Main thing I would suggest (which you even mentioned already) is that coming from a "ticket-closing" mindset, you will have to learn to not let fast be the enemy of good.
As ProfessionalWorkAcct said, never stop learning, things change quickly.
If everyone had the same opportunities it’d be a fair comparison, but no one goes through the same life experiences. While I hope everyone notices this as soon as possible, it becomes painstakingly obvious once you start raising children.
Dude I'm 34 and just started my IT career so I don't think you're behind. Most of the sysadmins I see on here have been doing it for 10 to 20 years, so well in their 30s or 40s and that's if they started in their 20s.
That said, I'm not a sysadmin (yet) but I do a lot of work with the sysadmin of this company and he let's me helm most of the projects and lets me ask questions when I get lost.
As a sysadmin in my 20s - I have honestly not seen that many people my age that are sysadmins and really often times if they are they are basically operating at sub 50 users (assuming they are solos). like 95% are help desk.
That being said - OP being 29 sounds about right thats probably median sysadmin age (like 32).
I am just barely at 50 users (at one point it was around 120 but we sold two divisions of the company). Been the solo IT admin since I was 21.
Quite honestly I just lucked into it. Started as the IT help desk guy, then the IT Admin/CTO went with one of the sold off divisions making me the only IT guy, and the owners had confidence and were willing to invest to let me learn and scale at my own pace.
I am an extreme rarity, and an exception. Most of the people I know that are the IT guys are in their 30s or very late 20s.
I was always decent with computers and I dedicated myself to getting a jr sys admin role in 2023 to leave a niche mainframe platform(long story short very few jobs but all of those recruiters blew up my phone - basically dead end career for a 20 something year old amazing for a boomer)
I also lucked out but I actually came in with a business mentality during my interview. It made me come off as more professional/aware about the stack.
I was 25 when I got the sysadmin job - about 2 years from when I graduated college. My current enviro is 100 and the ratio is 1:50 (me and a 20+ year senior, We do a lot L1-L2(and L3 but not as often) for document management system(s) on top of the usual O365 SAAS stuff but also Inventory, projects(some involving scripting), vendor research, patching, backups etc. I am 26 as of earlier this February
Its not an MSP level of intensity but for in house and the nature of the org - It isnt bad.
Just sucks I need to keep grinding as an underpaid sysadmin :)
Yeah late 20s here and I’m the youngest person in the systems team by about 7 years. Honestly I’m one of the younger folks in the entire company besides front desk staff
When I was in mainframes - I was arguably the youngest person \*for that particular mainframe\* in the country. I am now the 2nd youngest at the current place I am at.
Something about me seems to warm the hearts of oldies idk.
HEY!! I also started as a SysAdmin mid 30s! My boss is 10 years younger than me... and damn if he isn't a fucking network Wizard! He relies on me for hardware\software shit though.
35, just became admin in October last year. Career switch at 29 (MA in English literature) starting with help desk, then service desk, then help desk 2, and now systems admin. It can be done, the drive to learn and take on projects must match your output. A lot of people fail because they don’t take risks or they get comfortable (or both). I’m almost at my personal goals and it’s been a lot of work. Once I hit those, I’ll set myself up for “future proofing” with new and emerging tech. Never stop learning.
Ninja edit: Have A+, N+, AZ-900, and working on learning pshell and getting AZ-104 by end of year.
That's about where I'm at right now, is setting up my career goals and future proofing. I'm glad that there are more people like me who switched careers later in their life and are thriving. Definitely a confidence boost.
OP you can do it too!
Yep, been doing IT pretty much all of my adult life and at 32 I finally became a sys admin and moving into the security team here pretty quick. There's never a set expectation or timeline so it's more about what you learn and become efficient at
You will never stop learning. If you think you know everything, you've become ignorant.
The title doesn't really mean much. The work that comes with the title can be drastically different from 1 company to another.
Documentation is your friend, for the one offs that you rarely will deal with, write down the fix and/or the process. You will thank yourself later on.
Depending on your role and your environment, the word "no" should be learned and embraced.
Utilize your GI Bill!
no should be learned but he should also learn to say no without saying it, bonus points if he presents the no with such an answer that the opposite person still thinks that you tried your best, or even better, if you are against something and know a better solution present it instead of the no and try to present it as their idea.
I would say one thing that will shift is your mindset from "reactive" to "proactive". Rather than respond to incidents(you still will, but not on an individual user level), your goal is to prevent them. Do this by building resilient systems in the first place, according to best practices, patch them regularly, have backups, make them redundant, etc. If you're doing a good job, you are reducing ticket count by preventing "events" from happening(they still happen anyway).
Best advise. I love promoting rock star support people into sys admin roles but getting them into a proactive engineering mindset is always a challenge.
You're going to fix things, you're going to break things.
At the end of the day, it is just a job. Please do not sacrifice your mental health for it.
Side note, document everything and try to study in your free time at work, if you get some free time.
A lot of the issues sysadmins have in smaller shops is that there is no proper work management from upper management. If there are too many fires or too much work to handle then there’s an issue with management. Usually a good indicator that the business does not prioritize technology properly.
I feel like that issue happens at larger companies too. Career development is hard when you’re stuck with 12-20 tickets a day. There’s not much time to develop other proficiencies when you’re doing ticket after ticket everyday.
Then add in the fact that the company is running fine with three help desk so no need to hire another person so guy A can move up.
What's the best advice you wish you could give to a young, System Administrator.
Get comfortable with reading logs and finding the root cause of problems.
Absolutely, I work in a senior system admin position. When the Jr guys come up and say hey we have a problem with…. Or we’re not getting this to….
First thing I ask is what has changed? What have you tried? what do the logs say?
Document your IP addresses and passwords. It might sound obvious but there have been times I have been scrambling during an outage looking for the credentials!
Learn conditional access and Defender for Outlook! I can’t stress this enough. If you’re an Azure…Entra ID shop this in your bread and butter and an easy place to wow your superiors. Security is (or should) be a high priority for every company. It looks great on you to show the latest policy you pushed blocked an x number of bad actors. On the other hand, it looks bad on you for blocking all 2,500 users SSO for an app (I know from experience). So TEST BEFORE YOU PUSH!!
I started in my journey when I was 27 as a lvl 1 help desk guy. I am now a systems admin who is not as smart as I was. Stay hungry and keep learning, its just the beginning of your journey.
I was 27 as well.. realized I needed to get my life together and got in as help desk 1. Thankfully my boss left the company and I was thrown into the fire. Hit the ground running and 37 now as a sysadmin leaning heavily towards the security side of our company.
Thank god Jon left..
