubiquitous and is almost like saying "working with computers". All servers are VMs and should have been for nearly a decade now, even in the SMB. It should be assumed that anytime someone says servers, VMs are just assumed. It's not something that you really specialize in, it's just part of doing everything else. In the enterprise space you get a few rare roles that are "platform" roles that just handle the VM layer, but they are few and seem to be getting fewer as that gets absorbed by the more technical and needed systems departments.
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@scottalanmiller said:
- Solid understanding of SMTP, MTA, relays, SPAM, phishing, other mail products, mail bagging, AV, etc.
OK I know what most of these are, but what is Mail Bagging?
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http://www.message-continuity.com/how-it-works/what-is-mail-bagging.html
"Have you ever gone out of town and forwarded your mail to the post office until you return? Our Mail Bagging (MX Backup) solution acts in much the same way by allowing you to forward your email messages if your mail server becomes unavailable.
When your email server is unavailable, Mail Bagging (MX Backup) stores the emails sent to your mail exchange (MX) server and sends them to you when your system is back online. What's more, our SpamWeeder gateway system filters any blatant incoming spam and viruses from all bagged messages!"
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LOL - my Spam filter does that for me.
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@Dashrender said:
LOL - my Spam filter does that for me.
So if you change filters you know what features to look for.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@wirestyle22 said:
If I could do anything I would be working with File Servers, VM's and maybe even Media streaming. I find them all to be interesting. At the same point I don't really care. My primary concern is to put myself in a strong position to provide for my family ultimately. I will do what I need to do period.
File Servers I see as phasing out very quickly. Already I see them dropping very quickly. Like AD, we phased ours out in the past few years. They just don't make sense like they used to.
VMs are ubiquitous and is almost like saying "working with computers". All servers are VMs and should have been for nearly a decade now, even in the SMB. It should be assumed that anytime someone says servers, VMs are just assumed. It's not something that you really specialize in, it's just part of doing everything else. In the enterprise space you get a few rare roles that are "platform" roles that just handle the VM layer, but they are few and seem to be getting fewer as that gets absorbed by the more technical and needed systems departments.
I can't answer what I want to do because I don't really have a preference. I currently run Exchange, our File Servers, VM's which include AV, print servers, utility servers, and a domain as well as a standalone SQL database server. I run all cabling, setup all switches etc. I have no preference. Keep in mind I didn't build this I inherited it and they won't change anything.
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@Dashrender said:
LOL - my Spam filter does that for me.
When your mail system is up and running.
I feel like mail-bagging is a redirect for all mail, which then get forward to your mail system. Not only during outages...
But I've never used it so its hard for me to say.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
@Dashrender said:
LOL - my Spam filter does that for me.
So if you change filters you know what features to look for.
LOL, when I change filters, I'm going to O365 using their filter
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@wirestyle22 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@wirestyle22 said:
I understand but If I want to get out I need to put myself on a path to realize my goals and gain the knowledge to transition from baby admin. I don't know what path that is.
We don't either BUT we can figure one (or more) out once you determine a career goal.
Try this exercise... within reason, where are you today and where would you like to be in a year, three years and five years? What kind of job, what kind of duties and what kind of technologies do you wish you were working with?
If I could do anything I would be working with File Servers, VM's and maybe even Media streaming. I find them all to be interesting. At the same point I don't really care. My primary concern is to put myself in a strong position to provide for my family ultimately. I will do what I need to do period.
One Year: I'd like to be much stronger than I am today in my knowledge. I don't think I would make a transition within a years time but if I were given the opportunity of course I would take it.
Three Years: I would have "finished" my education in my given career path and started applying to much higher end jobs. I use quotations because as we all know we are never done.
Five Years: I would have a few years of experience as a higher end sysadmin.
I think that this is a good start, but mostly you are just saying "I want to improve." I think you need to be way, way more specific. System Administration is a group of job roles, not a singular one. In even a medium sized company that's not even a single department!
Your roadmap should be details enough (not that it can't change, but just to give you a starting point) that you would know to whom to submit a resume or with whom to interview for a "dream job" if it came up.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@wirestyle22 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@wirestyle22 said:
I understand but If I want to get out I need to put myself on a path to realize my goals and gain the knowledge to transition from baby admin. I don't know what path that is.
We don't either BUT we can figure one (or more) out once you determine a career goal.
Try this exercise... within reason, where are you today and where would you like to be in a year, three years and five years? What kind of job, what kind of duties and what kind of technologies do you wish you were working with?
If I could do anything I would be working with File Servers, VM's and maybe even Media streaming. I find them all to be interesting. At the same point I don't really care. My primary concern is to put myself in a strong position to provide for my family ultimately. I will do what I need to do period.
One Year: I'd like to be much stronger than I am today in my knowledge. I don't think I would make a transition within a years time but if I were given the opportunity of course I would take it.
Three Years: I would have "finished" my education in my given career path and started applying to much higher end jobs. I use quotations because as we all know we are never done.
Five Years: I would have a few years of experience as a higher end sysadmin.
I think that this is a good start, but mostly you are just saying "I want to improve." I think you need to be way, way more specific. System Administration is a group of job roles, not a singular one. In even a medium sized company that's not even a single department!
Your roadmap should be details enough (not that it can't change, but just to give you a starting point) that you would know to whom to submit a resume or with whom to interview for a "dream job" if it came up.
Let me do the research and I'll get back to you. I'll check out what companies in my area are hiring for and let you know what sounds appealing to me. That's really the best I can do. I guess for now I'll get my Network+ since I can use that for my CARF accreditation and move on from there.
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As a start, when it comes to "I want to advance my career" and especially when you don't have super solid direction, which is not uncommon because how do you know what you want to do until you have done it all, the top thing (and this goes for people with really solid direction too) you want to build a home lab, an epic one.
A home lab you can get access to the tech, the techniques, the trends, the products and all the stuff that your job does not. Certs are a decent way to push yourself to do boring things or things you never thought of, helping to avoid gaps. I like certs not for the paper that they provide but for the education they push you to do.
Build a lab that makes your company jealous. Make sure that in any discussion you could roll your eye and laugh with disdain at the joke of IT that your company uses. Don't actually do it, but have those thoughts deep down inside. Make your servers better, your email better, your security better, your file serving better... everything, make it more current, better implemented, running faster and doing more than you get to do at work. If they ever question what you are doing, mention that they take their business less seriously that you do your home network - set the bar higher than they do. Don't let your job define your quality bar.
