When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator
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I feel like part of what is lacking from this discussion is the acknowledgement that in most of the SMB market, there is no HR, and many times there is no formal IT (or very minimal). Most of this discussion is based around the false premise that people who know IT are hiring IT for most organizations. That's simply untrue. It's true that people in IT might understand IT.. but that pretty well rules out all but a tiny sliver of small businesses, and a whole lot of medium businesses too... or if I could summarize, the vast majority of the SMB world (at least in the US). Since SMBs make up around 95% of businesses in the country, the idea that IT is handling IT hiring when there often isn't even an IT department in the vast majority of those that even have on-staff IT is kind of weird.
Being good at business does not necessitate having good IT... adequate, or even sufficient IT is all that's required to be good at business even with IT needs. It's likely misinformed to suggest that most businesses and organizations are actually good at/with IT. Even organizations that are terrible at IT can thrive, even at IT, when everyone else around them is even worse. Sure, they will hit a wall at some point, but so long as the business is successful and the ownership is satisfied, what does that matter? Not all businesses are in business to make every possible penny they can right here, right now. Some simply want to do a thing, and so long as they're doing it successfully, they're content.
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@scottalanmiller 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:
@scottalanmiller 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:
@scottalanmiller 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:
@scottalanmiller 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:
@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:
@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:
Also notice, according to ASVAB... there is no title, whatsoever, for the ENTIRE SMB IT space. Not a single one.
And really - there probably shouldn't be. As mentioned - though not accepted by Scott - Generalist would not be acceptable to most people hiring in the SMB space, at least with my very limited exposure.
So of course, Scott's right - we should only 'talk' about correct things, and not have discussions around incorrect things - bad practices - but at the same time, knowing your audience and making your resume suit that situation is key.
Right, knowing the truth and knowing how to market are two different things. But you can't market well if you don't know the truth.
Then you have to decide if you are going to market well within the truth, or just lie.
So I either lie or I market myself poorly. Great.
Welcome to American employment
I'm not going to be a shitty person to make money, so I guess I'm choosing poverty
You are still assuming that I said you have to lie. But read what I actually wrote.
I do see it, but telling the truth is making myself non-competitive--not that I even consider it an option to lie.
WHY does telling the truth make you feel non-competitive?
Please don't start this conversation again lol. I'm actually just being honest, not having a pity party. The better question is what makes me competitive?
That's NOT the point. You keep redirecting. You keep feeling that telling someone something honest will not get you as far as lying. But is that really true? WHY do you feel that way? Good shops know when people are lying most of the time, so it limits those people to other kinds of work.
For some reason I wasn't notified of this reply. Weird. Anyway, Yeah I do think lying gets you further. I interviewed with ABC and they wanted someone who was a mac guru. I am not a mac guru, or basically a guru of anything. I said that I am by no means a mac guru, but I have my own home lab and self-teach constantly etc etc. I was attempting to prove that any effort they put into me would not be wasted. Well, as much as they appreciated my honesty they went with another dude. A friend of mine does master control for ABC and he said they asked this dude to do the most basic of things mac related (its' been awhile) and he didn't know how to do it. His boss then decided to just train the guy to be what they needed him to be.
Lying definitely helped that guy. He's making 90k+ a year right now with less knowledge than me.
That doesn't mean I would lie or that I endorse lying but in my experience it has paid off for everyone who has done it which is very unfortunate for honest people like me.
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@wirestyle22 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:
@wirestyle22 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:
@wirestyle22 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:
@wirestyle22 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:
@wirestyle22 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:
@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:
Also notice, according to ASVAB... there is no title, whatsoever, for the ENTIRE SMB IT space. Not a single one.
And really - there probably shouldn't be. As mentioned - though not accepted by Scott - Generalist would not be acceptable to most people hiring in the SMB space, at least with my very limited exposure.
So of course, Scott's right - we should only 'talk' about correct things, and not have discussions around incorrect things - bad practices - but at the same time, knowing your audience and making your resume suit that situation is key.