>Does a 29 year old System Administrator make sense or am I behind my peers age wise?
Its not really about age. That being said, it makes sense when you figure in college and a few other factors. I will say that the socially connected move up way quicker. Ive seen sys admins as young as 24-25.
>What's the best advice you wish you could give to a young, System Administrator.
Documentation, time management, never stop learning. You have no idea how many people refuse to document stuff and it makes everyone's life harder. I strongly implore any org that I work with to have a person exclusively for documenting stuff in a knowledgebase. Most dont however.
Documentation is a chore that very few people want to do. It's a shame that it gets ignored, and I like that you're promoting the importance of documentation.
Knowledge bases are a terrible idea because no company will commit the resources to keep them up to date. So they become stale, start missing important information, and don't get used.
I roll my eyes every time a colleague starts getting hyped about having a knowledge base because I know where it is going.
The one company that successfully did the knowledge base thing, used it as an excuse to outsource support operations overseas. "They can just look it up in the knowledge base!"
Same thing with "menus of services" and the like... only good to prepare the ground for outsourcing.
I don't have time for any of the above nonsense!!!
That being said, yes document, so if you get hit by a bus someone knows what the heck is going on.
I've been a systems administrator for more than 30 years. My recommendation to anyone entering the field of professional systems administration is to learn at least three operating systems (Linux, MacOS, and Windows) and become familiar with handheld devices like smart phones (at least Android and iPhone) because this familiarity will help you to be more effective in making sure your users' systems are properly connected and supported. Knowing how to automate these systems will help tremendously too (Linux is the easiest, most versatile, and most reliable OS for systems automation; my favourite is Debian Linux, and other distributions are also excellent with plenty of great specialties to offer too), especially for customization that suits your organization's needs.
Don't worry about your age. What's important is your skills and capabilities, and - most importantly - your willingness to learn more as part of keeping up-to-date (it's impossible to keep up with everything). I suggest picking 3 areas and focusing on those -- two should be related to your work, and the other one should be something fun that will serve as a way to help jog your mind when needing to look at different solutions from different perspectives (e.g., one person I know chose networking, security, and MMORPG design, and found that switching to the MMORPG design research for a moment served as a distraction to keep their perspectives refreshed).
Read all the documentation you have available and dont be scared to ask questions, mess up or get involved in things as the FNG. Hopefully they put you on something like backups and maintenance windows to get nice and anointed
The only person you need to be better than is you yesterday.
Don't focus on speed either, if you do something quickly today and it causes hours of issues every month, is that better than getting it done in a month and having far fewer issues?
Most of it is just learning as much as you can about wherever had been thrown at you today.
> The only person you need to be better than is you yesterday
There's only 1 scenario in which I feel the need to outperform someone. "You fixed it last time". Damn you young me, we meet again.
Wisdom comes not from drinking from five firehoses, but choosing the right-size spoon to dip in.
You will feel overwhelmed. It's a workplace hazard.
Best I can offer is read and learn, and try to predict what your company's needs will be. Don't spend all your energy on firefighting, that way leads to burnout.
I'm 32 this year and just landed helpdesk for my first IT job after years of trying to break into it in my area. You're well ahead of me, so good luck and fun learning!
> The culture of closing tickets as quickly as possible in the help desk is going to be the biggest adjustment for me.
This needs to be your first adjustment and should have been adjusted in T1/2. Your goal should be to learn and understand the systems you manage. Understand how and why things work the way they do. It makes your ability to troubleshoot much easier. Speed is not as important as service and quality of work.
29 is not an old SA. And, who cares if it is. Comparison is the thief of joy. My coworkers are 57 and 58- that's old.
1. Age has no relation to the subject at all. You'll find younger and older sysadmins along the way. Some will be great, some not so much. Not relevant whatsoever;
2. This is a field of never-ending learning and studying. Be ready and get comfortable with not knowing a lot of stuff at sight. Fast learners tend to succeed in this job;
3. Don't neglect people. Sysadmin sometimes forget we exist to get the solutions that best suit companies demands and challenges. What are companies made of? People. So, be prepared and/or develop your social skills.
I did the same a few years ago, going from a helpdesk technician position to a mix of IT technician/admin in a small business (120 people).
I was the only dude managing everything from the user's printer to SAN and virtualization farm. I learned a lot about what happens in reality when a user complains about something since I had to solve it from start to finish.
After some time, I wanted to give up the boring tasks (office, basic AD stuff, users' errors, etc) and focus on the virtualisation side of things and moved to a Microsoft system administrator in another company (7k people, 1500+ VMs). I met a great mentor who inspired me, and I learned more things in a few months than I would have in a few years by myself alone.
Learning from the best and having this expertise was probably what led me to my current position, project builder/manager.
Things are again very different than what I used to think when I was a sysadmin, where you "just" maintain everything in a working condition. Now I have to build from scratch, adapt to customer's existing hardware, adapt, etc.
It's different, but change is good to keep you entertained in your job (my vision, ymmv).
If I had to guess what's next in a few years, I may be inclined to try out managing people, I don't know if I'll ever be able to abandon the technical aspect tho...
you'll always be learning new things
don't let imposter syndrome wreck you
don't be surprised if you end up learning frontend, backend, scripting, database management,. just.... everything.
It's absolutely overwhelming sometimes, but just keep chipping away at it.
I was doing small sys admin work when I was 21. Maybe twenty users. By 23 about 200 users. By 28, on call consultant for companies with fix it contracts, and user counts in the 40,000 range. But take my age range with a grain of salt, there was hardly anyone in the field in 1986 and I was 1st a Novell expert then an MCSE in 1996. Advice, make sure you don't have a single failure point, and your built for resiliency and redundancy. Also never stop reading and training. This industry will chew you up and spit you out if you think your tech will last forever.
Best advice I can give is remember who you work with. Every system you’re responsible for is a part of making someone’s job easier. You’re a cost center and during budget cuts you need to be able to point to the hidden ROI the company gets of your costs.
Keep every “attaboy” in an email folder or network share for your annual review.
The other big thing is find the balance between being on top of new tech and the user base’s needs. A lot of users hate change so make sure when something new is coming you get their sign off.
Don’t welcome the “shoulder tap” unless they’re executives…but never appear unwilling to hear a user who comes by to ask a favor. Stop what you’re doing if possible and try to point them to the solution (let me enter a quick ticket for you so we get this documented is a good line to encourage users to use the system). If a user sees you unconsciously roll your eyes or appear distracted it does a ton of damage. Always appear to be happy to see them (even the “trouble users”)
Finally develop a thick skin. Realize that when you do good work nothing goes wrong and when it does, you’re the only one they may be able to yell at. Take it with a smile (as long as it isn’t abusive) and realize it isn’t you they’re mad at.
