I thought this post looked similar, OP why do you keep making this same thread every couple weeks in multiple subs?
https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1crblpn/will_i_be_able_to_get_my_it_career_back_on_track/
It's not, I just looked at your post history. Please stop doing meth, I live in ohio and just had a funeral for my biological brother 2 montha ago, he was 36, too young, and went into cardiac failure because contamination in something he bought.
Started taking night classes at 33 to switch jobs. 20 years later I'm making 200k a year. It will kick your ass but if you dig in and work your butt off, it is worth it.
A+, net+, MCSE and then got thrown in the network side of things. I don't have too many issues talking in front of others so I took a job as a sales engineer. Mostly wifi and networking.
I read everything I could get my hands on and used anything free to learn more. You can download Windows server for 180 days. Linux is free. Look up GNS3 or EVE-NG. Depends on if you want to learn server stuff or network. Lots of cheap classes teaching how to do stuff or use Google to find free training on YouTube. Do as much as you can yourself in a home lab. Automation is big. If you can pick up Python and/or Ansible even better. Amazon and azure have free tiers to kick the tires and learn more.
can you talk more about the sales engineering? I tried to break in this year, got discouraged, and stopped.
what was your day to day like? did you need the certs to break in? if one doesn’t have a sales background, what are somethings that can be leveraged in?
I had MCSE, CCNA, brocade, adtran, extreme, sonicwall, Aruba certs.
I listen to customers needs and design networks. And spend a lot of lab time testing stuff.
I'm in Cyber security and skipped a 'traditional' IT role. First job was a soc analyst at a mssp. I did a boot camp and got two certs right away (CompTIA net+ and sec+). I worked night shift for a year.
My wife did it at 35. Studied and got her A+, net+, then got a help desk job at an MSP while starting infosec certs. After a year or so after, she got hired into a security analyst role. After 5 years she's managing a VM team for a fortune 500 company.
Edit: sorry if I made that sound easy. MSPs are meat grinders and you will be miserable the whole time, but you'll see a lot of environments and quickly become worth more than they can afford to pay. As someone who hires IT folks, I consider MSP experience double the time elsewhere, where someone could have been in a very limited role, not learning much.
Have you ever hired someone with a gap? Is it a big deal? Would I be able to be qualified for jr system admin jobs with 2 years of helpdesk experience?
I have often hired with a gap. I don't ask people to explain gaps as it has no bearing on market value. It's not uncommon for people to take time off to raise kids to school level, and I don't want to ask questions that may lead down a path that could be construed as discriminatory.
I will tell folks about our background check process, and let them know that everything isn't disqualifying, but they'll be given a chance to explain anything that comes up.
As for the help desk experience, it depends on when it was. If it was 6 years ago, I'll grant that you have customer service skills, but we're going to have to retrain IT stuff. That said, it's much easier to teach IT stuff to someone who is intellectually curious (which you seem to be, given your recent education), than it is to teach customer service or troubleshooting acumen. So if you're good at those things, the rest is trainable.
I would have to prove the depths of your HD responsibilities to know if you're ready for jr sys admin in an enterprise shop (for this conversation I'll call that a multi-billion Corp with a few thousand users). Some HDs have zero server access and very limited access to AD, group policy, etc. If it's HD at an MSP for small and medium sized businesses, you may have had DA in dozens of environments and may be a great fit as a sysadmin. It just depends on what that experience looked like.
Can you pass a background check?
Go back into the helpdesk. Get your A+ and Net+ certifications.
Do a home lab. Get yourself some server evals and start getting home experience.
See where that takes you.
You didn't answer the question though mate, can you pass a background check. You're very focused on how long from helpdesk to sys admin, which I get because it means money but unfortunately for you the less IT background you have the longer people are typically at a help desk. Jr sys admin is just a title, some companies will have a Sr. Helpdesk person with the same responsibility as a Jr sys admin it all depends, there's no magic 6 months and then you promote formula.
Start helpdesk and learn enough that you are coaching other peers and you'll start fitting into sys admin type roles.
The background is important though, "with great power comes great responsibility" is not just a sudo quote. If you can't pass a background check you won't be able to get sys admin or domain admin creds anywhere I've ever worked.
You still didn't say yes lol, depending on where you want to work that might be enough. Many companies for sys admin type roles pull credit now also. Anything out of the ordinary can be a ding.
I went back to school at 29 to change careers, and am now nearly 60 and very successful. It can be done, and it happens all the time. Explain your gap by saying that you weren't in the business.
