Making the Jump From Sysadmin to Network Administrator?

termdex asks: "I've been looking to move from systems administration to network administration for the last couple years but for some set of reasons networking seems to be an impregnable area of work. My experience has been like the often clichèd 'chicken and egg' scenario. Most employers aren't interested in candiates that lack serious network admin experience (ie: 80/20 network/other), but it would seem difficult to get that level of experience if you're currently a sysadmin. What advice can Slashdot readers offer as what works best in making lateral career moves? What experiences can you relate that shows difficulty or success?"

But..

[skinfitz]

I thought they were one and the same job - I suppose if you take the definitions literally I see what you mean.

I do both then. Do I get paid double now? :o)

Re:But..

[pretzel_logic]

interesting point...

I created our CRM, admin the offsite Linux servers, sysadmin the macs and pcs. Handle the network. troubleshoot anything that gets plugged in to the wall. I make all the clients web sites, admin the databases, and write then CRM's.

I go offsite and set up LANs, do customer support for network and operations. I handle buying and purchasing bids for multiple companies, and do sales when I am needed for consultation at the conference table.

my title is 'tech guy' I have no degree and no certs. only skills and proof of skills. I am over qualified to work for large companies but under qualified at the same time. Its just one of those things, my advice is this:

do what makes you happy and follow your dreams.

dont lie on a resume. it will only backfire. dont list buzz words. instead make a list of things you have done.

Re:But..

[GigsVT]

pretzel_logic

And you like Steely Dan. Are you sure you aren't me?

Will you marry me?

Re:But..

[schon]

Are you sure you aren't me?

Or me.

He pretty much described me to a 'T'.

I wonder how many people here fit that bill..

Me Too

[McCarrum]

/me raises his hand.

Last year of school I passed was Year 8.

My previous job was IT R&D Project Manager for one of the largest universities on the globe.

I wonder how many of us are there out there ..

Jack is uberskilled, under certified

[4of12]

Sounds like you deserve a couple of things to happen:

• take a 3 week vacation so people start to understand what value there is to your work when it's missing
• your manager to be visited by some other company's manager who's impressed by how smoothly the IT infrastructure hums along because of what you have setup and how you maintain it.

Maybe in the latter case the other company's manager won't tell your manager just how excellent you are, but rather just make you an offer.

Back on topic, though, I think that setting up LANs for schools or non-profit organizations as a volunteer would get you some experience that could come in handy in any bid for a network admin position. Getting familiar with all the fundamentals of home-made low-cost routers (*NIX box with multiple network cards), firewalls, and proxies is important, even if the elementary school doesn't have nice expensive Cisco routers running the latest version of IOS.

Re:But..

[Universal Nerd]

I agree 110% with skinfitz.

My title is "sysadmin" but I'm one of the new network admins around here. I was hired to build up and maintain my empolyer's servers but, since they are the main network servers I have to administer the network.

The two jobs are almost the same, besides - you only need a full time system administrator if you run a server farm full of Win2k (or other MS-Win??) - a good Linux admin (or other *nx) needs only a shell script to download updates for their favorite distribution and deploy them after testing them out on a 'guinea pig'-server.

I spend about 20% of the day updating and revising scripts, 30% taking helpdesk calls, 20% reading Slashdot, Fark and The Register and the final 30% learning new stuff like program in Java, create better firewall rules, learn how to make Mozilla apps (not-so-useful-but-very-neato-stuff).

*nx doesn't need administration?

[Ashurbanipal]

you only need a full time system administrator if you run a server farm full of Win2k (or other MS-Win??) - a good Linux admin (or other *nx) needs only a shell script to download updates for their favorite distribution and deploy them after testing them out on a 'guinea pig'-server.

Oy veh. I am struck speechless. Or typeless, or something.

Re:But..

[k_stamour]

Funny...I've been looking to move from network administration to systems administration. Wana Trade? No Seriously......

Simple. Can you do the work?

[Unknown Poltroon]

Fudge your resume. Don't lie outright, just play with titles, percentages, and add on a couple of skills. Ok, so maybe that is outright lying. ITs a matter of degree.

Find a place to intern

[musicgreg]

There's a place called New Horizons in Connecticut near me that puts people in paid internships for NetAdmins and SysAdmins. I'm sure there are other places like that throughout the world.

Certification can help

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I don't advocate being a "paper candidate", but a cert or two can establish your creds as a Net Admin, and will do NOTHING to hurt your general tech marketability.

Net+ is a lightweight course of study, and is reasonable to get quickly.

I would aim for Cisco CCNA. If you understand OSI and TCP/IP well enough to mentally calculate subnets, be able to describe how sequence numbers are synched, and know the mechanics of ARP and RIP... You are half-way to certification already. Now add Cisco-specific stuff. I would recommend the Sybex CCNA study guide. Simple, and complete. This will lend additional credibility to a resume re-write, where you put a network "spin" on all of your existing experience.