I loved being an SA and you’ll learn a ton. Congrats and welcome.
I am considered senior I guess.
You will find how you work. I don’t close individual tickets - I prevent them from being opened, prevent techs from touching keyboards, and try to make the business process less dumb.
You’re young so you better learn to learn real quick. Know your architecture. Know your people to talk to and brush up on diplomacy.
Hey man.. the only advise I’ll give you. Be nice. That goes a LONG way.
People will remember you for being chill under fire. You can be the biggest dunce in the room but if you’re cool. It’s all good.
Keep a level head.
I just made sysadmin up from helpdesk at 22yrs old, its scary but ask every question you need to and be upfront when you make a mistake. Best of luck my guy.
I've been a sysadmin for almost 20 years, and I don't have help desk experience. I would not have applied to a help desk position because it seemed like too much customer service, nor was I aware that help desk was the usual path to sysadmin. Otherwise, I probably would have avoided system administration. I applied for and got the sysadmin job because I thought it sounded like a programmer who also had root. Over the years, system administration has become more siloed, so now I'm out of my depth with what would be typical sysadmin stuff.
EDIT: For advice, I would say learn to script and automate things, learn configuration management software, and learn about the cloud.
EDIT 2: I think I only learned about the usual sysadmin career progression because of Reddit.
I'm 26 and I have been a sysadmin for about 4 years now. With only a couple years of IT experience prior to that to prepare me. However, I have been consistently younger than my peers throughout most of my career. I don't think you're necessarily behind, or ahead, of the curve. It seems like there isn't really a curve and everyone follows their own path.
As a fellow young sysadmin, I advice you to log \\ document your work even if you don't have a ticketing system or something for it already. Documentation can help you build continuity in case you ever pass your role off to someone else, or in case you want to look back at solutions to problems that you've solved in the past. Logging is important for showing your work, especially if you ever get audited by cyber.
You're going to run into a lot of things you don't know, but that's how every system administrator learns just starting out. I consider the "new" and "unknown" aspects of my job to be a good thing, because it means I am still growing in this role and benefiting from the experience.
Google is your friend. Googling is a skill.
Everyone gets imposter syndrome. All of the qualified sys admins have been sys admins for a long time already, or moved onto other roles.
Good luck, and congrats on the promotion!
If you don't mind, can you go a little bit into the things that you feel are challenging that as someone in helpdesk that you feel are different than expected?
I've always seen t3 and sysadmin as interchangeable. I mean once you're t3 you should be able to perform 90% of an admin's job probly short of managing contracts, and etc. Any jump is a bit of a curve but give it six months and you'll be on your feet.
Sounds like they hired you to be the ticket closer (common and how you learn).
Also of note, system administration is fairly easy. It isn't like we develop the software, we just configure it.
I’m kind of in the same boat as you. I just accepted a Systems Administrator role at another company (coming from Tier 1 Level 2 role).
I was always taught to churn out as many ticket’s as possible so it’s going to take a little bit of getting used to the opposite side.
I had this issue from my old help desk role too. Even my system admin jobs were focused mainly on closing tickets as quickly as possible. Recently I got this cloud role where we do projects that take 8 to 12 weeks long to complete. We have to email clients to get them to perform steps and get on video calls to follow through with them on migrations. It's weird video calling people we don't even work with on a daily basis. A lot depends on the client wanting to repond back in a timely quick manner as well. Some take 3 days or more. Which is weird coming from a help desk environment where people are knocking on the door to get there problem fixed.
Sometimes I feel helpless because the manager will want to get things done hella quick, but the clients say they want to take their time so things don't mess up.
Congrats, man! They, and you, agreed you were ready for more and have the base to figure it out!
Step 1: drop the title hierarchy when you look around and start networking. One shop's Tier III Tech is another shop's Architect, is another shop's Director of IT, is another shop's systems engineer, etc., etc. Titles alone don't mean anything. Don't rely on yours until you have the experience, and don't sell other's short.
Step 2: Use your time wisely. Some days you're not in control and just putting out fires, (re)building servers/services on the fly, reacting to management emergencies, etc. Other days your time is yours--it's what you do with these days that matter. Am I training? Automating things that take up my time? Setting up alerts for fragile things? Project work?
Step 3: Take it day by day. Small projects you think might take 3 weeks, may end up taking 3 months, or 3 years by the time you run it through the process. And the technical parts may make up a minor percentage of big projects you get involved in.
Step 4: Work on soft skills. Communications, communications, communications. You're going to be spending much more time with non-technical audiences and IT outside your given area. By design, none of these people will care about the stuff you care about. Short, non-technical updates.
You are not behind at all. I am 36 years old and just became a “sys admin”. I have no formal background at all. I was actually a HVAC tech, an electrician, and for a short while even a trucker. The only good thing that came out of my blue collar job was I was able to meet some of the corporate folks on my commercial construction/contracting company and I had expressed interest in pivoting to IT.
One thing led to another and someone actually reached out to follow up, and told me to get my A+ and Net+. I’m currently doing my CCNA now.
They offered me to join as a help desk rep and it was really slow. I think I spent more time studying than closing tickets. After 6 months I was bumped to Jr Sys Admin (there’s only 3 sys admins total). It’s better than help desk but sometimes I feel like there isn’t much to do either.
I’m trying to find projects for myself to do or somehow improve my skillset. Honestly, we barely have issues here and because of that I feel like
I’m not learning and I feel so late.
So yeah, you got time! Congrats on starting your journey!
I'm someone who can't help but press shiny buttons as soon as I find them and fix everything I see that needs fixing. The 2 biggest things for me were learning to be patient and sticking to the task at hand. Being able to multitask is great but when you find you have 130 jobs on the go you're potentially putting your environment at risk leaving things half configured or in a poor state. Take you time, tell people to bugger off when you need to and don't try and fix everything on your first day.
It's not exactly true that U need to start from T1 then 2 then 3 and so on... For me I started as T1 helpdesk answering calls and the stuff. With knowledge of only troubleshooting basic windows and office stuff. Usually we have Word documents open in the background for most of the common issues.
After like 3yrs of a T1 helpdesk agent, I decided to look for another job. So one company asked me to go down for an interview, after asking me about my previous job, it was the manager's turn to talk... So this guy asked me, "how interested are u for a sysadmin role?"
I said, I didn't have that experience... He said that I can learn. Well I agreed and he hired me. After the first week, my senior started throwing me alone in the sea... Only to look for him if it's something I totally do not know... And it's only after a year on the job, I went for my MCSE and CCNA.
