Where Can You Go After Systems Administration?

Burnt-out-by-the-Pager asks: "I'm currently employed as a Systems Administrator for a hosting company, and I've been a sysadmin at various hosting companies for over 5 years. I started feeling 'burnt out' by it a few months ago - especially by the on-call pager duty, which makes having any sort of social life difficult. (I also suspect that the pager duty has been seriously affecting my health by frequently interrupting my sleep.) My question to the readers of /. - Where have you gone after being a Systems Administrator? Have you had to start at the bottom and work your way up, or has your sysadmin experience helped? And most importantly: has it made your life better?"

Consulting is not the "high road"

[Anonymous Coward]

Those who can, do.

Those who can't, teach.

Those who can't teach, consult.

I've had the displeasure of dealing with consultants many times over the years - and not once have I ever met one that truly knew anything about the topic they were 'consulting' on.

Sorry, but consulting is a huge step DOWN the evolutionary chain, not up

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=19990718 [userfriendly.org]

Re:Change industry.

[nanun]

I agree.

Being a sysadmin in a good organization is wonderful. OTOH, it can be flaming hemorrhoid if you work for a PHB

I used to work for an insurance company in Honolulu. I had 4 people giving me orders: GL, JW, CM, and JS. The first sign the company sucks is that you have 4 bosses. All desperately needed a good going-over with the old clue-by-four. Yeah, I was on-call. No, they didn't issue pager nor cellphone. They expected me to get my calls at home.

Solution: Caller ID and party at other people's houses nightly. Lots of beer and you get to use the pager as an ugly watch or key fob.

In 3 years, no one could ever figure out why I was never at home. <smirk>

I got a better offer from a bank. I now carry a pager, but the team is so tight I've only had it go off once. Go figure. If the system is designed and run well enough, the pager should not be sounding off nightly. If that fellow's pager is waking him up every night, he might consider that he sucks as a sysadmin.

Fix your job

[mwa]

You're burnt-out-by-the-pager in a position in which you're the systems administrator, so you must keep getting paged by things you should have fixed long ago.

Yes, that's a simplistic view, but in the long run, no matter where you go or what you do in this industry, you'll have on-call "issues". Try changing your attitude about your current position. Keep track of the things that keep ringing your bell, and make them stop ringing. If processes are aborting, write a process monitor that restarts them and mails you to let you know it happened, then track down why and have the problem fixed. Running out of space? Find out how much is really needed and make the time (and the outage) to reconfigure properly. Add in automated cleanup. Setup a threshold monitor so you get paged in advance of a real problem, so you can clean up at your leisure.

What you have to do is fix the problems, but track done the root cause and make the problem stop happening. The last 3 positions I've held started out with the pager going off all hours every day. After a year or so, I get paged once every few months. When you do this, however, make sure your management knows what you are doing, why, and how successfull you are. You can find more money and more responsibility (and more free time!) by preventing problems, if management knows they are being prevented. If they don't, they may just think things are so good they don't need you.

Take the high road

[underclocked]

Here is a little secret, after years and years of experience (ie hard work), you have accumulated vast amounts of knowlege that other people might like. And the most profitable way to dispense this knowlege is Consulting

That's right, you get to help out others while doing little, if any of the work yourself. No pagers, some travel, and usually the pay and benifits are outstanding.

Check out the big companys: Accenture [accenture.com] and/or Deloit and Touche [dc.com].

Re:Change industry.

[Llanfairpwllgwyngyll]

If you are a GOOD SysAdmin, move into the wonderful world of Security.

Far less time dealing with lusers, and you get to lart really important people from time to time.... AND they thank you for it :-)

You do have to really know your stuff though - a good colourful background covering lots of different technologies is a must.

Sales Engineer/Presales Support

[eMlliK]

I feel like I'm shooting myself in the foot... but the best place to move to after being a sysadmin (if you have a broad range of skills and are one of the lucky few that can actually converse with people without too much effort) is pre-sales support/sales engineer. I made the move 6 months ago and couldn't be happier. I get to design networks for customers without worrying about how to implement them! And when they break at 3am, they call the help desk, not me!! Plus I more than doubled my salary in the process. Pick a company that treats their sales team as gold, as that's ultimately what you become.