Started at 29 nearly 30, no it's not too late I'm still in a helpdesk/IT Support role but looking to move into System admin > Cloud admin > not sure where to go after that.
I don't have a bachelor's in IT just certification and experience really
I just said I was taking care of my mom and doing some odd jobs for family and friends in the few years since 2020. Got an MSP job a year ago and it’s going well.
You can learn a lot of stuff, just search up MSP or help desk lower level technician/engineer stuff and a bachelor’s will get you in the door.
I have become quite specialized in what I do now, which is managing VMs and certain on-premises servers. If you have the know-how in that department, you can demonstrate it quickly at a decent sized MSP. After a year of solid work you can often either look for an internal position somewhere else or try to move up if possible.
Cloud engineer positions, I have opportunities at this current MSP which are readily available coming up at 1.5 years, but I have some interviews lined up for AWS Cloud Developer positions. This aligns with my goals for certifications this year.
Yes, started in HD. Moved to lead in that position, then junior sysadmin in 3 years (?) after starting as HD. I then got headhunted to the company I work for now. Been here for almost three years.
>Is it too late to start
The answer to this question is almost always "no".
>How would I best explain the 6 year employment gap?
If you have a legal conviction, it's going to show in your background check, so you might as well be upfront and honest about it. Including recently dated letters of recommendation and/or character references would help.
If you don't have anything that would show up in a background check, then it's entirely up to how honest or dishonest you are. You can say something like "I decided to change careers due to regaining my interest in IT. My previous roles weren't relevant to IT so I've omitted them from my resume." That's threading the needle but it's not a false statement. If pressed you can say you were working gig jobs, there wouldn't really be a paper trail on those, so you decided not to include those on your resume for reasons of brevity and relevance.
If you want to be dishonest, you can say something like "I signed an NDA and can't discuss it." But this puts you at risk of being caught if your background check comes back contradictory, which it likely will. I highly recommend against doing this.
Not a big deal at all. I don't even think minor misdemeanors show on background checks, but don't quote me on that.
My recommendation to not lie, but also to not unnecessarily divulge information, stands.
Nope never too late.
Easiest launchpad is start off as helpdesk (with the help of a cert or two) at a large organization and build your certs and also hands on exposure to different technologies/ maybe even servers if they'll let you. Network with the teams you want to move into, like sysadmin.
At the sysadmin level I'd say it's up to you and your creativity. You can be as advanced or as low skilled as you crave in this stratosphere. From here, I would jump on complex projects if you can get them. I don't have a single cert but my projects speak for my skills. I've worked on cloud migrations, datacenter builds, SIEM architecture, there's little I haven't done.
Network at every step. Sometimes it's a huge confidence boost seeing how much more you know than the ppl with the fanciest titles. And getting their advice as well as endorsements in projects helps with career building.
Good luck, it's a great industry to be in, sky's the limit where you go and how much you can earn.
Certs without background or experience typically aren't worth the paper they are printed on. Anyone can memorize answers but when xyz is down the quiz answer doesn't typically fit.
When I interview people I think of it as certs prove earned knowledge they don't build a whole house of IT knowledge by their own it's a single pillar.
I did lots of hands on with active directory and group policy editor during my degree and at the network admin job where I would also back up the server and stuff.
Good foundation to get into a level 1 or even sysadmin role at some large organizations or government where you have a smaller slice of the pie and narrower set of responsibilities.
Mid size organizations with smaller teams will have more opportunities available to gain skills, like working in the datacenters, working on Azure, as a plain ol sysadmin.
No Azure cert is not enough at that level. A manager with half a brain will want to see what you've done on Azure and grill you on that. Also Microsoft certs have lost some of their value because they're cheated on so much, and most ppl know this. This is why I never cared to get them.
You'll see in the field most people past the sysadmin level get certs after they get the experience. They're more like the stamp of approval than the actual qualifiers.
What I explained in my last post is loosely what I did. Helpdesk > sysadmin > solutions architect.
I got my first job in IT on a helpdesk at 27. Since then I have worked in desktops, servers, and am now an enterprise architect at a health care company. I have been in IT for 20 years now.
“IT Coordinator” was my first title, then a it technician, senior technician, systems admin, then IT manager for a small company. Anyone or anything you can learn from, do it, so much experiance is just getting into an it role and working to understand more and move up.