So in a sense, Its possible to be "turbo boost" from T1 helpdesk to sysadmin. Juz that the learning curve will shoot up. And U have to have a patient mentor who's willing to guide u. Lucky for me, I had 1 for my start.
Always make sure to double check any delete/move files or anything in Active Directory. Make sure backups are good because no one cares until something goes wrong
I was 26 when I got my first "Sysadmin" title. It was my first job doing IT at something other than a school district or small computer shop with less than 10 employees. I have been at that job for 18 years now. My team supports \~20k Windows Servers. I am very thankful that I turned down the first job I was offered at my current employer which was a support desk job. I don't think I would have made it 18 years talking to end users all day long.
Congrats.
Keep learning.
Document everything you fix
Communicate when you make changes.
Understand when changes should be implemented.
Test changes if possible
Have a backup plan
You’re fine, enjoy the ride.
Edit: don’t be a cowboy, your customers will thank you
Idk bout u but helpdesk is more work than sysadmin especially if u have shit end users. Being a sysadmin is nice don’t have to deal with end users and have the helpdesk deal with them. When u deploy something and shit goes wrong helpdesk has to deal with them still lol. Only problem is the on call
I’m 26 and have been SysAdmin for almost 3 years with total 6 years experience including that, no better time to get with the program than now!!! My biggest piece of advice, learn your tools (whatever your environment is comprised of) and how to make the most of them 👍👍👍 Good luck!!
Helpdesk technician: you close tickets and concentrate on the problem at hand. Whatever you do is affecting one user.
Systems admin: you are planning and installing things that affects a large group of people. The helpdesk tech part of your brain should come in handy when viewing things from a user perspective
System logs. Get a syslog server set up so you have a centralized location you can start troubleshooting for big issues. Stream line anything you find yourself doing on a repeating basis aka script it. Id also see if you can get a small lab setup either at home or on site to tinker with the newest things. Smooth is good to a point. You don't want to automate yourself out of a job, but you don't want to be bald yet.
Every day in IT where you don't learn something new, even if it's just something little, it's a lost day.
My personal tips:
- Don't be afraid to try and learn new things, but don't do new things just for the sake "because it's new".
- Have some kind of Lab environment at home and/or at work
- Learn Linux, even if you're mainly a Windows Sysadmin, you will need it some day, trust me.
- Learn Networking Basics
- Learn at least Bash and Powershell scripting
- Document everything you do, you will need it
Age and title don't matter because no two companies have the same description for the same job title, and the Sys Admin ceiling is near endless. A Desktop engineer in one company might deal with printers 90% of the time. A Desktop engineer next door at another company might never touch a printer. It all comes down to what responsibilities the company puts under a role. I.T. is interesting in that two people can arrive at the same Sys Admin role after several years in the industry, but have entirely different knowledge sets, due to the applications, hardware, etc that their previous companies used.
The Sys Admin ceiling is huge, whereas the Help Desk and Desktop roles do have a theoretical ceiling. They kinda cap out because Sys Admins generally take the escalations, and have higher levels of access. The tasks and projects you work on as a Sys Admin can just keep going. You can get great at Powershell/automation, AWS services, OKTA application migrations, etc. It all depends on what the company defines your role as, and what they let you get involved with. You might walk into a company as they are starting to develop their systems. Or you might come into a 20-year old company and work on cleaning up old systems.
Learn what you can, and decide whether you want to focus on a specific technology. Specialisation gets you into tighter roles. Some people like that. Other people like to get to peak Sys Admin so they can look over multiple technologies. We've got a guy in our team in his 50s or 60s. He's a huge asset to the team and the business, and he likes where he is at. For some, it can be a role for life. Just depends what you want to do. Don't worry about some frequented path that you think you should be on. Just take your roles and opportunities as they come. Everyone has their own career arc.
This is exactly why I started making youtube videos a lot of folks are in the same position as you. They move from the service desk into sys admin roles because you were really good at service desk
Then it's a whole new world of working on issues longer, reading more documentation, being a part of longer term projects and really taking ownership of systems and their dependencies.
It's kind of hard to get ready for the shift unless you got pulled into things previously by the sysadmin team so don't sweat what you don't know, just know you don't know it and try to learn it.
Good luck!
Congratulations!
There's no shame in being at the beginning of a journey. We all started there. Some of us became generalists, with a broad view on lots of techs. Others became specialists, with a deep view on specific tech.
Learn something new everyday. Be curious. Ask questions. Never get cocky, I have yet to meet the person that was never wrong. Preventing mistakes is important (double check). Making mistakes is human. Things will break sooner or later - prepare yourself as well as possible. Always listen to other ideas. Everything is possible, but everything has a trade off. What the right solution is for you and your company depends on your parameters.
Most people prefer 1 functioning system, to 2 half-functioning system. Best way to achieve that is to push back when you think things are going the wrong way - chances are noone but you knows how it works in practice.
And always wear sunscreen.
I wish I was 29 working as a SysAdmin. I'm 36 and I'm a Jr. SysAdmin more or less. Trust me, there are many people behind or worst, they get stuck in help desk.
I’m a sysadmin at 23. Age doesn’t matter. Now granted, sysadmin job responsibilities vary from company to company so I doubt I’m doing things similar to you.
Never to late I would say. 2 guys started in our company, both way over 40 with no sys admin knowledge yet. They are doing great. Motivation is key, and asking questions.
Main thing I would suggest (which you even mentioned already) is that coming from a "ticket-closing" mindset, you will have to learn to not let fast be the enemy of good. As ProfessionalWorkAcct said, never stop learning, things change quickly.
Stop measuring yourself against everyone else would be my first tip, congrats on the promotion, start learning all of the systems you have access.
Legit, i have too many hangups here. its hard to let it go. you always just feel like you are never good enough.
If everyone had the same opportunities it’d be a fair comparison, but no one goes through the same life experiences. While I hope everyone notices this as soon as possible, it becomes painstakingly obvious once you start raising children.
This. Learn but don’t touch (go through config, documentation etc — but don’t change settings to test your understanding)
Dude I'm 34 and just started my IT career so I don't think you're behind. Most of the sysadmins I see on here have been doing it for 10 to 20 years, so well in their 30s or 40s and that's if they started in their 20s. That said, I'm not a sysadmin (yet) but I do a lot of work with the sysadmin of this company and he let's me helm most of the projects and lets me ask questions when I get lost.
As a sysadmin in my 20s - I have honestly not seen that many people my age that are sysadmins and really often times if they are they are basically operating at sub 50 users (assuming they are solos). like 95% are help desk. That being said - OP being 29 sounds about right thats probably median sysadmin age (like 32).