Re:Fix your job

[TheLink]

That can be applicable in many places but the trouble could be he's working for a _hosting_ company, and it's the customers who are screwing things up. That's harder to control automatically.

Can't shutdown your customers and restart them automatically ;).

Cheerio,
Link.

Re:Avoid

[mini me]

I would have to second the consulting option, if you are willing to go out on your own to run the business. The knowledge you have gained from being a sysadmin should help you to understand what is the right tool for the job. There are lots of companies out there that are looking to upgrade or install new systems and you can help them chose what they need to get everything up and running as well as install it. Basically you can keep doing administration (wiht a few other jobs) while working for different companies all the time. You should also be able to set basically your own schedule and that should help you avoid your pager!

Note: I am not a consultant, the views are based on only what I have seen in the consulting industry.

Fresh view here?

[Woefdram]

Let's start by saying that I was a sysadmin for about a year, when I made a move to consultancy, only last month. So I can't speak of experience (no burn-out, no pager, no years of experience), but that might be interesting (call it an undistorted view *grin*).

What I think anyone should do when fed up with something: move on. The main principle here is, IMHO, to do just those things you like and leave other things to others. If system administration is what you really like, you should stick to that (but try to convince your boss that having a social life is as important to you as it is to him and that the pager isn't exactly helping).

But I'm sure there are parts in administration that you like more than others. Here comes my point... I like the admin job, but I particularly like security-issues. So I try to concentrate on that. Did that in my former job and guess what: I get to do a security trajectory in my current job! Apart from the fact that I nearly doubled my income, this is what I like.

Furthermore I want to do some programming and DBA. Did a little of that in my own time and I liked it, so I decided I want to see if it would be nice to do as a job. So what I do is try to steer my employer into letting me do programming and DBA.

Main point: do what you like to do. And don't be afraid having to admit your interests have shifted after a few years. Simply go for the jobs you like best at that time. Carpe diem, as the Romans said.

What do you want to do?

[EuroBryce]

Are you looking to change companies / industries? If you've been with your company for five years, you are probably a highly valued employee. You should speak to Management and HR about other opportunities that are available for someone with your skills and interests.

The hosting company that I work for is very large, so we have dedicated DBA, Development, R&D, and various applications groups as obvious routes for advancement. Some of our technical people have also moved on as account reps to our largest partners.

I happen to like Operations, just got tired of the constant "fire-fighting" and being attached to a pager. Unofficially I moved myself into more of a "Special Projects" role a while ago, lessening my day-to-day responsibilities. Now I'm getting ready to switch to genuine "Special Projects" group. On the Ops side, I'll be responsible for internal services. No pager, plenty of travel opportunities. When roll-outs aren't happening I'll be doing Dev and R&D type project work, without being shoe-horned into a specific role (I'm young, still not sure what I want my "career" to be).

Same road, further down it

[saberwolf]

I was sort of in the same position. My job was part sysadmin, part user support. The user support bit was starting to get to me (there's only so many times you can explain what ctrl-alt-del is before insanity looms on the horizon). Fortunately there was room to maneuver at my company and I negotiated a change of responsibilities and the job title 'Operations Manager'. I still do some user support, mostly second line stuff now so I tend to get the more interesting problems. What I get to do now though is have more control over things so I'm less frustrated and I get to tinker with 'the bigger picture' rather than getting bogged down in the daily grind of support. I see Operations Manager as a stepping stone to IT Manager which is my next goal, probably not with the company I'm with though. It really depends where you want to go, I'm aiming to join the ranks of the evil undead (the pointy haired bosses) but if you still want to play with the toys then this isn't for you.

Consider a move to the top

[grimarr]

I was a sys admin for a university computer system, which supported about 5000 users doing e-mail, database, and number crunching stuff. I heard about, and eventually took, a position as "the company computer guy" for a small local biotech company. They had about 30 people, about 50 PCs, 10 Macs, and were wanting to set up some Unix servers to handle the big stuff. My university job had been great, because they had always given us the flexibility to do learn stuff that interested us, but this was even more so.