Right, knowing the truth and knowing how to market are two different things. But you can't market well if you don't know the truth.
Then you have to decide if you are going to market well within the truth, or just lie.
So I either lie or I market myself poorly. Great.
Welcome to American employment
I'm not going to be a shitty person to make money, so I guess I'm choosing poverty
You are still assuming that I said you have to lie. But read what I actually wrote.
I do see it, but telling the truth is making myself non-competitive--not that I even consider it an option to lie.
WHY does telling the truth make you feel non-competitive?
Please don't start this conversation again lol. I'm actually just being honest, not having a pity party. The better question is what makes me competitive?
That's NOT the point. You keep redirecting. You keep feeling that telling someone something honest will not get you as far as lying. But is that really true? WHY do you feel that way? Good shops know when people are lying most of the time, so it limits those people to other kinds of work.
For some reason I wasn't notified of this reply. Weird. Anyway, Yeah I do think lying gets you further. I interviewed with ABC and they wanted someone who was a mac guru. I am not a mac guru, or basically a guru of anything. I said that I am by no means a mac guru, but I have my own home lab and self-teach constantly etc etc. I was attempting to prove that any effort they put into me would not be wasted. Well, as much as they appreciated my honesty they went with another dude. A friend of mine does master control for ABC and he said they asked this dude to do the most basic of things mac related (its' been awhile) and he didn't know how to do it. His boss then decided to just train the guy to be what they needed him to be.
Lying definitely helped that guy. He's making 90k+ a year right now with less knowledge than me.
That doesn't mean I would lie or that I endorse lying but in my experience it has paid off for everyone who has done it which is very unfortunate for honest people like me.
I think this is standard knowledge now at this point. Lying gets you further sadly. It's unethical, and wrong to do, I don't endorse it, nor would I do it myself but you're point is spot on.
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@quixoticjeremy 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:
@scottalanmiller 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:
@scottalanmiller 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:
@scottalanmiller 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:
@scottalanmiller 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:
@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:
@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:
Also notice, according to ASVAB... there is no title, whatsoever, for the ENTIRE SMB IT space. Not a single one.
And really - there probably shouldn't be. As mentioned - though not accepted by Scott - Generalist would not be acceptable to most people hiring in the SMB space, at least with my very limited exposure.
So of course, Scott's right - we should only 'talk' about correct things, and not have discussions around incorrect things - bad practices - but at the same time, knowing your audience and making your resume suit that situation is key.
Right, knowing the truth and knowing how to market are two different things. But you can't market well if you don't know the truth.
Then you have to decide if you are going to market well within the truth, or just lie.
So I either lie or I market myself poorly. Great.
Welcome to American employment
I'm not going to be a shitty person to make money, so I guess I'm choosing poverty
You are still assuming that I said you have to lie. But read what I actually wrote.
I do see it, but telling the truth is making myself non-competitive--not that I even consider it an option to lie.
WHY does telling the truth make you feel non-competitive?
Please don't start this conversation again lol. I'm actually just being honest, not having a pity party. The better question is what makes me competitive?
That's NOT the point. You keep redirecting. You keep feeling that telling someone something honest will not get you as far as lying. But is that really true? WHY do you feel that way? Good shops know when people are lying most of the time, so it limits those people to other kinds of work.
For some reason I wasn't notified of this reply. Weird. Anyway, Yeah I do think lying gets you further. I interviewed with ABC and they wanted someone who was a mac guru. I am not a mac guru, or basically a guru of anything. I said that I am by no means a mac guru, but I have my own home lab and self-teach constantly etc etc. I was attempting to prove that any effort they put into me would not be wasted. Well, as much as they appreciated my honesty they went with another dude. A friend of mine does master control for ABC and he said they asked this dude to do the most basic of things mac related (its' been awhile) and he didn't know how to do it. His boss then decided to just train the guy to be what they needed him to be.
Lying definitely helped that guy. He's making 90k+ a year right now with less knowledge than me.
