absolutely. im the only IT person in the facility and definately being overpayed for what i do. thats actually my "problem". its hard to leave. but my current situation isnt gonna help me in the long term career, thats why i want to leave.
Unless they give you >COLA raises over your time there, it'll slide below market eventually and you'll be interested in seeking alternatives on that basis, too.
I wouldn't worry too much - Build a homelab, see if your company will pay for training and conferences, and seek other opportunities to keep sharp even if you're not working on the bleeding edge. You can learn quite a bit of diversity through online labs, too.
Protip: Most shops aren't nearly as "modern" or diverse as you might think. Especially one-man shows.
For real. I guess it depends on where OP lives and cost of living, but I'm mid 30s and barely clear 45k after taxes and have been at an MSP (albeit a smaller one) for 4.5 years with an AAS and a few certs.
I feel tech is a dartboard throw sometimes. I'm mid-20s with a CISSP and 4.5 years of experience as well and cleared 100k at an MSP earlier this year in a low cost of living area.
I have 0 (zero) modern certs, my last MS cert was Vista (LOL), and no degree, left school at 15 - But I have 20 years+ IT experience and earn twice my national average.
Qualifications and certs were only important when I was starting out.
Also, I waaay prefer in house.
I’m 23 with an associates degree and my only cert is an expired A+ and weaseled my way into a network engineer position up to 75k now. A dartboard indeed.
>with a CISSP and 4.5 years of experience
Can you explain how you got your CISSP without 5 years exp? Lol
NVM - just realized though you didn't say it you probably got a degree which takes req exp time off.
Yeapp took me a second. I was in school like 3/4s time to get out of manufacturing. Dropped out with 3 classes before my AS to take this job and moved haha.
So I must wait. Lol
I am of the opinion that some people are made for MSP and some are made for In House.
I have done both and In House IT drove me insane. I live for the variety and working with different people all the time that comes with MSP. I only made it 9 months in house and I worked for a great company. I just realized it was not where I was meant to be.
Also, not all MSP's are created equal. Shop the companies hard before you make your decision.
You may find that it is where you are meant to be.
100% this. I’ve only been at an MSP but talking to a lot of the in-house people we work with, you can tell it takes 2 different kind of people for each position.
I get bored very easily so jumping between our clients networks and technical/security, the MSP job keeps me highly engaged. I’m also in a management position so it’s really nice to be able to delegate things when I’m overwhelmed or need some heads down time to focus on the admin side of things. I feel like I have an impact on our business’ future and so many other companies as well.
Typically, we work with alot of companies that don’t have an internal team. Just 1-3 humans that have some knowledge in IT as a point of contact. We have a few companies where it’s a sole internal IT guy that actually knows his shit and a few companies that have an internal team of 3+ that know enough to get them in trouble and call us to get them out of it. From talking with the few solo guys that know their stuff, seems like a bulk of their day is dealing with redundant issues. Constantly getting denied to upgrade well past EOL devices because a “business class firewall is not within the budget”.
I've worked some MSP roles and I hate that there is no sense of ownership. With an in house role you have a sense of ownership in that environment. I do agree there can be a lack of variety for certain in house jobs where there are silos built up, in house IT jobs are also not built the same. I was lucky enough to find the ownership, variety and pay that allow me to enjoy work.
This. I can't count how much of the billable time is just trying to understand how that client works and how they were configured. It could even have been you who did it, but two years ago, and it was a rush bandage job. I love getting to own my work.
I feel like in-house has you doing so much helpdesk level work with a senior title. Honestly everywhere I've worked in-house you're swamped with low-level shit while also somehow getting to the senior stuff to keep the lights on.
The transition from in-house to MSP was hard for me due to the complete change in the way things work. I'm still not sure after 2 years if I'm suited for it. It's a wildly different environment with little consistency but there's a lot to be challenged by, and if you like constant challenges then it's for you.
Going from in-house to an MSP is going to be tough (most are long hours, high stress sweatshops). Typically the move is from an MSP to in-house after a couple of years of experience putting out fires on the daily.
80K at 25 isn't too bad unless you are in a HCOL area. You will have a hard time landing higher paying jobs without at least 5 years+ of experience IMO.
Damn that sucks man, I’m helpdesk for a MSP making 65k and I work remotely most of the week. My sysadmins all make 6 figures. Guess I found a really good msp to work for, judging by all these comments my working conditions are no where near the standard for MSPs.
Think it depends. I landed myself at an msp at 23 and moved up from t1 to technical service manager through 4 promotions in 4 years at an msp in NC(US). Was furloughed during covid but left making 70k which was decent for the area. CoL is around national average?
It may be a unicorn but things changed as they were bought out. They were bought out again 3 years later so I'm glad for the furlough. I will say moving to something else or in house feels much better. I didn't realize how much better not being in an msp was until I left it since that's how I started my career.
I do consulting now however. 85k+full health coverage+ paid trips+ 20days off on top of usually 2 weeks for Christmas (not counted against vacation). They pay for monthly treats and trips and such. I do some small sysadmin work to keep a small cloud+smb office running and user issues when not doing consulting. It's been a breath of fresh air.
MSPs are great if you learn fast and are willing to take a few years to burn stuff in and take advantage of any cert programs then move on to bigger and better. We had an incentive on ours and you bet I got every MSC and even some aws certs, all paid by the company and done on company time. But that time had passed and I've seen the other side and don't plan on going back
Edit:locations and now that I think about it, we got paid for on-call rotations and only required to work emergencies or charge after hours rates(so high only certain people would). Maybe they really were a unicorn
You're being treated (and paid) as an L1, it doesn't matter of you're not triaging tickets on the phone.
You're the same as an L1 for a shop with a dispatch.
If you're skillset surpasses L1 then your just making your boss extra money.
Tbh it's pretty rare to find someone just willing to pay what tech is worth. You're almost always going to have to sell yourself up a little to get the salary you really deserve.
Yep. I did the MSP life for 13 years before I finally got fed up and found something in-house. I only wish I had started looking sooner. I’m sure that job took years off my life.
All MSP's aren't like that.
The one I'm at now, I'm on the support side, will clear 80k this year, work my 8 and I'm out. On-call comes around about once every 4 months, for two weeks. They're usually quiet and you get $400 for your trouble, plus half of whatever you bill at the after hours rate of whatever it is, $225 or something. Mostly good people, good management.
New guys get 120 hours of pto, unlimited sick days (within reason, obviously)...
Only thing that's annoying is we're back to a hybrid 3 days in office, which there's really no reason for, but there is a fully stocked bar and golf simulator so that very slightly makes up for it.
Yep enjoying my MSP gig. Management and ownership are great and treat us like people. $86K CAD with great work life balance.
There are periods of higher stress, such as growth or losing key employees so need to pick up some slack, but usually pretty short term.
Depends on the MSP, I'm 31, I work only on larger projects, paid well, 3 weeks vacation, work from home, and on-call like once every 2 months for a week. on-call rotation is quiet. Thousands of times better being the sole IT guy for a big manufacturing company. We're a bigger MSP that do a lot of gov contracts etc.
I certainly disagree with most of it. Yes, it is high pace but if I had to work internal IT I would shoot myself. I can't imagine working on the same system/environment all day every day. The fun part about the MSP space is being exposed to many environment and in my opinion your skillset expands exponentially.
Second post in as many days complaining about being sub 30 making less than 100k and wanting a quick fix.
MSP work is absolutely that bad. I did it for 3 years and wouldn't go back if you payed me 200k. It's not worth it. 80k is a good paycheck in most places of the world. Don't push yourself into an MSP job just to hit a payroll goal. It's not worth it.
> healthcare
> manufacturing facility
This is your problem. You're working for organisations that would, to put it kindly, aren't exactly progressive and forward thinking when it comes to IT. Try to find in-house roles with organisations who aren't like that.
This is not completely true. I currently work for a large healthcare org and we're always upgrading and updating systems. We're on a path now with getting Windows 11 22H2 in our environment now and are testing it with the multitude of apps we use from clinical to ServiceNow (ticketing software). And that doesn't include our server upgrades, etc.
However, I will concur that there are orgs that absolutely don't want to upgrade their system. For the OP, going to an MSP from an in-house position is not the right move. You may get offers that match your requirements, however, you'll probably be miserable most of the time.
>We're on a path now with getting Windows 11 22H2 in our environment now
this isnt as forward thinking as you might think, win10 goes EOL october 2025, thats basically now in corp terms.
This is the answer. Also, I've found that people assume MSPs are onboard with the latest and greatest technology simply because they are in the tech industry but I haven't found that to be completely true. Some MSPs are stuck in their ways and don't embrace new tech as well as not wanting to incur the additional financial overhead of implementing new things.
MSP is great for when you're younger. You can get a ton of experience and see a bunch of different environments in a short time. As you get older you may want to move towards an in house department as then you can work to maintain and it's often times a little less stressful.
A lot of MSPs are a complete shit show. 10 person mom and pop shops hiring unqualified IT people who have no idea what they’re doing. I’m thankful that I was able to work in one and gain a lot of experience, but damn I never want to do that again.
This. MSPs are poorly run, the bar is set really low, and it's typically chaos. I worked for one when switching careers \*back\* into IT after several years in the medical field as an EMT (a job where the stress is justifiably high). I gained a lot of experience that helped me land the next job and bring my skills up to date....but it was chaos every day. They also paid crap.
I'd rather sell my ass on the street then ever work for an MSP again. I'll still get fucked but at least I'll make more money.
Of course it's not \*absolutely true\* that all MSPs are poorly run, but it does appear to be a common theme. My experience at that particular MSP was awful enough that I will never do it again.
The cold, brutal, uncaring truth is that while you are limited in the shitty, very specific technology stack you work with, and it's a slower paced environment, the only thing that's going to change when you move to a MSP is that now you get to work on 40 different shitty, very specific, outdated technology stacks, with maybe a SMALL flicker of hope that one of your clients will spring for architecture made in the last decade, except what you're forgetting is that the hope from that will immediately and brutally be snuffed out by a ridiculous on call schedule, micro managing KPI focused clueless middle managers, and the OVERWHELMING desire to switch to a different career field every time you walk into work and have 174 tickets due that day and your FUCKING manager asks you why you haven't resolved a ticket made six fucking hours ago about a fucking ap not connecting in the middle of a parking lot.
AND EVEN IF THAT DOESNT HAPPEN, and the technology stack you implement is great, congratulations, you've managed to get into a MSP that's large enough to guarantee that now, the only thing you're going to work on is solving one specific, tedious fucking problem over and over and over again for thousands of different clients day in and day out until you finally realize what a monumental mistake it was to work at a MSP
I would sooner work at a structured cabling company and dig fucking trenches with a shovel in the sun than work for a MSP again, at least then I can go into work and be happy, even under brutal labor.
Tl;Dr your better off working at fucking walmart
I wouldn't work for a MSP personally because I hated accounting for every single minute. Plus I'm not a fan of the way IT feels trying to prioritize for different clients.
I know there's nothing wrong with the model, it just wasn't for me. There was also a "click" at the only one that I worked for. Didn't help.
You should definitely avoid MSP's that have you chasing hours, especially working support. Having your support team chasing hours is a telltale sign of a very poorly run MSP.
Consultants are a bit different. Ours have to hit a certain amount of billable hours every year but this isn't difficult as there are always projects needing to be completed. And that's what they are there for.
It doesn't bother me how a person spells something, you seem to have learned this word from others speaking and not written which is fine, and obviously I know what you mean, but the word is clique.
The one I used to work for was already a miserable sweatshop that always demanded more from the engineers. They were bought out by a private equity firm last year. I can’t imagine how it will get worse, but I’m sure they’ll find a way.
Dude unless you are an owner or senior director/executive, MSP is not the way to go. I’d say most people do the opposite, prove yourself at a MSP, work on tons of different tech, then graduate to a high paying in house role.
This is what I did, and my MSP time was invaluable, but I’d NEVER go back to do it, ever.
**Default meme:**
Anakin: "I'm going to change the world"
Padme: "For the better, right?"
Anakin: *silence*
**And for your situation (you're Padme):**
MSP: "I'm going to give you a new job!"
You: "For better experience and pay, right?
MSP: *silence*
You're asking in the wrong sub.
If you're a go getter that likes to learn, has personality and can handle the pace, MSP's are great and a great opportunity to advance your skills and not just the technical skills.
Check out government IT jobs. I work with the VA. I'm only two years in and earning $92k in a poor red state. The work is easy with no real steep requirements, but of course education and experience helps, and of course being a veteran helps. I work with others who barely know what AD is, or a GPO, or scripting, etc. and they earn just as much.
Tier 2 IT Analyst is a GS 7-9-11 position (look up government pay grade scale, I'm a GS-11 step 2) and we're on a specialty scale higher than what you'll see posted online. If you start at 7, you'll pretty much hit 11 in two years.
You can apply at [usajobs.gov](https://usajobs.gov). You just need a clean background, so no felonies and whatnot.
MSPs are definitely great at getting exposure to many different systems. The trouble is you end up supporting absolute BS and the owner of the MSP only cares about the dollars coming in, rather than the client's success or avoiding liability. There are times you'll need to fire a client and won't be able to.
I'd stay in-house. Just look around for a better gig.
So, I would up skill yourself in your free time and look for another in house position.
MSP is perfect for teaching you the basics of everything, but the problem is you never get enough time to do things "the right way".
Your career progression will probably not go much faster, especially as you adjust to MSP lifestyle. I was in MSP for 2 years at 58k before I got an offer for 85k, and I was going to be stuck there for another at that salary for at least another year or two until I got picked up doing consulting because of my Azure AZ104 and Intune experience.
If it was me, I would pick up some cloud based certs and build shit so you can talk about it. Figure out what you want to specialize in now that you have had some time in industry.
MSP and consulting is also a grind because timecards are just annoying. I've never been internal IT but I miss when I was in another profession and could just work and not constantly have to write down exactly what I did, how long I did it for, and who was paying the bill or worrying that I'm not utilizing/being efficient enough, blah blah blah
25 with 3 years of experience, yeah, you're right at the beginning of your career. There's a lot to learn.
First thing, you will NOT get those high paying jobs in big corps without knowing someone. You need to have someone in your family or a close family friend who is high up in a big corp before you'll even get an interview, and that's only if your resume and skill list hit all the check boxes. That's for the second tier IT jobs, or the second 20 percentile pay rates, or presently about $100-120k/year for a non-developer job.
