Trying to break in to IT infrastructure field

There are SOOO many roles out there at a junior level for the kind of thing I want to do, that maybe I should be a bit more picky what I apply for. And not waste my time applying for these general helpdesk roles. They wont contribute to my career progression.

After 8 years in a help desk role, I shouldn't be looking for another help desk role.... The only thing is some of these helpdesk role are paying quite a bit more than what I currently earn.

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So tempted to withdraw form the interview I have booked for Wed the 9th. It's a role doing exactly what I'm currently doing just up to 6k more and really I don't want to do technical support anymore. I want an Infrastructure role.

In other words I'm not happy to make a sideways move.

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Not going to do anything rash yet regrading canceling my interview on the 9th as I still have over a week, but I do not want to deal with peoples issues with their: email, laptops, desktops, printers etc etc etc. I couldn't care less. Been doing that for the past 8 years.
 
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Don't cancel any interviews, at the least it's all good experience, just treat it as prep work for any future interviews you may get.

As for taking a drop in pay, it's not ideal but I've done it before and by doing so had paid off in the long run. Took a role that was paying about 15% less than I had been on (I took voluntary redundancy) for a role that was extremely beneficial to future prospects.

As well as taking the pay cut I was even worse off for it as the job was too far for a daily commute so had to rent a room during the week which ate up a fair chunk of cash and introduced personal life annoyances in being away from the wife all week.

Up shot to all this was it was a very attractive role to have on the CV (as well as being something I'd always wanted to do) for a good employer.

Less than 6 months in I was approached by another company and offered a 25% pay rise plus working from home so no more rent to pay.

Then about 5 or 6 months after then another company, one who I'd always wanted to work for, came along and offered me a lot more money to go work for them and have been there ever since in an amazing role.
 
Thanks for your reply.

I'm just hacked off at the moment. The other two people earning double what I earn, are lazy, come in late and leave all the crap to me. And they know exactly what their doing.

I don't care for setting up user accounts (being chased about by HR) while they go about doing interesting project work and come in when ever they choose.

I'm going to narrow my job search to only infrastructure type roles. No more user support for me. :mad:

They are just taking the mickey and it has been engineered like this from top to bottom. They've got it sweet, twice my wage, interesting stuff and don't have to do with the day to day rubbish as they can palm it off on to me.

This was something I spoke to my manager about last year in Nov. He agreed with me, but nothing has changed.
 
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And it's a double edged sword. the more people contact me and I hep them the more people contact me and no one else.

I've already been told by other people at work that they don't bother to contact the other guys as they never get a reply and they never bother to do whats asked.

So the company has learnt to just send everything my way, which plays in to the other guys hands.
 
Go, have a chat and then escalate. They'll soon get the picture. :) Good luck with the hunt, though! Look's like you've got a few nibbles on the horizon. Like EvO's said, don't ignore any interviews, you never know what might come up, and do highlight your infrastructure interest to prospective employers.
 
Just found out I have been raised by 2k. :rolleyes:

Thing is this is just a tactical move to protect the other two from having to do parts of my job if/when I leave. That will really put the cat amongst the pigeons.

My current role, doesn't forward my career in the slightest.

I'm not doing anything career worthy in my current role or picking up new skills.

Managers just asked me have I been looking and I said yes. And he said thought as much. :rolleyes:
 
opethdisciple said:
Just found out I have been raised by 2k. :rolleyes:

Thing is this is just a tactical move to protect the other two from having to do parts of my job if/when I leave. That will really put the cat amongst the pigeons.

My current role, doesn't forward my career in the slightest.

I'm not doing anything career worthy in my current role or picking up new skills.

Managers just asked me have I been looking and I said yes. And he said thought as much. :rolleyes:
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any luck with your job hunting ?
 
I have an interview for a Linux Administration role on the 15th March. It looks exactly what I want. I would get involved with every part of the system. (Firewalls, upgrades, DataCenter, networking, system admin and maintenance, San storage etc)

Really good experience. Hopefully* I can finally land a new job!

I need such a role to give me the necessary experience to take my career forward. I'm thinking 2 solid years in a Linux Admin role and I'll be ready for the next step.

I.e try and get a job at the next pay bracket up. Maybe look at junior level Devops role.

But my primary concern at the moment is just breaking in to a junior level Linux and infrastructure role.

A part of me is scared to leave my current role tho. I've been here 8 years. A huge part of my life is this job. Changing is no trivial matter.

But ultimately I am hacked off with it now. What I do in my current role is pretty much just technical support with a little 2nd line. I'm ready to learn more but the opportunity isn't there as they have partitioned the department so that I do the every day stuff and the other guys on twice my wage do the Linux project work.:rolleyes:

The guys I work with are very lazy. But I don't get to be lazy as I have HR chasing me around for user accounts, the rest of the company calling me directly as they know they dont get anywhere by contacting the other two and the department leaving the day to day stuff to me, when in reality it is part of their role too.

The only negative about this new job I'm interviewing for is its gonna be about 1.30hr travel each way.