Next, you might look at Cisco's CCNP - the network planner cert. Depends on how much you get out of certification, and how it's valued by your employers.

Your management at work, if your company is not really dysfunctional, should be able to help. With a good manager at work, you should be able to outline your longterm career interests, and get some support and direction to make this kind of move. This is what weekly one-on-ones are for - supposing a good manager!

Curious Question

[Outland Traveller]

Well, in my job experience (small to midsize companies) those two jobs are effectively the same. You wear whatever hat is necessary to get what needs to be done, done.

So, if you want my advice I would say to get a job at a smaller company where you can easily wear multiple hats, grow your experience, experiment with technologies that *you* think can help your company instead of being stuck with dead-end technologies that some PHB mandated from on high. After designing and implementing a few successful projects you should be able to get a job anywhere.

If you're stuck in a larger-sized business, a good company will support your efforts in migrating to a different department. It's usually a win-win situation. You get to do what you want, the company gets to keep someone that they already trust and who knows much more about the company's specific operations than a new hire. If your boss won't help you switch departments, then a good HR person usually will.

Re:Curious Question

[riffraff]

Exactly what I've done. I went from telecomm/data processing, to unix/nt sysadm, then to some network management (hp openview stuff). Then to this small company that has no other it guy, just me. So I do everything, from server builds to network engineering. The office moved to a new building, and I went and wired everything, engineered the whole network. Gave me lots of experience, and is pushing me more and more into the networking side, which is where I want to be anyway. If I was in a bigger company I would get pigeonholed into a specific job (like I was with the other companies) and wouldn't quite have the same opportunities as I do now.

Go work for a small company

[bill_mcgonigle]

You're stuck because you're in a big company where they actually have different people for network and admin jobs - that's your problem. Go work for a small company, where everybody wears at least 5 hats. If you really want to, you can go back to the corporate arena after a few years with any of those 5 job titles on your resume. I bet you won't want to, though.

HOWTO

[Kevin Stevens]

This is interesting. Even in the largest of companies, I have never seen a real distinction between system administrators and network administrators. I supppose that you would be lower on the totem pole though. In any case, my suggestion to you is, scrounge a few older PC's that are greater than 100 mhz (should be easy nowadays) scrounge/buy a router/firewall. I will make an assumption that you are using a windows based network. Yes, I am going to advocate this, steal win2k advanced server, exchange, etc. Install w2kAS, buy a book on it, read the book (I recommend mastering windows 2000 server, I think its a sybex book). Install Active Directory, get IIS working to serve webpages, leave your ftp on anonymous login by mistake and have it taken over as a DIVX server (cleaning up the mess will remind you to never do it again). If you can scrounge up a 300mhz+ machine, put 512MB of ram in it, and put exchange on (youre looking for functionality, not speed). create a small lan out of the scrounged PC's put whatever OS's on that you want, and configure them all to talk to each other. Buy a domain - you can get them for $10. Take one of the machines, throw two nics in it, *nix, and make it a firewall. I think you see the point- simulate the environment you want to learn about, its no longer prohibitively expensive to do so. MS would probably encourage this activity. One caveat- you will be best off if you can find a decent ISP - one that will provide you with a static IP and wont block ports. That may be impossible or very expensive. A solution to that would be a second router, in between the "play" lan and the cable/DSL modem. Attach a machine on this second router to simulate a machine out on the internet. If you are looking to get experience on cisco stuff, well... then... youre going to have to spend a significant amount of money no matter what. after you have done all this, fudge your resume.

Re:HOWTO

[adamy]

Or the Linux version:

INstall Linux. Set it up as a local router and firewall using IPChain/IPTable. Config QMail, OpenLDAP etc.

Use two small machines as subnets, route traffic between them. Suggest 10.10.1.255 for one and 10.10.2.255 as the other subnet. Your router will need multiple NICs to do it right.

Re:HOWTO

[mnmn]

This guys right.

But I havent landed anywhere. I have a tokenring + ethernet + wireless setup at home with 8 machines. DNS server, virtualhost apache, virtualhost email, with a custom-made webmail made in php, guestbooks custommade in perl, chilisoft ASP, SAMBA, mysql has guestbook entries, etc etc. One server is FreeBSD another is Debian. Two others not 24/7 are Solaris and RedHat. I have the Linux Certified Admin and LPI level 2, but 4 months constant searching online/newspapers/agencies and not a single phone call.

Re:HOWTO

[xtremex]

I have pretty much the same as you, but I have a total of 12 years experience. Been out of work for 12 months...they say I'm either "too expensive" or they're scared I'll take THEIR job. I have a house, a wife and kids. I've tried the lower paying jobs but they laugh at me.

