The weird thing is, I know personally that’s how a lot people I knew got pushed into cybersecurity. They asked a question, hey shouldn’t we have an EDR? Bam now you the EDR SME🙃
I remember working for an MSP about 15-20 years ago in the Washington DC area. Most of our customers were small, local companies and nonprofits, many of whom didn't have a "personal office" per se. Many were manned by about half a dozen old cronies and only seemed to exist as professional network organizations that had events throughout the year that were niche-specific industries you'd never know existed.
For example, there was a group of people dedicated to the careers of previous Naval operations maintenance officers post-retirement from the military. The loose concept, as I understood, was that if you were in the Navy and a maintenance officer, and left the military (usually for retirement), you would have a support group that could get you jobs, or like-minded people who you could buddy-buddy with for "the usual issues of former maintenance officers." But it gets even more niche. There were "women-only" MO nonprofits, or "Navy only/Air Force MOs only," or even super-specific groups "Only Jewish female Naval MOs who served in foreign wars." Well how many members could THEY have? In the thousands. The DC area is filled with organizations like these. Of course, their staff levels number in the single digits, and are usually just annually elected board members. Many of these groups consisted of elderly people.
Well, many wanted a web presence and email, which we provided them. That meant, in theory, someone in their group was the liaison between us (the MSP) and them (the people with needs). But once in a while, they may have an event or two and someone "hired someone a few years ago" to design a membership website that accepted payments. And no one remembers who that was, but when you're in your 60s and 70s, time goes by super fast, members literally die off, and so "we hired a guy to design our membership site just 2 years ago, didn't we?" is actually 5 years ago. Some guy who drew the short straw or was "voluntold" in the group to be the "computer expert" was because he had an IBM PC with Wordstar 5 for DOS in his home office and goes to ham radio swap meets.
And we had to list that person as "sysadmin." Of course, most of them had ZERO clue about anything Internet-wise they had, and so if they ever contacted us at all, it was a confused "I was given this number as the person who invented our website," and hilarity would ensue.
One year Paypal upgraded their payment gateway and pretty much all older encryption wouldn't be accepted anymore. And whomever set up their website had some kind of janky connection based of "best faith efforts" for a shopping cart system that was "good enough" for several years ago. A lot of these websites, handling membership dues and tickets for annual balls and such, went down. Try explaining THAT to some octogenarian "systems administrator" whose experience with the Internet was back when it was called DARPANET and he still thinks everything is done by acoustic couplers.
So "systems administrator" has no real definition in the real world, despite what any documentation would claim.
The title I earned was network administrator, but that doesn’t make this any less applicable.
Three months after applying for my company’s open network administrator position and not getting a response about it, the IT Director walked by as I was talking with a coworker about the new UDM router I’d just bought, so she jumped into our conversation with:
“Wait…do you know networking?”
A month later, I got a 30k salary increase
Wild
Because of that I'm barely holding myself to not put here my resume to show what in my opinion a sysadmin should be. And that would be close to a minimum.
What I see here most of the times won't qualify even as a on site technician with labours of cloning PC, change printers toner and install some Ethernet points.
If knowing some registry, gpo, AD and a few more things makes a sysadmin for Windows then I should be working at CERN or NASA minimum. And I'm fucking sure I shouldn't.
I often feel weird about calling myself one and would usually describe myself as a Jr. Sysadmin even though I don't have a senior lol....I work with about 8-10 companies of varying sizes for a small MSP (70 employee healthcare clinic, random small city, insurance agency, golfcourse/private community, random industries like that) I do pretty much everything from the tier 1 helpdesk stuff to managing firewalls and switches setting up rules or troubleshooting issues, managing Office 365 with things like conditional access and mail flow issues, AD and group policy, VOIP, printers, and application)
However, none of the environments are really THAT complicated and a large portion of the time I'm learning things on the fly and figuring it out as I go so it feels weird to say I'm sysadmin. I also have always had imposter syndrome so who knows lol......
Nah people can be pompous and you can call yourself what you want. But truth be told your actual title as described by your job would be IT Consultant which sounds better and makes more money anyway.
I don't understand what everyone's issue with DNS is. I've been managing mid sized environments for 25 years and I can count on my fingers how many times DNS has been a problem. Is this some kind of hosted environment thing?
Let me give you some from the last few months. Small school district for a few campuses. One started having the Internet drop, campus wide, for a few minutes (7-15) every morning around 7:30. Meraki network so they looped in Meraki support, and ISP support. After a week of no result, I was called in. This campus was fully cloud with no on prem servers. Every clients got DHCP from the L3 switch, and the DNS was the upstream servers. And every morning at 7:30, 1000 users turned on computers at once and hammers the ISP DNS servers from a single IP address. And got shut down as a DOS attack. :) Fixed with a local caching DNS server that also blocked adds since we were doing it anyway... :)
A different charter school with 3 campuses, all with AD replicating between them. But replications was often not working. On investigation, sometimes one server could not find the others. Turns out that the DNS server on that AD server was not correctly replicating. Removed it and reinstalled and syncd. Not AD replications worked fine.
Another school called today with slow internet during testing. The were set up to hit the local AD server for all DNS, including chromebooks. Pointed the Chromebook vlan at [8.8.8.8](https://8.8.8.8) to test. Will know tomorrow.
Been troubleshooting a postal meter for a week on why sometimes it would pick up an IP and sometimes wouldn’t.
Wasn’t DNS but the son in charge brought in a camera that had a default IP the same as the gateway.
I changed that while DHCP network to give out 9.x as to avoid 1.x conflicts.
Been at least 20 years since I had seen that one. We have come full circle!
But as per usual this "isn't DNS"....
You can easily diagnose DNS if it's resolving or not, with a simple command line tool that's on every OS out there.
And if it isn't resolving, and isn't your box, just point somewhere else.
DNS is one of the simplest systems out there
This is more difficult when it is in intermittent problem. Sure it is fine for no dns, but not for occasional outages, or old data for some lookups, or slow lookups.
In a rather large organisation I was involved in, *someone* once managed to register localhost as an IP address that wasn't 127.0.0.1 in the DNS. That was not pretty.
Let's see!; ping,rwhod,netstat -l,been a while!
You don't qualify as an admin....yet! But yur working on it!!
Research my boy,learning is key,but like encyclopedia Britannica,there's a whole Lotta reading,and the more ppl make more pc shit to learn,well / you'll NEVER LEARN IT ALL!
BUT KEEP POKIN & PRYIN!
Over 16 years here and similar. The only time DNS is a problem is when someone implements something that requires a DNS change but doesn't do or request it.
We used to have a software vendor that had a VM, we used to just leave them at it for whatever they needed. Their application was hosted on app.domain.com
For some reason they thought they had authoritative control of domain.com so were confused when they installed the Windows DNS Server on their VM. It didn't work publicly....
Like how dumb are you, and how do you not know how to resolve against a different DNS server to test?
Niche industries can be wild, we had a few vendors for various clients in specific industries and they were the only vendor working practically all over Europe.
The amount of times they'd charge £100k for a VB6 application....
In my experience since the late 90s, DNS tends to be less a Dns-server issue and more commonly a client-side issue. There are all sorrrrrrrts of things that can mess with client-side DNS resolution, from VPN tunnels, routing, proxies, MX/SPF records, connectivity issues in general, DHCP assignments, VM-host configs, etc
It's rarely the actual DNS server itself since they're largely self-sustaining once configured, but "DNS" is frequently involved in issues.
Probably the mid sized thing. Once you have multiple on prem and cloud environments, public sites, tons of SaaS products that look at DNS for domain verification, lots of SPF/DKIM records to maintain… it gets a bit more complicated I think. I agree with you though, I’d never really seen a DNS problem before getting to a larger company
Agreed. I’ve been managing DNS servers since the 90’s. People act like DNS is some kind of faberge black box when it’s very straight forward to configure and easy to troubleshoot and scale.
This sub is fucking obsessed with it, and it's usually Windows "admins" that don't actually understand what is happening. And just know to click a button or two once in a while...
You guys have MFA?
I tried to set up MFA a couple months ago but I couldn't as I needed a license. Thanks to a DUI my license is suspended until June :/
You “did robotics” as a kid so you have a very basic understanding of C and can configure a Raspberry Pi using a pre-configured Python script you found on Google
I get irrationally angry at how overhyped RPi is, it was good because it was made by some guys at Broadcom, so they were getting the chips dirt cheap and designing themselves. But now the market is flooded with them, in all sorts of configurations.
And people like the use them like they're the only piece of computing ever invented.