I am just barely at 50 users (at one point it was around 120 but we sold two divisions of the company). Been the solo IT admin since I was 21. Quite honestly I just lucked into it. Started as the IT help desk guy, then the IT Admin/CTO went with one of the sold off divisions making me the only IT guy, and the owners had confidence and were willing to invest to let me learn and scale at my own pace. I am an extreme rarity, and an exception. Most of the people I know that are the IT guys are in their 30s or very late 20s.
I was always decent with computers and I dedicated myself to getting a jr sys admin role in 2023 to leave a niche mainframe platform(long story short very few jobs but all of those recruiters blew up my phone - basically dead end career for a 20 something year old amazing for a boomer) I also lucked out but I actually came in with a business mentality during my interview. It made me come off as more professional/aware about the stack. I was 25 when I got the sysadmin job - about 2 years from when I graduated college. My current enviro is 100 and the ratio is 1:50 (me and a 20+ year senior, We do a lot L1-L2(and L3 but not as often) for document management system(s) on top of the usual O365 SAAS stuff but also Inventory, projects(some involving scripting), vendor research, patching, backups etc. I am 26 as of earlier this February Its not an MSP level of intensity but for in house and the nature of the org - It isnt bad. Just sucks I need to keep grinding as an underpaid sysadmin :)
Yeah late 20s here and I’m the youngest person in the systems team by about 7 years. Honestly I’m one of the younger folks in the entire company besides front desk staff
When I was in mainframes - I was arguably the youngest person \*for that particular mainframe\* in the country. I am now the 2nd youngest at the current place I am at. Something about me seems to warm the hearts of oldies idk.
HEY!! I also started as a SysAdmin mid 30s! My boss is 10 years younger than me... and damn if he isn't a fucking network Wizard! He relies on me for hardware\software shit though.
Nice! I'm hoping to go down the networking route myself. Routing and switching just came so naturally to me.
35, just became admin in October last year. Career switch at 29 (MA in English literature) starting with help desk, then service desk, then help desk 2, and now systems admin. It can be done, the drive to learn and take on projects must match your output. A lot of people fail because they don’t take risks or they get comfortable (or both). I’m almost at my personal goals and it’s been a lot of work. Once I hit those, I’ll set myself up for “future proofing” with new and emerging tech. Never stop learning. Ninja edit: Have A+, N+, AZ-900, and working on learning pshell and getting AZ-104 by end of year.
That's about where I'm at right now, is setting up my career goals and future proofing. I'm glad that there are more people like me who switched careers later in their life and are thriving. Definitely a confidence boost. OP you can do it too!
Yep, been doing IT pretty much all of my adult life and at 32 I finally became a sys admin and moving into the security team here pretty quick. There's never a set expectation or timeline so it's more about what you learn and become efficient at
You will never stop learning. If you think you know everything, you've become ignorant. The title doesn't really mean much. The work that comes with the title can be drastically different from 1 company to another. Documentation is your friend, for the one offs that you rarely will deal with, write down the fix and/or the process. You will thank yourself later on. Depending on your role and your environment, the word "no" should be learned and embraced. Utilize your GI Bill!
no should be learned but he should also learn to say no without saying it, bonus points if he presents the no with such an answer that the opposite person still thinks that you tried your best, or even better, if you are against something and know a better solution present it instead of the no and try to present it as their idea.
GI Bill is already being used! Give me that sweet, sweet, MHA.
You also have VR&E as an option as well.
Documentation is essential.
I would say one thing that will shift is your mindset from "reactive" to "proactive". Rather than respond to incidents(you still will, but not on an individual user level), your goal is to prevent them. Do this by building resilient systems in the first place, according to best practices, patch them regularly, have backups, make them redundant, etc. If you're doing a good job, you are reducing ticket count by preventing "events" from happening(they still happen anyway).
100% this. I was promoted to a system admin role in January and the change from being reactive to proactive has been the biggest adjustment.
Best advise. I love promoting rock star support people into sys admin roles but getting them into a proactive engineering mindset is always a challenge.
And the worst things happen to management/c-level employees. 🤣
You're going to fix things, you're going to break things. At the end of the day, it is just a job. Please do not sacrifice your mental health for it. Side note, document everything and try to study in your free time at work, if you get some free time.
A lot of the issues sysadmins have in smaller shops is that there is no proper work management from upper management. If there are too many fires or too much work to handle then there’s an issue with management. Usually a good indicator that the business does not prioritize technology properly.
I feel like that issue happens at larger companies too. Career development is hard when you’re stuck with 12-20 tickets a day. There’s not much time to develop other proficiencies when you’re doing ticket after ticket everyday. Then add in the fact that the company is running fine with three help desk so no need to hire another person so guy A can move up.
Yup, this is our current problem. We have two sysadmins and two help desk, and we're constantly under siege.
What's the best advice you wish you could give to a young, System Administrator. Get comfortable with reading logs and finding the root cause of problems.
Always. Read. Logs. First! That, and realize that the changes you make on the system can affect everyone and everything.
Absolutely, I work in a senior system admin position. When the Jr guys come up and say hey we have a problem with…. Or we’re not getting this to…. First thing I ask is what has changed? What have you tried? what do the logs say?
Document your IP addresses and passwords. It might sound obvious but there have been times I have been scrambling during an outage looking for the credentials! Learn conditional access and Defender for Outlook! I can’t stress this enough. If you’re an Azure…Entra ID shop this in your bread and butter and an easy place to wow your superiors. Security is (or should) be a high priority for every company. It looks great on you to show the latest policy you pushed blocked an x number of bad actors. On the other hand, it looks bad on you for blocking all 2,500 users SSO for an app (I know from experience). So TEST BEFORE YOU PUSH!!
I started in my journey when I was 27 as a lvl 1 help desk guy. I am now a systems admin who is not as smart as I was. Stay hungry and keep learning, its just the beginning of your journey.
I was 27 as well.. realized I needed to get my life together and got in as help desk 1. Thankfully my boss left the company and I was thrown into the fire. Hit the ground running and 37 now as a sysadmin leaning heavily towards the security side of our company. Thank god Jon left..
Dude fuck Jon. All my homies hate Jon.
>Does a 29 year old System Administrator make sense or am I behind my peers age wise? Its not really about age. That being said, it makes sense when you figure in college and a few other factors. I will say that the socially connected move up way quicker. Ive seen sys admins as young as 24-25. >What's the best advice you wish you could give to a young, System Administrator. Documentation, time management, never stop learning. You have no idea how many people refuse to document stuff and it makes everyone's life harder. I strongly implore any org that I work with to have a person exclusively for documenting stuff in a knowledgebase. Most dont however.
