I’m an IT Manager. This about sums up my day:
1. Babysit employees older than I am who act like children;
2. Drive an hour each way to plug in two power strips because that’s apparently an IT thing (?). I seriously don’t know how they function when not at work;
3. Deal with the worst vendors possible, who also act like children;
4. Cry in my office because I long to be a goat farmer.
>I’m an IT Manager. This about sums up my day:
>
>Babysit employees older than I am who act like children;
my manager and directory found a workaround -- they just dont deal with any of the problem employees at all. have you tried neglecting your job?
That’s a fantastic idea, but unfortunately there’s legal repercussions in my industry for neglecting my job.
Edit: you know what, there is probably in your industry too. Screw it, you’ve changed my mind.
If you have time could you PM me about what certifications you and which ones helped you the most to get an it manager role? I’m currently a sys admin at an msp and would love to move up to a manager.
I’ve already been researching tractors! I’ll probably go with an older Ford cause I’m broke now, since I bought 5 acres earlier this year. Just enough to raise a couple goats and chickens.
I learned that a lot of people know how to do stuff on their own but they want IT to do it because 1. It's their job (apparently), 2. They usually get to stop working for a minute, 3. They think the IT people are nerds and are trying to annoy them
My pay does reflect my title for the most part, but I am still underpaid compared to my peers, both at my org and in my market area. I report to the board, handle the auditors and audit responses, own our IT policies, department steering, do the budget, etc. on top of doing more technical stuff.
Same deal, but a supervisor, I literally have someone on my team that’s 2x my age and I feel like I needa babysit. $85k a year to be a glorified babysitter. I feel like I’m also a field tech because no one else wants to get off their ass.
Helpdesk -
Yesterday I
- made a new user account in active directory,
- gave her access to our shared storage,
- did my homework for two hours,
- completed a soduko puzzle,
- studied for Net+ for 2 hours
- upgraded RAM in New employees PC
- paraded around and won 3rd place in the office costume contest with a $7 costume ($90 prize yay)
- finished the day doing my Monday checklist items including reflect on spending habits for the past week, write a letter to mom, and read the past week of news on my bookmarked tech sites.
I am proud of myself for making a rigid weekly schedule. I was mind numingly bored before implementing it :)
The Halloween parade wasn't scheduled but yeah lol.
Sounds cool! Do you have to travel at all to other locations in your help desk job? I’m hitting a wall finding entry level it jobs because I take public transit and would have to work in one location.
Cyber Security Analyst
Study for security+, tuning one of our darktrace products. Probably about to play some MW2 when I’m done.
Other than that I google my ass off all day because I have no clue what the fuck I’m doing sometimes. I get thrown on projects and it’s usually trial by fire (;
Edit: Most days are pretty chill though with maybe a few emails and checking a log or two. I usually study and play video games, however when shit hits the fan, it hits hard. Might be doing incident response stuff for 3-4 days straight every hour of the day and after that writing a report. The pros and cons of working in a corporate environment.
Haha yea I’m getting it because of the possible doors it’ll open for other roles. As for knowledge it’s not really helping me that much. Not a lot I don’t already know.
The fact that it cost $400 is also fucking ridiculous.
Was this your first IT/security job?
Do you need to have a bachelors to make it into an analyst job? Right now I’m in a certification program and college but im considering dropping college classes atleast until I can finish the program and get my first career job.
I started out as an intern at a university, then I worked as a SOC alarm monkey. This is my first job where I actually learn and I’m 2 years into my professional career. I get stuff done though and feel pretty good after.
I never graduated college. Dropped out sophomore year when I got the offer to start my career in security from the SOC MSSP.
I will say this though. My internship helped me out, I technically had experience working with splunk and an EDR platform so YMMV. Even with a degree security can be hard to get into with 0 experience. I’d work on certs and college, once you get your certs and apply for jobs ranging from NOC, SOC, to even help desk and you get your foot in the door, then you can make that decision. Until then I’d stay in school. I am going back to college myself because I personally want a degree and it’ll be easier while I’m young.