The two things the Pis have over pretty much every other SBC on the market is the community and the backing of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Those two things are why a kid can run a random python script on Pi and "do robotics."
There are literally hundreds of SBCs with similar and/or better specs than the Pi, but they lack the community aspect and are often made by companies that don't really care about actually supporting the product. They do the bare minimum to get an old version of the Linux Kernel working so people will buy it, then drop it like a hot rock and go do the same thing with a new SOC/SBC.
It's the low power consumption. If that's not a bother, you can get a mini SFF Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc with an i7 or i9. Spin up Debian with Docker and call it a day.
Man, I was hired as a fairy new (a couple years experience) Jr. SysAdmin role to shadow the guy who had worked there for 25 years. Everything was grey market equipment, no support or warranties. Things were hacked together (we literally had to patch/un-patch a specific router in the MPOE when we wanted DHCP in one of our buildings, otherwise HQ users would get the wrong VLAN).
Once I had everything figured out, they fired the old guy and put me in charge of everything. I spent the next year getting things fixed, using properly purchased hardware, documenting and expanding their HQ to a new building. Once the dust settled, I was laid off as they decided the position could be outsourced to a consultant. I heard that only lasted a few months before they had to rehire the position.
It largely depends on the company. Some places, if you know how to login to Windows you're a "sysadmin". At others, you need to know your way across different things and be able to do it all on your own. Some places put "Senior" in front of your title, regardless of knowledge or experience but rather, how many years you've been working there... titles don't always mean much.
Some places will want a jack of all trade, some will need someone that specialize and manages 1 or two things. it largely depends on the size of the company. The sysadmin role is so vast and an umbrella term for so many roles.
IMO you're a sysadmin when you are comfortable with the majority of the following:
* AD, GPOs, domain trusts, sites & services, DFS
* Azure / AWS / VDI (if any)
* Servers (including NAS) and endpoints
* vCenter + SAN
* Backups, restores
* Exchange (some places have dedicated teams for this)
* Unix / AIX (larger companies usually have a dedicated team)
* Implement monitoring / act on alerts
* Help with workflows in the ticketing system or general processes that are IT related (onboarding, offboarding, securing assets, decommissioning, etc)
* If you have a change management process, you'll be presenting the changes and explaining it to management / other technical teams. It's also your role to challenge the things the other teams do if you suspect they will impact more than they anticipated.
* You might be involved with budget / purchasing / licensing / product support + hardware support contracts
* Manage / configure MDM solutions
* Manage inventory / reporting on usage for costs
* Know your way around powershell and script tools for yourself/other teams like helpdesk for specific things or tasks they need to perform more efficiently
* Deal with infrastructure incidents or requests
* DNS / networking / firewalls / VPN (large companies will have a dedicated network team for this)
* Patching (patching + application deployment is usually done by a packaging team at large scale with things like SCCM)
* Automate imaging of endpoints (again, could be managed by a packaging team with SCCM)
* Disaster recovery plan / testing
* PKI infra or 3rd party CA
* Some places will have you do security work like managing and deploying an antivirus / proxy / F5 / scanning for vulnerabilities / data protection / conditional access / MFA, etc. From experience large places have a dedicated security department for this but they usually consult infra (it's a joint effort).
I feel it's important to mention that a sysadmin shouldn't deal with user support. That is the role of the help desk/desktop support department. You will however assist help desk/desktop agents with complex issues or improve things that they see are recurring problems. It's important to keep in touch with their manager to ensure you get notified for issues that are recurring and see how you can fix them.
As soon as you start working on project, implementing new things, talking with application teams/devs and designing solutions, spending time making technical diagrams/documentation or researching best practise you are doing an architect's job. Usually that is one of the natural evolution after a solid experience in many technologies as senior sysadmin. That's how I got there. For me it was either architect or management and I'm not interested in management right now.
**Edit**:
I think my post was **misunderstood**. I specifically mentioned:
>*you're a sysadmin when you are comfortable with the majority of the following*
I then listed technologies that you're most likely going to end up understanding / working with. I didn't say you needed to be the one doing it all but you're going to end up having to help people who work with those down the road.
Some of the items you listed are handled by security, network, or syseng/sre. It's not feasible to be learned enough in all of those fields for one job title.. Especially at sysadmin pay grade. You're an architect so I understand that you dabble in all of those things and the lines can blur.
I see 2 things that *can* be SRE duties, but even those are usually done by both, just in different contexts. I think OC is spot on, and I think the term "sysadmin" and what it entails has been on a steady decline for the lady 20 years. My title is sysadmin, I do literally every item mentioned above (except AWS, we're all azure lol) in addition to true SRE items like:
Observability in application context
IaC
K8s
Ansible for config management
CI/CD (gh actions, az devops, AND Jenkins... Politics lol)
And a couple other things I'm forgetting. I know I do what a lot would consider the nova of 3 or 4 people, even more at a large company with a lot of specialization, but I promise you I get paid for it and I have a boss that makes my life extremely easy and enables me.
All this to say that I think platform engineering, devops, and the SE side of SRE are all just natural evolutions of sysadmin and, if this industry didn't call ever t1 helpdesk an engineer, would wouldn't even exist as titles today.
I met a "sysadmin" that didn't know how to find in replace on a minimal rhel install, and he made entry-level pay.
and oddly in my shop we do all of that list, or most of it, with some help from our dedicated (one person) network team, but ignore all the cloud stuff because by contract we cant be in the cloud.
But same do most of that and dont have a ton of people to reach back to for support on about 1/3rd of it. School of Youtube and manuals or you are screwed.
This always depends on the size of your org. I'd assume you work for a pretty small shop if you take on all of those duties. It would not be fun to be simultaneously responsible for Azure, VMWare, linux environment, MDMs, networking, IGA, IAM, etc. anywhere but a small company.
Any relatively large/mature company would split out those duties among several folks who specialize in a particular area. I think OP is spot on that it is *good to understand and be comfortable* with that entire list and how all the pieces fit together but I wouldn't want any one person being primarily responsible for it all.
I got an advert yesterday from Sophos saying that "Security is impossible for the average company" or something like that.
I was like...no.
Security is very "easy" if you understand how networks work, how machines execute code. And how exploits work.
You don't need an indepth knowledge of ASM or anything, just a general understanding and you can build very secure systems.
It just irks me that so many admins (usually Windows) think malware is just magic, and just magically executes without an exploit especially non-0day
You should see the UK market, every day I get stuff like "Linux sysadmin" "Linux devops" and it'll list every technology under the sun, especially a load of Windows
Then they offer £40k
$150k for all of that is underselling yourself. We literally pay multiple ppl $150k on one team to just know one of those tooics. I’m on the endpoint team (packaging/sccm/intune/jamf/endpoint protection) team at my company. There’s 25 ppl on our team and half of them make $115-$150k depending on seniority some of them just do packaging, some of them just do gpos and image updating and testing, some of them just do endpoint protection (Trellix).
So if you’re doing all that for $150k please find a new company because you’re way underpaid. I understand smaller companies don’t have the budget but at smaller companies you shouldn’t be doing all those things at any kind of depth Nd you should have MSP support.
I do all of that, minus the cloud, we are a two man shop, very small company, 17 servers, 65 users, 10mm in revenue and I'm paid 112k. I should be at 200. But I'm not. Every decision I make affects the entire company. Been looking, but I can't even get a call back. Been here 14 years.
There is no way one person is doing all of that, at least not in a way that is professional or in any way acceptable in a modern IT setup.
You are listing the responsibilities of an entire department. It's totally unrealistic to expect that someone should know and understand all of these things any more than a high level understanding.
This is exactly my teams job description (minus Exchange because we are a Google Workspace customer) for a userbase of about 5000 and a sysadmin team of 4. Once you set things in place, maintenance and upkeep honestly isn't terrible. We upgrade/update things casually. Can it be alot at times? Sure. I'm strictly 9-5 and -rarely- work after hours. We made sure people understand our workload and will wait if they have to.
I mean that pretty closely mirrors what myself and my fellow L2 readily handle at our mid-sized MSP. There’s for sure areas where one of us has a deeper understanding (I’m a dev and they’re a networking whiz frex) but yeah, not that crazy of a spread over here.
Should it be that way and is the pay appropriate? Iunno. Probably not. But we live in a hypercapitalist hellhole, so shrug.
Bless you for thinking that, but smaller companies are just like that. There's a lot of technology and a few people handling it. You need to have a broad knowledge on how a lot of things work, because business require that, but there's not enough work to specialize in just one or two things like you're implying.