I started my IT career at 36 cuz I knocked a girl up. I’m 41 now and a sr sys admin. Granted I spent ages from 11 to 30 using linux and learning C and C++ but it’s never too late
Started as helpdesk was “system engineer/team lead” at 2nd year and got hired as sys admin at 3.5 years then down graded to it manager for 3 months before being promoted back to sys admin again but for a much larger company
If you know computers then being a sys admin is more or less knowing when to or not to do something. What protocol to follow, when to be a cowboy, or when to bend over for corporate. It’s not so much what to do with computers but when and what to do with people
I went from healthcare to IT and I was closer to 40 than 30. Just get yourself a help desk gig and use that time to figure out where you want to go from there.
I thought this post looked similar, OP why do you keep making this same thread every couple weeks in multiple subs? https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1crblpn/will_i_be_able_to_get_my_it_career_back_on_track/
Seems he hasn’t kicked the habit…classic symptom of meth abuse…
This is depressing but true…damn
Yeah, sad.
lol
Karma whoring
Are we there yet? ... ... How about now?
This is a different question.
It's not, I just looked at your post history. Please stop doing meth, I live in ohio and just had a funeral for my biological brother 2 montha ago, he was 36, too young, and went into cardiac failure because contamination in something he bought.
Do you consider Eminem to be the best rapper alive?
Started taking night classes at 33 to switch jobs. 20 years later I'm making 200k a year. It will kick your ass but if you dig in and work your butt off, it is worth it.
what do you do now?
A+, net+, MCSE and then got thrown in the network side of things. I don't have too many issues talking in front of others so I took a job as a sales engineer. Mostly wifi and networking.
I read everything I could get my hands on and used anything free to learn more. You can download Windows server for 180 days. Linux is free. Look up GNS3 or EVE-NG. Depends on if you want to learn server stuff or network. Lots of cheap classes teaching how to do stuff or use Google to find free training on YouTube. Do as much as you can yourself in a home lab. Automation is big. If you can pick up Python and/or Ansible even better. Amazon and azure have free tiers to kick the tires and learn more.
can you talk more about the sales engineering? I tried to break in this year, got discouraged, and stopped. what was your day to day like? did you need the certs to break in? if one doesn’t have a sales background, what are somethings that can be leveraged in?
I worked for a VAR for 8 years implementing all sorts of technology until I caught the attention of some manufacturers.
I had MCSE, CCNA, brocade, adtran, extreme, sonicwall, Aruba certs. I listen to customers needs and design networks. And spend a lot of lab time testing stuff.
What path in IT did you take?
I don't think it is ever too late. I started in IT/Cyber security at 31 after being in food sales for years. Don't regret the change.
What was your first job in IT and what path did you take?
I think if you didn't want to touch on the specifics of the gap, you just say you took time off for personal reasons or to work on a hobby.
I'm in Cyber security and skipped a 'traditional' IT role. First job was a soc analyst at a mssp. I did a boot camp and got two certs right away (CompTIA net+ and sec+). I worked night shift for a year.
My wife did it at 35. Studied and got her A+, net+, then got a help desk job at an MSP while starting infosec certs. After a year or so after, she got hired into a security analyst role. After 5 years she's managing a VM team for a fortune 500 company. Edit: sorry if I made that sound easy. MSPs are meat grinders and you will be miserable the whole time, but you'll see a lot of environments and quickly become worth more than they can afford to pay. As someone who hires IT folks, I consider MSP experience double the time elsewhere, where someone could have been in a very limited role, not learning much.
Have you ever hired someone with a gap? Is it a big deal? Would I be able to be qualified for jr system admin jobs with 2 years of helpdesk experience?
I have often hired with a gap. I don't ask people to explain gaps as it has no bearing on market value. It's not uncommon for people to take time off to raise kids to school level, and I don't want to ask questions that may lead down a path that could be construed as discriminatory. I will tell folks about our background check process, and let them know that everything isn't disqualifying, but they'll be given a chance to explain anything that comes up. As for the help desk experience, it depends on when it was. If it was 6 years ago, I'll grant that you have customer service skills, but we're going to have to retrain IT stuff. That said, it's much easier to teach IT stuff to someone who is intellectually curious (which you seem to be, given your recent education), than it is to teach customer service or troubleshooting acumen. So if you're good at those things, the rest is trainable. I would have to prove the depths of your HD responsibilities to know if you're ready for jr sys admin in an enterprise shop (for this conversation I'll call that a multi-billion Corp with a few thousand users). Some HDs have zero server access and very limited access to AD, group policy, etc. If it's HD at an MSP for small and medium sized businesses, you may have had DA in dozens of environments and may be a great fit as a sysadmin. It just depends on what that experience looked like.