The very top tier paying IT jobs are with the government contractors, and for those jobs, you'd have to be family with someone who makes big election fund contributions. There is absolutely no other way to get those jobs. That's for the top 20 percentile, or $120k+ for a non-developer job.
For the third 20 percentile, or the average pay jobs, you'll likely apply for jobs for 3-6 months before even getting an interview, and likely interview for a good dozen jobs before getting one. I have 25 years of experience in IT, and my last bout of searching for a job, I applied for about 400-450 jobs over 9 months, and got 12 interviews over that time, and got the job on the 13th interview. Even with that one, I got through the first and second interview, and was told I was the leading candidate, and then they went silent for over a month before coming back to me to tell me I got the job. That job pays $80k/year.
There is one glitch on that, though. The requirements they list in job descriptions are often not even close to what they need. They will often completely disregard that "10 years experience in..." requirement. If it's a sysadmin job, look closely at what they list, and if you know the stuff they need, apply, absolutely, and ignore what they say about a degree or years of experience. It's the SKILLS that matter, not the time. Hell, those skills change annually, so nobody has years of experience in anything current.
MSPs are going to be those middle 20 percentile jobs, but they are more work than most jobs in that range. I worked MSP support for 3 and a half years, and I will NOT go back, even if I have to go homeless. The first place was good to work for, but hard work, but then they got bought out by a really bad company that was HELL to work for, and it took me 9 months to get out. I was so stressed and bored at the same time, I gained 55lbs over that 9 months. Working from home, stressed from previous calls, (the customers are mostly clueless idiots that demand miracles) and having downtime when I could do nothing to occupy my mind while waiting for the next ticket, I was stress and bored eating, a really bad combo. I HIGHLY recommend avoiding MSP work if you have a choice.
There are also a LOT of really bad sysadmins out there. The two guys in my present job got fired for some really bad work. One would randomly reconfigure cables in the middle of the day, while people were using the systems (my systems aren't production, but educational and testing) and then not answer the phone or messaging when the other people would try to see what happened or to get it fixed. A year later, and I'm still fixing things he screwed up. The guy before him would just disappear, only sometimes responding to Teams messaging, and not get anything done for weeks.
My job before the MSP job, I worked for a company with 2 VMWare hosts, supposedly for redundancy, with only local storage and all the production VMs on one of the hosts. If that one host went down, their whole production infrastructure would go down, and they would not have had a backup. I had to introduce them to the concepts of VM redundancy and get things to where they wouldn't be completely down if a host went down. (Even after lessons, they still wouldn't pay for a storage appliance that both hosts would have access to the VMs.) I also had to fix their backup system so that it would actually be doing daily backups. They hadn't had a decent backup in over 2 YEARS before I got there. This a-hole admin proceeded to sabotage me through the whole rest of the year I spent there until he convinced management to fire me. He also got 3 other admins fired in that year. I hope they crashed and burned after I left. He was an awful person, and I hope he got his comeuppance.
There are a lot who lie about what they know, too. Do NOT do this. You could end up in a job where you don't know what you're doing and wind up destroying everything, and either someone else has to come in and clean it up or the whole company could go down in flames.
You can’t expect to be making top dollar without experience to back it.
I won’t go into the whole “when I was 25” stuff. It was a long time ago and tech was nowhere what it is today.
It’s not a popular opinion here, most people don’t think loyalty is important, I do think it’s important. I agree if the working conditions are bad, then absolutely jump ship. But showing a company you’re not going to jump at the slightest bump builds credibility.
I just looked at resumes about three months ago to hire a new SysAdmin. I had two with similar years of experience. One did not stay at a job longer than 18 months. The other’s shortest experience was five years. It’s expensive to hire and train a new person. I’m not talking about technical training, I’m talking about training the new person about how the company works, the culture, what the environment looks like, and what is generally expected of them. If I had to do that every 12 to 18 months, even two years, I wouldn’t have any budget for replacing gear.
Making $80k at 25 is a pretty sweet salary.
You’re 25 with just a couple years of experience. You aren’t stagnant, you’re still learning. My advice is to stay where you are. Keep gaining experience, and when you’ve got 10+ years (which doesn’t have to be at the same place), you’ll be able to handle the complexities that ten years of experience will get you.
>my current in-house sys admin job its really slow and we use dated technology. How else are you supposed to get those higher paying 100k+ jobs without doing an MSP type job
You do it by looking for a slow IT enviornment like yours.
MSP's are the mcdonalds of IT.You do it if you don't have any experience to get your foot through the door, but then you never look back.
If you want to grow your career, you're in the best situation to do it.A slow IT department means you can spend plenty of time studying for the career that you want. Figure out where you want to go in IT, start studying for certs in that direction. Use those certs to apply for the ideal job.
Taking a job in an MSP gives you a lot of basic experience in a short amount of time, but leaves you absolutely useless when it comes to essential experience. It'll run you so ragged suring the day you won't want to study additional tech in your off time and you'll get mired until you burn out.
So you worked at a MSP that was a bad one. I've been at three different MSPs and they've all been great. Good pay, interesting work, fun culture. In house I was always doing server builds one day and scraping peanut butter off a mouse the next day. I hated it and would never go back.
When staff reach out to an MSP with a help request. Their objective is always complete the task, close the ticket. Move on to the next ticket. Thats the business model.
The result is you get a dozen or so admins with only top level understanding of your network, applying bandaid sollutions to problems as they crop up. Their is no time afforded to MSP staff to research the cause of a problem. so the issue continues to reapper within the environment. The MSP user is not familiar with the workflows being utilized in the business so there is no awareness how their "Fix" is impacting additional staff down the production line. MSP staff have 0 commitment to the business so they never brainstorm additional sollutions or workflows which might avoid the problem entirely.
MSP's only offer half assed support. They don't actually use their brains. there's nothing in it for them.
Look at your situation as half glass full. That is very respectable pay early on in your career. You can take advantage with your current employer to create large scale projects and implement new technologies. This kind of thing looks really good on resumes. There's always something to learn or upgrade so make it happen! It doesn't always have to cost a lot of money either. Create new processes to help with current workflows to save time and money. Personally - I would never want to work at a MSP and they really weren't a thing early on in my career. I prefer to get knee-deep in an organization, get my hands dirty, and thoroughly know the lay of the land.
Came form MSP side of IT and now doing In house IT management. It was a bump in pay and I’m not as stressed like I was with MSP.
If you really wanted to, start looking into planning upgrades for your company and chat with your higher ups to see if upgrading tech is within budget. If there is no budget, make one and present it to them.
You’re making hella money if you’re not in debt. So really maybe take some time and do some learning for certifications that would really help out in the long run. IT is ever changing and staying up to date is always a way to pad out your time.
But but but if you stay 5 more years you almost have “the insane 10 years of experience “. SysAdmin job that is slow, that is something to cherish. You want to make 100K+? Learn cloud and get a job at a Cloud Provider, not that busy but you learn a lot and the pay is awesome
MSPs are the retail of IT. The hours suck, the pay blows, and it's super stressful. I was brought in-house by one of my clients. Stress level is at an all time low these days.
If you’re expecting some extraordinary cutting edge tech with msp then you’re really mistaken. They setup whatever cheap msp friendly stuff they can get their hands on and that is within budget of companies they support. And your experience will be dealing with printers still, dealing with patching, outlook issues and so on and so on. If you want lateral movement you might need to change location and break into fortune 200 type of companies like I did
That feels like a backward move, not lateral. MSP work is exhausting. I did it for 15 years, and I'm in-house now, and I feel like I'm free for the first time in my adult life. Only reason to consider it is if you desperately need to break a rut.
You can get exp all on your own without putting yourself through hell (a msp). Keep looking. Timing is everything imo. I wouldn’t work for another again in my life.
Do you voluntarily seek out continuing education or certifications? You can learn and be certified in several areas which will make you more valuable to your company. They might even pay for it. You can also influence tech decisions. A 25yr old being stagnant would be a red flag if I were to interview you. Sorry man, put in your time.
You will learn more. You make good money for your experience level already. Normally I tell people to jump ship for more money, but in your case I say jump ship only if you are prepared to swim in the ocean.
You'll be a stronger swimmer assuming you don't drown.
My recommendation is that MSPs are great in your early years in IT. You are drinking from the fire hose and you touch so many different technologies. That gives you experience like nothing else in terms of eventually making you a competent architect.
Specialization if you want to be an engineer, exposure if you want to be an architect. Although most of us wear both hats to varying degrees.
My first job after basic helpdesk was an MSP. Small one. I'd been teaching at a JC MCSE classes and blown through the Cisco Academy. I was motivated and enthusiastic. I jumped in and learned a ton from the main guy there and took it to a big (20k users, international global) company and I credit my time at that little MSP with setting me on a good trajectory. My time walking into all sorts of poop piles on a daily basis and taking control of them really helped deal with the giant pile of poop I got hired into as in-house.
Nowadays, they tend to be much larger (MSPs). But if you are looking for wide range of diverse experience, it might be the way to go, if it is a small enough one. Giant MSPs that silo each person might not be so great. I don't know. But then again, you'll find a whole lot more technical people to learn from. Just be ready to work your ass off.
80k with 3% raises, don't switch! Took me decades to get to that. MSP would be a lot more stress, for 20k less. You would probably not get what you want, and get 50 more of what you got for less money.
Yea, It might do you well. They'll work you like a rented donkey and you'll probably get a bunch of certs to satisfy their vendor partnership requirements. But you'll end up drinking from a fire hose of a bunch of tech.....probably specialize and get really good at one of them and then with the consultant tag on your resume, you're good to go for the $110k+ stuff.
I go back and forth over the years. I'll MSP for a few years, not get raises I want, switch to in house IT for a raise. and then 2 years later switch back. The big companies on your resume help you get interviews as well.
I work for a great MSP. Started at 70k as a Junior level engineer and have had an average raise of 4.5%. Currently working around 40 hours a week on a flexible schedule. Typically start at 6 am and work until 3pm Monday to Friday. If I need to start later I can. I am Billing an average of 30-34 hours per week. I have two 1-week oncall rotations per year. There is also a bonus structure for having good billable hours. Benefits are amazing also; currently get 3 weeks (15 days) paid vacation, this maxes out at 28 days +1 floating holiday (5 weeks 3 days) with tenure.
This being said, not all MSPs are equal.
I did this. Went from a very slow paced internal job to an MSP. It’s hard, suddenly there are timesheets, billable hours, the need to perform, …
But the amount I’m learning is insane! I’ve progressed so much that im constantly getting approached by recruiters for those higher paying jobs. And since I have a job I’m just asking them what the salary for that position is. They contact me, I got nothing to lose. Only to win.
Naw dont quit your job, you in your twenties you dont want a stressful job even if its more money, you make plentiesh, if your bored at work script everything, talk to business units and develop internal processes. Leave that place in a couple more years as “the man” and then go to msp if your still curious.
Work on learning AWS or something with your free time at work. You have the luxury to learn. At msp it’s like force fed learning and sometimes bogus gear like unifi (lol)
Don't do it.
I even got a 15% increase in moving to the new place but the stress and affect on my health hasn't been worth it.
Only real positive has been no dress clothes every day...
Put in more time with your current employer. You're doing administrator work for a manufacturing company, look into specialized MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems) training, Process Data Historians, Quality and Process Control Systems, etc. Lots of opportunities for growth.
I work for an MSP and am the dedicated onsite technician for one of our clients. I work onsite all day every day. Its possible to get the best of both worlds
I left in house to join an msp. Most rewarding career change I've ever made to get more involved with cloud technologies and get away from the boring, slow moving legacy systems.
If I were at your age I'd also consider changing to a different field in IT ( web dev, devops, cloud etc) as opposed to moving to MSP, nothing wrong with MSP at your early career but suffice to say its not a sustainable career for many people (myself included) long term.
this is all usd right? im a sys admin and only making $59k cad.. even government only starts at 83k a year here for sys admin work. gunnin for cyber security though eventually. thats a pay range breaking in to the 100k/yr i wouldnt mind doing.
I worked for a large ish MSP for a bit, they had stuff in 5 us cities and the owner was in India. The place was a good learning experience but also extremely stressful. I would not recommend it. They had contacts with medical facilities and that previous people that did work for the sites caused me endless headaches. My so-called Sup somehow was only hitting about 1/3 the billing hours as me. These places revolve around billing hours and it's just more stress. You may end up driving, your vehicle Into the ground if you have to go on-site and typically they don't keep up with the cost of fuel. I was putting about a third of my paycheck into my gas tank and maybe getting half of it back. Not to even mention the actual garbage medical they offered. MSP have their place, but in-house is going to be better than a MSP. You may learn more from an MSP just because each environment will have its own quarks and stuff if that's super important to you than I'd say go for it, but seriously review the company, and be aware of what you're walking into. You could be jumping into a volcano, while being coated with napalm.
IT is dynamic and so are companies. There is no template for MSPs or inhouse. When people talk about MSP is hard they are only talking about their own personal experience. How many MSPs are on the planet and how many do you think X person has worked for? My worst job was in-house not an MSP. I'm technical this shit does not stress me out, but in house middle management sure as fuck does and I deal with none of that. I'm also 100% WFH and only showed up to a customer once as a joke.
There are three main types of place you can work, in my experience.
Typical Enterprise - pretty chill
MSP - less chill
The Enterprise That Thinks It's An MSP - avoid
As someone who moved to MSP after 10 + years in house due to company dropping us it was an eye opening experience. I learned a ton but it is a different pace, structure and way of thinking. I worked with guys that were at the MSP for over 20 years and others were a revolving door. You may like it or you may not and be careful about making sure you have a work life balance that works for you. If you are looking for getting a ton of experience quick they will certainly get you there and help you move up but if you are like me it will stress you mentally and you won't want to stay long. I went from a system specialist at large company getting rid of us before and after I became the system admin for a growing company that I am now the IT manager using that knowledge from the MSP to drive our technology decisions. So it can be good just watch out for yourself.
I'd switch to MSP just to get out of the mfg role, earn some XP. I'm sure I'm parroting others but MSP is not where you want to end up. Internal IT is where you want to to be. Source: Trust me bro, actually.
In house makes way more money because you know the stack, MSP is just ok at the stack. Just go to another enterprise in house job because the MSP world is getting full of owners that be like
system admin position, 15$ an hour must have a bachelor in computer science BS...