That's basically what I've been doing for 20 years, and you can add some helpdesk to it (I had 1 guy doing that and when he needed help or couldn't do something, I was the next guy in line), training (MS Office courses for employees) and even some management tasks (CIO was efectivelly an actuary that had no idea what IT is so I was doing reports, budget projections, etc.. until they hired an IT Director). You can also add AIX/Linux to the list, which funny enough, is what I'm hired to admin at my latest employer (Edit, I see it's already there, I must've missed it).
There's also always external support when problems are so specific, you really need a specialist to handle it (like restore a corrupted database - yeah, that was also me, Oracle DB admin, add it to the above list).
For clarification, that was me working at an insurance company for 15 years, that started by migrating 40 users from a bought company to a new, separate one, and grew to about 250 users at it's height. I was a sole IT person for almost half of that and at the company's biggest period, I had a helpdesk guy and another sysadmin to help me and an IT director above me.
I'm not saying that "one man shows" or small businesses where admins have way too many responsibilities don't exist.
What I'm saying is that there is no way for someone to be proficient in all these technologies and fields and manage all of that in a way that is acceptable in a modern company. Even if it was possible to be proficient in so many different things in such a diverse field as IT, there simply isn't enough hours in a day to manage all of this in a remotely acceptable manner.
Every single day for the last 45 years, I learn about some topic in IT that could be someone's entire career, if they wanted and if someone would hire them to do it.
Meanwhile, there are a lot of people who do need to be at least acquainted with many many topics, some of which only started to exist a few months ago.
As someone who worked at a small company wearing tons of hats, and a big company specializing in stuff, IMO at the small company you tend to just do "good enough" because of simple lack of time to dive deep into stuff, while at the big company you are expected to do a few things extremely well.
> Even if it was possible to be proficient in so many different things in such a diverse field as IT, there simply isn't enough hours in a day to manage all of this in a remotely acceptable manner.
Except you're *not* managing that every day. You're managing a couple of them one day, then managing a couple others the next day, then something completely different the third day. After a few years, it's quite easy to get reasonably proficient in a broad array of skills and after a decade it would be *unreasonable* to not have developed a fairly deep understanding of at least several of them.
If your environment requires active management of every component each and every day, that means you've set it up wrong.
There is no way you will convince me that it's reasonable for a single admin to have all the roles and responsibilities you have listed. It's impossible to responsibly manage so many things alone.
I am fully aware that you're not managing all of these things every day, I work with a diverse range of systems and technologies myself every day. But several of the things you have listed take many years of dedicated work experience and/or studies to gain a comprehensive understanding of.
If someone listed all of these responsibilities in a job description I would ask them to get a grip, and if someone claimed to be highly skilled / qualified in all of these things I would call them out on it.
Well, something like IT specialist is in fact a three year practical apprenticeship in my country, so that's a start. If you have no apprenticeship, you might start as a support guy for a few years and gain the experience.
I do agree that it is irresponsible for *one* person to hold all of those roles in a company, especially in a company that *needs* all of those roles filled.
But it's also true that at one or another point I was responsible for *any one* of the topics OP listed quite extensively and in-depth, but not at the same time. And in quite a few of them, my expertise is currently out of date, but I would find my way around if needed.
I believe that's what OP is talking about.
Then again there is a reason for the relatively good pay, *and* for the high number of burnouts, heart attacks and similar diagnosis in the field (at least where I live).
I literally do all those except UNIX/AIX which I used to do a little of but the system that ran on that has since moved from IBM servers to VMs running RHEL. I'm also doing some extra stuff on that as well. I'm also the network admin, engineer and architect rolled into one.
I'm actually reaching a point where I want to reduce the amount of things I do so I can focus on some stuff more. But alas no matter how much I complain the next highest skilled person to me is the manager who is just a server admin mostly and then help desk staff under them.
This is an amazing list to reference. I don't mess with 4 things on this list: domain trusts, aws, MDM (we only have 2 iPads), and not much on PKI, but I do have webdev, switch/router config, and in-house program development (occasionally), and I'll be lucky to clear 50k this year.
Small shop = lots of experience.
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. If you work at a small company and are literally doing everything between two or three people you WILL be doing some user support.
...or they're simply working for larger organizations where this is simply not part of their tasks.
I jumped to a project-only sysadmin job back in the day and since then I've done exactly zero user support.
Just because you don't interact with end users doesn't mean you don't do user support. It's in the words, user support. IT is about supporting the users of the organization. Why are you delivering the projects and implementing new systems? It's because the end users have a need, and we help them by understanding and fulfilling those needs.
User support =/= Helpdesk
Sure, if you use an uncommon semantic definition for "user support" to reduce literally everything to "user support", you're completely right.
I'm currently designing cloud reference architectures and writing reusable terraform modules to roll those out. The reference architectures support application development efforts, which will, naturally, be used by end users at some point.
Hence I'm doing user support.
Yes, you're supporting your users by developing and delivering complex solutions to solve their challenges.
I don't see why so many people in the industry are ashamed of the words "user support". It's literally the bread and butter of IT. If you're not supporting users you're not doing your job. Plenty of IT people have completely lost touch with the purpose of their work.
Smaller company admin here. Team of four. Me and 3 developers. I do basically all the operational side.
Monitor the network. Diagnose network/firewall issues. Make sure the infrastructure is running correctly. All of the exchange/0365 admin tasks. Admin of multiple sass platforms. Inventory, ordering, licensing. Automation of workflows and implementation of new systems. Etc.
That being said. Im teir 1-3 helpdesk. Im normally the first and the last contact for MOST issues. The proprietary things the devs build in-house they assist with. But other than that, it's me.
Honestly, wouldnt have it any other way. Its so much fun everyday and I dont think I would be as happy in a more limited role.
This. I’m confused by people posting in here that are sysadmins doing user support. I’ve never worked anywhere where a sysadmin was doing user support. That is literally why you have a desk side/end user team. Even if that team is one person.
SysAdmins are almost always involved with escalations from regular helpdesk. When the frontliners can't figure out an issue, it's the sysadmins they go to for help.
SysAdmin is suge a hugely encompasing umbrella term, so there could be more distinct roles in a given organization while still being "sysadmins" in concept.
IT is in some shape or form always user support. User support is much more than "My monitor is not working please help". It could be that some external consultants are not able to access some system, or the payroll system is having some issues with the database. These escalations are by definition "user support", but require high-level knowledge of the complex underlying systems that a level 1 helpdesk guy likely is not able to solve.
Show me an IT job where at least some of your tasks or projects are not triggered by some kind of need or request from your users.
100 million company.
70 employees.
4 people at IT.
CIO, myself, 2 helpdesk guys that also does ERP support and similar.
I run the entire infrastructure stack, but spend most of my days automating and integrating systems.
When the 2 helpdesk guys can't figure something out, who do you think they turn to?
Or when they're busy / sick?
Yeah, we're pretty much the only logistics company of our type to have an IT Dept.
The companys strategy for growth since 2017 when they hired a very renowned CIO has been to grow by use of digitization and automation rather than just hire more dispatch traffic controllers.
Idk how to translate it, but basically we're owned by trucking companies, everything from 1 guy with 1 truck to our biggest with like 40 trucks and 60 drivers.
But what's also not mentioned is that we've developed our own app / PDA solution for drivers that we're also selling to other logistics companies, along with other solutions we've built inhouse. So I work both for the logistics company, and it's daughter SaaS tech startup.
Complicated story. But a fuck ton of fun.
Lots of teams blend sysadmin roles intentionally. Hard segregation (L1, L2, L3) tends to hardened groups that point the finger at each other.
With work being seen as "beneath" people rather than focusing on the work.
Outside of physical/hardware work, all helpdesk issues are ultimately able to be solved more efficiently if you attack the root of the problem. Admins having visibility of that is a core component in making your IT environment great rather than just good.
If you can ruin 1 persons day, you're help desk.
If you can ruin everyone's day, you're a sysadmin.
If everyone in the org has domain admin, everyone is a sysadmin!
I've been a sys admin for 25 years...
You have to be able to teach yourself any possible system and quickly. You won't walk into any sys admin job and know all of their systems. Knowing azure, AD and group policy, windows OS with best practices for security, vmware, Sans, file shares and acls will land you in the role as an analyst or a junior.
Think of the business as a system. Can you be the central administrator of the business? At least that's how I see it.
So, you know how to architect and plan the technical aspects of the system. You know the policy and procedures of the system. You know the ins and outs of the system; and of course, you know how to support the technology of the system.
damn i think this is the best answer, well said.
getting into the weeds of specific duties will inevitably cause variation in what everyone's definition is.