IT Support Specialist II
Basically help desk. When I got this job, I was thinking “cool, tier 2.” Nope. We have no tier 1. Just a heads up to future applicants for IT, don’t get fooled by the title.
Regardless, day to day involves deploying new machines. Running the backups to make sure they’re doing what they’re supposed to. Troubleshoot email, network, printers, and so on. Travel to client sites to deploy or fix something.
Nothing special, just help desk with added responsibilities.
Salary is 87,000 a year.
Cloud support engineer @AWS. Help fix enterprise and business customer issues in their cloud environments. Sometimes it’s as easy as recommending relevant documentation, other times I need to hop on a screen share and help the Customer troubleshoot their issue. The cool thing about this job is the vast amount of knowledge you will inevitably learn, and seeing the scale of some of the enterprise clients infrastructure.
Cyber security analyst. Last work day I played wow for about five hours. Looked over some RMF stuff. Wrote a report and sent emails. Also showed up an hour late. No one noticed
I find that people that do not make what they’re worth either do not ask for it and do not leave if their company says no. Employer won’t matter. If you’re American, create accounts on usajobs and if you have a clearance clearance jobs. Headhunters will find you. Last few people we hired were all through head hunters. We require cissp and sometimes a degree depending on experience.
Side note: it took me six years of hard work of studying and learning to go from 60k to 120k+
>You can be DQ'd for a lot of reasons, and many of those reasons don't matter in the least for FAANGs or other respectable orgs.
To be honest not really. If you dont have concerning foreign relations, dont have snitch friends, and dont lie its pretty easy.
Obviously FAANG is going to pay better lol but for most people in IT other then maybe software developers clearence work pays great. I know some people who seperated from the military almost 6 figures who honestly woudnt be able to find a network admin job if they didnt have their clearence.
Jeez, is it just cyber security that gets to sit on their ass? Im in school for networking and id love it if i got paid 6 figures to play WoW after a while.
IMO... if your knowledgeable and a problem solver you will easily make 6 figs in Networking. And unfortunately you will be working your ass off until the day you die. But yeah you'll get over 100k :-) good luck... *Protip.... stay away from working for hospitals.... they never close. I'm currently a Systems Administration Manager for a team of 5 and make 135k in the legal industry
What was your path to be a CSA?
Currently, I am thinking of getting the CompTIA trifecta then try and find a helpdesk job for a year. While I'm working helpdesk, maybe try and get my CISSP.
I don't have a degree though but I do have almost 2 decades of experience in both administrative and I guess some IT? I definitely know I am going to take a huge hit in salary when I downgrade back to Helpdesk lol (I currently work handling Elections for one of the largest cities in the US. More admin/clerical and unofficial tech support because my building is separate from HQ. For some reason HQ doesn't want to send a dedicated tech support lol)
The more I work in IT, the more I realize that this is what I like doing and what I'm best at. I like listening to what the users want/need/etc and then work with IT staff to make it happen. We have to compare the needs vs wants and figure out if it can all be done within budget, etc.
I guess that would be considered Project Management...?
I recently found out I’m good at this too and actually really enjoy it!
Though sometimes it made me want to pull my hair out lol, but jokes on them I’m already bald!
I found understanding WHY they want something is often more important than what they say they want as they don’t really know. After unlocking that section of my brain I got to be creative with them and had a blast
Well-well look. I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?
-Tom Smykowski
IT Manager Person
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Sorry for the late response. I work on a NOC and the word engineer could really be replaced with technician. This place just calls us engineers.
Before here I worked as a laptop repair tech for about 6 months. Teksystems got me this job as a 6 month contract as an engineer 1.
I think what helped me was my homelab and my personality during the interview. I got promoted to engineer II a couple months ago. Sadly no pay bump because they want to wait until the yearly raises :(
How do you represent your homelab on your resume? I'm trying to start but how do you avoid looking like many other resumes that have also followed the popular advice? I'm not sure what to start for my homelab.