So far I have only spoken to the new company once, but they seem to be handing things in a very impressive way. They said after my face to face interview there would be a technical exam. Given that goes OK, I would get a day to come down and work with them to see if I like it.

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I have a feeling what will happen is, when I do finally get an offer and hand in my notice, current company will know they cant really afford to lose me and offer me a good 10-15% pay rise. But then I'll have to decide if 4-6k extra in a job where I am not building on skills that can take my career forward is worth it compared to taking a job at a lower pay (what I'm on now) but doing a job where the experience and skills will take my career forward and enable me to double+ my wage in the next 3-4 years.

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In the next two years I cant be lazy tho. :rolleyes: I need to try and get the LPIC 1 and 2 done in about a year. After that, it could be the case that I'll look at the LPIC 3 Virtualization & High Availability which will be good for moving on in to a DevOps position. Alternatively I might look at the CCNA and CCNA security. Will see.

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The fear I have in leaving is because this is all I've known really. I have to remember that I am moving on to bigger and better things. Ones career is long. I cant stay in this position for ever.
 
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opethdisciple said:
I have a feeling what will happen is, when I do finally get an offer and hand in my notice, current company will know they cant really afford to lose me and offer me a good 10-15% pay rise. But then I'll have to decide if 4-6k extra in a job where I am not building on skills that can take my career forward is worth it compared to taking a job at a lower pay (what I'm on now) but doing a job where the experience and skills will take my career forward and enable me to double+ my wage in the next 3-4 years.
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Apologies for being a bit blunt here, but it doesn't sound like that's what they are going to do. It sounds very much to me as though the boss has decided you're a liability, can't be trusted with the real work and just wants somebody to do the menial jobs and take the flack when needed.

Thats not to say that you actually are that, you've just fallen out of favour with the boss and his opinion is less of you than you deserve. Don't be scared to leave, he only way you are going to get any happiness is by changing jobs. Your boss is content to have you for a mug and your colleagues are quite happy to lord it up and leave all the boring stuff to you.

I wouldn't expect that pay rise and counter offer. I'd just focus on finding that new start.
 
Fr0dders said:
Apologies for being a bit blunt here, but it doesn't sound like that's what they are going to do. It sounds very much to me as though the boss has decided you're a liability, can't be trusted with the real work and just wants somebody to do the menial jobs and take the flack when needed.

Thats not to say that you actually are that, you've just fallen out of favour with the boss and his opinion is less of you than you deserve. Don't be scared to leave, he only way you are going to get any happiness is by changing jobs. Your boss is content to have you for a mug and your colleagues are quite happy to lord it up and leave all the boring stuff to you.

I wouldn't expect that pay rise and counter offer. I'd just focus on finding that new start.
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It would appear that way. But I can tell you why this is so. It's historical.

Before I started there was just two of them, and they couldn't cope on their own and needed a run around. Someone to go to the other sites to do the menial stuff whilst they could get on with the actual IT.

So they hired me. At the time I had zero experience. It was my first job. So was just happy to have a job. At the time I was going round and round. I was either too qualified (masters degree) or didn't have enough experience.

Over the years my role took on more responsibility as I gained experience and knowledge. About 3-4 years in to my 8 years at this company the other Linux guy started experiencing difficulties with a sick farther. He disappeared for about 6 months. But was all over the place for at least 2 years. Turning up maybe 1-2 days a week. Depressed, going for 3-4 hour lunch breaks etc... So they hired another Linux guy to help out my manager.

This was the only reason why the team grew to four. Fast forward, the other guy is back and more stable, but during this time, the guy they hired is lazy and according to him was only hired to do Linux not technical support, so basically got annoyed with the technical support found another job, quit then accepted an offer with the current company at a higher wage packet. (And must have a verbal agreement with my manager that he doesn't have to do technical support because he gets away with murder)

So this is the reason why all the menial stuff is given to me. It's a mixture of historical and the other two thinking it's not their job/lazy.

Even my manager does the technical support but the other two get away with being lazy.

Even the people I support have complained that the other two are lazy and rude!

With out me, they wont have the luxury of laziness, as the new guy if junior wont hit the ground running and if they hire someone of higher technical ability to me he equally want wont to do aspects of my job so it will have to be shared out, which is going to be painful for the lazy people I work with.

I know for a fact one of the guys I mentioned (who says it's not his role to do technical support - it is) will quit shortly after I go because with out me will have to suddenly do some work!

So yes, I believe they will offer me a counter offer to stay. My manager has indicated to me numerous times 'my job is important'. Even when they verbally gave me my pay rise last week, he asked me if that was enough for me to stop looking....

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But I'm not really looking at this from a money perspective. I'm looking at it from a skills/experience perspective. I know for me to be earning twice my wage which they are, I too need to be getting experience with what they do. And in my current job, not only does my manager not give me anything to get my hands dirty, but I dont have time either with all the support rubbish I have to deal with.