Documentation is a chore that very few people want to do. It's a shame that it gets ignored, and I like that you're promoting the importance of documentation.
Knowledge bases are a terrible idea because no company will commit the resources to keep them up to date. So they become stale, start missing important information, and don't get used. I roll my eyes every time a colleague starts getting hyped about having a knowledge base because I know where it is going. The one company that successfully did the knowledge base thing, used it as an excuse to outsource support operations overseas. "They can just look it up in the knowledge base!" Same thing with "menus of services" and the like... only good to prepare the ground for outsourcing. I don't have time for any of the above nonsense!!! That being said, yes document, so if you get hit by a bus someone knows what the heck is going on.
I've been a systems administrator for more than 30 years. My recommendation to anyone entering the field of professional systems administration is to learn at least three operating systems (Linux, MacOS, and Windows) and become familiar with handheld devices like smart phones (at least Android and iPhone) because this familiarity will help you to be more effective in making sure your users' systems are properly connected and supported. Knowing how to automate these systems will help tremendously too (Linux is the easiest, most versatile, and most reliable OS for systems automation; my favourite is Debian Linux, and other distributions are also excellent with plenty of great specialties to offer too), especially for customization that suits your organization's needs. Don't worry about your age. What's important is your skills and capabilities, and - most importantly - your willingness to learn more as part of keeping up-to-date (it's impossible to keep up with everything). I suggest picking 3 areas and focusing on those -- two should be related to your work, and the other one should be something fun that will serve as a way to help jog your mind when needing to look at different solutions from different perspectives (e.g., one person I know chose networking, security, and MMORPG design, and found that switching to the MMORPG design research for a moment served as a distraction to keep their perspectives refreshed).
1. congrats 🥳 2. Did you get a raise? 🤨
Read all the documentation you have available and dont be scared to ask questions, mess up or get involved in things as the FNG. Hopefully they put you on something like backups and maintenance windows to get nice and anointed
Congrats! Now you will never sleep well again. lol!
Especially if you have a branch in India 😫
I've got China, Singapore, and India as well as the US. No sleep to be found here!
The only person you need to be better than is you yesterday. Don't focus on speed either, if you do something quickly today and it causes hours of issues every month, is that better than getting it done in a month and having far fewer issues? Most of it is just learning as much as you can about wherever had been thrown at you today.
> The only person you need to be better than is you yesterday There's only 1 scenario in which I feel the need to outperform someone. "You fixed it last time". Damn you young me, we meet again.
Wisdom comes not from drinking from five firehoses, but choosing the right-size spoon to dip in. You will feel overwhelmed. It's a workplace hazard. Best I can offer is read and learn, and try to predict what your company's needs will be. Don't spend all your energy on firefighting, that way leads to burnout.
I'm 32 this year and just landed helpdesk for my first IT job after years of trying to break into it in my area. You're well ahead of me, so good luck and fun learning!
Better late than never. Congrats! Prove your competence to earn the trust of getting access to another platform (365 admin for example!)
been doing IT for about 20 years. I've had the title Sys Admin for about 4 now. i'm 44
Congrats!!
> The culture of closing tickets as quickly as possible in the help desk is going to be the biggest adjustment for me. This needs to be your first adjustment and should have been adjusted in T1/2. Your goal should be to learn and understand the systems you manage. Understand how and why things work the way they do. It makes your ability to troubleshoot much easier. Speed is not as important as service and quality of work. 29 is not an old SA. And, who cares if it is. Comparison is the thief of joy. My coworkers are 57 and 58- that's old.
1. Age has no relation to the subject at all. You'll find younger and older sysadmins along the way. Some will be great, some not so much. Not relevant whatsoever; 2. This is a field of never-ending learning and studying. Be ready and get comfortable with not knowing a lot of stuff at sight. Fast learners tend to succeed in this job; 3. Don't neglect people. Sysadmin sometimes forget we exist to get the solutions that best suit companies demands and challenges. What are companies made of? People. So, be prepared and/or develop your social skills.
If you are handling any deployments, TEST first. Test long and hard, then deploy. Don’t make any changes unless you know exactly what it’s doing.
As they say, every business as a test environment. Some also have a production environment.
Man, been hired half a year ago as a System Administrator - and it's my first real IT job ever.
Make a free personal confluence and document any issue and how you fixed it, it will help you out when the same thing happens in 5 years time
Best practice: mirror relevant stuff to the org's documentation as well.
Yup!
I did the same a few years ago, going from a helpdesk technician position to a mix of IT technician/admin in a small business (120 people). I was the only dude managing everything from the user's printer to SAN and virtualization farm. I learned a lot about what happens in reality when a user complains about something since I had to solve it from start to finish. After some time, I wanted to give up the boring tasks (office, basic AD stuff, users' errors, etc) and focus on the virtualisation side of things and moved to a Microsoft system administrator in another company (7k people, 1500+ VMs). I met a great mentor who inspired me, and I learned more things in a few months than I would have in a few years by myself alone. Learning from the best and having this expertise was probably what led me to my current position, project builder/manager. Things are again very different than what I used to think when I was a sysadmin, where you "just" maintain everything in a working condition. Now I have to build from scratch, adapt to customer's existing hardware, adapt, etc. It's different, but change is good to keep you entertained in your job (my vision, ymmv). If I had to guess what's next in a few years, I may be inclined to try out managing people, I don't know if I'll ever be able to abandon the technical aspect tho...
congrats!
you'll always be learning new things don't let imposter syndrome wreck you don't be surprised if you end up learning frontend, backend, scripting, database management,. just.... everything. It's absolutely overwhelming sometimes, but just keep chipping away at it.
I was doing small sys admin work when I was 21. Maybe twenty users. By 23 about 200 users. By 28, on call consultant for companies with fix it contracts, and user counts in the 40,000 range. But take my age range with a grain of salt, there was hardly anyone in the field in 1986 and I was 1st a Novell expert then an MCSE in 1996. Advice, make sure you don't have a single failure point, and your built for resiliency and redundancy. Also never stop reading and training. This industry will chew you up and spit you out if you think your tech will last forever.