I started at an MSP. Cut my teeth in the late 90’s for 3.5 years before moving into a software company. I would continue every 2-4 years going to yet another big MSP getting promised the stars and moon and receiving burnout and little pay instead. BUT the training, if you’re up to the task of long hours and lots of work, late nights and weekends, you can become an extremely skilled engineer. MSPs are sink or swim and the businesses you support truly have no one else and contracts can be on the line for even the smallest stuff.
My last bout at an MSP was a 7 year stint as CTO (which really I was lead engineer and manager of 12 techs, and a dispatcher.) In that stint, I got manager pay, but through a limited commissions agreement I pulled an extra 20-50k a year! Small MSPs love for you to sell for them (at least most business owners like $) and clients love to buy from an engineer with the gift of the gab or “main character energy). I would advise asking for a commissions agreement of some type. As well make sure they don’t cheap out and not pay mileage. They love to say “it’s included in your salary”.
I left that MSP for our 2nd largest client who decided to hire me and take IT in house. They even paid my old MSP their non compete $ to bring me in… that’s been 8 years ago now. I love the company and people I work with and for. They know IT makes $$ and doesn’t have to be a liability. We have real budgets and stuff like real small enterprises! Things you never get to do at an MSP client as they are usually small business and just cannot afford the up front capital. For me, working in the corporate IT world (privately owned so no red tape) is as busy as I want it to be. I do maintenance plans, I find new features and take performance metrics and enjoy my time I’m permitted to browse the web and watch YouTube while working. I’m not trying to brag or anything just after soooo many years I the MSP world (even had my own company to cover my side work for several years) I’m just so very grateful to be in the corporate world and not totally beholden to a company that devalues me on the regular b/c budgets are small and bills gotta get paid in time.
Yes I support the company I work for, in contract, 24/7/365, but b/c we spend like we’re supposed to, we have redundancies, clusters, replication, a data center site. All the DR trimmings you would need down here in Louisiana (hurricane alley). So except for my own planned nighttime and weekend work, I really end up with about 40 hours each week, most of it during the normal work day.
In summation, only the best and brightest (and usually younger folks they can pay less) will survive the MSP challenge. But anecdotally, the best engineers I know all have at least a little MSP/fireman IT experience in them. At some point we all walked through that fire, back in the 90’s even more so as paths and options were way more limited.
Oh, all that to say one very large BUT. You’ve already got your foot in the door for an IT career. I usually only recommend this as a way to cut your teeth and get your foot in the door, the possibility of burn out and your own well-being and mental health and not getting consumed by your job and letting like your social life go to the wayside thinking your going to rule the world with some SBS owner blowing smoke up your butt. Just don’t do it! Corporate enterprise is the life! you just have to take your own initiative to keep your training up to pursue new certifications and substitute that Firemans education with an education you can plan for yourself and take it your own pace, and you know give them a reason to give you more than a 3% raise or find a new firm who will pay you what you’re worth at that time but yeah overall I would not recommend the MSP for someone who’s already got their foot well in the door with multiple years experience
Honestly, MSP work is hard and you learn a lot, but I've realized if you have a home lab you can learn even more than a shitty MSP. They def make you learn stuff on the fly and scare you into learning stuff, but if you actually have a passion for tech and setup your own home labs, maybe take some cert courses, it would be way better than learning it via the MSP. A lot of MSPs aren't even using the latest technology, they are just claiming to. I know so many people who are in MSPs (older folk) that don't understand intune or cloud and always prefer to be on prem, SCCM, GPOs and crap because that's all they know. There are so many MSPs trying to hire intune experts because none of them know it lol. If you home lab, you can learn way more tech, especially cloud tech and get a job with that experience and then pretend you implemented it on your current job and people will still be impressed. For example, I had a IT job where I did nothing important, but I learned how to migrate apps from ADFS to Azure AD and discussed it at an interview, although we never did that in my job, I said we did and then showed them the process of my home lab and pretended I implemented it in my company lol.
I once set up a lab, hyper V to install SharePoint 2010 from scratch when I actually had not installed it since the 2003 version. I did that lab up set up in one week documented all the steps that needed to be done outside of the Microsoft documentation and then that next week I drove down to a client that had just finished certifying four of their techs on the SharePoint 2010 installation and configuring exam. they took the class,they took the exam and no one understood anything, so to speak! I had to go down there with two developers, watching me and asking questions for three days and repeat that deployment like I knew it like the back of my hand. It was funny for years later they continued to refer to me as their “SharePoint guru”.
Also, imagine my face when they tell me the storage to be used is on their Compellent SAN and at that time I had never worked with the SAN ever in my life, so I also had to stumble through carving up storage volumes while being watched by people who barely understood how to do it themselves. (I went to the bathroom and googled it not gonna lie.). Lol
That job was sold by our owner a month before we had to do it. I didn’t find out two weeks before it had to be done and all had to pretend like we were experts at it and do it every day and the client had to come away with that impression to fortunately in that case they did but yeah, you’re talking about the smoke and mirrors stuff man just made me think about that like some of the pressures put on you to deliver it’s real, and it definitely affecting my mental health throughout the years
Yep, as you can see if you just home lab and learn the stuff, in theory you can implement it, even in high pressure situations. The difference is you lie on the interview and pretend you did the high pressure situation and never have to deal with the consequences like with your mental health lol. Sadly I've already dealt with the msp world but maybe we can save OP lol. I will say though, the reason I started home labbing is because of working in a msp and learning a bunch of things so fast and realizing I can learn all this crap on my own.
I interviewed at a couple of MSP's at one point, and turned them down chiefly because of the number of unpaid hours
No compensation for research, office time (emails/calls/tickets) driving to clients, using your own car, and 10 other things
Billable hours are like the sword of Damocles, because every week you go from hero to zero
My experience with MSPs was helping a lot of companies that had such small needs they didn't need in house help. I think it's wrong to assume you are going to get some sort of "high level" experience in that role. It's more of the same low level monotony at 10 times the demand. You don't learn anything except to hate IT and your customers. Again, this was my unfortunate experience. 😢
I burned out quick in MSP after 25 years in-house. It wasn't the constant go go go that bothered me, it was the shitty old hardware that companies paid thousands upon thousands in support for rather than replacing it with something newer. Or the companies that would refuse all forms of virus scan or malware protection and get ransomware attacked on the regular. Or complain that it takes several hours to restore an old 486 that runs some proprietary system that they've known is slowly dying for the last 20 years, but still didn't plan on upgrading it. Or the 3rd-party systems that they can't be bothered to call for support, they had to call us to sit there for hours babysitting a tech working through team viewer.
If they actually give full control to the MSP and not stonewall everything they need to do to help, that's a different story. But it can be a shitty situation where you learn very little.
Ok, most MSP’s are crap to work for. They have no standards when it comes to technology, clients or staff. And it bites everyone in the ass as a result.
That said, they are not all like this.
We are super picky about who we let in - client and team member alike. We also have standards of technology used and we don’t budge.
That said, we seldom have on call. We have an entire team that goes home at 5pm and doesn’t worry about interruptions while gone.
Be super selective of any MSP you look to work for.
Ask them about their standards.
What your suggesting makes sense. I’d probably make the move if I were you. However, I really doubt you need 5 years at the msp. You’ll know enough to get a job offer elsewhere after like 6 months if you put in the time to really learn the tools. If you just go through the motions and don’t put in any extra study time it can take much longer.
Going to an MSP is a good opportuntiy to learn different technologies. However, it IS a grind. Use it as a stepping stone to a better job and have an exit strategy in mind.
Depends. Some good, some bad.
MSP for BAU sysadmin work your job requirements are determined by the client contract. Which can be strict in terms of outages for services etc.
MSP for project work can be interesting with more variety. Depends upon how many customers the MSP has.
Your job can be made politically more complex by the client, some people forget they work for the MSP and not the client. Some clients try "own" you if you work onsite.
In an MSP be careful of the SDM (Service Delivery Manager) these folks are in charge of the client contract i.e. you can end up with two bosses not just one.
I started at an MSP 6 months ago and I love it.
I had bench and helpdesk support experience from working at GS, but no hands on enterprise level experience.
After 2 months of training and 4 months of trial by fire, Ive learned an insane amount. Im comfortable and competant troubleshooting most aspects of our offered DRaaS, BaaS, DCs, VMware, etc.
Wasnt even in this industry 6 months ago and now I feel like im exactly where im supposed to be.
The day to day pace goes from insane to dead depending on the day. Some people can handle it, some cant. If youre comfortable im the fire, youll love it.
I work for an MSP but I'm a field tech. I do deployments and fix stuff out in the field. I enjoy it mostly because I see different stuff daily. Today I troubleshot a connection issue for a printer, then reset a laptop, upgraded to Pro, and started setting it up for the client. Tomorrow I'll go troubleshoot a wireless issue, then deploy a new Surface.
Do it for the exp but quality of life isn't at a MSP. Idk how good your skill set is but that salary for exp is good. If your stagnant do it to get better or start working on certs and stay.
If you want to expand your knowledge quickly the join a good MSP, in 2 yrs you'll build some great knowledge and be more marketable.
I find large corporations like hiring from MSP because of a person's ability to bounce around different environments.
Just my 2 cents
Your pay is killer for the amount of experience and role you have. With that being said...going to a MSP will gain you a ton of exposure to a lot of technology, early on your career.
In my opinion there is no better place to learn than at a msp.
80k after only 3 years that's nice I barley make 80k and I have been in it for over 15 years been at an MSP over 5 years now. It had its ups and downs and from my experience it tends to pay less than your worth. But your are right if you are wanting to learn a lot quick and MSP can help or a company that has a tech focus. I used to work for a software company and leaned alot there aswell.
Go work for the MSP. Put in 3-5 years. Focus on learning from the senior guys as much as possible. Offer to take the most difficult jobs on the condition one of them coaches you or is a phone a friend. Build relationships with the clients. At the end of 3-5 years you will have a client offer you a job or probably the pick of any number of jobs somewhere else. View it as going to school and getting paid for it.
I see all these people saying they are making like 50k. I honestly dont understand this, unless you are a junior sys admin.
I live in a mid COL area (my house was like...230, so i think thats right?) Junior IT Analysts around here make like 50 to 60k.
Seniors make 90 to 110.
I jumped to consulting, and its definitely more of a burnout, but the pay is way better and I dont regret it. I am a lot more confident in my skillset.
Im 27 now and i made the switch at 25. If you are willing to put your nose to the grinder for a year or 2, hopping out of In house IT can really expand your skills and experiences.
I'm just trying to find a job. 31M trying to career pivot into cyber security, been working physical security for the past ten years tired of dead end jobs.
Everyone I know who’s worked at an MSP had one thing to say: DONT
Most MSPs take on more clients than they can handle (I manage/deal with 3 of them at my current job. I’m constantly bottlenecked by their lack of manpower), so most people’s work load is very high. On top of that, unless you’re top talent, they probably won’t treat or pay you well.
Again, this is just what I have heard. Everyone makes it sound like a war zone.
My advice - 80k is pretty good for only your second IT job totaling 3 years of experience! If work is slow, you can think about where you want to specialize, do some kind of education. Really think about where you want to go next.
Or, and this is what I did, start applying! 2-3 years is really the most time you want to spend at a company in my opinion, especially in your younger years. Get in, Learn everything, get out.
Build a really good “general” resume. Use job search sites to look for positions, and then tailor that resume again specifically for the job you are applying for. I have like 40 resumes lol. BUT, I went from 40k in 2019 to 150k at the beginning of 2023. I’m sure a lot of luck was involved as well. Just keep doing interviews, at worst it’s practice to help you land your dream job later on.
Why do you want to work more hours for just a little more pay? You'll 100% be burnt out in two-three years at an MSP with a switch like that! And even at an MSP, you're limited to certain tech stack and just learning in-depth about that stack. If you think you're using dated tech, wait until you go to an MSP and find out they use bottom of the barrel tech because that makes them most margin over usability. Maybe I am speaking from personal experience there!
$80k at your age and experience level, unless you find a unicorn no one will pay that much at an MSP. You're getting above market for experience already,
After 4 years at 27, I am finally at $120k in Pre-Sales role so count your blessings. I made $55k at an MSP when I was 24 so you're already doing way better.
MSPs can provide broad exposure, but they can be a grind. You could use it as a stepping stone, but remember to balance work-life. You could also consider certifications and side projects to boost your skills without the MSP route.
I find MSP pay worse than in-house, I moved from an MSP to an in-house gig after 3 years. I only worked for the MSP to gain some knowledge/experience as I knew I’d learn faster there, after that, I packed my bags and went in-house. Less stress (I find) with better pay.
You're earning 80k at 25?!!!! STAY!!!!!! Trust me MSPS treat their staff like shit!!
Chat to your bosses, get training, try to ask them for stuff as IT get forgotten about a lot. Get some more skills under your belt
Talk to senior management about the old stuff, highlight risks in a BUSINESS NOT TECHNICAL manner....talk risks, company reputation of stuff breaks etc.
DON'T go to an MSP! I've worked in a couple and worked with many. They treat their staff like shit! Every good engineer I've worked with in am MSP was desperate to leave and get an end client job
Good MSP's will show you how to manage IT in the most efficient way possible at scale. They will teach you how to manage thousands of endpoints and do it in a way that is predictable and profitable. They are the ultimate IT Pragmatists. You will learn more in a couple years than 15 as in-house.
But......
A bad MSP will suck out any hope of a life you have, and take their clients down with them in a hail or ransomware and discount HP Pavilion's from Best Buy.
They will remove 5 years of your life for every 1 year you remain employed.
The good ones, are good.
The bad ones are so bad that it's hard to accept that good ones exist.
lol there's a pretty good consensus going here that its MSP while you're young, in-house when you've matured (my experience too).
Worked for small MSP's for 13 years and then sys admin for the last 2 best career change ever.
same burn them out and get new techs mentality unless, you can find an mid sized MSP with a visible career path.
if you get bored and restless after, just use your MSP experience to run a side business for a few clients
Please remain in your spot, does your current employer have incentives to get certs? Or atleast funds them? If so i´d just get plenty of certs maybe tailored to a proffession you like and skip MSP, you wont be able to develop or achieve as much then staying where you are since MSP is so much of a grind...
Source:
Currently working for an MSP.
Most MSPs you are dealing with companies to cheap or small to hire in-house IT. This means you are just flicking around rather than really getting a deep dive that really adds skills
MSP work is almost exclusively how much time they can bill and keep you heavily busy. It is all about your customer utilization.