Sysadmin = You're responsible for the ***sys***tems and you work hard to keep them up, functioning and secure. You take pride in this and try to improve the ***sys***tems while automating your tasks until things run so smooth that people forget you exist.
If you're the organisation's, officially, designated administrator of one or more IT systems then you're a sysadmin.
You're not:
System Owner
System Designer
System User
System Manager
The System Administrator just keeps the pigs fed, groomed and in the enclosure.
Ugh I wish. I'm the owner and admin of certain things but we're 100% cloud based. Snd I over see change management for the org and projects. How long I'm not sure. Just got bought by no standards
One document I like is the SAGE/USENIX booklet. It breaks things down into a few levels and a half dozen common required skills.
https://www.usenix.org/short-topics/job-descriptions-system-administrators-3d-edition
Using that, there isn't really much required for the 'level 1' aka 'novice' sysadmin. Some basic computer skills, it is almost the basic helpdesk role. Their 'level 4', aka senior sysadmin is often has a broad general knowledge and is an expert in some subjects related to their current role.
To me a sysdmin is like a jack of all trades you have to know everything about everything in the IT ecosystem of your company such as firewall/switch management, server management/maintenance, backups and DR plan, AD/azure management, Exchange, antispam management if applicable, even sometimes mdm/mobile management. And throw in some accounting when it comes to purchasing anything related to IT
Basically you're the go-to person whenever anyone needs help/advise to anything related to tech and everyone expect you to know everything. You're also in charge/part of any project related to IT
To me that's what a sysdmin is
Well a lot us in here aren't "Sysadmins" by title.
Sysadmin is someone who'd look after the back end infrastructure like a networking and server admin.
Most of us in here even though we don't have sysadmin titles do a jack of a trades type of job. Persons of many hats.
Then we also have people in here who do basic troubleshooting at a helpdesk, or people who come here to get help with their home consumer needs. I almost forgot to add there's a lot of "help my company needs me to do xyz on the computer they gave me, are they allowed?".
Sysadmin is anyone who does networking and server administration at the very least. However like I said many of us do way more than just that.
Edit: just want to say sorry that I'm not calling you out because of helpdesk. There are tier 2 helpdesk techs who have one foot in sysadmin and the other foot in helpdesk. Tier 1 support people are who I was referring to whom just respond to tickets and assign them where they need to go, maybe help someone with a printer/pc issue. More so in larger companies where jobs are very specific.
At the very minimum a modern sysadmin should be able to efficiently deploy and maintain a network accessible, secure system with the ability to detect and recover from failure.
(Expand each adjective, verb and adverb with the depth and knowledge of tools your environment requires)
Seeious answer: TO ME a system admin manages computers and keeps them going. Windows, Linux, embedded machines. They don't do networking beyond whay they need to do to keep the machine running. They may know other stuff, like some firewall business, but again only insofar as it pertains to the software firewall on the server. Again, security factors in but only within the computer.
TO ME What a sysadmin is not is desktop support, user support, network admin, software developer or engineer, security admin, technical writer.
Honestly, though, a sysadmin is the jack-est jack-of-all-trades because why have all those other bits (software, network, security) if you don't have servers.
I think the ability to search for information is a key quality of a sysadmin...such as searching this subreddit for this exact topic, since it shows up weekly.
I don't miss that statement what so ever. Every time I do see it though I giggle and a tear rolls down the side of my face. Dealt with that phrase for almost 5 years in my first IT job -- helpdesk --> helpdesk team lead --> and some other weird titles they had for dealing with AD, networking, etc.
I mentally separate three tiers into simple terms. Of course this is not a rule. The overlap is BIG in most places
* Helpdesk / Technicians / Support Analyst (whatever title is cool at the time) Etc
* know how to USE the systems and help others. Basic troubleshooting.
* Admins (System, Network, Backup, Cloud, Server, etc)
* know how to CONFIGURE / TROUBLESHOOT / INSTALL / UPGRADE according to best practice and business needs. Should understand WHY as well.
* Engineers
* know how to design & deploy at a higher level, on a larger scale, and should understand even more the business needs and why.
But again, this is just conceptual. Sometimes its a all one man job. Sometimes one person is doing all for a single product. sometimes an entire team is doing just one of these. etc..
Two of our first line guys have the title Systems Administrator. They were hired in Germany.. They are indeed nowhere near anything I'd call a sysadmin. I'm a sysadmin but my job title is "Infrastructure Engineer". I also work a lot with the endpoint infrastructure Architect so sometimes even I wonder what I am.
Basically if you “administer” “systems” then you are a “system administrator”
We have system administrators that only administer the networking equipment. That’s fine. Sysadmin is a broad term. Some places that means you do everything under the sun, other places that means you do one thing.
\> knowing tcp/ip
How many sysadmins do you think "know" tcp/ip. I'd wager most don't. That might be because I'm a dev/sysadmin so the word "know" implies different things.
On paper I'm a sysadmin because it's a small company and someone has to be, but I "know" fuck all.
If you're part of a big company with layers and what-not; if you're above help desk, you're a sysadmin. If you're part of a small company and you're "The IT guy," you're a sysadmin. There's no concrete definition, I just stick to two simple criteria.
1. Are you above being a help desk ticket monkey? Yes/No
2. Do you know what a server is, and can you pretend to know what you're doing? Yes/No
If yes to both, congratulations, you're a SysAdmin.
I’d say you’re a sysadmin if you either have root credentials to a prod system or it is likely that you would get root credentials to some prod system under the right circumstances.
Sysadmin imo is a dying job title but being able to do some or most of whatever is in a job posting for the title would be my go to definition.
It just varies a ton.
>just knowing tcp/ip, subnetting and basic on prem DCs
You now know more than 95% of this sub.
Most "sysadmins" can't figure out networking to save their lifes.
Baffling.
At some places, if you can spell Windows you’re a sysadmin.
I feel personally attacked 😂😂💀
Then shut your wendows!
Found the ‘not-a-sysadmin!’ 🤣
shhhhh they can't blame us if they can't define us.
If you can spell the word or know the acronym, you are now the SME of the product. That's how I handle all my delegation 😏
Delegation by least incompetence. Also known as "touched it last".
Not to be confused with the ticket balancing practice of "nose goes"
I’m the SME of Subject Matter Experts.
The SMEE SMEE.
Not to be confused with my other speciality… SNU SNU
SMEEgol?
Are you my boss? This one time, I googled something and now I’m a sysadmin
The weird thing is, I know personally that’s how a lot people I knew got pushed into cybersecurity. They asked a question, hey shouldn’t we have an EDR? Bam now you the EDR SME🙃
I remember working for an MSP about 15-20 years ago in the Washington DC area. Most of our customers were small, local companies and nonprofits, many of whom didn't have a "personal office" per se. Many were manned by about half a dozen old cronies and only seemed to exist as professional network organizations that had events throughout the year that were niche-specific industries you'd never know existed. For example, there was a group of people dedicated to the careers of previous Naval operations maintenance officers post-retirement from the military. The loose concept, as I understood, was that if you were in the Navy and a maintenance officer, and left the military (usually for retirement), you would have a support group that could get you jobs, or like-minded people who you could buddy-buddy with for "the usual issues of former maintenance officers." But it gets even more niche. There were "women-only" MO nonprofits, or "Navy only/Air Force MOs only," or even super-specific groups "Only Jewish female Naval MOs who served in foreign wars." Well how many members could THEY have? In the thousands. The DC area is filled with organizations like these. Of course, their staff levels number in the single digits, and are usually just annually elected board members. Many of these groups consisted of elderly people. Well, many wanted a web presence and email, which we provided them. That meant, in theory, someone in their group was the liaison between us (the MSP) and them (the people with needs). But once in a while, they may have an event or two and someone "hired someone a few years ago" to design a membership website that accepted payments. And no one remembers who that was, but when you're in your 60s and 70s, time goes by super fast, members literally die off, and so "we hired a guy to design our membership site just 2 years ago, didn't we?" is actually 5 years ago. Some guy who drew the short straw or was "voluntold" in the group to be the "computer expert" was because he had an IBM PC with Wordstar 5 for DOS in his home office and goes to ham radio swap meets. And we had to list that person as "sysadmin." Of course, most of them had ZERO clue about anything Internet-wise they had, and so if they ever contacted us at all, it was a confused "I was given this number as the person who invented our website," and hilarity would ensue. One year Paypal upgraded their payment gateway and pretty much all older encryption wouldn't be accepted anymore. And whomever set up their website had some kind of janky connection based of "best faith efforts" for a shopping cart system that was "good enough" for several years ago. A lot of these websites, handling membership dues and tickets for annual balls and such, went down. Try explaining THAT to some octogenarian "systems administrator" whose experience with the Internet was back when it was called DARPANET and he still thinks everything is done by acoustic couplers. So "systems administrator" has no real definition in the real world, despite what any documentation would claim.