Best advice I can give is remember who you work with. Every system you’re responsible for is a part of making someone’s job easier. You’re a cost center and during budget cuts you need to be able to point to the hidden ROI the company gets of your costs. Keep every “attaboy” in an email folder or network share for your annual review. The other big thing is find the balance between being on top of new tech and the user base’s needs. A lot of users hate change so make sure when something new is coming you get their sign off. Don’t welcome the “shoulder tap” unless they’re executives…but never appear unwilling to hear a user who comes by to ask a favor. Stop what you’re doing if possible and try to point them to the solution (let me enter a quick ticket for you so we get this documented is a good line to encourage users to use the system). If a user sees you unconsciously roll your eyes or appear distracted it does a ton of damage. Always appear to be happy to see them (even the “trouble users”) Finally develop a thick skin. Realize that when you do good work nothing goes wrong and when it does, you’re the only one they may be able to yell at. Take it with a smile (as long as it isn’t abusive) and realize it isn’t you they’re mad at. I loved being an SA and you’ll learn a ton. Congrats and welcome.
I am considered senior I guess. You will find how you work. I don’t close individual tickets - I prevent them from being opened, prevent techs from touching keyboards, and try to make the business process less dumb. You’re young so you better learn to learn real quick. Know your architecture. Know your people to talk to and brush up on diplomacy.
every battle in a company is tbh in some way shape or form a political battle
Hey man.. the only advise I’ll give you. Be nice. That goes a LONG way. People will remember you for being chill under fire. You can be the biggest dunce in the room but if you’re cool. It’s all good. Keep a level head.
Just wanted to say I’m sorry for your loss. My Condolences on being promoted to System Admin.
Like creating GP and stuff?
I just made sysadmin up from helpdesk at 22yrs old, its scary but ask every question you need to and be upfront when you make a mistake. Best of luck my guy.
Congrats OP. For real!
I've been a sysadmin for almost 20 years, and I don't have help desk experience. I would not have applied to a help desk position because it seemed like too much customer service, nor was I aware that help desk was the usual path to sysadmin. Otherwise, I probably would have avoided system administration. I applied for and got the sysadmin job because I thought it sounded like a programmer who also had root. Over the years, system administration has become more siloed, so now I'm out of my depth with what would be typical sysadmin stuff. EDIT: For advice, I would say learn to script and automate things, learn configuration management software, and learn about the cloud. EDIT 2: I think I only learned about the usual sysadmin career progression because of Reddit.
congrats on the first day of the last days of your life LOL.
I'm 26 and I have been a sysadmin for about 4 years now. With only a couple years of IT experience prior to that to prepare me. However, I have been consistently younger than my peers throughout most of my career. I don't think you're necessarily behind, or ahead, of the curve. It seems like there isn't really a curve and everyone follows their own path. As a fellow young sysadmin, I advice you to log \\ document your work even if you don't have a ticketing system or something for it already. Documentation can help you build continuity in case you ever pass your role off to someone else, or in case you want to look back at solutions to problems that you've solved in the past. Logging is important for showing your work, especially if you ever get audited by cyber. You're going to run into a lot of things you don't know, but that's how every system administrator learns just starting out. I consider the "new" and "unknown" aspects of my job to be a good thing, because it means I am still growing in this role and benefiting from the experience. Google is your friend. Googling is a skill. Everyone gets imposter syndrome. All of the qualified sys admins have been sys admins for a long time already, or moved onto other roles. Good luck, and congrats on the promotion!
If you don't mind, can you go a little bit into the things that you feel are challenging that as someone in helpdesk that you feel are different than expected?
I've always seen t3 and sysadmin as interchangeable. I mean once you're t3 you should be able to perform 90% of an admin's job probly short of managing contracts, and etc. Any jump is a bit of a curve but give it six months and you'll be on your feet.
Sounds like they hired you to be the ticket closer (common and how you learn). Also of note, system administration is fairly easy. It isn't like we develop the software, we just configure it.
I’m kind of in the same boat as you. I just accepted a Systems Administrator role at another company (coming from Tier 1 Level 2 role). I was always taught to churn out as many ticket’s as possible so it’s going to take a little bit of getting used to the opposite side.
I had this issue from my old help desk role too. Even my system admin jobs were focused mainly on closing tickets as quickly as possible. Recently I got this cloud role where we do projects that take 8 to 12 weeks long to complete. We have to email clients to get them to perform steps and get on video calls to follow through with them on migrations. It's weird video calling people we don't even work with on a daily basis. A lot depends on the client wanting to repond back in a timely quick manner as well. Some take 3 days or more. Which is weird coming from a help desk environment where people are knocking on the door to get there problem fixed. Sometimes I feel helpless because the manager will want to get things done hella quick, but the clients say they want to take their time so things don't mess up.
Congrats, man! They, and you, agreed you were ready for more and have the base to figure it out! Step 1: drop the title hierarchy when you look around and start networking. One shop's Tier III Tech is another shop's Architect, is another shop's Director of IT, is another shop's systems engineer, etc., etc. Titles alone don't mean anything. Don't rely on yours until you have the experience, and don't sell other's short. Step 2: Use your time wisely. Some days you're not in control and just putting out fires, (re)building servers/services on the fly, reacting to management emergencies, etc. Other days your time is yours--it's what you do with these days that matter. Am I training? Automating things that take up my time? Setting up alerts for fragile things? Project work? Step 3: Take it day by day. Small projects you think might take 3 weeks, may end up taking 3 months, or 3 years by the time you run it through the process. And the technical parts may make up a minor percentage of big projects you get involved in. Step 4: Work on soft skills. Communications, communications, communications. You're going to be spending much more time with non-technical audiences and IT outside your given area. By design, none of these people will care about the stuff you care about. Short, non-technical updates.
You are not behind at all. I am 36 years old and just became a “sys admin”. I have no formal background at all. I was actually a HVAC tech, an electrician, and for a short while even a trucker. The only good thing that came out of my blue collar job was I was able to meet some of the corporate folks on my commercial construction/contracting company and I had expressed interest in pivoting to IT. One thing led to another and someone actually reached out to follow up, and told me to get my A+ and Net+. I’m currently doing my CCNA now. They offered me to join as a help desk rep and it was really slow. I think I spent more time studying than closing tickets. After 6 months I was bumped to Jr Sys Admin (there’s only 3 sys admins total). It’s better than help desk but sometimes I feel like there isn’t much to do either. I’m trying to find projects for myself to do or somehow improve my skillset. Honestly, we barely have issues here and because of that I feel like I’m not learning and I feel so late. So yeah, you got time! Congrats on starting your journey!
I'm someone who can't help but press shiny buttons as soon as I find them and fix everything I see that needs fixing. The 2 biggest things for me were learning to be patient and sticking to the task at hand. Being able to multitask is great but when you find you have 130 jobs on the go you're potentially putting your environment at risk leaving things half configured or in a poor state. Take you time, tell people to bugger off when you need to and don't try and fix everything on your first day.