Re:HOWTO

[joshki]

Two things:
1. Why would you want to "steal" W2kAS/exchange when you can get linux/sendmail/qmail for free(legally), and Unix/Linux admins get paid more?
2. Don't ever lie on your resume -- it will come back to haunt you.

Re:HOWTO

[Kevin Stevens]

He should run the software for the environment he wants to work in- and in most large corporate environments windows is entrenched, and is not likely to go anywhere. Sure its great to know linux, and mebbe you could convince a switch once you have the job, but if you have linux all over your resume and you go to Morgan Stanley ( or wherever) and they say they are a Windows shop, you will never even get the opportunity. I did not intend for the post to start a holy war. I dont really think that is lying, you have the skills, you put them on your resume, you just dont have to mention that you did not necessarily obtain them while getting paid.

Re:HOWTO

[joshki]

Odd that you would pick Morgan Stanley for your example -- they're working with Redhat to switch [com.com] to linux for some of their operations.
My point wasn't that you shouldn't learn windows if you're in a windows shop -- my point was that Linux/Unix administrators get paid better, and that Linux/Unix have a much greater market share than you obviously think -- even in corporate environments. If you're looking for a job, that's a better place to look. Plus, you don't have to steal win2k, or lie on your resume...

Re:HOWTO

[Mourgos]

One caveat- you will be best off if you can find a decent ISP - one that will provide you with a static IP and wont block ports. That may be impossible or very expensive.

Speakeasy [speakeasy.net] does all that.

Find a "bridge" position in a Corporate IT shop

[bofus]

If you're trying to move from a "pure" OS position directly into an "IP routing and switching only" type of job, you'll probably find it difficult. Especially in today's job market.

I run a corporate Network support group that handles LAN/WAN technology, and my staff of 8 is mostly people who have started out as sysadmins and developed their networking skills along the way. The value this background brings is that their general OS and application knowlege allows them to troubleshoot beyond typical "Layer 2/3" problems. It also provides a more open interaction with our sys admins, who do not have routing and switching expertise. We do have several router geeks who focus on our IP routing and LAN/WAN switching infrastructure, but it's the folks with the mix of general OS and specific networking skills that keeps our DBA, progammer, and system administration customers happy.

If you're trying to get into a ISP or Telco NOC, you'll probably have a tough time, without demonstrable routing and telecom experience. OTOH, if you can find a corporate IT shop that supports a variety of technologies (WAN/LAN, Security/Firewalls, Internet, Data Center, etc), you can exploit you sysadmin knowlege in a networking environment. Make sure your resume highlights your relevant networking experience.

Some of my best overall Network Engineers came to me as Unix or Windows admins with a general understanding of networking, and a strong desire to learn more. We're not shy about providing training, and after 6-12 months we end up with very effective engineers who play nice with others. :-)

Good Luck!

The reason they won't hire you...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is because you goof off on Slashdot all day!

You're probably sitting at your desk doing that right now instead of, oh, I don't know, working!

Oops, I gotta go... the boss is coming.

Two different jobs.

[Ashurbanipal]

If a garbage man knows how to drive a truck, that doesn't make him the equivalent of a professional chauffeur. He may be able to do that job, IF he is exceptionally talented, but that doesn't make it the same task.

Get a part-time job as network admin for your local non-profit group. They might be able to advise you on how to get a tax break for your labors, if they can't outright pay you.

Battered spouse shelters, HfH locals, unaffiliated museums, etc. can always use help with technical matters. Find one that is looking to create a network presence.

Re:Two different jobs.

[DrZaius]

I would equiate a professional chauffeur to a web designer in this crazy hypothetical world.

IANAGM (I am not a garbage man), but I'm pretty sure you need a higher class license to drive a garbage truck. You'd probably need your air break cert as well.

A garbage man could call himself a truck driver then.

In reality, most people who are sysadmins could do netadmin work and vice versa.

Re:Two different jobs.

[anthony_dipierro]

They might be able to advise you on how to get a tax break for your labors, if they can't outright pay you.

Nope, you can't deduct labor, only actual expenses (like mileage driving to the site).

Tricks

[Telastyn]

One trick I've done, and seen done, is to request some machines to use as a testbed. Older sort of machines so they're cheaper. Basically to run patches on to confirm things work, or to try out certain software packages (like interoperability questions). This is something sysadmins should do usually, but don't.

AND ask for a low end cisco box (2611 and a 2924 or so) to make sure your company's filtering/ACLs won't effect the software. Then toy around with the switch & router a little bit. Nice practical know how for something you should probably have anyways.