The new job entailed lots of new, interesting stuff. They were building a new building for their company, so in the first year, I learned about premise wiring, telephone systems and services, LANs, WANs, NT server, building security systems, and more. Plus, we installed Unix and Linux for servers. It is a wonderful opportunity to build all the infrastructure from the ground up, and I was very lucky that we could afford to do just about everything "the right way", and had very little "legacy" stuff to hold us back.

It's not as demanding as it might seem. Mostly, people work 9-5, and while technically I'm on pager all the time, I don't get called more than 5 times a year, usually because of power outages.

Look for a small local company, that uses lots of computers, and is growing to the point where they need a full-time sysadmin, not just users keeping things running. They may not be able to pay top dollar, but the freedom of being "head of IT" can make up for a lot. I love it!

Avoid

[AdamInParadise]

As a rule, try to avoid anything with 'Administrator' in it: System Administrator, Database Administrator and the like. It might be interesting and well paid, but there's usually no way up. First your employer need YOU, always ready, so promoting you is hard, because you're so useful. Second, there is few places when there is more than a dozen admins, so a managerial position is hard to get.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy tinkering with computers, tuning them and making them run smoothly for everyone. Heck, part of my duties at my last job was to administer the NT network.

But I still think that this is a bad career move.

Try to go into consulting, and apply your administration skills to the actual conception of systems and networks.

Re:Change industry.

[Dinopeptic Germ]

I was an SA for a medical software company for 8 years. It was quite hectic and stressful as most every SA know's the job can be. I then switched to the banking industry and went into a Capacity Planning position. It invloved planning for new installations as well as doing performance analysis on existing projects. After 8 months I found myself getting bored with the paper work and the meetings. I decided to move back into an SA position because of two reasons. One, I like the "hands on" - I'm too much of a nerd to just look at a million dollar server on paper, I want to play with it too! And two, the banking industry offers me *much* more interesting (high end) servers to play with than the medical software industry ever did. Perhaps the change in position was just a "grass is greener on the other side" issue. What I really needed may have been a change in the industry I was involved with.

After IT?

[mustafap]

Time computers or Dixons.

Sysadmin today, what next?

[qbalus]

My first job in a software engineering organization was as a System Administrator. I found that the breadth of experience I gained positioned me to move into Lab System Administration. In my experience there was alot more freedom to create solutions in a R&D Lab. From here I moved into Software Testing, and Software Release Engineering. The System Admin background was always a very big help! From there I did Program Management, but found that I prefered creating software/hardware solutions and now consult and build custom portal solutions. I guess the thing it took me awhile to determine is what I was best suited for. Some folks love trouble-shooting and responding to urgent situations, some like to create, some like to manage, some like to write. I was fortunate to have spent a large part of my working years in large companies that provided exposure to alot of different careers. Once I figured it out... I went out on my own.

Cheers, QBAL

Personally...

[larien]

I just moved from a University sysadmin post to working as a Unix project engineer (various people will say I'm not a real engineer, but that's my job title, and it explains what I do).

What this involves is stuff like an admin does (ie, setting up systems, installing software), but doesn't have the same level of support that you may expect in a normal sysadmin post. Plus I don't have to do on-call stuff!

Oh, and since this is as a contractor in an oil company, the pay has increased dramatically! :)
--

Specialize

[TBone]

I haven't even been a SysAdmin for that long, but I consistently get 'suggestions' from vendors that I might consider becoming a Disaster Recovery specialist. Is it glamorous or easy? No, but you know that if you get into a position where you actually have some say over DR, that what you say needs done will be done. All 3 companies that I've been at lately have slashed spending for IT. Except for DR - you'd think the DR team ate capital for lunch every day.

DR, performance tuning, interoperability, and so forth. You will limit yourself, but you always have your basic SysAdmin abilities to fall back on.

Re:Specialize

[TBone]

Yeah, but the guy wants to know what you do after you get tired of being a general sysadmin.

Mind you, I'm not talking about the kind of sysadmin that gets stuck witht he DR Documentation in your current company - I'm talking about the kind of admin that a company like Veritas hires and sends out on consulting gigs to companies that are bringing in outside help for DR - or like Oracle does for Performance Tuning probelms.

Re:Change industry.