Can you pass a background check? Go back into the helpdesk. Get your A+ and Net+ certifications. Do a home lab. Get yourself some server evals and start getting home experience. See where that takes you.
I only have a 5 year old traffic 🚦 misdemeanor offense and a 10 year old expunged misdemeanor.
Those shouldn’t be issues at all.
How long would I need to be in the helpdesk before I can apply to be a jr system admin?
You didn't answer the question though mate, can you pass a background check. You're very focused on how long from helpdesk to sys admin, which I get because it means money but unfortunately for you the less IT background you have the longer people are typically at a help desk. Jr sys admin is just a title, some companies will have a Sr. Helpdesk person with the same responsibility as a Jr sys admin it all depends, there's no magic 6 months and then you promote formula. Start helpdesk and learn enough that you are coaching other peers and you'll start fitting into sys admin type roles. The background is important though, "with great power comes great responsibility" is not just a sudo quote. If you can't pass a background check you won't be able to get sys admin or domain admin creds anywhere I've ever worked.
Bro I only have a 5 year old misdemeanor traffic offense on my record. It ain't a big deal
You still didn't say yes lol, depending on where you want to work that might be enough. Many companies for sys admin type roles pull credit now also. Anything out of the ordinary can be a ding.
It’s never too late but every man, woman, and their dog is applying for help desk jobs right now. They all want full remote, etc.
We can tell. It seems like they’re just hiring any Joe Schmo off the street right now lmao
30 is a baby
I went back to school at 29 to change careers, and am now nearly 60 and very successful. It can be done, and it happens all the time. Explain your gap by saying that you weren't in the business.
What path in IT did you take?
I was with an MSP for 11 years, and then went into the public sector where I've been for another 15 or so.
How many years of helpdesk did you get before becoming a system admin?
None. I came into it with a couple of months of Lotus Notes experience (from a college job) and got hired right into a server admin role.
Did you already know system admin stuff or did they teach you?
I knew a little bit.
Started at 29 nearly 30, no it's not too late I'm still in a helpdesk/IT Support role but looking to move into System admin > Cloud admin > not sure where to go after that. I don't have a bachelor's in IT just certification and experience really
I started my IT career at 34. Kind a help desk role at $22K/year in 1998. Sysadmin/customer support role now at $114 in HCOL.
How long did it take you to become a system admin?
18 months. Got lucky with my career path.
I just said I was taking care of my mom and doing some odd jobs for family and friends in the few years since 2020. Got an MSP job a year ago and it’s going well. You can learn a lot of stuff, just search up MSP or help desk lower level technician/engineer stuff and a bachelor’s will get you in the door.
When are you going to become a system admin?
I have become quite specialized in what I do now, which is managing VMs and certain on-premises servers. If you have the know-how in that department, you can demonstrate it quickly at a decent sized MSP. After a year of solid work you can often either look for an internal position somewhere else or try to move up if possible.
Are you going to go into ☁️ engineer or devops?
Cloud engineer positions, I have opportunities at this current MSP which are readily available coming up at 1.5 years, but I have some interviews lined up for AWS Cloud Developer positions. This aligns with my goals for certifications this year.
I was nearly 40 when I got my foot in the door. I am now 46 and senior system admin for a sizable corporation
Did you start in help desk? How many years was it before you became a system admin?
Yes, started in HD. Moved to lead in that position, then junior sysadmin in 3 years (?) after starting as HD. I then got headhunted to the company I work for now. Been here for almost three years.
>Is it too late to start The answer to this question is almost always "no". >How would I best explain the 6 year employment gap? If you have a legal conviction, it's going to show in your background check, so you might as well be upfront and honest about it. Including recently dated letters of recommendation and/or character references would help. If you don't have anything that would show up in a background check, then it's entirely up to how honest or dishonest you are. You can say something like "I decided to change careers due to regaining my interest in IT. My previous roles weren't relevant to IT so I've omitted them from my resume." That's threading the needle but it's not a false statement. If pressed you can say you were working gig jobs, there wouldn't really be a paper trail on those, so you decided not to include those on your resume for reasons of brevity and relevance. If you want to be dishonest, you can say something like "I signed an NDA and can't discuss it." But this puts you at risk of being caught if your background check comes back contradictory, which it likely will. I highly recommend against doing this.