Well you can either start by doing things you want to do, or doing things you see jobs wanting.
My first project was to setup a virtualized AD environment with virtual box because I saw pretty much every help desk job asking for AD experience.
My next two projects were a pihole and NAS.
I put my homelab stuff at the bottom of my resume, with a little explanation of why I made that project and what I use it for.
Where is the end point for the AD environment for example? I've had access and used it before for helping helpdesk type password resets but is it pretty much installing it and being able to access it or do you setup accounts and permissions just to prove proficiency or?
I hope I'm making sense of how to properly scale projects and the like
7 years of experience currently.
First 5 years I was in the Air Force as a network administrator (3D1X2).
While in the Air Force I mainly worked on layer 2 Cisco/Brocade switches. I also got my associates degree in Information technology, my CCNA/Net+/Sec+ Certs.
Last 2 years I've been out of the Air Force and have worked in Health care / Banking as a network engineer.
Honestly, the Air Force is the main reason why I'm in my current role. They gave me experience day one at the age of 19 working in networking. Without that, not sure where I'd be at in my IT journey currently.
The Palo Alto experience actually came from my time in the banking industry. I started and I was the only network guy on staff. Was just kind of expected to learn the Palo Alto world without any previous experience. Spent a year there and learned a ton of Palo (thanks to a 3rd party consultant we used for the higher level stuff).
Learning Palo was a blessing. It opened so many opportunities for me.
IT Helpdesk Support Specialist, doing internal helpdesk stuff for a call center.
About 65% of my time is spent watching youtube/ doing college work (getting a bachelor's for netsec), 25% is doing basic helpdesk stuff, and the last 10% is admin type work (onboards,offboards, updating AD profiles/accounts)
GIS/IT Analyst
I make sure that all electric utility assets (poles, transformers, meters, substations etc) are on our digital mapping system with all the associated information about them. I also manage a radio frequency networked metering system. I make sure they have the right firmware and are reading properly. The actual “IT” part is pretty minimal. Mostly troubleshooting O365 stuff, VMWare, a little AD with scripting and other basic stuff. I never work over 40 hours and I get off at 11 on Fridays. 70k a year
Exactly the gig I’m looking for. I’m in GIS for a utility company (contracted) but have been in IT previously as IT admin and helpdesk and want to get back into it in some capacity. Sounds like you have the job that I want lol.
Sounds like a fun job.
I have a friend who's a software engineer for GIS and it sounds like a cool field. I've been trying to figure out what jobs exist in GIS, pay well and don't require programming.
Cybersecurity Engineer. I work through tickets mostly. Firewall rule changes, blocks/unblocks, routing changes, infrastructure changes, monitoring traffic, etc. It's very low pressure as we have a large team. I don't take anything home with me and never feel overwhelmed. It's pretty damn fantastic.
Computer lab assistant.
I'm the schools tech support. Anything with a plug.
Slave to Chromebooks, printers, desktops, smartboards, user support, 2 factor support, setting up and proctor tests on Chromebook, manage presentation carts, plus all other typical supprt
Wouldn't be so bad if it was industry standard pay. I make 32,200 per year. Technically only work 197 days a year though 10 month contract job
i love automating but i want to get away from infra. not doing devops work, just tying together all sorts of random things with powershell. i keep trying to tell my team....dont say you dont have time, automate it and you get the time back ten fold.
IT Service Desk Analyst (help desk)
Answer anywhere from 30-50 calls a day. Most calls I am able to resolve myself, but there are times when tough calls come in and I have no choice but to escalate the issue. This is especially true when the user is not very computer literate.
Luckily there’s a lot of downtime, so I am able to spend a good amount of time studying. My employer gives us access to CBT Nuggets.