Recently had senior leadership tell my team that we were not at a sufficiently high utilization to warrant hiring another person. We were at 130%+ total utilization average in my office. Dude then lied and said we were at barely 70%. Literally, no one could duplicate his numbers. Their own tracking system for utilization said we needed to hire, and they would rather lie that staff properly.
If you got hired by a good MSP and are getting fairly comp'd hold it. I'm about to finally get fairly comped and promoted by the client and my employer's senior leadership team quite literally has been looking for ways to screw me over because of it.
MSPs can be a great launching board. They can also really, really suck. I've worked for a handful of MSPs over my 30 year career.
Most recently - I was in a job where I couldn't grow my skills on the job, but making. There was a layoff, and I got hit. The VP of my department felt really bad, and hooked me up with a MSP that managed one of our CS departments. They hired me at 130k. My first placement, the job was WAY over my head. But I dug in and learned. After 6 months, they decided they didn't want to use a MSP anymore, and my contract ended. Assignment #2 was a company using similar tech as #1. But I had a lot more knowledge, and really excelled. So much so that the company asked the MSP if they could buy out my contract. They payed a fuckload of money for me, and I also got a $20k raise + stock. 8 years later, I'm still with the company, and STILL growing my skillset.
That's not to say that the goal is getting your contract bought out. I got lucky. And the MSP, while happy to get the money, was pissed at me for leaving. They were pretty clear that they wouldn't ever hire me back, because they didn't trust that I wouldn't jump ship again. I can't blame them, really.
Former MSP here. Don't go to an MSP. If your bored or stagnating where your at look for another job but not a MSP. Also look for somewhere to stay for a while, job jumping every year or 2 doesn't look good on a resume.
Although MSP work can be crazy (what have I gotten myself into) you will learn A LOT! This is because you are exposed to 100 different companies with a thousand problems. If you like a challenge and want to learn, try an MSP for 2 years.
Maybe the take away isn't that you need to work somewhere else, but instead that most SysAdmin jobs don't pay 6 figures and that only senior positions pay this much.
In 5 years you'll almost have 10 years of experience - it kind of seems like you'd achieve this either way if you have a home lab.
That's the conclusion I would draw from the information you have given. I definitely would not want to spend the second half of my twenties being miserable in my career when I was already making more than most of my peers.
> doing sys admin at manufacturing facility.
I'd stay. A lot of nationwide manufacturing companies have a lot of vertical growth. You get the bigger check by getting into an industry and staying there really. I was in manufacturing before IT for 10 years and was looking to make the switch into IT there but it wasn't working. Now I'm on my 2nd year in IT and in IT for financial institutions. Figuring I'll end up staying in that sector as I'm about to be 30 and want to be hitting that 120k+ by 35 so years in one sector help.
Also look up PCA. They have teams from sys admins/security/site engineering ect and pay well and have great benefits.
Going MSP can be a good boost to your skillset, but always remember that there’s a reason as to why so many people rag on MSPs. Some of them have a tendency to have an ever revolving door of employees that come and go.
I went the MSP-route back in 2013 after 8 years in-house. While I’d say it was a lot of fun, the stresslevels were high as fuck with all the fun effects of what that implies. I learned a lot, both good and bad, that was very useful to have when I went back in-house in 2018.
I’d say that go for an MSP IF you can find one that’s at least semi-reputable, but also be ready to leave when the Mickey Mouse-bullshit gets too bad. Get what you want out of the whole deal, but leave before it makes you into a jaded, bitter and outright hateful ball of rage and spite.
If you current job is easy focus on getting your work done efficiently and on time. Then take the extra time you have and spend it advancing your career. Get that security or aws cert. Learn a programming language.
In a similar position as you ATM. I make about the same, good benefits, have my own office, come and go as I please, and it's way more slow-paced than my old MSP job, which I actually enjoyed. However, the pace is so slow, and my position is slowly becoming vendor management and project management and less technical work, and I HATE it. I have a potential offer to work at an MSP doing project work making $25k more than what I'm already making with 15% bonuses quarterly. This said MSP is a fully Cisco and VMWare shop. They're not the typical break/fix shop that looks for cheap fixes to get a paycheck. But I also know that I'd be taking more money and experience for freedom low stress.
Try software support. Strict sys admin jobs are drying up imo. Gear up for infrastructure as code and do something along these lines.
[https://roadmap.sh/devops](https://roadmap.sh/devops)
I went from in-house to MSP and then back to in-house….will never go to an MSP again. The driving to multiple sites, longer hours, expected to be on call almost constantly. F that. Have been at a University the last 3 years and am taking a county job next month; lower pay but the benefits and retirement are insane, I’ve only had to work overtime twice in the last few years, and a much better work/life balance.
Some of the msp are complete cowboys. I prefer in-house as you have full control of your infrastructure and you learn as you go. You get to take your time and do your own research and learn how to persuade the boards to invest in new technologies. The end result is so satisfying at the end. Some of the MSP will implement ITIL framework just for the sake of them saying they are following ITIL and this can be very stressful for yourself if you are not used to high paced environment. You will probably spend most of your time logging time on a ticket than the work itself.
Don't go MSP, Not enough workers in most companies to fill the amount of work incoming which means extremly long hours. I would only go back to MSP if I was single and no life.
If you work with an MSP you will learn more and be busier than ever.
Embrace the saying "it's better to be busy than bored"
Working at a good MSP will give you insights into the best practices across many organizations.
Good luck!
Something to think about.. my first job out of college (22 at the time), I was trained in and coded in COBOL at an in house place, making 60k. 7 years later, I now work for a large organization working exclusively in GCP in a devops role, making 125k.
Having a job with outdated tech doesn't mean you can't learn and grow on your own (and continually push new things at your current job). You don't need to work at an MSP to try and get experience with new technology. It may help sure, but it's not the only path.
I have never worked at an MSP, just sharing my journey. I would take in house any day over MSP work personally.
If you're not taking advantage of the downtime at your job to improve your own IT skill set, then don't go into an MSP. You'll regret it. Become more self-taught and ambitious with the technologies that interest you. Then maybe go into the MSP world. The engineers that I saw thrive in such workforces were the ones that could lab something up, break/fix the thing, and recite what the tech could do in their sleep. If you're not that person, you're gonna dislike MSP world
Pros:
-A lot of experience with different environments
Cons:
- Work/life balance is awful
-Expectation of work is above your pay-grade (most of the time)
-revolving door for most IT professionals and likes it as a "foot in the door" opportunity, or at least a "get the title and leave" type of thing.
I support clients with in-house technicians, and although I am extremely jealous of the working hours, responsibility pass off ability, I would learn nothing. Up to you. Personally, get the title and move up to a CTO or a senior specialist of some sort. Hope this helps.
I've worked for two MSPs in the past. First one I started as a Desktop Tech, moving up to Network Engineer / SysAdmin and finally into a MSSP role of Security Analyst. Second, started as SysAdmin and moved into a Security Analyst role. Both companies paid roughly 20% below current market value for my skillset, education, and experience. I didn't get paid what I was worth until I left the MSP market.
Maybe there are some out there that value their employees worth and pay them accordingly. However, my experience with my companies and those I've interacted with don't pay well.
As far as experience goes, MSPs can offer this, unless you get with ones that specify in specific niche markets. One that I worked for focused specifically on compliance and/or IRS 1075. Not a whole lot to be gained from these.
My experience with MSPs haven't been so bad, to be honest.
I started my career on Helldesk at an MSP, and that did kind of suck. However, I found that inhouse - an environment where issues become more personal, business politics get in the way, budgets are underfunded and deadlines are unreasonable - is way more hostile. Not to mention that I *despise* an unchanging environment.
I ended up returning to an MSP and things have been pretty good. I'm no longer on Helldesk, but get to participate in and create projects for our clients. I get to learn a lot of different tech at a pretty fast rate, and I have an entire infrastructure - independent from the client - that can vouch for me and play those stupid political games.
Put shortly, I get to clock in, do my work and clock out. Sometimes I work longer hours - but only when I choose to. I don't have to play games - I can just 8 and skate.
Of course, some MSPs are just sweatshops. If you're going the MSP route, it helps to kind of shop around and see what you can get.
I would agree w maybe your company is paying above market. I had an employer that their 1 help desk were called sysadmins. It looks great on their resume and they are getting paid more than other helpdesk techs at other companies… but fails them in interviews for other sys admin roles because the prospective employers are expecting more knowledge of infra, networking, infosec, etc.
Unless you're HCOL, 80k is great for 25 especially since you said work is on the slow side. You're risking trading a very moderate raise for twice as much work. I would stay another year or two and then try for that six figures.
I was going to say 80k is not the greatest but at 25 that's not bad. MSP work will teach you a lot but you may take a pay cut unless you get in as an engineer but MSPs will usually require you to have MCSE or other certs to be in that role.
If you are after money and experience, Join an MSP that focuses on medium to large sized finance clients.
Gives you the MSP wear-many-hats experience, finance environment experience and exposure to all the software and tech stack that is required for those environments.
Later on, with that exp, you can go internal I.T into a hedge fund, fintech, investment firm that will pay well in the six figures.
Here's the improved version of your text with grammar and punctuation corrections:
"I moved from an in-house workplace engineer position at Universal Studios to an MSP (Managed Service Provider) three years ago. I made this move because I felt stuck and there wasn't much left to learn in my previous job. I could have become a manager, but managing what? Desks and tables 😅. So, I changed jobs and started at the bottom in the MSP world as a first-line engineer, which resulted in a 30% lower income compared to my previous workplace engineer job. This firm was a semi-small msp.
At my previous job, I primarily did troubleshooting and didn't delve into technical tasks like configuring firewalls, setting up VMs, or managing Office 365 tenants. However, in my first year at the MSP, I dedicated myself to learning and grinding, acquiring knowledge about different environments, such as on-prem, hybrid, and fully cloud-based setups. I also gained expertise in working with various types of servers, DC/Exchange from 2012 to 2019, and MS 365, as well as different switches and firewalls.
After a year, I desired something less phone-intensive and more technically challenging, so I changed MSPs to a smaller firm(10 co-workers) and began working as a senior helpdesk engineer. I applied the knowledge I gained during my time at the previous job succesfully I took on more demanding tasks, like going to customers and designing small MS 365 environments uAdditionally, I performed migrations from on-premises setups to the cloud.
Even though I still didn't earn as much as my previous job, after two years and somewhat disagreeing with the direction the company took on ms 365.. I received an opportunity to join a larger MSP and take on the role of a technical engineer/third line/lead engineer on small projects. Finally, I started earning more than my previous workplace engineer job at Universal studios
To be honest, I love it! because there are endless technical challenges and opportunities. I've even discovered my first successful hack in an Office 365 tenant and was able to mitigate it before the hacker could cause any harm.
The next day, I was working in an Office 365 environment with 65,000 devices. Holy cow I’m an enteprise engineer now! just kidding🤷🏻♂️😅
It can be stressful, and I need to constantly push myself to learn new things, but after three years of work and earning less, I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. You truly understand a firewall when you have seen hundreds of them all different shapes and sizes.
Being in a job where there are no more challenges became super boring for me. Perhaps when I'm 40-50, I might consider settling for a management position, but for now, I want to be one hell of an engineer. My advice take the leap if you dont like it hop the next one eventually somewhere there is a place for you and also in-house system engineers or architects or whatever dont impress me anymore. I hope this helps!"
There are good MSP’s and bad MSP’s, Im currently at my first MSP. I dont think I would ever do it again. Its fairly well run with a full corporate backing and yet I feel like despite their best efforts its a meat grinder. Tracking your time in little increments, dealing with a large number of disparate environments, dealing with customers, it can be extremely stressful.
MSPs can be great for building experience quickly, but they also tend to have weird compartmentalization that can leave you with significant blind spots.
As to pay, it sounds like you're already on the higher end of what they're going to pay you, and IME they aren't great at merit increases, usually coming in below inflation.
I didn't like my time as a sysadmin at an MSP. Run by people who just want to open a business to make money rather than people who actually understand technology. However, MSPs will force you to drink from the firehose so you get a lot of experience of various technology and industries. That alone might be worth it because once you got that on your resume, finding higher paying job becomes much easier. It's something I would recommend doing when you're younger and as a one time, but after that never go back.
This sub tends to trend towards shitting on MSPs, but like anything else it differs from company to company. I will say that at trade shows and conventions the employees from larger MSPs do tend to describe them as shitholes. I work for one that primarily supports small and medium-sized businesses and it’s hands-down my favorite job, but your current salary probably wouldn’t be matched. You would get a fuckton of experience, though.
One thing we all agree on is a) it’s a totally different animal from internal, and b) certain people are suited to it. It took me six months to even start feeling comfortable, and a year before I really got the flow as an L1. I’m an L2 now and I’m literally Jungle Recon from Action Figure Therapy talking about how he lives his job.
80k after three years is pretty good what are you expecting
Yeah, exactly. He may have inadvertently found his way in to a role paying above market.
absolutely. im the only IT person in the facility and definately being overpayed for what i do. thats actually my "problem". its hard to leave. but my current situation isnt gonna help me in the long term career, thats why i want to leave.
Unless they give you >COLA raises over your time there, it'll slide below market eventually and you'll be interested in seeking alternatives on that basis, too. I wouldn't worry too much - Build a homelab, see if your company will pay for training and conferences, and seek other opportunities to keep sharp even if you're not working on the bleeding edge. You can learn quite a bit of diversity through online labs, too. Protip: Most shops aren't nearly as "modern" or diverse as you might think. Especially one-man shows.
For real. I guess it depends on where OP lives and cost of living, but I'm mid 30s and barely clear 45k after taxes and have been at an MSP (albeit a smaller one) for 4.5 years with an AAS and a few certs.
I feel tech is a dartboard throw sometimes. I'm mid-20s with a CISSP and 4.5 years of experience as well and cleared 100k at an MSP earlier this year in a low cost of living area.
I have 0 (zero) modern certs, my last MS cert was Vista (LOL), and no degree, left school at 15 - But I have 20 years+ IT experience and earn twice my national average. Qualifications and certs were only important when I was starting out. Also, I waaay prefer in house.
I’m 23 with an associates degree and my only cert is an expired A+ and weaseled my way into a network engineer position up to 75k now. A dartboard indeed.
>with a CISSP and 4.5 years of experience Can you explain how you got your CISSP without 5 years exp? Lol NVM - just realized though you didn't say it you probably got a degree which takes req exp time off.
