#CareerGrowth #ProfessionalDevelopment #ITCareers #JobProgression
Have you ever wondered how some people seem to level up in their careers at lightning speed while you are still stuck in the same position, feeling like progress is a distant dream? 🤔 It can be frustrating to see others move from helpdesk roles to engineering or sysadmin positions in just a couple of years, while you are struggling to make your way up the ladder.
Don’t worry, you are not alone in feeling this way! Many professionals in IT face the same dilemma and wonder what the secret formula is to accelerate their career growth. But fear not, there are practical solutions that can help you level up faster and achieve your professional goals. Let’s dive into some strategies to help you navigate your career path with confidence.
## Hands-On Experience: Putting Knowledge into Practice
One of the key factors that can propel your career forward is hands-on experience. While studying and gaining certifications are essential, nothing beats the value of actually applying your knowledge in real-world situations. Look for opportunities within your current role to take on new challenges, volunteer for projects outside of your comfort zone, and seek mentorship from more experienced colleagues. By gaining practical experience, you not only enhance your skills but also demonstrate your capabilities to your employers.
## Study Smart: Investing in Continuous Learning
Studying outside of work hours can make a significant difference in your career progression. Dedicate time to expand your knowledge through online courses, workshops, and self-study materials. Keep up to date with the latest trends in the IT industry and focus on acquiring skills that are in high demand. By investing in continuous learning, you stay ahead of the curve and position yourself as a valuable asset to potential employers.
## Networking: Building Connections for Success
Luck may play a role in career advancement, but more often than not, it is about building strong connections within the industry. Attend networking events, join professional organizations, and engage with like-minded individuals in your field. Building a strong network can open doors to new opportunities, mentorship, and valuable insights that can help you progress in your career. Remember, it’s not just about what you know but who you know that can make a difference in your professional journey.
In conclusion, leveling up in your IT career requires a combination of hands-on experience, continuous learning, and networking. By taking proactive steps to enhance your skills, expand your knowledge, and connect with industry professionals, you can accelerate your career growth and achieve your goals sooner than you think. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day, but with dedication and perseverance, you can build a successful career path that leads to a fulfilling and rewarding future. Good luck on your journey to success! 🚀
I have read countless posts about people being in helpdesk for 1-2 years, then moving into engineer/sysadmin type roles.
How the!? I'm coming up to 2 years in helpdesk/desktop support, and feel like I'm not even close to that kind of role.
How did you do it? Hands on experience? Study outside of work hours? Luck?
Would love to know!
Different job market, and much more aggressive upskilling in your free time.
It’s hard to break out of help desk with just help desk experience. You typically need things like intermediate level certs to get admin type roles, and advanced ones for engineer roles.
The people I see do that are volunteering for everything, putting in a lot of extra time learning new things, but won’t have a lot of experience to go with the knowledge they’ve gained. As years pass, you gain a certain perspective that just can’t be manufactured quickly.
Don’t underestimate networking. Also small shops. My first role could’ve easily turned into sysadmin if I wasn’t hell bent on SWE and analytics. We were a three person shop with helpdesk not doing heir job so I took a lot of sys admin type work with helpdesk and dev work over while my boss was managing and doing network stuff.
Networking was how I got that job.
I moved up after 4 years at the help desk. Network and make connections. This is so crucial! I underestimated the importance of this.
Location and willingness to relocate can also play a role. If you’re in or near a major city, you’re gonna have a lot more opportunities than if you live in a smaller isolated town where there are a few companies and you don’t want to relocate.
Networking, of the people kind
The quickest way to a more senior role is developing the skills needed for the role.
Personally, I would rather promote from within and hire at the bottom.
I encourage my support guys to shadow the engineers when they escalate a support issue to see how they troubleshoot and fix the problem.
But, they also invest in themselves. Don’t expect things to be given to you. Sign up for a pluralaight account and learn on your own time.
You are in control of your career and future. You need to work hard and keep your skills relevant.
Taking contractual positions
Network with lots of people in your role, there should be plenty of SLS teams. Be eager to understand what their role is. If they like your initiative you will come up when their boss mentions needing to backfill or fill a role.
Offer to go an extra mile, do you see some articles that could be spruced up? Well show off a little. Are you getting only 90s in your QMs well give your manager a hard reason to even give you a 1:1 and write down every mistake make habits to correct it.
Now you have a boss that is very impressed with you. You could surprisingly sweep that senior role skipping any sort of tenure.
Study your ass off outside of work , if you have a passion for tech then you probably could start really making it your hobby. Apply for positions that are not applicable to you and tailor your resume to those positions..
But honestly networking is the biggest one. Show lots of people you work with your worth and who knows.
TL;DR: Make friends, do diverse things willingly, and do them well.
Two huge things people overlook.
First, many are saying that in these comments, but you really need to network and make friends. All of my motions between companies were because I was poached. Other companies, or people within those companies knew of me either because they worked with me directly or indirectly. No, this doesn’t mean you have to go to professional seminars or anything. Just make friends with people at work, be kind to them, help them out, give them good memories of you so that they might recommend to you if they move up or to somewhere else.