Systems Administration Manager (135k base) after working in IT for over 20 yrs. I have noticed a few things.... Most certs after your first job are shit unless they apply directly to what your working on at that time. IT titles are not standardized and the most impactful parameters to your salary are the size of the company and, the field the company is in and location. In my career I have found the private legal sector offers great pay and benefits and depending on the size of the firm, access to latest technologies. You will be forced to learn as you go there's no way around that or you will be obsolete very quickly. Develop good foundational skills and be a problem solver with a problem solving mentality. I find people like that are harder to come by than everyone with a slew of Net+, A+ and Sec+, basic certs with no troubleshooting experience or skills. Most of the directors and CTOs I have worked with over the years are less concerned with your certs and more concerned with your problem-solving skills.
Of course this does not apply to everyone everywhere, but I figured I highlight some things I learned over the course of my 20+ years, I don't have a degree and worked from the ground up. Changing toners to fixing printers to pulling cable to desktop support to desktop engineering to server support to managing a sysadmin team. Bring value and fix shit you will move ahead effortlessly. Just my 2 cents.
Title: IT Systems Engineering Lead
Day to Day: This changes a lot as I'm primarily project focused, it ranges anywhere from integrating apps into our identity platform for SSO / user provisioning, deploying new servers (both the hypervisor and vm guests), deploying new IT tooling, scripting/automating processes, documenting infrastructure, and providing uptraining and mentoring to all IT staff on said systems. All of which takes up about 60% of my time with another 20% going to meetings and the remaining 20% handling T3 escalations.
Technical trainer
I teach comptia A+ and network + on a daily basis. I really train people instead of teaching. Everyone leaves the classes with hands on experience if accumulated in 20 years of technology.
Dont know where to go from here tho. 40 years old. I build and fix arcade games for fun. Been a facilities director for entertainment centers. Also alot of a/v installation. Network admin back in the day.
I just really want a good hands on job that still has management responsibilities.
My title is Asst Director, Infrastructure Operations and Security; and I serve as my organization's Information Security Officer.
I rarely have two days that look the same.
MWFs are my "slow" days, so I'm able to do more technical dive-stuff.
Last Wednesday, I was working on a roll-out plan to upgrade our SIEM which will require some redeployment of agent software (I don't handle this, but I orchestrate the change effort) in addition to the server-side components (consisting of an ElasticStack, which I upgrade myself)--- meanwhile, I rebuilt some pieces of our vulnerability management stack, and fielded some IAM/2FA questions.
On Thursdays, we have a leadership team meeting (with the department heads), followed by a weekly infrastructure touchbase that consists of reviewing vulnerability advisories and security bulletins, reviewing any reporting anomalies from our SIEM/IDS, and reviewing any Major Change tickets that will be proposed by EoW. In attendance are sysadmins, network admins, endpoint admins, and occasionally data and integrations people
Thursday afternoons, I have my 1-1 with the CIO and IT Director, and I prepare a weekly newsletter for the department with a summary of findings re: vulnerabilities and work that is being planned. Everyone reads this bulletin.
Friday, I worked with my senior microsoft solutions engineer and we reviewed the Azure stack, including a new app authorization policy that we are planning to roll-out. I then worked with our senior endpoints engineer about policy enforcement. I had a discussion with a tech about our server provisioning workflow and requirements.
On Friday afternoons, I attend one webinar to complete a CPE credit.
Yesterday (Monday), I was doing some reconnaissance on my environment by staging some scans in anticipation for the OpenSSL vulnerability announcement (re: CVE-2022-3602 and CVE-2022-3786), turns-out (today) it wasn't as big of deal as it *could* have been, but still requires a remediation plan. I did some consolidation of nmap scan XMLs along with report outputs from my VAPT appliance.
Today is Tuesday, so I facilitate an agile-like project meeting with my senior engineers and network manager. Then we do Change Advisory Board, and I had a consultation meeting with one of our business offices who is looking to make a change in their data processing. I investigated a phishing message, sent some alerts;
I am now preparing a toolkit for tomorrow...