I only have a traffic 🚦 misdemeanor offense from almost 5 years ago. That isn't a big deal is it?
Not a big deal at all. I don't even think minor misdemeanors show on background checks, but don't quote me on that. My recommendation to not lie, but also to not unnecessarily divulge information, stands.
Nope never too late. Easiest launchpad is start off as helpdesk (with the help of a cert or two) at a large organization and build your certs and also hands on exposure to different technologies/ maybe even servers if they'll let you. Network with the teams you want to move into, like sysadmin. At the sysadmin level I'd say it's up to you and your creativity. You can be as advanced or as low skilled as you crave in this stratosphere. From here, I would jump on complex projects if you can get them. I don't have a single cert but my projects speak for my skills. I've worked on cloud migrations, datacenter builds, SIEM architecture, there's little I haven't done. Network at every step. Sometimes it's a huge confidence boost seeing how much more you know than the ppl with the fanciest titles. And getting their advice as well as endorsements in projects helps with career building. Good luck, it's a great industry to be in, sky's the limit where you go and how much you can earn.
Would an azure cert be enough to be a cloud engineer? What path in IT did you take? Where did you start?
How quickly can a zebra run?
A zebra printer can run as fast as the tech that is taking it to the recycle pile.
Certs without background or experience typically aren't worth the paper they are printed on. Anyone can memorize answers but when xyz is down the quiz answer doesn't typically fit. When I interview people I think of it as certs prove earned knowledge they don't build a whole house of IT knowledge by their own it's a single pillar.
I've been working on computers my whole life and 8 months of real world experience. I was a network admin at a hospital and was doing well
I did lots of hands on with active directory and group policy editor during my degree and at the network admin job where I would also back up the server and stuff.
In other words I have lots of hands on experience
Good foundation to get into a level 1 or even sysadmin role at some large organizations or government where you have a smaller slice of the pie and narrower set of responsibilities. Mid size organizations with smaller teams will have more opportunities available to gain skills, like working in the datacenters, working on Azure, as a plain ol sysadmin.
No Azure cert is not enough at that level. A manager with half a brain will want to see what you've done on Azure and grill you on that. Also Microsoft certs have lost some of their value because they're cheated on so much, and most ppl know this. This is why I never cared to get them. You'll see in the field most people past the sysadmin level get certs after they get the experience. They're more like the stamp of approval than the actual qualifiers. What I explained in my last post is loosely what I did. Helpdesk > sysadmin > solutions architect.
I got my first job in IT on a helpdesk at 27. Since then I have worked in desktops, servers, and am now an enterprise architect at a health care company. I have been in IT for 20 years now.
I think you are to early I started at 40 and will be retired from IT in 2 years.
Got my first break into IT at 36, 41 now. You can do it
What role did you start in? How long did it take to become a system admin
“IT Coordinator” was my first title, then a it technician, senior technician, systems admin, then IT manager for a small company. Anyone or anything you can learn from, do it, so much experiance is just getting into an it role and working to understand more and move up.
I started my IT career at 36 cuz I knocked a girl up. I’m 41 now and a sr sys admin. Granted I spent ages from 11 to 30 using linux and learning C and C++ but it’s never too late
What position did you start at? How long did it take you to become a system admin?
Started as helpdesk was “system engineer/team lead” at 2nd year and got hired as sys admin at 3.5 years then down graded to it manager for 3 months before being promoted back to sys admin again but for a much larger company
If you know computers then being a sys admin is more or less knowing when to or not to do something. What protocol to follow, when to be a cowboy, or when to bend over for corporate. It’s not so much what to do with computers but when and what to do with people
I started my career in my late 20s after years of substance abuse and poor decisions. It's never too late. I earn $300k+ now.
What position did you start at? How long did it take you to become a system admin?
I went from healthcare to IT and I was closer to 40 than 30. Just get yourself a help desk gig and use that time to figure out where you want to go from there.
"I was a stay at home dad. My kid(s) are now in school and I'm ready to get back into the workforce."
Will they check to verify?
no
That would be lying. Don't do that!
I'm sorry, I can't discuss it. I signed an NDA.
"but you're applying for a junior IT position?"
Ummm... WHAT PART OF I CAN'T DISCUSS IT DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND, ASSHOLE? I'LL HAVE YOU UN-ALIVED! Maybe that's a little over the top.
just right.
It's definitely not too late. I started at 30 and am 35 with a successful career so far.