[JabberWokky]

I went from working at a courthouse (the network goes down, and you potentially put an innocent man in jail) to an ISP (the network goes down, and 4000+ users will tell you things about your ancestry that you never knew), both of which involved a "red beeper", which in the first case, I was the only one competent, and in the second case, I was generally the only one who would wake up to answer it, so became the first to call.

I then went to a finance company with tons of salespeople and a small, split Novell network (not every salesperson even had a computer, as there was a secretary for every five of them to manage files).

In the first week, I went out to lunch with the CIO to a restaurant right around the corner from the office. Less than five minutes after we sat down, the power went out. I started twitching. Ten minutes went by, and I said "I'm going to run up to the office to make sure everything is okay".

The CIO said: "The servers shut down after a minute of no power... I figured, why stress the UPSes?". I sat in shock, and he just smiled at me and said: "Business is stopped anyway; the phonesets are dead. They're probably all leaving early to go to a bar".

Sure enough, when we got back, nobody even asked, the place was nearly empty, and he walked over to the servers, and nonchalantly flipped them on and turned on the monitor to watch the bootup.

"I've got them trained right".

You see, the business was nearly all outbound calls schmoozing people. It turned out that there was a honkin' UPS on the receptionist board, and all inbound messages were taken down with no problem.

So, yes, there are some damn fine places to be a sysadmin. I had the space, the time and the budget to plan and execute a nice, very stable network and stable of laptops for travelling salespeople.

--
Evan

Quality Assurance

[nublord]

After working for 3 years on mixed Netware-WinNT 4.0 networks I went to work for a company that produces directory-centric applications. They scooped me up because I could set up complex networks and use their applications. It's been great - I still get to be a network admin (gotta set up and tear down the testing networks) without the whining users. I also get to be in on the development of new features and bring a 'user point of view' to applications. Engineers are great but they (most) don't know how to manage a network like an admin does. Some of the features they want to build in to a product look good on paper but have absolutely no use.

Learning the QA methodoligies has been easy. There are several good books out there. They're at home right now so I don't have the titles available. I've found that even the 'older' books, those written in the late 70's and 80's, are just as good as the newer books.

The biggest pluses - no pager, no 'I forgot my password', and lots of time to learn ALL the new technologies.

Re:Specialize

[AliasTheRoot]

I went the opposite direction, rather than specialise I chose to generalise. I have a huge amount of variety in my work, am well respected and get to make many decisions on technical implementation.

Oh and the money isn't bad either :)

Software Engineering/Programming

[darthtuttle]

I switch back and forth between being a software engineer and a systems manager. Software engineering is an interesting job, but you probably want to make sure you don't get stuck being a code boy forever. The real fun comes in design and research for software development projects. Having a clue about security and the like will make you a bit more valueable.

On the other hand you can move in to Systems Management. It's kinda like systems admin but with a better title :) Reall though, find a job where you actually plan, design, and implement solutions, rather then just provide a platform for applications.
--
Darthtuttle
Thought Architect

Here is the next step:

[Wedman]

BOFH [bofh.net]

Has it made your life better?

[krystal_blade]

Being a sysadmin has to be one of the greatest joys out there. Screw the social life.

The "Power Overwhelming" feeling gives me a hardon that would make Natalie Portman blush.

My maniacal laughs can be heard throughout the office, as I roam from system to system, wreaking havoc, restarting computers remotely on people I don't like, and checking the bosses E-Mail and deleting the ones that tell them to reduce my pay.

The only other job I would consider is the "prairie dog clapper".
(The guy who makes a loud noise in the cubicles which prompts everyone to stand up and look for the source, creating a "prairie dog" effect.)

krystal_blade

Financial

[wizzy403]

While now may not be the best time to do it, start looking for a job outside the ISP rat-race. I left that world for the financial industry just after Xmas, and I've never been happier. We have *MUCH* better equipment, better hours, my pager doesn't go off nearly as often (mostly due to working for a company that has the money to buy the right equipment), and I get paid much better.

Also, the technical challenge is much greater. At the ISP, I had a small single-tier network of mostly linux machines. Here, I have a multi-tier Sun-based production network, a 3 platform development network, plus all the routers, switches, load balancers, and firewalls I can eat. Seriously, I learned more about how you should really run a large-scale network in my first 3 months here than I did in 4+ years of ISP/Webhouse Admin experience.