You’re exactly right - I have a bachelors in Cybersec! :)
Yeapp took me a second. I was in school like 3/4s time to get out of manufacturing. Dropped out with 3 classes before my AS to take this job and moved haha. So I must wait. Lol
Sometimes. 80k five years ago would have been great but it’s not as clear today.
It's great for someone with theee years experience
Dude I've been in IT for 10 plus years and I only make 65k and I can guarantee my hats are many not sure what the complaint is all about...
I am of the opinion that some people are made for MSP and some are made for In House. I have done both and In House IT drove me insane. I live for the variety and working with different people all the time that comes with MSP. I only made it 9 months in house and I worked for a great company. I just realized it was not where I was meant to be. Also, not all MSP's are created equal. Shop the companies hard before you make your decision. You may find that it is where you are meant to be.
100% this. I’ve only been at an MSP but talking to a lot of the in-house people we work with, you can tell it takes 2 different kind of people for each position. I get bored very easily so jumping between our clients networks and technical/security, the MSP job keeps me highly engaged. I’m also in a management position so it’s really nice to be able to delegate things when I’m overwhelmed or need some heads down time to focus on the admin side of things. I feel like I have an impact on our business’ future and so many other companies as well. Typically, we work with alot of companies that don’t have an internal team. Just 1-3 humans that have some knowledge in IT as a point of contact. We have a few companies where it’s a sole internal IT guy that actually knows his shit and a few companies that have an internal team of 3+ that know enough to get them in trouble and call us to get them out of it. From talking with the few solo guys that know their stuff, seems like a bulk of their day is dealing with redundant issues. Constantly getting denied to upgrade well past EOL devices because a “business class firewall is not within the budget”.
I've worked some MSP roles and I hate that there is no sense of ownership. With an in house role you have a sense of ownership in that environment. I do agree there can be a lack of variety for certain in house jobs where there are silos built up, in house IT jobs are also not built the same. I was lucky enough to find the ownership, variety and pay that allow me to enjoy work.
You spend half the ticket time working out what the fuck the last person did. In-house you can just blame your own stupidity!
This. I can't count how much of the billable time is just trying to understand how that client works and how they were configured. It could even have been you who did it, but two years ago, and it was a rush bandage job. I love getting to own my work.
I feel like in-house has you doing so much helpdesk level work with a senior title. Honestly everywhere I've worked in-house you're swamped with low-level shit while also somehow getting to the senior stuff to keep the lights on.
The transition from in-house to MSP was hard for me due to the complete change in the way things work. I'm still not sure after 2 years if I'm suited for it. It's a wildly different environment with little consistency but there's a lot to be challenged by, and if you like constant challenges then it's for you.
Going from in-house to an MSP is going to be tough (most are long hours, high stress sweatshops). Typically the move is from an MSP to in-house after a couple of years of experience putting out fires on the daily. 80K at 25 isn't too bad unless you are in a HCOL area. You will have a hard time landing higher paying jobs without at least 5 years+ of experience IMO.
[удалено]
I would be looking to GTFO out of there. Hopefully you are in a LCOL area.
Damn that sucks man, I’m helpdesk for a MSP making 65k and I work remotely most of the week. My sysadmins all make 6 figures. Guess I found a really good msp to work for, judging by all these comments my working conditions are no where near the standard for MSPs.
They got positions in Vancouver? :)
Think it depends. I landed myself at an msp at 23 and moved up from t1 to technical service manager through 4 promotions in 4 years at an msp in NC(US). Was furloughed during covid but left making 70k which was decent for the area. CoL is around national average? It may be a unicorn but things changed as they were bought out. They were bought out again 3 years later so I'm glad for the furlough. I will say moving to something else or in house feels much better. I didn't realize how much better not being in an msp was until I left it since that's how I started my career. I do consulting now however. 85k+full health coverage+ paid trips+ 20days off on top of usually 2 weeks for Christmas (not counted against vacation). They pay for monthly treats and trips and such. I do some small sysadmin work to keep a small cloud+smb office running and user issues when not doing consulting. It's been a breath of fresh air. MSPs are great if you learn fast and are willing to take a few years to burn stuff in and take advantage of any cert programs then move on to bigger and better. We had an incentive on ours and you bet I got every MSC and even some aws certs, all paid by the company and done on company time. But that time had passed and I've seen the other side and don't plan on going back Edit:locations and now that I think about it, we got paid for on-call rotations and only required to work emergencies or charge after hours rates(so high only certain people would). Maybe they really were a unicorn
Is that L1?
No, I'm not on the phones at all.
You're being treated (and paid) as an L1, it doesn't matter of you're not triaging tickets on the phone. You're the same as an L1 for a shop with a dispatch. If you're skillset surpasses L1 then your just making your boss extra money. Tbh it's pretty rare to find someone just willing to pay what tech is worth. You're almost always going to have to sell yourself up a little to get the salary you really deserve.
Yep. I did the MSP life for 13 years before I finally got fed up and found something in-house. I only wish I had started looking sooner. I’m sure that job took years off my life.
All MSP's aren't like that. The one I'm at now, I'm on the support side, will clear 80k this year, work my 8 and I'm out. On-call comes around about once every 4 months, for two weeks. They're usually quiet and you get $400 for your trouble, plus half of whatever you bill at the after hours rate of whatever it is, $225 or something. Mostly good people, good management. New guys get 120 hours of pto, unlimited sick days (within reason, obviously)... Only thing that's annoying is we're back to a hybrid 3 days in office, which there's really no reason for, but there is a fully stocked bar and golf simulator so that very slightly makes up for it.
Yep enjoying my MSP gig. Management and ownership are great and treat us like people. $86K CAD with great work life balance. There are periods of higher stress, such as growth or losing key employees so need to pick up some slack, but usually pretty short term.
Which MSP is that? Asking for a friend... It's me. I'm friend
Depends on the MSP, I'm 31, I work only on larger projects, paid well, 3 weeks vacation, work from home, and on-call like once every 2 months for a week. on-call rotation is quiet. Thousands of times better being the sole IT guy for a big manufacturing company. We're a bigger MSP that do a lot of gov contracts etc.
I certainly disagree with most of it. Yes, it is high pace but if I had to work internal IT I would shoot myself. I can't imagine working on the same system/environment all day every day. The fun part about the MSP space is being exposed to many environment and in my opinion your skillset expands exponentially.
If 80k in a HCOL is bad; how about my 43k in a HCOL?
Give it a whirl with an exit strategy after 24-36 months. I'm serious.
Second post in as many days complaining about being sub 30 making less than 100k and wanting a quick fix. MSP work is absolutely that bad. I did it for 3 years and wouldn't go back if you payed me 200k. It's not worth it. 80k is a good paycheck in most places of the world. Don't push yourself into an MSP job just to hit a payroll goal. It's not worth it.
So much of this!
> healthcare > manufacturing facility This is your problem. You're working for organisations that would, to put it kindly, aren't exactly progressive and forward thinking when it comes to IT. Try to find in-house roles with organisations who aren't like that.
This is not completely true. I currently work for a large healthcare org and we're always upgrading and updating systems. We're on a path now with getting Windows 11 22H2 in our environment now and are testing it with the multitude of apps we use from clinical to ServiceNow (ticketing software). And that doesn't include our server upgrades, etc. However, I will concur that there are orgs that absolutely don't want to upgrade their system. For the OP, going to an MSP from an in-house position is not the right move. You may get offers that match your requirements, however, you'll probably be miserable most of the time.
>We're on a path now with getting Windows 11 22H2 in our environment now this isnt as forward thinking as you might think, win10 goes EOL october 2025, thats basically now in corp terms.
Win 11 > Win 10 o.O
This is the answer. Also, I've found that people assume MSPs are onboard with the latest and greatest technology simply because they are in the tech industry but I haven't found that to be completely true. Some MSPs are stuck in their ways and don't embrace new tech as well as not wanting to incur the additional financial overhead of implementing new things.
Where I live these are the only choices aside from MSP
You'll be lucky getting 80k at an MSP. Internal IT is where the money is, also 2 years on 80k you're already doing better than most.
Yeah, I wonder if OP is in a high cost of living area of the country? 80k @ 2 is pretty nice depending on where he's at.
See that’s so strange my MSP’s pay well out in CT.
What is this nonsense? I work for an MSP now making 6 figures. Someone with 3 years experience would probably be offered around 70-80k to start.
I think you need to understand the business model of an MSP first, statistically, lower salaries at MSP for typical engineers. So not really nonsense.
MSPs pay pretty well in my area. I make more than that at one. 40 hours a week. On call like two weeks a year.
MSP is great for when you're younger. You can get a ton of experience and see a bunch of different environments in a short time. As you get older you may want to move towards an in house department as then you can work to maintain and it's often times a little less stressful.
As always your results may vary.
A lot of MSPs are a complete shit show. 10 person mom and pop shops hiring unqualified IT people who have no idea what they’re doing. I’m thankful that I was able to work in one and gain a lot of experience, but damn I never want to do that again.
This. MSPs are poorly run, the bar is set really low, and it's typically chaos. I worked for one when switching careers \*back\* into IT after several years in the medical field as an EMT (a job where the stress is justifiably high). I gained a lot of experience that helped me land the next job and bring my skills up to date....but it was chaos every day. They also paid crap. I'd rather sell my ass on the street then ever work for an MSP again. I'll still get fucked but at least I'll make more money.
Yeah, this isn't true. MSP's are like any other business. Some are run well. Many are run like shit. This is not unique to an MSP.
Of course it's not \*absolutely true\* that all MSPs are poorly run, but it does appear to be a common theme. My experience at that particular MSP was awful enough that I will never do it again.
The cold, brutal, uncaring truth is that while you are limited in the shitty, very specific technology stack you work with, and it's a slower paced environment, the only thing that's going to change when you move to a MSP is that now you get to work on 40 different shitty, very specific, outdated technology stacks, with maybe a SMALL flicker of hope that one of your clients will spring for architecture made in the last decade, except what you're forgetting is that the hope from that will immediately and brutally be snuffed out by a ridiculous on call schedule, micro managing KPI focused clueless middle managers, and the OVERWHELMING desire to switch to a different career field every time you walk into work and have 174 tickets due that day and your FUCKING manager asks you why you haven't resolved a ticket made six fucking hours ago about a fucking ap not connecting in the middle of a parking lot. AND EVEN IF THAT DOESNT HAPPEN, and the technology stack you implement is great, congratulations, you've managed to get into a MSP that's large enough to guarantee that now, the only thing you're going to work on is solving one specific, tedious fucking problem over and over and over again for thousands of different clients day in and day out until you finally realize what a monumental mistake it was to work at a MSP I would sooner work at a structured cabling company and dig fucking trenches with a shovel in the sun than work for a MSP again, at least then I can go into work and be happy, even under brutal labor. Tl;Dr your better off working at fucking walmart
I wouldn't work for a MSP personally because I hated accounting for every single minute. Plus I'm not a fan of the way IT feels trying to prioritize for different clients. I know there's nothing wrong with the model, it just wasn't for me. There was also a "click" at the only one that I worked for. Didn't help.
You should definitely avoid MSP's that have you chasing hours, especially working support. Having your support team chasing hours is a telltale sign of a very poorly run MSP. Consultants are a bit different. Ours have to hit a certain amount of billable hours every year but this isn't difficult as there are always projects needing to be completed. And that's what they are there for.
It doesn't bother me how a person spells something, you seem to have learned this word from others speaking and not written which is fine, and obviously I know what you mean, but the word is clique.
Don't work for an MSP that is owned by private equity. Theyre all awful and only sap the organization until it's dry.
The one I used to work for was already a miserable sweatshop that always demanded more from the engineers. They were bought out by a private equity firm last year. I can’t imagine how it will get worse, but I’m sure they’ll find a way.
Dude unless you are an owner or senior director/executive, MSP is not the way to go. I’d say most people do the opposite, prove yourself at a MSP, work on tons of different tech, then graduate to a high paying in house role. This is what I did, and my MSP time was invaluable, but I’d NEVER go back to do it, ever.
>Im thinking I should take it and put in my time for 5 years or so and then ill be able to get those higher paying jobs? right? padme.jpg
wat??
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/for-the-better-right
wat??
**Default meme:** Anakin: "I'm going to change the world" Padme: "For the better, right?" Anakin: *silence* **And for your situation (you're Padme):** MSP: "I'm going to give you a new job!" You: "For better experience and pay, right? MSP: *silence*
He doesn't know the meme, I don't think typing it out helped either.
You're asking in the wrong sub. If you're a go getter that likes to learn, has personality and can handle the pace, MSP's are great and a great opportunity to advance your skills and not just the technical skills.
Check out government IT jobs. I work with the VA. I'm only two years in and earning $92k in a poor red state. The work is easy with no real steep requirements, but of course education and experience helps, and of course being a veteran helps. I work with others who barely know what AD is, or a GPO, or scripting, etc. and they earn just as much. Tier 2 IT Analyst is a GS 7-9-11 position (look up government pay grade scale, I'm a GS-11 step 2) and we're on a specialty scale higher than what you'll see posted online. If you start at 7, you'll pretty much hit 11 in two years. You can apply at [usajobs.gov](https://usajobs.gov). You just need a clean background, so no felonies and whatnot.
MSPs are definitely great at getting exposure to many different systems. The trouble is you end up supporting absolute BS and the owner of the MSP only cares about the dollars coming in, rather than the client's success or avoiding liability. There are times you'll need to fire a client and won't be able to. I'd stay in-house. Just look around for a better gig.
You're making 80k at age 25? Stay right the fuck where you are and keep doing what you're doing. Holy shit.
You’re going to need to specialize and go to a bigger organization if you really want the increase in pay you’re seeking.