Second, upskilling is important, but so is putting those skills to work if it is possible in your current environment. Most of my internal motion within companies has been from me jumping in and doing work and earning promotions without really needing to ask for them. This certainly isn’t possible in all companies, but in many it is. Start getting involved with processes and tasks that don’t lie directly under your purview as a help desk person if you can. Not only can it earn you promotions internally, but it is actively upskilling you while you are at work already.
I have not had to apply for a promotion or a job in over a decade. That covers my entire IT career and my transition from green help desk personnel at an MSP, to Director of Technology at a private company.
The above two things coupled with a strong work ethic and willingness to tackle anything that is put on my desk without complaining or pushing it off, strong troubleshooting and logic skills, and strong social skills are the key to how I’ve done things.
I changed my career paths quite late and got my IT degree at 28 yo. Ater 3 years of working in IT I actually never did helpdesk. First 2 years I did as a local IT-support for 2 different companies and currently I’m in a level 2/sysadmin role in a small company. I have been learning all the time from Youtube etc. when there is downtime at work. I think you just have to be hungry to learn more and take all the opportunities you get, even if you didn’t know what to do (learn as you go).
I moved all around the country chasing jobs that could drag me onward and upward, while my direct bosses condescended to me. I so want to add Michele on LinkedIn and rub her face in my success. That’s okay though. I shouted at her, quit, trained her how to do all the things I did, and didn’t even have another job lined up. I feel like quitting with nothing lined up is a pretty good “eff you”.
I had no right to break into IT. I stumbled in ass-backwards, but it’s the family business in a way and I took to it quickly and clung on for prospects. My employment history looks like 3 years, 1 year, 3 years, 6 months, 3 years, 8 months, 2.5 years…
I could still be supporting SAP3.
Learn active roles server
Then go to LinkedIn. Search active roles server jobs!
70k, boom, you are welcome
Seriously though, kind of like that
Also learn Azure and AD. Get those certs, be the person!
Like fish in a barrel, sailpoint, cyberark, okta more barrels to shoot fish in!
The major work is done on your free time. Get 2 basic certs, one in system (Linux, windows server) and 1 in network (ccna preferred). Build a lab in cloud or at home, practise and test. Make a portfolio of your project, put it in likedin, take a junior sysadmin role, and move slowly to engineer role.
Learn to code
Skill up, automate, demonstrate value, get promoted.
I was a hardware repair tech for a year, then switched to desktop support. Officially I was in the role for 18 months… unofficially I started doing Sysadmin work 6 months in due to them not being able to find and employ a competent sysadmin. So some luck, but most of it was hard work.
Here is what I will say about “luck”, and what most peiple who complain about how lucky people are to advance fast don’t understand….Was I lucky to have certain opportunities put in front of me throughout my career? Absolutely. But if not for my own hard work, those opportunities either wouldn’t have presented themselves, or I would’ve wasted them.
I spent A LOT of time playing with my homelab, taking on projects that I thought would benefit my employer, etc.
I’m having trouble with this, now. I’ve been a network engineer for about 7 years now and I will tell you that the team,your manager, your employer, getting enough sleep, enjoying what you’re doing…it ALL matters. For the first half of my career I was motivated because my team was great and everyone I worked with over different jobs became some of the best friends I have, still today. Engineers get each other. lol My managers were cool. My employers treated us like professionals, gave us whatever we needed (amenities, PTO, above average salary, and our network was tight and smooth (most of the time), we worked well together and we unintentionally motivated each other to be better than the day before. It wasn’t like work, but more like going to the clubhouse everyday to hang out with friends and our own nerd community. Going home, we’d study, lab, compare each other’s labs and just kept growing. Second half of my career, really the post-Covid portion, sucks. Employer isn’t bad, but teammates aren’t the kind you can joke with, they don’t share knowledge (this is over multiple jobs, not just one), can’t find a good team to work with anymore because our job market isn’t great, you have to be an entire IT dept anymore to earn what we earned pre-Covid, and to top it off, I’m just tired. There’s no motivation, no push except the dollar and I just didn’t become an engineer to chase that. Don’t get me wrong, I love earning 6-fig’s. I like not worrying about money because it should help me just focus on being an better engineer for my employer, but I also don’t feel like I’m not doing for my team anymore and whatever I level up on goes unappreciated. Anyway, motivation from my peers and enjoying what I do were the prime factors in how I leveled up so fast becoming a CCNP after 3.5 years in, I was soaking it up, learned cloud and got my AWS-SAA. learned cloud was fun, learning how to script code in Terraform, Ansible, using Docker, writing in Ruby, deep-diving into Linux, it was fun and fun to share. You find the right team and have fun at what you’re doing, you’ll level up fast. You’ll WANT to. That’s my experience, anyway.