Go work for a small ISP

[Deagol]

I recently moved into a small rural town, which happens to have a small ISP. Since the owner knows I'm a UNIX admin telecommuting to the university which employs me (and he has little in the way of UNIX expertise), he's been interested in my services. I've mentioned casually that I'd be willing to do some lite side work for free, with the experience being my pay. We'd then see if the arrangement might get more formal (that is, I get paid).

Note that this is for wireless installs and support (of which I have zero experience), since I already have a little experience with leased lines and routers. But the same thing could apply to anyone for any skill. Seek out smaller shops that may not be able to afford a full-time senior-level admin, and see if you can barter your experience.

All sysadmins have network experience

[Alex Belits]

If they don't they are not sysadmins. What they may lack is experience with particular vendors' equipment, however that is usually nonessential, and is remedied by reading a book. If a company does not understand this, a decent sysadmin wouldn't want to work for it. Where would shitty one-trick-pony sysadmins should work, I have no idea, my advice to them is to kill themselves so others won't suffer from their stupidity and incompetence.

I understand that US is in recession, and people are desperate, but this just isn't worth it -- when quality is lost, it's extremely difficult to get it back, so unless someone is comfortable with encouraging the start of another Dark Ages at no benefit for himself whatsoever, he should not try to chase narrowminded job definitions written by HR drones and PHBs but look for a job where no one will doubt his qualification.

I did the reverse

[Sandman1971]

I basically did the reverse. I used to by a WAN admin (managing an Internet backbone). 8 months ago I made the jump to SysAdmin (same company, but now managing customer-facing servers). You'll probably have better luck if you're staying within the same company then trying to get a Network Admin job at another company.

Having certs in your current field is always a good thing. It shows that you want to improve yourself and your willingness to learn. You might also want to look into getting a cert like Cisco's CCNA (which is a joke to get nowadays). It will show that you have basic knowledge of networking (CCNA covers stuff like subnetting and different network topologies and cabling and protocols, and of course, routers and switches).
If you have the extra cash, buy yourself some routers (ebay) and set up a home network (using something like OSPF or BGP; not just static routing).

Before jumping ship to my Sysadmin job, I had no real practical work experience in the *nix world. But I have alot of personal experience; running a home network, with mail server, DNS server, web server, etc... on multiple linux servers. This definately worked in my favour.

And as with any type of interview, there's more than just your knowledge; there's work ethics, willingess to learn, wanting to grow, etc... All these play into account, especially if applying for a job within the same company.

This whole method of jobsearching sucks royally

[mnmn]

For years since grade 6 or so, Ive tried to program Commodore 64, learn C and cluster Linux. I even made sure I know the nearby areas like I got my MCSE and CCNA and learned basic XSLT, while building a simple Opengl 1.4 game.

But I just cant seem to land work. I came to Canada recently and its been maybe 4 months I've been granted work papers. But neither IT job agencies work, nor newspapers/workopolis. They all say I have to 'bug' them. How? How can I just call someone at work and say hi I'm bugging you so I can make inroads into your company possibly replacing you. Damn straight I have bad social skills but arent geeks supposed to? Are HR managers that ill trained in that work whereby they hire a sucky technician one he knows or has been bothered on the phone by alot, but not make a quick check in the real market to get a better bang for his buck??

This I dont understand. "Lifes like that". Shouldnt be. What if I were the CEO of a small firm needing maybe 2 sysadmins? I'd definitely aim for the wider market and filter out the 'good' ones. After all I'd be working so hard to make the company succeed right? Why doesnt it work that way?

You might think I just dont have the needed skills. Heres a hint: I only have 2 years of a 4-year college. But my OS experience includes QNX and Plan9. I can do fancy stuff with vbscript + ADSI and have benchmarked 8 different relational databases. I can program in QT3.0, Perl, ANSI C Visual Basic, Assembly. Do I have to produce massive breakthrough OpenSource apps to enter the market? I really dont know people in this new country and the last one was a third-world country not worth going back to.

Does anyone have a simple answer to this beside "hey live with it"??? I dont think people in other fields of work go through this much jobsearch wrangling. I understand the market is crapshoot now, but what about the very lousy Sysadmins Ive met who managed pServers and didnt know what a WINS server is? People who land J2EE contracts.. and THEN start learning the damn thing. People who setup a website in IIS + Windows because "Microsoft is the biggest company" and say "Linux is just like DOS".

Go somewhere smaller

[toybuilder]

One possibility that comes to mind is that you are at a place that is too big for you to immediately "move up" and take the reigns of network administration. You might need to move to a smaller organization where you can apply your current skills in sysadmin 20%, and then devote the other 80% to expanding your skills to networking and management (of systems and networks).

It's sort of like the navy -- to go up in the ranks, you sometimes have to move to a smaller ship!