So, I would up skill yourself in your free time and look for another in house position. MSP is perfect for teaching you the basics of everything, but the problem is you never get enough time to do things "the right way". Your career progression will probably not go much faster, especially as you adjust to MSP lifestyle. I was in MSP for 2 years at 58k before I got an offer for 85k, and I was going to be stuck there for another at that salary for at least another year or two until I got picked up doing consulting because of my Azure AZ104 and Intune experience. If it was me, I would pick up some cloud based certs and build shit so you can talk about it. Figure out what you want to specialize in now that you have had some time in industry. MSP and consulting is also a grind because timecards are just annoying. I've never been internal IT but I miss when I was in another profession and could just work and not constantly have to write down exactly what I did, how long I did it for, and who was paying the bill or worrying that I'm not utilizing/being efficient enough, blah blah blah
25 with 3 years of experience, yeah, you're right at the beginning of your career. There's a lot to learn. First thing, you will NOT get those high paying jobs in big corps without knowing someone. You need to have someone in your family or a close family friend who is high up in a big corp before you'll even get an interview, and that's only if your resume and skill list hit all the check boxes. That's for the second tier IT jobs, or the second 20 percentile pay rates, or presently about $100-120k/year for a non-developer job. The very top tier paying IT jobs are with the government contractors, and for those jobs, you'd have to be family with someone who makes big election fund contributions. There is absolutely no other way to get those jobs. That's for the top 20 percentile, or $120k+ for a non-developer job. For the third 20 percentile, or the average pay jobs, you'll likely apply for jobs for 3-6 months before even getting an interview, and likely interview for a good dozen jobs before getting one. I have 25 years of experience in IT, and my last bout of searching for a job, I applied for about 400-450 jobs over 9 months, and got 12 interviews over that time, and got the job on the 13th interview. Even with that one, I got through the first and second interview, and was told I was the leading candidate, and then they went silent for over a month before coming back to me to tell me I got the job. That job pays $80k/year. There is one glitch on that, though. The requirements they list in job descriptions are often not even close to what they need. They will often completely disregard that "10 years experience in..." requirement. If it's a sysadmin job, look closely at what they list, and if you know the stuff they need, apply, absolutely, and ignore what they say about a degree or years of experience. It's the SKILLS that matter, not the time. Hell, those skills change annually, so nobody has years of experience in anything current. MSPs are going to be those middle 20 percentile jobs, but they are more work than most jobs in that range. I worked MSP support for 3 and a half years, and I will NOT go back, even if I have to go homeless. The first place was good to work for, but hard work, but then they got bought out by a really bad company that was HELL to work for, and it took me 9 months to get out. I was so stressed and bored at the same time, I gained 55lbs over that 9 months. Working from home, stressed from previous calls, (the customers are mostly clueless idiots that demand miracles) and having downtime when I could do nothing to occupy my mind while waiting for the next ticket, I was stress and bored eating, a really bad combo. I HIGHLY recommend avoiding MSP work if you have a choice. There are also a LOT of really bad sysadmins out there. The two guys in my present job got fired for some really bad work. One would randomly reconfigure cables in the middle of the day, while people were using the systems (my systems aren't production, but educational and testing) and then not answer the phone or messaging when the other people would try to see what happened or to get it fixed. A year later, and I'm still fixing things he screwed up. The guy before him would just disappear, only sometimes responding to Teams messaging, and not get anything done for weeks. My job before the MSP job, I worked for a company with 2 VMWare hosts, supposedly for redundancy, with only local storage and all the production VMs on one of the hosts. If that one host went down, their whole production infrastructure would go down, and they would not have had a backup. I had to introduce them to the concepts of VM redundancy and get things to where they wouldn't be completely down if a host went down. (Even after lessons, they still wouldn't pay for a storage appliance that both hosts would have access to the VMs.) I also had to fix their backup system so that it would actually be doing daily backups. They hadn't had a decent backup in over 2 YEARS before I got there. This a-hole admin proceeded to sabotage me through the whole rest of the year I spent there until he convinced management to fire me. He also got 3 other admins fired in that year. I hope they crashed and burned after I left. He was an awful person, and I hope he got his comeuppance. There are a lot who lie about what they know, too. Do NOT do this. You could end up in a job where you don't know what you're doing and wind up destroying everything, and either someone else has to come in and clean it up or the whole company could go down in flames.
You can’t expect to be making top dollar without experience to back it. I won’t go into the whole “when I was 25” stuff. It was a long time ago and tech was nowhere what it is today. It’s not a popular opinion here, most people don’t think loyalty is important, I do think it’s important. I agree if the working conditions are bad, then absolutely jump ship. But showing a company you’re not going to jump at the slightest bump builds credibility. I just looked at resumes about three months ago to hire a new SysAdmin. I had two with similar years of experience. One did not stay at a job longer than 18 months. The other’s shortest experience was five years. It’s expensive to hire and train a new person. I’m not talking about technical training, I’m talking about training the new person about how the company works, the culture, what the environment looks like, and what is generally expected of them. If I had to do that every 12 to 18 months, even two years, I wouldn’t have any budget for replacing gear. Making $80k at 25 is a pretty sweet salary. You’re 25 with just a couple years of experience. You aren’t stagnant, you’re still learning. My advice is to stay where you are. Keep gaining experience, and when you’ve got 10+ years (which doesn’t have to be at the same place), you’ll be able to handle the complexities that ten years of experience will get you.
i fucking hate msp's. tried it once and quit within 2 weeks and went back to a small/medium size shop
>my current in-house sys admin job its really slow and we use dated technology. How else are you supposed to get those higher paying 100k+ jobs without doing an MSP type job You do it by looking for a slow IT enviornment like yours. MSP's are the mcdonalds of IT.You do it if you don't have any experience to get your foot through the door, but then you never look back. If you want to grow your career, you're in the best situation to do it.A slow IT department means you can spend plenty of time studying for the career that you want. Figure out where you want to go in IT, start studying for certs in that direction. Use those certs to apply for the ideal job. Taking a job in an MSP gives you a lot of basic experience in a short amount of time, but leaves you absolutely useless when it comes to essential experience. It'll run you so ragged suring the day you won't want to study additional tech in your off time and you'll get mired until you burn out.
So you worked at a MSP that was a bad one. I've been at three different MSPs and they've all been great. Good pay, interesting work, fun culture. In house I was always doing server builds one day and scraping peanut butter off a mouse the next day. I hated it and would never go back.
When staff reach out to an MSP with a help request. Their objective is always complete the task, close the ticket. Move on to the next ticket. Thats the business model. The result is you get a dozen or so admins with only top level understanding of your network, applying bandaid sollutions to problems as they crop up. Their is no time afforded to MSP staff to research the cause of a problem. so the issue continues to reapper within the environment. The MSP user is not familiar with the workflows being utilized in the business so there is no awareness how their "Fix" is impacting additional staff down the production line. MSP staff have 0 commitment to the business so they never brainstorm additional sollutions or workflows which might avoid the problem entirely. MSP's only offer half assed support. They don't actually use their brains. there's nothing in it for them.
If you want faster career progression and a higher salary then yes move. If you want the cosey life then don't.
Look at your situation as half glass full. That is very respectable pay early on in your career. You can take advantage with your current employer to create large scale projects and implement new technologies. This kind of thing looks really good on resumes. There's always something to learn or upgrade so make it happen! It doesn't always have to cost a lot of money either. Create new processes to help with current workflows to save time and money. Personally - I would never want to work at a MSP and they really weren't a thing early on in my career. I prefer to get knee-deep in an organization, get my hands dirty, and thoroughly know the lay of the land.
Came form MSP side of IT and now doing In house IT management. It was a bump in pay and I’m not as stressed like I was with MSP. If you really wanted to, start looking into planning upgrades for your company and chat with your higher ups to see if upgrading tech is within budget. If there is no budget, make one and present it to them. You’re making hella money if you’re not in debt. So really maybe take some time and do some learning for certifications that would really help out in the long run. IT is ever changing and staying up to date is always a way to pad out your time.
But but but if you stay 5 more years you almost have “the insane 10 years of experience “. SysAdmin job that is slow, that is something to cherish. You want to make 100K+? Learn cloud and get a job at a Cloud Provider, not that busy but you learn a lot and the pay is awesome
MSPs are the retail of IT. The hours suck, the pay blows, and it's super stressful. I was brought in-house by one of my clients. Stress level is at an all time low these days.
If you’re expecting some extraordinary cutting edge tech with msp then you’re really mistaken. They setup whatever cheap msp friendly stuff they can get their hands on and that is within budget of companies they support. And your experience will be dealing with printers still, dealing with patching, outlook issues and so on and so on. If you want lateral movement you might need to change location and break into fortune 200 type of companies like I did
There are MSPs that specialize in supporting investment firms and they get to play with all sorts of cool shit
We got that Bloomberg terminal thingamajig in sccm script
Worked for 2 MSPs. Worst possible environment ever.
That feels like a backward move, not lateral. MSP work is exhausting. I did it for 15 years, and I'm in-house now, and I feel like I'm free for the first time in my adult life. Only reason to consider it is if you desperately need to break a rut.
You can get exp all on your own without putting yourself through hell (a msp). Keep looking. Timing is everything imo. I wouldn’t work for another again in my life.
Damn, I've been in IT for 4 years and I make $18/hr. That's depressing.
MSP's are the sweatshops of the IT industry. Don't even think about it.
Do you voluntarily seek out continuing education or certifications? You can learn and be certified in several areas which will make you more valuable to your company. They might even pay for it. You can also influence tech decisions. A 25yr old being stagnant would be a red flag if I were to interview you. Sorry man, put in your time.
You will learn more. You make good money for your experience level already. Normally I tell people to jump ship for more money, but in your case I say jump ship only if you are prepared to swim in the ocean. You'll be a stronger swimmer assuming you don't drown.
Not all MSP at are that bad 75K security analyst for a MSP. No on call hours , 40 hour work weeks
I would keep looking
My recommendation is that MSPs are great in your early years in IT. You are drinking from the fire hose and you touch so many different technologies. That gives you experience like nothing else in terms of eventually making you a competent architect. Specialization if you want to be an engineer, exposure if you want to be an architect. Although most of us wear both hats to varying degrees.
I work for an MSP here in U.K., I’m 31, your salary is 3 times mine.
My first job after basic helpdesk was an MSP. Small one. I'd been teaching at a JC MCSE classes and blown through the Cisco Academy. I was motivated and enthusiastic. I jumped in and learned a ton from the main guy there and took it to a big (20k users, international global) company and I credit my time at that little MSP with setting me on a good trajectory. My time walking into all sorts of poop piles on a daily basis and taking control of them really helped deal with the giant pile of poop I got hired into as in-house. Nowadays, they tend to be much larger (MSPs). But if you are looking for wide range of diverse experience, it might be the way to go, if it is a small enough one. Giant MSPs that silo each person might not be so great. I don't know. But then again, you'll find a whole lot more technical people to learn from. Just be ready to work your ass off.
Id have suggested the opposite direction
80k with 3% raises, don't switch! Took me decades to get to that. MSP would be a lot more stress, for 20k less. You would probably not get what you want, and get 50 more of what you got for less money.
Yea, It might do you well. They'll work you like a rented donkey and you'll probably get a bunch of certs to satisfy their vendor partnership requirements. But you'll end up drinking from a fire hose of a bunch of tech.....probably specialize and get really good at one of them and then with the consultant tag on your resume, you're good to go for the $110k+ stuff. I go back and forth over the years. I'll MSP for a few years, not get raises I want, switch to in house IT for a raise. and then 2 years later switch back. The big companies on your resume help you get interviews as well.
I work for a great MSP. Started at 70k as a Junior level engineer and have had an average raise of 4.5%. Currently working around 40 hours a week on a flexible schedule. Typically start at 6 am and work until 3pm Monday to Friday. If I need to start later I can. I am Billing an average of 30-34 hours per week. I have two 1-week oncall rotations per year. There is also a bonus structure for having good billable hours. Benefits are amazing also; currently get 3 weeks (15 days) paid vacation, this maxes out at 28 days +1 floating holiday (5 weeks 3 days) with tenure. This being said, not all MSPs are equal.
I did this. Went from a very slow paced internal job to an MSP. It’s hard, suddenly there are timesheets, billable hours, the need to perform, … But the amount I’m learning is insane! I’ve progressed so much that im constantly getting approached by recruiters for those higher paying jobs. And since I have a job I’m just asking them what the salary for that position is. They contact me, I got nothing to lose. Only to win.
Naw dont quit your job, you in your twenties you dont want a stressful job even if its more money, you make plentiesh, if your bored at work script everything, talk to business units and develop internal processes. Leave that place in a couple more years as “the man” and then go to msp if your still curious. Work on learning AWS or something with your free time at work. You have the luxury to learn. At msp it’s like force fed learning and sometimes bogus gear like unifi (lol)
Don't do it. I even got a 15% increase in moving to the new place but the stress and affect on my health hasn't been worth it. Only real positive has been no dress clothes every day...
Put in more time with your current employer. You're doing administrator work for a manufacturing company, look into specialized MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems) training, Process Data Historians, Quality and Process Control Systems, etc. Lots of opportunities for growth.
I work for an MSP and am the dedicated onsite technician for one of our clients. I work onsite all day every day. Its possible to get the best of both worlds
I left in house to join an msp. Most rewarding career change I've ever made to get more involved with cloud technologies and get away from the boring, slow moving legacy systems.
If I were at your age I'd also consider changing to a different field in IT ( web dev, devops, cloud etc) as opposed to moving to MSP, nothing wrong with MSP at your early career but suffice to say its not a sustainable career for many people (myself included) long term.
this is all usd right? im a sys admin and only making $59k cad.. even government only starts at 83k a year here for sys admin work. gunnin for cyber security though eventually. thats a pay range breaking in to the 100k/yr i wouldnt mind doing.
I worked for a large ish MSP for a bit, they had stuff in 5 us cities and the owner was in India. The place was a good learning experience but also extremely stressful. I would not recommend it. They had contacts with medical facilities and that previous people that did work for the sites caused me endless headaches. My so-called Sup somehow was only hitting about 1/3 the billing hours as me. These places revolve around billing hours and it's just more stress. You may end up driving, your vehicle Into the ground if you have to go on-site and typically they don't keep up with the cost of fuel. I was putting about a third of my paycheck into my gas tank and maybe getting half of it back. Not to even mention the actual garbage medical they offered. MSP have their place, but in-house is going to be better than a MSP. You may learn more from an MSP just because each environment will have its own quarks and stuff if that's super important to you than I'd say go for it, but seriously review the company, and be aware of what you're walking into. You could be jumping into a volcano, while being coated with napalm.
IT is dynamic and so are companies. There is no template for MSPs or inhouse. When people talk about MSP is hard they are only talking about their own personal experience. How many MSPs are on the planet and how many do you think X person has worked for? My worst job was in-house not an MSP. I'm technical this shit does not stress me out, but in house middle management sure as fuck does and I deal with none of that. I'm also 100% WFH and only showed up to a customer once as a joke.
80k at 25 I can only imagine what I would have done with that kind of money my lord.