I was in help desk for a several years, then I got out by going outside as a telecom field tech for another several years. Now I’m a permanent govt employee doing a flavor of cybersecurity with 90% of down time most days with the 4/10s work schedule with a six figure salary. A lot of my old coworkers are still stuck working the help desk/ tech support cause they never left to do something unfamiliar and get uncomfortable to learn something totally different.
It’s kind of simple , anyone can just show up to work and put in the “time” for a few years gaining experience in that work just by showing up. But to level up “fast” you simply need to be improving torward your goal any free time you get. A lot of the tech jobs I had gave me the ability to work fast, what did I do to look busy? Study. I was helpdesk for 2 years during that time I studied my net plus ccna which then got me into network administration and during my two years there working and gaining network admin exposure I also got my ccnp during my free time. Don’t get me wrong it’s 3ish hours a day of studying to gain the needed certifications to become a full fledge network engineer but reality is I could have stayed a net admin for 3 more years and then got my ccnp or just applied to be a net engineer. But since I got my ccnp and studied the hell out of everything network engineering related I cut my career path timeline in half. See my point ?
Certs. Being proactive. Being collaborative. Being respectful to everybody. Leaving Ego at home.
This was my path from 0 IT experience to today, sorry for the length. Happy to chat about specifics if you find anything relevant. I worked hard to learn a lot in my early positions and barely had a life outside of studying in my downtime for almost 2 years, but it really paid off and I would do it all again. These days I study sparingly and do most of my learning on the job.
June 2020
Started taking community college classes for networking and cybersecurity while working in the criminal justice field
August 2020
Got the A+, Started applying to jobs, literally zero responses
Feb 2021
Got the Security+, landed interviews but nothing that paid even close to current non-IT salary(all ~40k, current salary ~56k)
October 2021
Finally hired, took job based on title with very little knowledge of role with 4k pay cut (~$52k). Ended up being advanced data entry in Telecom. It started with 4 weeks of training that was actually really good, but I knew I had to move on to a more direct IT support position
November 2021
Got the Network + and started a homelab with a raspberry pi.
December 2021
Finished CC cybersecurity certificate program ( also got a network technician certificate)
Jan 2022
Enrolled in WGU, got ITIL certification, sent flurry of applications and was getting a good amount of interest.
Feb 2022
Offered contract position with state university department doing desktop support for $30/hour. Great experience, learned a lot and they wanted to offer me full time by the time I left but I wanted $60k and they couldn’t do it.
May 2022
Offered “on site engineer” position with MSP after 1 interview. I asked for 10% above posted salary and got it ($60k), full benefits, unlimited PTO. They wanted 3 years experience and I had about 3 months of real experience.
I was actually moved to mostly remote position. Lots of exposure to junior sysadmin type stuff (azure/sharepoint, meraki, started powershell scripting).
Also built a docker compose based media server in my homelab running on Ubuntu.
October 2022
Finished WGU degree including CCNA this month. Sent out another flurry of applications targeting network/sysadmin positions. Lots of interviews. Accepted system Administrator position for 25% raise, $75k. Dedicated service desk below me so direct end user support is basically nonexistent.
Nov. 2022-nov. 2023
Finally some stability – stayed in sysadmin position, learning network/infra, implementing scripting and lots of platform workflow automations. Became the go to admin for most of our SaaS stack and established myself as a viable backup for the network/infrastructure engineers. Traveled to a dozen sites around the US to upgrade networking equipment, rack servers etc.
Nov-Dec. 2023
Okta certified Professional and Administrator certifications
Feb 2024
Promoted to system engineer with a 28% raise, just under $100k.
Today:
I have a 2nd round interview for a new position this week for as much as 35% increase over my current job doing post-sales engineering for a well know security software company. They like my experience architecting integrations, but they place high value on my experience interfacing with internal departments and external vendors, end users and executives.
First thing you need to understand is that you will see an extremely biased reflection of reality online. People stuck in helpdesk are less likely to mention it all the time compared to people who are rocketing up the ladder.
Then you just have to accept that there are a number of things that are possible that you may not be doing. Do you have a degree? Do you have numerous certs? Are you asking for extra responsibilities at work? Are you building up your resume outside of work? Are you prepared?
Luck is often able to be described as ‘When preparation meets opportunity’. Not saying luck isn’t involved at all, but it is very much possible to ‘create’ your own luck too.
If you’re a quiet guy that just shows up to work and never breaks the mold and is expecting to just tumble into a higher level position that is going to take a long time if ever and is likely to just never happen.
some times you are forced to up skill. it’s a sink or swim situation/job.
smaller companies, start ups are the place to be to be super stressed busy, and learn. it’s not for everybody but that’s how I learned.
Right place Right time! Next Man Up ! Network with the staff learn and pray to god someone makes them an offer they can’t refuse.
I moved up quickly because I know lots of people in the industry starting when I was 15 and going to cyber and IT in-person meet ups. I got a degree in CS. I passed along jobs I knew would be a better fit for someone else. People notice this and you’d be surprised who wants to help you in return.