The other reason is the partition of the department. As mentioned above, the other two historically are hired to do the infrastructure stuff and me I was just a run around. So if they give me more interesting stuff to do I'm sort of taking work from them and they wont do my work, so in the end I lose out again as I fall behind with all the support crap.

What they should be doing is telling the other two they have to share more my role and theirs so all three of us can share the workload and I can do some more interesting things. But I know at least one of them will NOT be bothered. He has a few menial stuff to do himself and when he gets chased about it, he just says 'I'm busy coding', when in reality he finds plenty of time for cigarettes and facebook and nonsense on his phone.

Also this same guy, sometimes doesn't even bother to open up his email and definitely doesn't look at the ticket system.
 
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danielanthony said:
Try building on your Linux skills by looking at OpenStack, you can deploy the RedHat version on one VM. Then look at Ceph. Suddenly you've got a fully functional cloud environment. £££
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Cool. I'll take a look at this tomorrow. There's just tons and tons of stuff out there for me to get my hands dirty.

At the moment, I've been covering a few fundamentals. I installed Apache and the LAMP stack. And played around with iptables.

I got my head round it now.
 
Theres me starting to panic over the weekend at the thought of ACTUALLY leaving this place, then I come in to work and remember why I really need to go.

My little corner of our department I know like the back of my hand. Manager receives a call from a user about the VPN not working. He hands it over to me (no one else in the office at this point - late as usual). User says they haven't used the laptop in months and says they remember an email that we sent out saying that they needed to return the laptops to us to update the vpn software on them.

Also they've had a password change in that time.

I realize through talking to the end user that her issue is she is using the wrong client.

Manager is on another call and is berating me for what I'm saying to her. Claiming that that doesn't need to be done why am I ripping the guts out of the machine etc ect etc... It's been working all this time ect ect

(She says she hasn't used it in months)

I just say back calmly to him, 'she's using the wrong client', again he goes and ranting off to me, so I repeat 'she is using the wrong client'.

Not much I can do. I either do my job or I don't do my job.

Am I not experienced enough to know after 8 years what I'm doing?

P.s - I'm right about this. He forgets the technicalities because it's not a day to day thing for him and just assumes that I don't know what I'm doing.

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Just to put this in to perspective, I remember the other guy (senior Linux) had the same issue, he did the same I did which was ask the end user to send the laptop in to us.

He didn't get my manager berating him that he doesn't know what he's doing.

He did the same thing I'm going to do, change the client.

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I need a job where it's not assumed I'm a complete dim wit. Some where where my experience is actually valued.

Believe it or not I know stuff they don't. They are just Linux specialists, so look down at me for not being at their level in LINUX!

P.s - Note to self - Reread this when it comes time to leave so that you remember the sort of crap I have to deal with.
 
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Like I said before, your manager has lost confidence in you and your relationship is breaking down as a result.

Just leave. He thinks he'll be able to replace you with somebody better and won't know any better until the new kid starts and he has to get trained from the ground up and they have an extended period when everybody is going to have to pitch in and help him out.

Then watch the fireworks. oh rather don't ... as you won't be working there by then :D
 
I have keep meaning to be replying to this thread for the past couple of weeks now!

I have been in the OPs situation before.... My manager at my previous role didn't have confidence in my ability and preferred me doing all of the donkey work, senior staff at architect level was badgering on at the manager to put me in a more senior position..... However he wasn't interested. I gave notice, and then the company tried rehiring for a more senior position for less money than I was on.

They couldn't find a more senior person, so ends up getting someone much junior than me. 1.5 years later I now earn more money than my ex colleagues who were in the senior positions.

When you interview at places, if they ask why your leaving your current role, just explain to them that you need a new challenge and would like to specialise more in the Linux side of things, don't start droning on about how your old company was holding you back, as everyone knows that's one of the main reasons why people resign from jobs.
 
FishThrower said:
I have keep meaning to be replying to this thread for the past couple of weeks now!

I have been in the OPs situation before.... My manager at my previous role didn't have confidence in my ability and preferred me doing all of the donkey work, senior staff at architect level was badgering on at the manager to put me in a more senior position..... However he wasn't interested. I gave notice, and then the company tried rehiring for a more senior position for less money than I was on.

They couldn't find a more senior person, so ends up getting someone much junior than me. 1.5 years later I now earn more money than my ex colleagues who were in the senior positions.

When you interview at places, if they ask why your leaving your current role, just explain to them that you need a new challenge and would like to specialise more in the Linux side of things, don't start droning on about how your old company was holding you back, as everyone knows that's one of the main reasons why people resign from jobs.
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One of my former colleagues doubled his wage in the first two years after he left the company I work for.

He doubled that again when he went contract.

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I should have moved on from my position years and years ago. But my focus since around 2012 was partying on the weekends. What I should have done was found another role after 4 years (if not before) partied less and studied more.
 
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I know I've said this a few times in this thread already, but I really do feel you're still focusing too much on certs. I have literally no IT qualifications except a BSc and it's not prevented me from having roles in software development, infrastructure, IT operations.

Having the right attitude and skills are much more important.
 
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