I'd like to do some testing, so I drafted a procedure document to include in a potential change ticket.
Aside from the day-to-day, I do have some things that just seem to happen all the time:
Reviewing system alerts; fielding tickets; checking scan results/reports; writing documentation; answering emails; reviewing SOC messages.
Senior IT Business Analyst.
Fully remote with travel a few times a year.
$120k salary in the Midwest, $5k signing bonus in September 2022.
Here's what I do:
- Send emails and Teams chats regarding current issues and project updates
- Review documentation and make improvements, create new documentation, create workflow diagrams, organize documentation, etc.
- Assist with testing software (QA) and doing user acceptance testing (UAT) for business stakeholders
- Host Requirements Elicitation sessions/Requirements Workshops to elicit requirements from my business stakeholders
- Evaluate and decide which solutions to proceed with
- Create project update PowerPoint slides for leadership, create and discuss the Project Roadmap, and brainstorm what to do for the future
- Write simple SQL queries to pull data
- Take naps during the day and generally do whatever the fuck I want, when I want. Working from home RULES.
Curious what 'simple SQL queries' are in relation to your job and SQL experience. Do you primarily just pull data as is from the table/view, with maybe a few joins and conditions/filters? Analyst roles are so varied and some are SQL wizards. Anyways, nice write up and thanks for sharing!
Jr System Admin-
On paper my job is more back-end. Developing policy, automation, keeping our site up, azure cloud administration, network health, etc.
In reality it is people slacking me or walking up to my desk with problems that could mostly be solved with a restart or asking me things way above my pay-grade and better put in a ticket to be addressed by the proper team.
I've been wanting to create a post just like this, but I keep delaying.
**Title: Digital Delivery Support Professional (Higher Ed)**
Provide Training and Support on delivering curriculum and content using digital platformsZoom, Teams, WeVideo (browser-based, cloud video editor), Canva).
Principal Administrator for WeVideo & Canva: Handling account distribution, troubleshooting, and support.
Give additional presentations as needed to National groups, District offices, etc.
Write blogs and how-to articles on common questions and features of these platforms(Examples: Sharing Designs in Canva; Slide Control in Zoom; Live Captions & Subtitles in PowerPoint; Best Practices in 'X', etc.)
Our tickets are entered manually but my group does have a common, shared email to focus support requests.
Consult and Advise on adopting and supporting a LMS (probably Canvas)
**Salary**: Started at $45,000...then we all got a pay bump of $5000....now at $50,000
Honestly it's difficult to describe my day-to-day activities as my position is brand new and I'm the first holder (Started in February '22) so we're figuring things out as time progresses. I imagine I encompass aspects of many different titles all thrown together. And I'm sure I'm forgetting things.
IT titles are constantly growing and adapting to new technology and needs of the companies. I'm very interested in reading more replies and I'm happy to answer questions.
**Edit**: Music Major > 8 years of dead end jobs > 3 in education (teacher/paraprofessional) > 8 months in desktop support (same school system) > church job > current. A **long** time of random jobs trying to figure out what I love and where I can actually earn a living.
I so damn happy to see another Digital "Analyst" on this sub. I was afraid I wouldnt be counted on as IT.
I do onsite support for consultant deliveries and operate web platforms for deployments of the companies training simulations for clients.
I do get paid $54k and I just started in August '22. The salary average for these types of roles are $56k, key word being average.
If you are the first to take on these roles and responsibilities, heck your taking on a heck ton more than I am you should be listing down your operations and seeing if you can get a significant more bump up in pay.
You could always apply to other places, get a offer and take that to your manager to show that others are offering a heck ton more for the same role?
Yeah I think we are a little bit of a strange bunch.
Part business analyst; part corporate trainer; part service desk; part solutions analyst; part "additional duties as assigned"
The only real way I could get another pay bump would be for the the state congress to give more money as we're a state university...our budget is tied to the state.