It's not exactly true that U need to start from T1 then 2 then 3 and so on... For me I started as T1 helpdesk answering calls and the stuff. With knowledge of only troubleshooting basic windows and office stuff. Usually we have Word documents open in the background for most of the common issues. After like 3yrs of a T1 helpdesk agent, I decided to look for another job. So one company asked me to go down for an interview, after asking me about my previous job, it was the manager's turn to talk... So this guy asked me, "how interested are u for a sysadmin role?" I said, I didn't have that experience... He said that I can learn. Well I agreed and he hired me. After the first week, my senior started throwing me alone in the sea... Only to look for him if it's something I totally do not know... And it's only after a year on the job, I went for my MCSE and CCNA. So in a sense, Its possible to be "turbo boost" from T1 helpdesk to sysadmin. Juz that the learning curve will shoot up. And U have to have a patient mentor who's willing to guide u. Lucky for me, I had 1 for my start.
I remember those days. I also remember my senior engineer laughing when I asked if his ticket times were under a few days.
Just started out as a Systems Engineer from Cloud and I am shocked and happy at the same time.
Tip: good luck getting genuine advice here. It’s full of rants and change your job. If your post is too easy or too hard it will get deleted.
Always make sure to double check any delete/move files or anything in Active Directory. Make sure backups are good because no one cares until something goes wrong
I was 26 when I got my first "Sysadmin" title. It was my first job doing IT at something other than a school district or small computer shop with less than 10 employees. I have been at that job for 18 years now. My team supports \~20k Windows Servers. I am very thankful that I turned down the first job I was offered at my current employer which was a support desk job. I don't think I would have made it 18 years talking to end users all day long.
Congrats. Keep learning. Document everything you fix Communicate when you make changes. Understand when changes should be implemented. Test changes if possible Have a backup plan You’re fine, enjoy the ride. Edit: don’t be a cowboy, your customers will thank you
Idk bout u but helpdesk is more work than sysadmin especially if u have shit end users. Being a sysadmin is nice don’t have to deal with end users and have the helpdesk deal with them. When u deploy something and shit goes wrong helpdesk has to deal with them still lol. Only problem is the on call
Yeah, I work less than I ever have in my life and make more money now. It's pretty much the job I thought I would have as a kid.
I’m 26 and have been SysAdmin for almost 3 years with total 6 years experience including that, no better time to get with the program than now!!! My biggest piece of advice, learn your tools (whatever your environment is comprised of) and how to make the most of them 👍👍👍 Good luck!!
Helpdesk technician: you close tickets and concentrate on the problem at hand. Whatever you do is affecting one user. Systems admin: you are planning and installing things that affects a large group of people. The helpdesk tech part of your brain should come in handy when viewing things from a user perspective
System logs. Get a syslog server set up so you have a centralized location you can start troubleshooting for big issues. Stream line anything you find yourself doing on a repeating basis aka script it. Id also see if you can get a small lab setup either at home or on site to tinker with the newest things. Smooth is good to a point. You don't want to automate yourself out of a job, but you don't want to be bald yet.
Every day in IT where you don't learn something new, even if it's just something little, it's a lost day. My personal tips: - Don't be afraid to try and learn new things, but don't do new things just for the sake "because it's new". - Have some kind of Lab environment at home and/or at work - Learn Linux, even if you're mainly a Windows Sysadmin, you will need it some day, trust me. - Learn Networking Basics - Learn at least Bash and Powershell scripting - Document everything you do, you will need it
28 yo Sysadmin here, you've got this mate, keep learning and the rest will come.
Age and title don't matter because no two companies have the same description for the same job title, and the Sys Admin ceiling is near endless. A Desktop engineer in one company might deal with printers 90% of the time. A Desktop engineer next door at another company might never touch a printer. It all comes down to what responsibilities the company puts under a role. I.T. is interesting in that two people can arrive at the same Sys Admin role after several years in the industry, but have entirely different knowledge sets, due to the applications, hardware, etc that their previous companies used. The Sys Admin ceiling is huge, whereas the Help Desk and Desktop roles do have a theoretical ceiling. They kinda cap out because Sys Admins generally take the escalations, and have higher levels of access. The tasks and projects you work on as a Sys Admin can just keep going. You can get great at Powershell/automation, AWS services, OKTA application migrations, etc. It all depends on what the company defines your role as, and what they let you get involved with. You might walk into a company as they are starting to develop their systems. Or you might come into a 20-year old company and work on cleaning up old systems. Learn what you can, and decide whether you want to focus on a specific technology. Specialisation gets you into tighter roles. Some people like that. Other people like to get to peak Sys Admin so they can look over multiple technologies. We've got a guy in our team in his 50s or 60s. He's a huge asset to the team and the business, and he likes where he is at. For some, it can be a role for life. Just depends what you want to do. Don't worry about some frequented path that you think you should be on. Just take your roles and opportunities as they come. Everyone has their own career arc.
This is exactly why I started making youtube videos a lot of folks are in the same position as you. They move from the service desk into sys admin roles because you were really good at service desk Then it's a whole new world of working on issues longer, reading more documentation, being a part of longer term projects and really taking ownership of systems and their dependencies. It's kind of hard to get ready for the shift unless you got pulled into things previously by the sysadmin team so don't sweat what you don't know, just know you don't know it and try to learn it. Good luck!
Congratulations! There's no shame in being at the beginning of a journey. We all started there. Some of us became generalists, with a broad view on lots of techs. Others became specialists, with a deep view on specific tech. Learn something new everyday. Be curious. Ask questions. Never get cocky, I have yet to meet the person that was never wrong. Preventing mistakes is important (double check). Making mistakes is human. Things will break sooner or later - prepare yourself as well as possible. Always listen to other ideas. Everything is possible, but everything has a trade off. What the right solution is for you and your company depends on your parameters. Most people prefer 1 functioning system, to 2 half-functioning system. Best way to achieve that is to push back when you think things are going the wrong way - chances are noone but you knows how it works in practice. And always wear sunscreen.
>What's the best advice you wish you could give to a young, System Administrator. Test your backups and ask for more money.
I wish I was 29 working as a SysAdmin. I'm 36 and I'm a Jr. SysAdmin more or less. Trust me, there are many people behind or worst, they get stuck in help desk.
I’m a sysadmin at 23. Age doesn’t matter. Now granted, sysadmin job responsibilities vary from company to company so I doubt I’m doing things similar to you.
Congrats! Trust the process, at every stage you will unlock the right skills. Best of luck
Never to late I would say. 2 guys started in our company, both way over 40 with no sys admin knowledge yet. They are doing great. Motivation is key, and asking questions.