In the last dozen or so years (I got my first actual IT job in 2007), I’ve wandered around a bit looking for a good working spot and, in that time, I’ve had a couple of goals that always seemed ideal.
Firstly, I wanted to be a Linux Admin. However, while I am an old DOS-boy and do enjoy linuxing around (I first installed Linux around 1999, when doing so was not quite so user friendly…), I was never in a spot where I actually HAD to learn it, so I never went very far with in. My job from 2007-2008 did involve some Unix, and watching Marietta (our Unix admin) fly her fingers across two keyboards as she worked in Unix and Linux at the same time was quite inspiring. But, alas, I left there.
I ended up thinking that a regular (aka, windows) sysadmin might be fun, though I still felt like I didn’t have the technical know how to do it (and still hated Windows, as I have since I first glimped Windows 3.1 in 1992)… I did end up in a small organization as the Sysadmin for a couple of years. It was nice to finally have the kind of work that I wanted to do, but the atmosphere was dull and unfriendly, the IT manager was too curmudgeonly, and I felt held-back in terms of really learning some interesting stuff. And the idea was that, in the distant future, I would replace the manager when he retired. IT Manager, however, was not a goal I immediately aspired to, especially in an environment that I did not like. Something about being the desk where every technical buck ended seemed a bit too unwieldy. That said, I did study it a bit, meaning that I got my Bachelors in Managing Information Systems. I still looked around, and applied for Sysadmin jobs, since I had the title anyway. One thing I learned in that job is that I felt most comfortable with hardware… And that maybe a Network Engineer would be nice. Again, I didn’t have the skills or background, but I knew that would be something I would like.
I left that Sysadmin job for a strictly Administration job, working in Operations for an MSP. Terrible, I didn’t enjoy it at all… The people I worked with, their weird relationships with the clients, never seeing anyone, or really any computer, in person. I kept thinking about Sysadminning again, and I did end up applying for a couple of related jobs at Dartmouth but, alas, I didn’t get them.
But, low and behold, I ended up becoming an IT Manager (well, technically I became an IT coordinator, but I changed the title) and, well, I actually like it a lot. It’s a small spot, a single person (me) IT department (and no, you don’t have to manage people to be a manager), about a hundred employees, one site and just three servers.
But it’s fun and interesting because you get to deal with everything: Buying and setting up equipment, troubleshooting wifi and all systems, dealing with data and coming up with reports… In fact, it really matches the range of stuff that I had to take to get my BSMIS degree.
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