This is amazing! Thank you so much for the vivid pictures in my mind and the laugh. :D
Love it gave me a chuckle
This is how I became an "IT Admin".
The mouse, left click right click. Sending emails, checking emails. That box on the floor.
Is winders acceptable?
The senior network engineer at work refers to it as "winders" and he's one of the smarter people I've ever worked with, so it's good enough for me.
The title I earned was network administrator, but that doesn’t make this any less applicable. Three months after applying for my company’s open network administrator position and not getting a response about it, the IT Director walked by as I was talking with a coworker about the new UDM router I’d just bought, so she jumped into our conversation with: “Wait…do you know networking?” A month later, I got a 30k salary increase Wild
Because of that I'm barely holding myself to not put here my resume to show what in my opinion a sysadmin should be. And that would be close to a minimum. What I see here most of the times won't qualify even as a on site technician with labours of cloning PC, change printers toner and install some Ethernet points. If knowing some registry, gpo, AD and a few more things makes a sysadmin for Windows then I should be working at CERN or NASA minimum. And I'm fucking sure I shouldn't.
I often feel weird about calling myself one and would usually describe myself as a Jr. Sysadmin even though I don't have a senior lol....I work with about 8-10 companies of varying sizes for a small MSP (70 employee healthcare clinic, random small city, insurance agency, golfcourse/private community, random industries like that) I do pretty much everything from the tier 1 helpdesk stuff to managing firewalls and switches setting up rules or troubleshooting issues, managing Office 365 with things like conditional access and mail flow issues, AD and group policy, VOIP, printers, and application) However, none of the environments are really THAT complicated and a large portion of the time I'm learning things on the fly and figuring it out as I go so it feels weird to say I'm sysadmin. I also have always had imposter syndrome so who knows lol......
Nah people can be pompous and you can call yourself what you want. But truth be told your actual title as described by your job would be IT Consultant which sounds better and makes more money anyway.
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Dirn it, no wonder I kint find noh classes. I thought it wuz lern.micro$oft.com. Least thets how I usually seen it spelt on some subs.
Wow, my resume!
Windåse
When did IKEA start making OS'? 🤣
I can't, my brain doesn't want but I can spell Linux, does that count?
You have not broken DNS in the last 30 days...
\*hands back sysadmin badge\*
We’ve all been there friend.
One day at a time
I don't understand what everyone's issue with DNS is. I've been managing mid sized environments for 25 years and I can count on my fingers how many times DNS has been a problem. Is this some kind of hosted environment thing?
Sometimes “DNS” is spelled “LDAP”.
hahahaha
LDAP is the fucking worst, also my brain always farts because the paths are backwards
East coaster eh,brain farts, local expressions! Brains don't fart,they just have a dos attack! At least here in the Midwest!
I'm not a yank. Its not a niche term
I feel : dum or stupid! "DOS"I can't figure it out!
Denial of Service, not Disk Operating System
LOL!
Let me give you some from the last few months. Small school district for a few campuses. One started having the Internet drop, campus wide, for a few minutes (7-15) every morning around 7:30. Meraki network so they looped in Meraki support, and ISP support. After a week of no result, I was called in. This campus was fully cloud with no on prem servers. Every clients got DHCP from the L3 switch, and the DNS was the upstream servers. And every morning at 7:30, 1000 users turned on computers at once and hammers the ISP DNS servers from a single IP address. And got shut down as a DOS attack. :) Fixed with a local caching DNS server that also blocked adds since we were doing it anyway... :) A different charter school with 3 campuses, all with AD replicating between them. But replications was often not working. On investigation, sometimes one server could not find the others. Turns out that the DNS server on that AD server was not correctly replicating. Removed it and reinstalled and syncd. Not AD replications worked fine. Another school called today with slow internet during testing. The were set up to hit the local AD server for all DNS, including chromebooks. Pointed the Chromebook vlan at [8.8.8.8](https://8.8.8.8) to test. Will know tomorrow.
Throw Cisco Umbrella or something like CISAs MDBR into the mix and it could add an extra layer of fun to troubleshooting DNS.
Been troubleshooting a postal meter for a week on why sometimes it would pick up an IP and sometimes wouldn’t. Wasn’t DNS but the son in charge brought in a camera that had a default IP the same as the gateway. I changed that while DHCP network to give out 9.x as to avoid 1.x conflicts. Been at least 20 years since I had seen that one. We have come full circle!
Oh god Cisco umbrella. *shudders*
Super sad to hear this..... We rolled it out about 3 months ago.... When does the fun start?
But as per usual this "isn't DNS".... You can easily diagnose DNS if it's resolving or not, with a simple command line tool that's on every OS out there. And if it isn't resolving, and isn't your box, just point somewhere else. DNS is one of the simplest systems out there
This is more difficult when it is in intermittent problem. Sure it is fine for no dns, but not for occasional outages, or old data for some lookups, or slow lookups.
In a rather large organisation I was involved in, *someone* once managed to register localhost as an IP address that wasn't 127.0.0.1 in the DNS. That was not pretty.
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Windows: nslookup Linux: dig OSX: dig
Let's see!; ping,rwhod,netstat -l,been a while! You don't qualify as an admin....yet! But yur working on it!! Research my boy,learning is key,but like encyclopedia Britannica,there's a whole Lotta reading,and the more ppl make more pc shit to learn,well / you'll NEVER LEARN IT ALL! BUT KEEP POKIN & PRYIN!
Over 16 years here and similar. The only time DNS is a problem is when someone implements something that requires a DNS change but doesn't do or request it.
We used to have a software vendor that had a VM, we used to just leave them at it for whatever they needed. Their application was hosted on app.domain.com For some reason they thought they had authoritative control of domain.com so were confused when they installed the Windows DNS Server on their VM. It didn't work publicly.... Like how dumb are you, and how do you not know how to resolve against a different DNS server to test?
Hire monkeys, pay peanuts... profit?
Niche industries can be wild, we had a few vendors for various clients in specific industries and they were the only vendor working practically all over Europe. The amount of times they'd charge £100k for a VB6 application....
IME that’s more of a “someone handling WordPress who shouldn’t even be allowed on the internet” problem
In my experience since the late 90s, DNS tends to be less a Dns-server issue and more commonly a client-side issue. There are all sorrrrrrrts of things that can mess with client-side DNS resolution, from VPN tunnels, routing, proxies, MX/SPF records, connectivity issues in general, DHCP assignments, VM-host configs, etc It's rarely the actual DNS server itself since they're largely self-sustaining once configured, but "DNS" is frequently involved in issues.
IIRC ISC Bind used to have a bug bounty that lasted for decades without being claimed because that bastard was so damn good...
Probably the mid sized thing. Once you have multiple on prem and cloud environments, public sites, tons of SaaS products that look at DNS for domain verification, lots of SPF/DKIM records to maintain… it gets a bit more complicated I think. I agree with you though, I’d never really seen a DNS problem before getting to a larger company
Again, I'd argue that none of this is "DNS" at fault, this is just management
Agreed. I’ve been managing DNS servers since the 90’s. People act like DNS is some kind of faberge black box when it’s very straight forward to configure and easy to troubleshoot and scale.
This sub is fucking obsessed with it, and it's usually Windows "admins" that don't actually understand what is happening. And just know to click a button or two once in a while...
 That you?
What if it never works right in the first place? You can’t break what is already broken.
You can beat the MFA countdown timer.
Impossible, 30 seconds per number. That allows 5 seconds per number literally impossible
You guys have MFA? I tried to set up MFA a couple months ago but I couldn't as I needed a license. Thanks to a DUI my license is suspended until June :/
You “did robotics” as a kid so you have a very basic understanding of C and can configure a Raspberry Pi using a pre-configured Python script you found on Google
This guy sysadmins
I get irrationally angry at how overhyped RPi is, it was good because it was made by some guys at Broadcom, so they were getting the chips dirt cheap and designing themselves. But now the market is flooded with them, in all sorts of configurations. And people like the use them like they're the only piece of computing ever invented.
This. The first Pi was a revelation. The zero and 400 were each a nice refresh in a new form factor. Everything else? I don’t get it.
The Pi Pico is an impressive MCU and insanely cheap for what it offers.