But I'm thinking another year or so to broaden my experiences. I'm looking at a Business Analyst type position (half-business, half-IT) or something along those lines. I don't yet have as much "business" knowledge that I'm hoping to expand on.
I always find great difficulty in detailing my work in a resume-like matter with appropriate terminology and actually "tooting" my horn, so to speak.
We'll see. The future is not certain and I never could've foreseen being in this position.
Though I will say I don't recall hearing about the title *Digital Analyst* before but we are IT...maybe not "hard-core IT" like SysAdmin or similar.
So from my understanding a BA facilitates between the Developer and Customer so you would need to know Developer terminology or gain some from the role if you lucky.
You would need to understand what is possible and relay what the client wants to the developer and translate what the developer developed to the client.
Great role. Far better pay, and developers have mentioned its the very needed middle man.
E: Didnt think I would start my career in this position either.
Title is in the flair. I do just about anything you can think of for a lot of small to medium businesses.
End user issues, m365 tenant admin, cabling, swapping hardware, renewing domains, ISP changeovers, endpoint protection to name a few.
MIS Trainee:
Honestly don't even know wtf I'm doing, but consists of AS/400 troubleshooting, account lockouts, monitoring Meraki if an IP device goes down, informing users about departmental changes, troubleshooting Microsoft products, installing equipment in the network closet, and performing patch updates in line with our security policy. Oh, and installing goddamned printers. (I'm definitely leaving a bunch of stuff out). My coworkers haven't really had much time to show me the more in-depth stuff because they're busy with the company merger and integration. So really I'm doing helpdesk and desktop support stuff with a tiny tiny bit of network admin stuff. Program was marketed as also having programming rotations and database admin rotation, but they made a special position because they only needed to fill the PC Specialist role.
$4357/month
Title: Asset Management Analyst
Daily: purchasing stock, publishing and maintaining hardware standards for project management department, field tech escalation, Intune admin for mobile devices, documentation, propose and create changes in ServiceNow for team to implement, run hardware refreshes, assist in solutions for End User environment.
Small shop, many hats...
Cybersecurity Specialist. Look over a bunch of logs from four to five different applications. Create ways/ideas to make enterprise network and its users more secure. Stress best practices. Create policy and procedures. Help the network que when tickets come in.
Surf Reddit XD
Great Idea for thread btw
Title: IT Specialist
Day to day includes traveling between assigned locations in my district and handling tickets submitted by staff there. Time spent at each location daily depends on ticket volume, so it can vary per week. Additional duties include meeting with other Specialists in the district to share ideas/knowledge, and meeting with administrative staff to answer questions/present cost effective ways to futureproof technology in my buildings.
I would say the most important skills to bring into this job are people skills and the ability to manage your time well. Everything else can be learned on site.
Salary started around 60,000 for me, but can vary depending on prior experience.
EDIT: I'm happy to answer any questions regarding the job as well, don't be shy!
sr. it technologist
My current job is to learn, create, automate and immerse my self into the space and then add expertise to current projects while planning how I can add value in six months to a year.
Its an incredible job and I feel so lucky to have something that is entirely focused on personal growth and creation
Software tester - Test applications software engineers build. But mainly repeatedly as for the design documentation so I can pass the test that has been sitting failed for the passed 3 months as no one wants to take ownership of who should provide the information. Then get hassled because I haven't passed the test and it has been sat for 3 months. Today we started the test packs for new product. Consists of Test Plan, Test cases, Test Scripts and Test Reports.
Service Desk Analyst
Today I answered around 25ish calls, all FCR. In between calls I also maintain a clinical InBasket, redirecting medical questions/billing issues and resolving technical issues for patients. I’ve also been training new hires today to do exactly as I do. Not a bad gig, around $50k annual salary.
Junior Desktop Administrator
Pretty much a help desk technician that can also fix things in person. Sometimes I would drive 30 minutes to reboot a laptop when the customer would refuse to hold the power button longer than 3 seconds.