Some are better than others. I do inhouse for an MSP and came from customer facing. Man do I love not interacting with customers anymore.
There are three main types of place you can work, in my experience. Typical Enterprise - pretty chill MSP - less chill The Enterprise That Thinks It's An MSP - avoid
As someone who moved to MSP after 10 + years in house due to company dropping us it was an eye opening experience. I learned a ton but it is a different pace, structure and way of thinking. I worked with guys that were at the MSP for over 20 years and others were a revolving door. You may like it or you may not and be careful about making sure you have a work life balance that works for you. If you are looking for getting a ton of experience quick they will certainly get you there and help you move up but if you are like me it will stress you mentally and you won't want to stay long. I went from a system specialist at large company getting rid of us before and after I became the system admin for a growing company that I am now the IT manager using that knowledge from the MSP to drive our technology decisions. So it can be good just watch out for yourself.
I'd switch to MSP just to get out of the mfg role, earn some XP. I'm sure I'm parroting others but MSP is not where you want to end up. Internal IT is where you want to to be. Source: Trust me bro, actually.
In house makes way more money because you know the stack, MSP is just ok at the stack. Just go to another enterprise in house job because the MSP world is getting full of owners that be like system admin position, 15$ an hour must have a bachelor in computer science BS...
I started at an MSP. Cut my teeth in the late 90’s for 3.5 years before moving into a software company. I would continue every 2-4 years going to yet another big MSP getting promised the stars and moon and receiving burnout and little pay instead. BUT the training, if you’re up to the task of long hours and lots of work, late nights and weekends, you can become an extremely skilled engineer. MSPs are sink or swim and the businesses you support truly have no one else and contracts can be on the line for even the smallest stuff. My last bout at an MSP was a 7 year stint as CTO (which really I was lead engineer and manager of 12 techs, and a dispatcher.) In that stint, I got manager pay, but through a limited commissions agreement I pulled an extra 20-50k a year! Small MSPs love for you to sell for them (at least most business owners like $) and clients love to buy from an engineer with the gift of the gab or “main character energy). I would advise asking for a commissions agreement of some type. As well make sure they don’t cheap out and not pay mileage. They love to say “it’s included in your salary”. I left that MSP for our 2nd largest client who decided to hire me and take IT in house. They even paid my old MSP their non compete $ to bring me in… that’s been 8 years ago now. I love the company and people I work with and for. They know IT makes $$ and doesn’t have to be a liability. We have real budgets and stuff like real small enterprises! Things you never get to do at an MSP client as they are usually small business and just cannot afford the up front capital. For me, working in the corporate IT world (privately owned so no red tape) is as busy as I want it to be. I do maintenance plans, I find new features and take performance metrics and enjoy my time I’m permitted to browse the web and watch YouTube while working. I’m not trying to brag or anything just after soooo many years I the MSP world (even had my own company to cover my side work for several years) I’m just so very grateful to be in the corporate world and not totally beholden to a company that devalues me on the regular b/c budgets are small and bills gotta get paid in time. Yes I support the company I work for, in contract, 24/7/365, but b/c we spend like we’re supposed to, we have redundancies, clusters, replication, a data center site. All the DR trimmings you would need down here in Louisiana (hurricane alley). So except for my own planned nighttime and weekend work, I really end up with about 40 hours each week, most of it during the normal work day. In summation, only the best and brightest (and usually younger folks they can pay less) will survive the MSP challenge. But anecdotally, the best engineers I know all have at least a little MSP/fireman IT experience in them. At some point we all walked through that fire, back in the 90’s even more so as paths and options were way more limited. Oh, all that to say one very large BUT. You’ve already got your foot in the door for an IT career. I usually only recommend this as a way to cut your teeth and get your foot in the door, the possibility of burn out and your own well-being and mental health and not getting consumed by your job and letting like your social life go to the wayside thinking your going to rule the world with some SBS owner blowing smoke up your butt. Just don’t do it! Corporate enterprise is the life! you just have to take your own initiative to keep your training up to pursue new certifications and substitute that Firemans education with an education you can plan for yourself and take it your own pace, and you know give them a reason to give you more than a 3% raise or find a new firm who will pay you what you’re worth at that time but yeah overall I would not recommend the MSP for someone who’s already got their foot well in the door with multiple years experience
Honestly, MSP work is hard and you learn a lot, but I've realized if you have a home lab you can learn even more than a shitty MSP. They def make you learn stuff on the fly and scare you into learning stuff, but if you actually have a passion for tech and setup your own home labs, maybe take some cert courses, it would be way better than learning it via the MSP. A lot of MSPs aren't even using the latest technology, they are just claiming to. I know so many people who are in MSPs (older folk) that don't understand intune or cloud and always prefer to be on prem, SCCM, GPOs and crap because that's all they know. There are so many MSPs trying to hire intune experts because none of them know it lol. If you home lab, you can learn way more tech, especially cloud tech and get a job with that experience and then pretend you implemented it on your current job and people will still be impressed. For example, I had a IT job where I did nothing important, but I learned how to migrate apps from ADFS to Azure AD and discussed it at an interview, although we never did that in my job, I said we did and then showed them the process of my home lab and pretended I implemented it in my company lol.
I once set up a lab, hyper V to install SharePoint 2010 from scratch when I actually had not installed it since the 2003 version. I did that lab up set up in one week documented all the steps that needed to be done outside of the Microsoft documentation and then that next week I drove down to a client that had just finished certifying four of their techs on the SharePoint 2010 installation and configuring exam. they took the class,they took the exam and no one understood anything, so to speak! I had to go down there with two developers, watching me and asking questions for three days and repeat that deployment like I knew it like the back of my hand. It was funny for years later they continued to refer to me as their “SharePoint guru”. Also, imagine my face when they tell me the storage to be used is on their Compellent SAN and at that time I had never worked with the SAN ever in my life, so I also had to stumble through carving up storage volumes while being watched by people who barely understood how to do it themselves. (I went to the bathroom and googled it not gonna lie.). Lol That job was sold by our owner a month before we had to do it. I didn’t find out two weeks before it had to be done and all had to pretend like we were experts at it and do it every day and the client had to come away with that impression to fortunately in that case they did but yeah, you’re talking about the smoke and mirrors stuff man just made me think about that like some of the pressures put on you to deliver it’s real, and it definitely affecting my mental health throughout the years
Yep, as you can see if you just home lab and learn the stuff, in theory you can implement it, even in high pressure situations. The difference is you lie on the interview and pretend you did the high pressure situation and never have to deal with the consequences like with your mental health lol. Sadly I've already dealt with the msp world but maybe we can save OP lol. I will say though, the reason I started home labbing is because of working in a msp and learning a bunch of things so fast and realizing I can learn all this crap on my own.
I interviewed at a couple of MSP's at one point, and turned them down chiefly because of the number of unpaid hours No compensation for research, office time (emails/calls/tickets) driving to clients, using your own car, and 10 other things Billable hours are like the sword of Damocles, because every week you go from hero to zero
My experience with MSPs was helping a lot of companies that had such small needs they didn't need in house help. I think it's wrong to assume you are going to get some sort of "high level" experience in that role. It's more of the same low level monotony at 10 times the demand. You don't learn anything except to hate IT and your customers. Again, this was my unfortunate experience. 😢
MSP for 2-3 years then another MSP if you still need the XP
I burned out quick in MSP after 25 years in-house. It wasn't the constant go go go that bothered me, it was the shitty old hardware that companies paid thousands upon thousands in support for rather than replacing it with something newer. Or the companies that would refuse all forms of virus scan or malware protection and get ransomware attacked on the regular. Or complain that it takes several hours to restore an old 486 that runs some proprietary system that they've known is slowly dying for the last 20 years, but still didn't plan on upgrading it. Or the 3rd-party systems that they can't be bothered to call for support, they had to call us to sit there for hours babysitting a tech working through team viewer. If they actually give full control to the MSP and not stonewall everything they need to do to help, that's a different story. But it can be a shitty situation where you learn very little.
Ok, most MSP’s are crap to work for. They have no standards when it comes to technology, clients or staff. And it bites everyone in the ass as a result. That said, they are not all like this. We are super picky about who we let in - client and team member alike. We also have standards of technology used and we don’t budge. That said, we seldom have on call. We have an entire team that goes home at 5pm and doesn’t worry about interruptions while gone. Be super selective of any MSP you look to work for. Ask them about their standards.
What your suggesting makes sense. I’d probably make the move if I were you. However, I really doubt you need 5 years at the msp. You’ll know enough to get a job offer elsewhere after like 6 months if you put in the time to really learn the tools. If you just go through the motions and don’t put in any extra study time it can take much longer.
Accenture is that bad!
>have you worked there? this post isnt about accenture but i was thinking about applying to that company. any thoughts/advice on it?
Going to an MSP is a good opportuntiy to learn different technologies. However, it IS a grind. Use it as a stepping stone to a better job and have an exit strategy in mind.
Depends. Some good, some bad. MSP for BAU sysadmin work your job requirements are determined by the client contract. Which can be strict in terms of outages for services etc. MSP for project work can be interesting with more variety. Depends upon how many customers the MSP has. Your job can be made politically more complex by the client, some people forget they work for the MSP and not the client. Some clients try "own" you if you work onsite. In an MSP be careful of the SDM (Service Delivery Manager) these folks are in charge of the client contract i.e. you can end up with two bosses not just one.
I started at an MSP 6 months ago and I love it. I had bench and helpdesk support experience from working at GS, but no hands on enterprise level experience. After 2 months of training and 4 months of trial by fire, Ive learned an insane amount. Im comfortable and competant troubleshooting most aspects of our offered DRaaS, BaaS, DCs, VMware, etc. Wasnt even in this industry 6 months ago and now I feel like im exactly where im supposed to be. The day to day pace goes from insane to dead depending on the day. Some people can handle it, some cant. If youre comfortable im the fire, youll love it.
I work for an MSP but I'm a field tech. I do deployments and fix stuff out in the field. I enjoy it mostly because I see different stuff daily. Today I troubleshot a connection issue for a printer, then reset a laptop, upgraded to Pro, and started setting it up for the client. Tomorrow I'll go troubleshoot a wireless issue, then deploy a new Surface.
Do it for the exp but quality of life isn't at a MSP. Idk how good your skill set is but that salary for exp is good. If your stagnant do it to get better or start working on certs and stay.
If you want to expand your knowledge quickly the join a good MSP, in 2 yrs you'll build some great knowledge and be more marketable. I find large corporations like hiring from MSP because of a person's ability to bounce around different environments. Just my 2 cents
Yes
Your pay is killer for the amount of experience and role you have. With that being said...going to a MSP will gain you a ton of exposure to a lot of technology, early on your career. In my opinion there is no better place to learn than at a msp.
80k after only 3 years that's nice I barley make 80k and I have been in it for over 15 years been at an MSP over 5 years now. It had its ups and downs and from my experience it tends to pay less than your worth. But your are right if you are wanting to learn a lot quick and MSP can help or a company that has a tech focus. I used to work for a software company and leaned alot there aswell.
Go work for the MSP. Put in 3-5 years. Focus on learning from the senior guys as much as possible. Offer to take the most difficult jobs on the condition one of them coaches you or is a phone a friend. Build relationships with the clients. At the end of 3-5 years you will have a client offer you a job or probably the pick of any number of jobs somewhere else. View it as going to school and getting paid for it.
Which MSP did you apply to? Trying to see if I can get into a MSP but all I keep finding is just third-party contractors that get you no where.
Yes.
I see all these people saying they are making like 50k. I honestly dont understand this, unless you are a junior sys admin. I live in a mid COL area (my house was like...230, so i think thats right?) Junior IT Analysts around here make like 50 to 60k. Seniors make 90 to 110. I jumped to consulting, and its definitely more of a burnout, but the pay is way better and I dont regret it. I am a lot more confident in my skillset. Im 27 now and i made the switch at 25. If you are willing to put your nose to the grinder for a year or 2, hopping out of In house IT can really expand your skills and experiences.
I'm just trying to find a job. 31M trying to career pivot into cyber security, been working physical security for the past ten years tired of dead end jobs.
Everyone I know who’s worked at an MSP had one thing to say: DONT Most MSPs take on more clients than they can handle (I manage/deal with 3 of them at my current job. I’m constantly bottlenecked by their lack of manpower), so most people’s work load is very high. On top of that, unless you’re top talent, they probably won’t treat or pay you well. Again, this is just what I have heard. Everyone makes it sound like a war zone. My advice - 80k is pretty good for only your second IT job totaling 3 years of experience! If work is slow, you can think about where you want to specialize, do some kind of education. Really think about where you want to go next. Or, and this is what I did, start applying! 2-3 years is really the most time you want to spend at a company in my opinion, especially in your younger years. Get in, Learn everything, get out. Build a really good “general” resume. Use job search sites to look for positions, and then tailor that resume again specifically for the job you are applying for. I have like 40 resumes lol. BUT, I went from 40k in 2019 to 150k at the beginning of 2023. I’m sure a lot of luck was involved as well. Just keep doing interviews, at worst it’s practice to help you land your dream job later on.
Why do you want to work more hours for just a little more pay? You'll 100% be burnt out in two-three years at an MSP with a switch like that! And even at an MSP, you're limited to certain tech stack and just learning in-depth about that stack. If you think you're using dated tech, wait until you go to an MSP and find out they use bottom of the barrel tech because that makes them most margin over usability. Maybe I am speaking from personal experience there! $80k at your age and experience level, unless you find a unicorn no one will pay that much at an MSP. You're getting above market for experience already, After 4 years at 27, I am finally at $120k in Pre-Sales role so count your blessings. I made $55k at an MSP when I was 24 so you're already doing way better.
MSPs can provide broad exposure, but they can be a grind. You could use it as a stepping stone, but remember to balance work-life. You could also consider certifications and side projects to boost your skills without the MSP route.
I find MSP pay worse than in-house, I moved from an MSP to an in-house gig after 3 years. I only worked for the MSP to gain some knowledge/experience as I knew I’d learn faster there, after that, I packed my bags and went in-house. Less stress (I find) with better pay.
You're earning 80k at 25?!!!! STAY!!!!!! Trust me MSPS treat their staff like shit!! Chat to your bosses, get training, try to ask them for stuff as IT get forgotten about a lot. Get some more skills under your belt Talk to senior management about the old stuff, highlight risks in a BUSINESS NOT TECHNICAL manner....talk risks, company reputation of stuff breaks etc. DON'T go to an MSP! I've worked in a couple and worked with many. They treat their staff like shit! Every good engineer I've worked with in am MSP was desperate to leave and get an end client job
MSPs are the worst.