That doesn't mean I would lie or that I endorse lying but in my experience it has paid off for everyone who has done it which is very unfortunate for honest people like me.
I think this is standard knowledge now at this point. Lying gets you further sadly. It's unethical, and wrong to do, I don't endorse it, nor would I do it myself but you're point is spot on.
It's also the norm. You end up competing against super humans in the job market because they aren't representing themselves honestly. That's why I feel the need to read all of the books I am reading. I have to make myself ACTUALLY extremely good at my job to be able to market myself as such. It's an uphill battle. If I can ever find a mentor that I work with daily it's going to be huge for me.
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@tirendir When I was hired here, they had the IT admin from the company across the parking lot do the technical interview for them. They hadn't had anyone in this role for over a year and were having a service provider do some basic things but they weren't doing it that well and so the company realized that they needed someone to be here full time and really get things up to snuff. That is exactly what I did.
I was honest when I said that I was only doing odd jobs and that I wanted a full time job. That was almost 7 years ago. I make about 75% more now, than I did when I started. I still hear from several people that they are so glad that they hired me.
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@wrx7m said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@tirendir When I was hired here, they had the IT admin from the company across the parking lot do the technical interview for them. They hadn't had anyone in this role for over a year and were having a service provider do some basic things but they weren't doing it that well and so the company realized that they needed someone to be here full time and really get things up to snuff. That is exactly what I did.
I was honest when I said that I was only doing odd jobs and that I wanted a full time job. That was almost 7 years ago. I make about 75% more now, than I did when I started. I still hear from several people that they are so glad that they hired me.
What are you responsibilities now and how do they differ from what you started?
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@wirestyle22 The same as when I was hired. I run everything IT. We have more users, equipment, servers and projects. Most projects are a result of me identifying needs and ways to make things better. Whether it is efficiency or quality of service. Although, I am looking for a jr level IT generalist admin person to deal with the end user stuff and assist in projects.
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@wrx7m What technical knowledge did you have when you started? You said you only had odd jobs. Did you go to school for IT? Where did your knowledge come from? What did your technical test consist of?
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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.
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@tirendir You are generally correct.
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@wirestyle22 Sorry. I didn't mean to imply that I only had odd jobs. I had been working full time in IT until late 2008 and the economy took a dive. At that point, I was let go from an IT service provider and I was doing odd jobs looking for full time work for about 18 months. It was really tough.
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@wrx7m Oh I see.
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@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
Most of this discussion is based around the false premise that people who know IT are hiring IT for most organizations. That's simply untrue.
It's not untrue, it is only untrue in markets that should not be hiring IT at all, like the SMB. In the enterprise and large businesses, IT hires IT. Just like every other job function.
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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:
Most of this discussion is based around the false premise that people who know IT are hiring IT for most organizations. That's simply untrue.
It's not untrue, it is only untrue in markets that should not be hiring IT at all, like the SMB. In the enterprise and large businesses, IT hires IT. Just like every other job function.
They should be hiring MSP's, but that doesn't mean they are
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@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
Being good at business does not necessitate having good IT...
No, but it does necessitate trying to have good IT.
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@scottalanmiller Since when aren't almost all MSPs SMBs too? Or are they silently excluded from that blanket statement?
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@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:
@scottalanmiller Since when aren't almost all MSPs SMBs too? Or are they silently excluded from that blanket statement?
MSP's can hire many different specialists and have them cover multiple contracts offering better support than the contracts they support can offer themselves. As an example you are not likely to see a database admin at a typical SMB
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@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.
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@wirestyle22 While this is true, the vast majority of SMBs may have no need for specialists except for infrequent project work, or for one very specific thing on a regular basis. That makes MSPs a sizable money sink versus on-site IT 99% of the time, because MSPs make money providing expertise. If no substantial level of expertise is required, why pay for what amounts to worthless expertise to the SMB in question?
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)?
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@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. I spoke about this before on ML and everyone told me to leave. I did.