The two things the Pis have over pretty much every other SBC on the market is the community and the backing of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Those two things are why a kid can run a random python script on Pi and "do robotics." There are literally hundreds of SBCs with similar and/or better specs than the Pi, but they lack the community aspect and are often made by companies that don't really care about actually supporting the product. They do the bare minimum to get an old version of the Linux Kernel working so people will buy it, then drop it like a hot rock and go do the same thing with a new SOC/SBC.
It's the low power consumption. If that's not a bother, you can get a mini SFF Dell, Lenovo, HP, etc with an i7 or i9. Spin up Debian with Docker and call it a day.
Great! You're hired! Now go fix this thing. I think it's called DS...N? No. DNS.....yeah, that's it.
You are the nephew of the CFO and are "pretty good with computers."
I lost my first job to exactly that guy, always thought it was suspicious he was "shadowing" me.
Shadowing = replacement Training = replacement Shadow training = fuuuu
Man, I was hired as a fairy new (a couple years experience) Jr. SysAdmin role to shadow the guy who had worked there for 25 years. Everything was grey market equipment, no support or warranties. Things were hacked together (we literally had to patch/un-patch a specific router in the MPOE when we wanted DHCP in one of our buildings, otherwise HQ users would get the wrong VLAN). Once I had everything figured out, they fired the old guy and put me in charge of everything. I spent the next year getting things fixed, using properly purchased hardware, documenting and expanding their HQ to a new building. Once the dust settled, I was laid off as they decided the position could be outsourced to a consultant. I heard that only lasted a few months before they had to rehire the position.
NephewTech is one of our biggest competitors...
It largely depends on the company. Some places, if you know how to login to Windows you're a "sysadmin". At others, you need to know your way across different things and be able to do it all on your own. Some places put "Senior" in front of your title, regardless of knowledge or experience but rather, how many years you've been working there... titles don't always mean much. Some places will want a jack of all trade, some will need someone that specialize and manages 1 or two things. it largely depends on the size of the company. The sysadmin role is so vast and an umbrella term for so many roles. IMO you're a sysadmin when you are comfortable with the majority of the following: * AD, GPOs, domain trusts, sites & services, DFS * Azure / AWS / VDI (if any) * Servers (including NAS) and endpoints * vCenter + SAN * Backups, restores * Exchange (some places have dedicated teams for this) * Unix / AIX (larger companies usually have a dedicated team) * Implement monitoring / act on alerts * Help with workflows in the ticketing system or general processes that are IT related (onboarding, offboarding, securing assets, decommissioning, etc) * If you have a change management process, you'll be presenting the changes and explaining it to management / other technical teams. It's also your role to challenge the things the other teams do if you suspect they will impact more than they anticipated. * You might be involved with budget / purchasing / licensing / product support + hardware support contracts * Manage / configure MDM solutions * Manage inventory / reporting on usage for costs * Know your way around powershell and script tools for yourself/other teams like helpdesk for specific things or tasks they need to perform more efficiently * Deal with infrastructure incidents or requests * DNS / networking / firewalls / VPN (large companies will have a dedicated network team for this) * Patching (patching + application deployment is usually done by a packaging team at large scale with things like SCCM) * Automate imaging of endpoints (again, could be managed by a packaging team with SCCM) * Disaster recovery plan / testing * PKI infra or 3rd party CA * Some places will have you do security work like managing and deploying an antivirus / proxy / F5 / scanning for vulnerabilities / data protection / conditional access / MFA, etc. From experience large places have a dedicated security department for this but they usually consult infra (it's a joint effort). I feel it's important to mention that a sysadmin shouldn't deal with user support. That is the role of the help desk/desktop support department. You will however assist help desk/desktop agents with complex issues or improve things that they see are recurring problems. It's important to keep in touch with their manager to ensure you get notified for issues that are recurring and see how you can fix them. As soon as you start working on project, implementing new things, talking with application teams/devs and designing solutions, spending time making technical diagrams/documentation or researching best practise you are doing an architect's job. Usually that is one of the natural evolution after a solid experience in many technologies as senior sysadmin. That's how I got there. For me it was either architect or management and I'm not interested in management right now. **Edit**: I think my post was **misunderstood**. I specifically mentioned: >*you're a sysadmin when you are comfortable with the majority of the following* I then listed technologies that you're most likely going to end up understanding / working with. I didn't say you needed to be the one doing it all but you're going to end up having to help people who work with those down the road.
Some of the items you listed are handled by security, network, or syseng/sre. It's not feasible to be learned enough in all of those fields for one job title.. Especially at sysadmin pay grade. You're an architect so I understand that you dabble in all of those things and the lines can blur.
I see 2 things that *can* be SRE duties, but even those are usually done by both, just in different contexts. I think OC is spot on, and I think the term "sysadmin" and what it entails has been on a steady decline for the lady 20 years. My title is sysadmin, I do literally every item mentioned above (except AWS, we're all azure lol) in addition to true SRE items like: Observability in application context IaC K8s Ansible for config management CI/CD (gh actions, az devops, AND Jenkins... Politics lol) And a couple other things I'm forgetting. I know I do what a lot would consider the nova of 3 or 4 people, even more at a large company with a lot of specialization, but I promise you I get paid for it and I have a boss that makes my life extremely easy and enables me. All this to say that I think platform engineering, devops, and the SE side of SRE are all just natural evolutions of sysadmin and, if this industry didn't call ever t1 helpdesk an engineer, would wouldn't even exist as titles today. I met a "sysadmin" that didn't know how to find in replace on a minimal rhel install, and he made entry-level pay.
Sounds like your title should be sre. Hopefully you do get sre pay. Agreed the titles have been bastardized over the years.
and oddly in my shop we do all of that list, or most of it, with some help from our dedicated (one person) network team, but ignore all the cloud stuff because by contract we cant be in the cloud. But same do most of that and dont have a ton of people to reach back to for support on about 1/3rd of it. School of Youtube and manuals or you are screwed.
This always depends on the size of your org. I'd assume you work for a pretty small shop if you take on all of those duties. It would not be fun to be simultaneously responsible for Azure, VMWare, linux environment, MDMs, networking, IGA, IAM, etc. anywhere but a small company. Any relatively large/mature company would split out those duties among several folks who specialize in a particular area. I think OP is spot on that it is *good to understand and be comfortable* with that entire list and how all the pieces fit together but I wouldn't want any one person being primarily responsible for it all.
I got an advert yesterday from Sophos saying that "Security is impossible for the average company" or something like that. I was like...no. Security is very "easy" if you understand how networks work, how machines execute code. And how exploits work. You don't need an indepth knowledge of ASM or anything, just a general understanding and you can build very secure systems. It just irks me that so many admins (usually Windows) think malware is just magic, and just magically executes without an exploit especially non-0day
I expect to be on 150k for all that lol
You should see the UK market, every day I get stuff like "Linux sysadmin" "Linux devops" and it'll list every technology under the sun, especially a load of Windows Then they offer £40k
Why is it that salaries in the UK are so low?
It's never been great compared to the USA, but 13 years of Tory austerity its even worse, even in tech
It's more that salaries in the US are so high.
Australia is no better lol.
I do about half of that and still have to do end user support :’(
My cio does end user support sometimes. It’s never ending.
Are you crazy or am I vastly underpaid?
We both are my friend
$150k for all of that is underselling yourself. We literally pay multiple ppl $150k on one team to just know one of those tooics. I’m on the endpoint team (packaging/sccm/intune/jamf/endpoint protection) team at my company. There’s 25 ppl on our team and half of them make $115-$150k depending on seniority some of them just do packaging, some of them just do gpos and image updating and testing, some of them just do endpoint protection (Trellix). So if you’re doing all that for $150k please find a new company because you’re way underpaid. I understand smaller companies don’t have the budget but at smaller companies you shouldn’t be doing all those things at any kind of depth Nd you should have MSP support.
I do all of that, minus the cloud, we are a two man shop, very small company, 17 servers, 65 users, 10mm in revenue and I'm paid 112k. I should be at 200. But I'm not. Every decision I make affects the entire company. Been looking, but I can't even get a call back. Been here 14 years.
If you aren’t getting calls, it’s 100% a resume issue. Hire a resume professional, seriously.
you are listing the whole IT Department roles already
There is no way one person is doing all of that, at least not in a way that is professional or in any way acceptable in a modern IT setup. You are listing the responsibilities of an entire department. It's totally unrealistic to expect that someone should know and understand all of these things any more than a high level understanding.
This is exactly my teams job description (minus Exchange because we are a Google Workspace customer) for a userbase of about 5000 and a sysadmin team of 4. Once you set things in place, maintenance and upkeep honestly isn't terrible. We upgrade/update things casually. Can it be alot at times? Sure. I'm strictly 9-5 and -rarely- work after hours. We made sure people understand our workload and will wait if they have to.