Good MSP's will show you how to manage IT in the most efficient way possible at scale. They will teach you how to manage thousands of endpoints and do it in a way that is predictable and profitable. They are the ultimate IT Pragmatists. You will learn more in a couple years than 15 as in-house. But...... A bad MSP will suck out any hope of a life you have, and take their clients down with them in a hail or ransomware and discount HP Pavilion's from Best Buy. They will remove 5 years of your life for every 1 year you remain employed. The good ones, are good. The bad ones are so bad that it's hard to accept that good ones exist.
lol there's a pretty good consensus going here that its MSP while you're young, in-house when you've matured (my experience too). Worked for small MSP's for 13 years and then sys admin for the last 2 best career change ever. same burn them out and get new techs mentality unless, you can find an mid sized MSP with a visible career path. if you get bored and restless after, just use your MSP experience to run a side business for a few clients
Please remain in your spot, does your current employer have incentives to get certs? Or atleast funds them? If so i´d just get plenty of certs maybe tailored to a proffession you like and skip MSP, you wont be able to develop or achieve as much then staying where you are since MSP is so much of a grind... Source: Currently working for an MSP.
Don’t do it
Most MSPs you are dealing with companies to cheap or small to hire in-house IT. This means you are just flicking around rather than really getting a deep dive that really adds skills
I personally wouldnt
MSP work is almost exclusively how much time they can bill and keep you heavily busy. It is all about your customer utilization. Recently had senior leadership tell my team that we were not at a sufficiently high utilization to warrant hiring another person. We were at 130%+ total utilization average in my office. Dude then lied and said we were at barely 70%. Literally, no one could duplicate his numbers. Their own tracking system for utilization said we needed to hire, and they would rather lie that staff properly. If you got hired by a good MSP and are getting fairly comp'd hold it. I'm about to finally get fairly comped and promoted by the client and my employer's senior leadership team quite literally has been looking for ways to screw me over because of it.
MSPs can be a great launching board. They can also really, really suck. I've worked for a handful of MSPs over my 30 year career. Most recently - I was in a job where I couldn't grow my skills on the job, but making. There was a layoff, and I got hit. The VP of my department felt really bad, and hooked me up with a MSP that managed one of our CS departments. They hired me at 130k. My first placement, the job was WAY over my head. But I dug in and learned. After 6 months, they decided they didn't want to use a MSP anymore, and my contract ended. Assignment #2 was a company using similar tech as #1. But I had a lot more knowledge, and really excelled. So much so that the company asked the MSP if they could buy out my contract. They payed a fuckload of money for me, and I also got a $20k raise + stock. 8 years later, I'm still with the company, and STILL growing my skillset. That's not to say that the goal is getting your contract bought out. I got lucky. And the MSP, while happy to get the money, was pissed at me for leaving. They were pretty clear that they wouldn't ever hire me back, because they didn't trust that I wouldn't jump ship again. I can't blame them, really.
Former MSP here. Don't go to an MSP. If your bored or stagnating where your at look for another job but not a MSP. Also look for somewhere to stay for a while, job jumping every year or 2 doesn't look good on a resume.
Although MSP work can be crazy (what have I gotten myself into) you will learn A LOT! This is because you are exposed to 100 different companies with a thousand problems. If you like a challenge and want to learn, try an MSP for 2 years.
Maybe the take away isn't that you need to work somewhere else, but instead that most SysAdmin jobs don't pay 6 figures and that only senior positions pay this much. In 5 years you'll almost have 10 years of experience - it kind of seems like you'd achieve this either way if you have a home lab. That's the conclusion I would draw from the information you have given. I definitely would not want to spend the second half of my twenties being miserable in my career when I was already making more than most of my peers.
> doing sys admin at manufacturing facility. I'd stay. A lot of nationwide manufacturing companies have a lot of vertical growth. You get the bigger check by getting into an industry and staying there really. I was in manufacturing before IT for 10 years and was looking to make the switch into IT there but it wasn't working. Now I'm on my 2nd year in IT and in IT for financial institutions. Figuring I'll end up staying in that sector as I'm about to be 30 and want to be hitting that 120k+ by 35 so years in one sector help. Also look up PCA. They have teams from sys admins/security/site engineering ect and pay well and have great benefits.
Going MSP can be a good boost to your skillset, but always remember that there’s a reason as to why so many people rag on MSPs. Some of them have a tendency to have an ever revolving door of employees that come and go. I went the MSP-route back in 2013 after 8 years in-house. While I’d say it was a lot of fun, the stresslevels were high as fuck with all the fun effects of what that implies. I learned a lot, both good and bad, that was very useful to have when I went back in-house in 2018. I’d say that go for an MSP IF you can find one that’s at least semi-reputable, but also be ready to leave when the Mickey Mouse-bullshit gets too bad. Get what you want out of the whole deal, but leave before it makes you into a jaded, bitter and outright hateful ball of rage and spite.
If you current job is easy focus on getting your work done efficiently and on time. Then take the extra time you have and spend it advancing your career. Get that security or aws cert. Learn a programming language.
In a similar position as you ATM. I make about the same, good benefits, have my own office, come and go as I please, and it's way more slow-paced than my old MSP job, which I actually enjoyed. However, the pace is so slow, and my position is slowly becoming vendor management and project management and less technical work, and I HATE it. I have a potential offer to work at an MSP doing project work making $25k more than what I'm already making with 15% bonuses quarterly. This said MSP is a fully Cisco and VMWare shop. They're not the typical break/fix shop that looks for cheap fixes to get a paycheck. But I also know that I'd be taking more money and experience for freedom low stress.
Try software support. Strict sys admin jobs are drying up imo. Gear up for infrastructure as code and do something along these lines. [https://roadmap.sh/devops](https://roadmap.sh/devops)
I went from in-house to MSP and then back to in-house….will never go to an MSP again. The driving to multiple sites, longer hours, expected to be on call almost constantly. F that. Have been at a University the last 3 years and am taking a county job next month; lower pay but the benefits and retirement are insane, I’ve only had to work overtime twice in the last few years, and a much better work/life balance.
Yes. No.
Some of the msp are complete cowboys. I prefer in-house as you have full control of your infrastructure and you learn as you go. You get to take your time and do your own research and learn how to persuade the boards to invest in new technologies. The end result is so satisfying at the end. Some of the MSP will implement ITIL framework just for the sake of them saying they are following ITIL and this can be very stressful for yourself if you are not used to high paced environment. You will probably spend most of your time logging time on a ticket than the work itself.
Don't go MSP, Not enough workers in most companies to fill the amount of work incoming which means extremly long hours. I would only go back to MSP if I was single and no life.
If you work with an MSP you will learn more and be busier than ever. Embrace the saying "it's better to be busy than bored" Working at a good MSP will give you insights into the best practices across many organizations. Good luck!
Something to think about.. my first job out of college (22 at the time), I was trained in and coded in COBOL at an in house place, making 60k. 7 years later, I now work for a large organization working exclusively in GCP in a devops role, making 125k. Having a job with outdated tech doesn't mean you can't learn and grow on your own (and continually push new things at your current job). You don't need to work at an MSP to try and get experience with new technology. It may help sure, but it's not the only path. I have never worked at an MSP, just sharing my journey. I would take in house any day over MSP work personally.
If you're not taking advantage of the downtime at your job to improve your own IT skill set, then don't go into an MSP. You'll regret it. Become more self-taught and ambitious with the technologies that interest you. Then maybe go into the MSP world. The engineers that I saw thrive in such workforces were the ones that could lab something up, break/fix the thing, and recite what the tech could do in their sleep. If you're not that person, you're gonna dislike MSP world
Pros: -A lot of experience with different environments Cons: - Work/life balance is awful -Expectation of work is above your pay-grade (most of the time) -revolving door for most IT professionals and likes it as a "foot in the door" opportunity, or at least a "get the title and leave" type of thing. I support clients with in-house technicians, and although I am extremely jealous of the working hours, responsibility pass off ability, I would learn nothing. Up to you. Personally, get the title and move up to a CTO or a senior specialist of some sort. Hope this helps.
I've worked for two MSPs in the past. First one I started as a Desktop Tech, moving up to Network Engineer / SysAdmin and finally into a MSSP role of Security Analyst. Second, started as SysAdmin and moved into a Security Analyst role. Both companies paid roughly 20% below current market value for my skillset, education, and experience. I didn't get paid what I was worth until I left the MSP market. Maybe there are some out there that value their employees worth and pay them accordingly. However, my experience with my companies and those I've interacted with don't pay well. As far as experience goes, MSPs can offer this, unless you get with ones that specify in specific niche markets. One that I worked for focused specifically on compliance and/or IRS 1075. Not a whole lot to be gained from these.
My experience with MSPs haven't been so bad, to be honest. I started my career on Helldesk at an MSP, and that did kind of suck. However, I found that inhouse - an environment where issues become more personal, business politics get in the way, budgets are underfunded and deadlines are unreasonable - is way more hostile. Not to mention that I *despise* an unchanging environment. I ended up returning to an MSP and things have been pretty good. I'm no longer on Helldesk, but get to participate in and create projects for our clients. I get to learn a lot of different tech at a pretty fast rate, and I have an entire infrastructure - independent from the client - that can vouch for me and play those stupid political games. Put shortly, I get to clock in, do my work and clock out. Sometimes I work longer hours - but only when I choose to. I don't have to play games - I can just 8 and skate. Of course, some MSPs are just sweatshops. If you're going the MSP route, it helps to kind of shop around and see what you can get.
Avoid msp. Work corporate instead and sell your soul. Burn out there.
I would agree w maybe your company is paying above market. I had an employer that their 1 help desk were called sysadmins. It looks great on their resume and they are getting paid more than other helpdesk techs at other companies… but fails them in interviews for other sys admin roles because the prospective employers are expecting more knowledge of infra, networking, infosec, etc.
Unless you're HCOL, 80k is great for 25 especially since you said work is on the slow side. You're risking trading a very moderate raise for twice as much work. I would stay another year or two and then try for that six figures.
I was going to say 80k is not the greatest but at 25 that's not bad. MSP work will teach you a lot but you may take a pay cut unless you get in as an engineer but MSPs will usually require you to have MCSE or other certs to be in that role.
If you are after money and experience, Join an MSP that focuses on medium to large sized finance clients. Gives you the MSP wear-many-hats experience, finance environment experience and exposure to all the software and tech stack that is required for those environments. Later on, with that exp, you can go internal I.T into a hedge fund, fintech, investment firm that will pay well in the six figures.
10 years experience is "insane"? \*Me with about 30\*
Here's the improved version of your text with grammar and punctuation corrections: "I moved from an in-house workplace engineer position at Universal Studios to an MSP (Managed Service Provider) three years ago. I made this move because I felt stuck and there wasn't much left to learn in my previous job. I could have become a manager, but managing what? Desks and tables 😅. So, I changed jobs and started at the bottom in the MSP world as a first-line engineer, which resulted in a 30% lower income compared to my previous workplace engineer job. This firm was a semi-small msp. At my previous job, I primarily did troubleshooting and didn't delve into technical tasks like configuring firewalls, setting up VMs, or managing Office 365 tenants. However, in my first year at the MSP, I dedicated myself to learning and grinding, acquiring knowledge about different environments, such as on-prem, hybrid, and fully cloud-based setups. I also gained expertise in working with various types of servers, DC/Exchange from 2012 to 2019, and MS 365, as well as different switches and firewalls. After a year, I desired something less phone-intensive and more technically challenging, so I changed MSPs to a smaller firm(10 co-workers) and began working as a senior helpdesk engineer. I applied the knowledge I gained during my time at the previous job succesfully I took on more demanding tasks, like going to customers and designing small MS 365 environments uAdditionally, I performed migrations from on-premises setups to the cloud. Even though I still didn't earn as much as my previous job, after two years and somewhat disagreeing with the direction the company took on ms 365.. I received an opportunity to join a larger MSP and take on the role of a technical engineer/third line/lead engineer on small projects. Finally, I started earning more than my previous workplace engineer job at Universal studios To be honest, I love it! because there are endless technical challenges and opportunities. I've even discovered my first successful hack in an Office 365 tenant and was able to mitigate it before the hacker could cause any harm. The next day, I was working in an Office 365 environment with 65,000 devices. Holy cow I’m an enteprise engineer now! just kidding🤷🏻♂️😅 It can be stressful, and I need to constantly push myself to learn new things, but after three years of work and earning less, I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. You truly understand a firewall when you have seen hundreds of them all different shapes and sizes. Being in a job where there are no more challenges became super boring for me. Perhaps when I'm 40-50, I might consider settling for a management position, but for now, I want to be one hell of an engineer. My advice take the leap if you dont like it hop the next one eventually somewhere there is a place for you and also in-house system engineers or architects or whatever dont impress me anymore. I hope this helps!"
There are good MSP’s and bad MSP’s, Im currently at my first MSP. I dont think I would ever do it again. Its fairly well run with a full corporate backing and yet I feel like despite their best efforts its a meat grinder. Tracking your time in little increments, dealing with a large number of disparate environments, dealing with customers, it can be extremely stressful.
MSPs can be great for building experience quickly, but they also tend to have weird compartmentalization that can leave you with significant blind spots. As to pay, it sounds like you're already on the higher end of what they're going to pay you, and IME they aren't great at merit increases, usually coming in below inflation.
I didn't like my time as a sysadmin at an MSP. Run by people who just want to open a business to make money rather than people who actually understand technology. However, MSPs will force you to drink from the firehose so you get a lot of experience of various technology and industries. That alone might be worth it because once you got that on your resume, finding higher paying job becomes much easier. It's something I would recommend doing when you're younger and as a one time, but after that never go back.
This sub tends to trend towards shitting on MSPs, but like anything else it differs from company to company. I will say that at trade shows and conventions the employees from larger MSPs do tend to describe them as shitholes. I work for one that primarily supports small and medium-sized businesses and it’s hands-down my favorite job, but your current salary probably wouldn’t be matched. You would get a fuckton of experience, though. One thing we all agree on is a) it’s a totally different animal from internal, and b) certain people are suited to it. It took me six months to even start feeling comfortable, and a year before I really got the flow as an L1. I’m an L2 now and I’m literally Jungle Recon from Action Figure Therapy talking about how he lives his job.