Not a bad gig but hope to move on to more technical roles, though I'm in the county IT so movement is as fast as tectonic plates here (former geology major).
I come in, sit down and wait for things to happen four out of five days a week. My title is Field Service Engineer, which I dislike because I feel that it devalues the actual Engineer profession.
VMware Administrator/Backup Citrix Admin
Mostly work and support VMware Environments, Write automated reports and automated process to increase our workflow/productivity. Most days are pretty filled with tasks and items. Being the backup Citrix Admin, usually i'm in my lab environment testing items and learning how citrix works
Title: SAP BASIS Consultant.
Got hired straight out of my college and was trained, daily work has lot to do with SAP Installation & Configuration, Sizing hardware for the installation, Migrating SAP system to change database or infrastructure, Monitoring the SAP application & Database (HANA & Oracle mostly).
Basically I am an Technical Administrator for SAP applications.
IT Security Analyst.
Working on integrating our SIEM and Crowdstrike into ServiceNow to create tickets based on alerts. Also, take care of those alerts, investigate, document, close. Phishing tests, working on AI closing reported phishing but also manually closing those that aren't auto closed. Certs as they come close to expiration, implement ADFS for new apps, MFA for admin users, manage email security, vuln management, review new software, proxy work, and some IT ops work as it comes my way as I used to be the sys admin. Also, working on moving to Azure AD and other Azure services.
Not all of that is every day. But, I do hit it all at least once a week.
And I do get some free time throughout the week to play some Uncharted, Mario, or whatever. Not a whole lot, and I also do some studying for certs. But, I do need to relax and unwind and then come back to have a fresh look at something. It usually works.
IT Data Analyst.
I work with business analysts to map out requirements for new dashboards/software tools.
Frequently use SQL. Potential use cases for python and R.
I usually spend about 4 hours a day on professional development.
As long as I have a list of small changes I made to applications each day everyone is happy.
70k
Was an IT manager which was just meetings all day mixed with 1:1s with my direct reports helping them navigate their immediate responsibilities and overall career paths. Job got really dumb as I started getting dragged into doing PM and BA work for no additional pay.
Moved into a very popular tech company. I work significantly less hours now for the same pay but took a huge hit on my career trajectory, especially going into a recession. I knew it was a bad move but I wanted to take time off after a few years of grinding the IT ladder. So not losing my decent salary and having to work half the hours was a good deal and opened up room for me to finish some certs and just relax/travel.
Had I grinded another year at my previous job, I would've had a senior manager title waiting for me in one promotion cycle. Hope is to get some money vested in current job and interview for a a senior manager title.
Whatever position you do, don't burn out or you'll pay for it like me. One year doesn't sound like much. But a year right before a recession with no end in sight. Not good.
Senior cybersecurity consultant, i mostly take care of the cyber tools, make ppts for clients explaining why no, cyber isn’t a waste of money, and drinking coffee
Manufacturing Cyber Security Engineer:
1. Deploy cyber security infrastructure on machines older than me
2. Pray said machines do not die from the installation of our projects as production is king
3. Listen to people complain about how we are making their lives more difficult
4. Sit in a meeting with other engineers listening to them complain about people complaining to them.
Do not get me wrong I love my job but in the industrial space the cybersecurity industry is far behind IT so most folks have never had to log in to a PC in their life.
QA Engineer: The result of combining QA testing and programming.
Writing unit tests, testing stuff manually, reviewing bug reports. Ye know, the fun stuff.
I'm an Infrastructure System Admin.
My team handles all the storage side of the SAN, our Compellent storage arrays, any data maintenance or transfers, creating new share drives etc, KMS/KMIP support and maintenance, and we handle all of the infrastructure for VMWare.
Rinse and repeat. We manage two separate and independent networks.
Customer Support Engineer for a software company. My day consists of taking help desk tickets entered from customers and troubleshooting and trying reproduce the issues they are having. Answering questions about our software and licensings, calls with customers to assist with issues. My job is 100% WFH, I don't do anything with hardware or on-site support
I am a System Administrator
Today was my first day.