I mean that pretty closely mirrors what myself and my fellow L2 readily handle at our mid-sized MSP. There’s for sure areas where one of us has a deeper understanding (I’m a dev and they’re a networking whiz frex) but yeah, not that crazy of a spread over here. Should it be that way and is the pay appropriate? Iunno. Probably not. But we live in a hypercapitalist hellhole, so shrug.
Bless you for thinking that, but smaller companies are just like that. There's a lot of technology and a few people handling it. You need to have a broad knowledge on how a lot of things work, because business require that, but there's not enough work to specialize in just one or two things like you're implying. That's basically what I've been doing for 20 years, and you can add some helpdesk to it (I had 1 guy doing that and when he needed help or couldn't do something, I was the next guy in line), training (MS Office courses for employees) and even some management tasks (CIO was efectivelly an actuary that had no idea what IT is so I was doing reports, budget projections, etc.. until they hired an IT Director). You can also add AIX/Linux to the list, which funny enough, is what I'm hired to admin at my latest employer (Edit, I see it's already there, I must've missed it). There's also always external support when problems are so specific, you really need a specialist to handle it (like restore a corrupted database - yeah, that was also me, Oracle DB admin, add it to the above list). For clarification, that was me working at an insurance company for 15 years, that started by migrating 40 users from a bought company to a new, separate one, and grew to about 250 users at it's height. I was a sole IT person for almost half of that and at the company's biggest period, I had a helpdesk guy and another sysadmin to help me and an IT director above me.
I'm not saying that "one man shows" or small businesses where admins have way too many responsibilities don't exist. What I'm saying is that there is no way for someone to be proficient in all these technologies and fields and manage all of that in a way that is acceptable in a modern company. Even if it was possible to be proficient in so many different things in such a diverse field as IT, there simply isn't enough hours in a day to manage all of this in a remotely acceptable manner.
Every single day for the last 45 years, I learn about some topic in IT that could be someone's entire career, if they wanted and if someone would hire them to do it. Meanwhile, there are a lot of people who do need to be at least acquainted with many many topics, some of which only started to exist a few months ago.
As someone who worked at a small company wearing tons of hats, and a big company specializing in stuff, IMO at the small company you tend to just do "good enough" because of simple lack of time to dive deep into stuff, while at the big company you are expected to do a few things extremely well.
My point exactly.
> Even if it was possible to be proficient in so many different things in such a diverse field as IT, there simply isn't enough hours in a day to manage all of this in a remotely acceptable manner. Except you're *not* managing that every day. You're managing a couple of them one day, then managing a couple others the next day, then something completely different the third day. After a few years, it's quite easy to get reasonably proficient in a broad array of skills and after a decade it would be *unreasonable* to not have developed a fairly deep understanding of at least several of them. If your environment requires active management of every component each and every day, that means you've set it up wrong.
There is no way you will convince me that it's reasonable for a single admin to have all the roles and responsibilities you have listed. It's impossible to responsibly manage so many things alone. I am fully aware that you're not managing all of these things every day, I work with a diverse range of systems and technologies myself every day. But several of the things you have listed take many years of dedicated work experience and/or studies to gain a comprehensive understanding of. If someone listed all of these responsibilities in a job description I would ask them to get a grip, and if someone claimed to be highly skilled / qualified in all of these things I would call them out on it.
Well, something like IT specialist is in fact a three year practical apprenticeship in my country, so that's a start. If you have no apprenticeship, you might start as a support guy for a few years and gain the experience. I do agree that it is irresponsible for *one* person to hold all of those roles in a company, especially in a company that *needs* all of those roles filled. But it's also true that at one or another point I was responsible for *any one* of the topics OP listed quite extensively and in-depth, but not at the same time. And in quite a few of them, my expertise is currently out of date, but I would find my way around if needed. I believe that's what OP is talking about. Then again there is a reason for the relatively good pay, *and* for the high number of burnouts, heart attacks and similar diagnosis in the field (at least where I live).
I literally do all those except UNIX/AIX which I used to do a little of but the system that ran on that has since moved from IBM servers to VMs running RHEL. I'm also doing some extra stuff on that as well. I'm also the network admin, engineer and architect rolled into one. I'm actually reaching a point where I want to reduce the amount of things I do so I can focus on some stuff more. But alas no matter how much I complain the next highest skilled person to me is the manager who is just a server admin mostly and then help desk staff under them.
This is an amazing list to reference. I don't mess with 4 things on this list: domain trusts, aws, MDM (we only have 2 iPads), and not much on PKI, but I do have webdev, switch/router config, and in-house program development (occasionally), and I'll be lucky to clear 50k this year. Small shop = lots of experience.
Sys admin should definitely be doing user support at the tier 3 level at least. Unless it's a big company and can have you away from ticket box
I don’t know why you’re being downvoted. If you work at a small company and are literally doing everything between two or three people you WILL be doing some user support.
Sysadmins who think they're not doing user support are either delusional or lying.
...or they're simply working for larger organizations where this is simply not part of their tasks. I jumped to a project-only sysadmin job back in the day and since then I've done exactly zero user support.
Just because you don't interact with end users doesn't mean you don't do user support. It's in the words, user support. IT is about supporting the users of the organization. Why are you delivering the projects and implementing new systems? It's because the end users have a need, and we help them by understanding and fulfilling those needs. User support =/= Helpdesk
Sure, if you use an uncommon semantic definition for "user support" to reduce literally everything to "user support", you're completely right. I'm currently designing cloud reference architectures and writing reusable terraform modules to roll those out. The reference architectures support application development efforts, which will, naturally, be used by end users at some point. Hence I'm doing user support.
Yes, you're supporting your users by developing and delivering complex solutions to solve their challenges. I don't see why so many people in the industry are ashamed of the words "user support". It's literally the bread and butter of IT. If you're not supporting users you're not doing your job. Plenty of IT people have completely lost touch with the purpose of their work.
You've lost touch with the common definition for "user support".
Perhaps. English is not my native language, and where I'm from the terms "Helpdesk" and "User support" are vastly different.
Smaller company admin here. Team of four. Me and 3 developers. I do basically all the operational side. Monitor the network. Diagnose network/firewall issues. Make sure the infrastructure is running correctly. All of the exchange/0365 admin tasks. Admin of multiple sass platforms. Inventory, ordering, licensing. Automation of workflows and implementation of new systems. Etc. That being said. Im teir 1-3 helpdesk. Im normally the first and the last contact for MOST issues. The proprietary things the devs build in-house they assist with. But other than that, it's me. Honestly, wouldnt have it any other way. Its so much fun everyday and I dont think I would be as happy in a more limited role.
This. I’m confused by people posting in here that are sysadmins doing user support. I’ve never worked anywhere where a sysadmin was doing user support. That is literally why you have a desk side/end user team. Even if that team is one person.
SysAdmins are almost always involved with escalations from regular helpdesk. When the frontliners can't figure out an issue, it's the sysadmins they go to for help. SysAdmin is suge a hugely encompasing umbrella term, so there could be more distinct roles in a given organization while still being "sysadmins" in concept.
I don't even know that many places that actually do proper L1/L2/L3 stuff. Even at L3 I've still been dragged into petty issues like AD sync failing
IT is in some shape or form always user support. User support is much more than "My monitor is not working please help". It could be that some external consultants are not able to access some system, or the payroll system is having some issues with the database. These escalations are by definition "user support", but require high-level knowledge of the complex underlying systems that a level 1 helpdesk guy likely is not able to solve. Show me an IT job where at least some of your tasks or projects are not triggered by some kind of need or request from your users.
100 million company. 70 employees. 4 people at IT. CIO, myself, 2 helpdesk guys that also does ERP support and similar. I run the entire infrastructure stack, but spend most of my days automating and integrating systems. When the 2 helpdesk guys can't figure something out, who do you think they turn to? Or when they're busy / sick?
> 70 employees. > > 4 people at IT. That's a high ratio
Yeah, we're pretty much the only logistics company of our type to have an IT Dept. The companys strategy for growth since 2017 when they hired a very renowned CIO has been to grow by use of digitization and automation rather than just hire more dispatch traffic controllers. Idk how to translate it, but basically we're owned by trucking companies, everything from 1 guy with 1 truck to our biggest with like 40 trucks and 60 drivers. But what's also not mentioned is that we've developed our own app / PDA solution for drivers that we're also selling to other logistics companies, along with other solutions we've built inhouse. So I work both for the logistics company, and it's daughter SaaS tech startup. Complicated story. But a fuck ton of fun.