Learn to step down a gear

[matt_wilts]

I was in a very similar position to you a couple of years ago. At that time I was a Systems Engineer for CompuServe/Worldcom here in the UK. We covered the UK & Scandinavia. Long work hours & international travel were really eating into my social life - I'd been single for 3 yrs & couldn't honestly see how I'd meet a partner working the hours I did.

Like you, I did on-call: fine when there are 5 engineers in the group, hey, it's only one week in five, right? Wrong...when 2 of them resign because of the pay/hrs, you end up doing it one week in three. And for this you got? £2000 p/a (about $3000 at that time).

After a particularly heavy week (4 countries in 7 days) I sat down & decided to re-evaluate my life. Was what I was being paid (MUCH MUCH less than the sales/marketing people, with no commission or company car) worth the continual colds, mouth ulcers, etc? No - I was running myself into the ground. My mother even offered me my old room back "just until you can sort yourself out" (I'm 35, by the way!)

Luckily after 5 months or so searching I found a job that was a 10 minute commute (instead of a 90 minute drive) with a local company. I'm now their Network Development Manager - so it means yes, occasionally I have to play politics, and I don't get to touch the toys as much either. I took a salary cut of £6000 (approx $8000) - but believe me, it was worth it for my health, if nothing else.

Sometimes you just have to take a step back & look at what you're doing. Hope you sort something out soon.

Matt

Change industry.

[jotaeleemeese]

If you like being a SysAdmin (you get to do many different things, unlike a programmer or a DBA) maybe you should consider changing industry.

Banks and the like: want you slaved to your pager but they pay good money for it. Stay away.

ISP: wnat you slaved to your pager and pay nothing. No comment.

Oil Industry, specialy services companies: they don't always require such hectic pace of activity, it is not unusual that they are strictly 9 to 5 and one rarely needs to carry a pager. There are some peaks of activity but most of the time tasks are mundane and you have time to either play Quake or read /. without feeling guilty.

Integrators: very hectic during projects, otherwise just phone support but it depends on clients and contracts.

Universities: you will be close to starvation, but will get some degree of sanity and if you choose correctly will have a lot of fun. If you can afford it why not to take a break working for one until you find the strength to start all over again?

Where have I gone after being a SysAdmin?

[merlyn]

Usually just to the local pub.

Switch Jobs

[scotpurl]

I went from sysadmining for a university to being an industry consultant. (The 3x pay increase was nice.) The U job was OK, but the abuse by grad students who wanted me to make their 486 run like a Pentium/print porn on the color printer/(un)install whatever they wanted, and especially by faculty who considered themselves gods, and considered me their personal whipping boy, "stop by my house, my computer won't run my daughters educational games..." Well, I was ready to move to a new job.

I was very lucky to get placed at a client site that's been almost perfect. I only had one major page, which was when a helpful unix admin decided to "fix" the permissions on a production server. That was an interesting 14 hours of work, after spending six hours on the cell phone (trying to tell someone how to execute unix commands) while I was trying to get back to the client site.

After that, I went back to programming, and doing systems architecture work. I don't get paged, I get to be as creative as I can be, I get to play with the new stuff, and I get called in to help figure out the big, strange problems. I don't carry a pager, and I never get called at home. I'm going on 2 weeks vacation next month, and I'll actually be left totally alone.

The security job that another poster suggested is OK, so long as you're not supposed to be the prosecutor, too. Having a job where you bring employees into a meeting to scold them for doing something wrong is best left to the HR people, and not to the computer security people. Nothing sucks more than a user with an attitude, and who wants revenge.

Main point is, switch companies. Some companies want as many firemen as they can hire, since they seem hell-bent to give all the users matches and gasoline to play with. Other companies fireproof everything, and actually send the users to fireman school.

the Scary Devil Monastery

[AliasTheRoot]

aka alt.sysadmin.recovery is where most burnt out sysadmins can be found :)

Seriously, if you have a broad knowledge of complex systems & the interactions between them and aren't afraid of using Powerpoint & Project then move in to an infrastructure architecture / project management role. These jobs can involve long hours but typically no pagers.

Security is good fun and good money, but a pager is required and it can get pretty hectic if things go titsup.com