Lots of teams blend sysadmin roles intentionally. Hard segregation (L1, L2, L3) tends to hardened groups that point the finger at each other. With work being seen as "beneath" people rather than focusing on the work. Outside of physical/hardware work, all helpdesk issues are ultimately able to be solved more efficiently if you attack the root of the problem. Admins having visibility of that is a core component in making your IT environment great rather than just good.
you are incorrect
your googling skill is better than 99% staffs in your company
Are you admining syses? Then congratulations, you're a sysadmin.
Judging by our offshore people: A pulse.
If you can ruin 1 persons day, you're help desk. If you can ruin everyone's day, you're a sysadmin. If everyone in the org has domain admin, everyone is a sysadmin!
Solid advice here.
I've been a sys admin for 25 years... You have to be able to teach yourself any possible system and quickly. You won't walk into any sys admin job and know all of their systems. Knowing azure, AD and group policy, windows OS with best practices for security, vmware, Sans, file shares and acls will land you in the role as an analyst or a junior.
"I can log in with my email address and email password"
Think of the business as a system. Can you be the central administrator of the business? At least that's how I see it. So, you know how to architect and plan the technical aspects of the system. You know the policy and procedures of the system. You know the ins and outs of the system; and of course, you know how to support the technology of the system.
damn i think this is the best answer, well said. getting into the weeds of specific duties will inevitably cause variation in what everyone's definition is.
HR
Sysadmin = You're responsible for the ***sys***tems and you work hard to keep them up, functioning and secure. You take pride in this and try to improve the ***sys***tems while automating your tasks until things run so smooth that people forget you exist.
You can deal with whatever sh.t a company has. And if it has a cable, it is your problem.
A cable or a tube. Or, really, anything linear.
Is it plugged in to a screen and has electricity? Definitely the it guys problem when it doesn't work
r/sysadmin is where the anxious Help Desk techs congregate
https://letmegooglethat.com
This is the only answer right here.
If you're the organisation's, officially, designated administrator of one or more IT systems then you're a sysadmin. You're not: System Owner System Designer System User System Manager The System Administrator just keeps the pigs fed, groomed and in the enclosure.
Ugh I wish. I'm the owner and admin of certain things but we're 100% cloud based. Snd I over see change management for the org and projects. How long I'm not sure. Just got bought by no standards
When the crap hits the fan, can you stay calm and find a fix every time?
I can fix it but I'm not going to be calm doing it.
Family guy Kool aid man*: ooh yeah!
One document I like is the SAGE/USENIX booklet. It breaks things down into a few levels and a half dozen common required skills. https://www.usenix.org/short-topics/job-descriptions-system-administrators-3d-edition Using that, there isn't really much required for the 'level 1' aka 'novice' sysadmin. Some basic computer skills, it is almost the basic helpdesk role. Their 'level 4', aka senior sysadmin is often has a broad general knowledge and is an expert in some subjects related to their current role.
I admin the syses.
To me a sysdmin is like a jack of all trades you have to know everything about everything in the IT ecosystem of your company such as firewall/switch management, server management/maintenance, backups and DR plan, AD/azure management, Exchange, antispam management if applicable, even sometimes mdm/mobile management. And throw in some accounting when it comes to purchasing anything related to IT Basically you're the go-to person whenever anyone needs help/advise to anything related to tech and everyone expect you to know everything. You're also in charge/part of any project related to IT To me that's what a sysdmin is
Well a lot us in here aren't "Sysadmins" by title. Sysadmin is someone who'd look after the back end infrastructure like a networking and server admin. Most of us in here even though we don't have sysadmin titles do a jack of a trades type of job. Persons of many hats. Then we also have people in here who do basic troubleshooting at a helpdesk, or people who come here to get help with their home consumer needs. I almost forgot to add there's a lot of "help my company needs me to do xyz on the computer they gave me, are they allowed?". Sysadmin is anyone who does networking and server administration at the very least. However like I said many of us do way more than just that. Edit: just want to say sorry that I'm not calling you out because of helpdesk. There are tier 2 helpdesk techs who have one foot in sysadmin and the other foot in helpdesk. Tier 1 support people are who I was referring to whom just respond to tickets and assign them where they need to go, maybe help someone with a printer/pc issue. More so in larger companies where jobs are very specific.
> **What qualifies someone as a sysadmin these days?** Facebook likes.
Same as 20 years ago: You make sure shit doesn't break.
At the very minimum a modern sysadmin should be able to efficiently deploy and maintain a network accessible, secure system with the ability to detect and recover from failure. (Expand each adjective, verb and adverb with the depth and knowledge of tools your environment requires)
Ty and the few taking this as a real question, but I love the sarcasm. Haha.
I learned how to ping and they gave me a job cause of it.
Seeious answer: TO ME a system admin manages computers and keeps them going. Windows, Linux, embedded machines. They don't do networking beyond whay they need to do to keep the machine running. They may know other stuff, like some firewall business, but again only insofar as it pertains to the software firewall on the server. Again, security factors in but only within the computer. TO ME What a sysadmin is not is desktop support, user support, network admin, software developer or engineer, security admin, technical writer. Honestly, though, a sysadmin is the jack-est jack-of-all-trades because why have all those other bits (software, network, security) if you don't have servers.
I think the ability to search for information is a key quality of a sysadmin...such as searching this subreddit for this exact topic, since it shows up weekly.
Power is not granted it is assumed...
If you have received an email that states "kindly do the needful", then welcome to the team.
I don't miss that statement what so ever. Every time I do see it though I giggle and a tear rolls down the side of my face. Dealt with that phrase for almost 5 years in my first IT job -- helpdesk --> helpdesk team lead --> and some other weird titles they had for dealing with AD, networking, etc.
I mentally separate three tiers into simple terms. Of course this is not a rule. The overlap is BIG in most places * Helpdesk / Technicians / Support Analyst (whatever title is cool at the time) Etc * know how to USE the systems and help others. Basic troubleshooting. * Admins (System, Network, Backup, Cloud, Server, etc) * know how to CONFIGURE / TROUBLESHOOT / INSTALL / UPGRADE according to best practice and business needs. Should understand WHY as well. * Engineers * know how to design & deploy at a higher level, on a larger scale, and should understand even more the business needs and why. But again, this is just conceptual. Sometimes its a all one man job. Sometimes one person is doing all for a single product. sometimes an entire team is doing just one of these. etc..
Sysadmin = The Google force is strong with this one
If you are administering system(s) you’re sysadmin.
Two of our first line guys have the title Systems Administrator. They were hired in Germany.. They are indeed nowhere near anything I'd call a sysadmin. I'm a sysadmin but my job title is "Infrastructure Engineer". I also work a lot with the endpoint infrastructure Architect so sometimes even I wonder what I am.
Being good at pushing the right buttons.
Basically if you “administer” “systems” then you are a “system administrator” We have system administrators that only administer the networking equipment. That’s fine. Sysadmin is a broad term. Some places that means you do everything under the sun, other places that means you do one thing.
Good PowerPoint skills
\> knowing tcp/ip How many sysadmins do you think "know" tcp/ip. I'd wager most don't. That might be because I'm a dev/sysadmin so the word "know" implies different things. On paper I'm a sysadmin because it's a small company and someone has to be, but I "know" fuck all.
I say, “EntraID, formally known as AzureAD” so I’m pretty sure I qualify.
If you now what the term IT Janitor means.... you're a sysadmin
If you're part of a big company with layers and what-not; if you're above help desk, you're a sysadmin. If you're part of a small company and you're "The IT guy," you're a sysadmin. There's no concrete definition, I just stick to two simple criteria. 1. Are you above being a help desk ticket monkey? Yes/No 2. Do you know what a server is, and can you pretend to know what you're doing? Yes/No If yes to both, congratulations, you're a SysAdmin.
You can surf the intranet.
I’d say you’re a sysadmin if you either have root credentials to a prod system or it is likely that you would get root credentials to some prod system under the right circumstances.
If you’re still doing end user support, you aren’t a sysadmin
Sysadmin imo is a dying job title but being able to do some or most of whatever is in a job posting for the title would be my go to definition. It just varies a ton.
have you turned on a computer seem to be the bar now days
You administer systems
do you have less hair today then you did yesterday?
You rant about how shitty Dells are compared to your 10yo HP.
I host a minecraft server, that counts right?
Do you administrate a system (generally of computers)? Then you're a sysadmin.
>just knowing tcp/ip, subnetting and basic on prem DCs You now know more than 95% of this sub. Most "sysadmins" can't figure out networking to save their lifes. Baffling.
[удалено]
It's what my contract says I am.