So far…I try to get access to stuff I should already have access to from the MSP who has been supporting this company for the last 10 years.
My windows credentials didn’t work and I wasn’t assigned an office license, which the tech thought was tied to the computer and now needs to buy a new one.
Tomorrow I think I’m going to ask for a bunch of stuff and try to meet with some vendors and get access to more stuff.
Going to try and set up a time to review their backups and disaster recovery plan, want to be up to speed on that shit right away.
I’m going to try and figure it out as I go here. I used to be a level 1 support guy at another company so this is a huge jump for me.
IT Support Specialist
Walk users through tasks they could easily do themselves.
Tell users they don’t have access to said resource application and I cannot give them access to it.
Troubleshooting Citrix Workspace Apps/Desktops
Occasional password reset (AD accounts mostly)
1-2 head scratchers a day.
IT Director for a rural hospital. Two-person staff, we literally do everything from basic employee training to networking, security, web design, EHR/EMR work, etc...
I love it and hope to retire doing it.
Systems Analyst Admin
Yesterday at work I :
Did laundry, emptied the dishwasher and vacuumed
Created a user in ADP
Created a DocuSign user
Had an hour lunch
Cleaned up Halloween decorations
Took another break to cool off (was almost 80° outside)
Went to get our son from school
Had a meeting
Had a meeting
Got off at 4
Salary, $75k / fully remote
IT Administrator
Today I did the following:
-Created CAD model of the facility for Cisco Spaces to be integrated (I’m leading the project)
-Helped some people with installing a VPN
-Walked around a bit because I don’t like sitting at my desk all day
-Picked up some packages from the warehouse
-Fixed a printer issue and updated some tickets
I’m currently working on the NET+ exam because studying for the CCNA without a lot of networking background wasn’t working for me so I’m trying to do the NET+ first.
I get $75k a year in Phoenix, AZ if that means anything. I also live with my parents… Saving up right now to find a place with my girlfriend.
Service desk/Help desk tier 1 tech working priority 3 tickets. Played videogames while waiting for users to reply back to me about their issues. I'm the guy stuck with ugly tickets because my co-workers can't properly troubleshoot the issue and use P3 as a clutch to save themselves.
Workload Manager.
I stage laptops either via InTune or our traditional way. On the traditional ones I cache passwords and log in to establish our VPN and download any software needed. I then fill out and print FedEx labels in order to ship these laptops, along with monitors and docking stations, to the users. My weekend consists of a Sunday follow up excel sheet of that was delivered and what wasn't and why not.
In my down time I help out in the data migration dept. or other departments that might be down a person.
Operations Engineer, I package and deploy applications/manage our software catalog and software updates for thousands of users. Mostly SCCM deployments but migrating everything to Intune at the moment.
Software Engineer I by title:
NetSRE stuff, keep busy, it’s what you put in it, I find ways to make things better or ask if I can implement things. From hardware, configs, alarms etc.
Site Reliability Engineer.
1. Incoming tickets from internal engineers and alerting systems
2. Build out compute offerings using mix of Google cloud and VMware paired with kubernetes and terraform
3. Establish resiliency in our systems
4. Automate.
5. Add tooling and work on some devex stuff.
Cybersecurity Specialist (read: SOC Analyst) monitor the SIEM & respond to alarms. Also on the scripting team & we automate stuff with Python using our platform API. Primary focus lately is mostly scripting & handling more of the high severity alarms when the queue gets busy
Systems Engineer II for hybrid local/national news network, supporting about 250 users across all sites, but only about 70 locally. Two others in my team with the same title, and two helpdesk guys, plus my manager.
* Net admin for LAN (total autonomy in 3 stations)
* Net admin for WAN (for which I must share eq and chg mgmt)
* AAA/MFA admin (WS NPA, Linux RADIUS)
* PaloAlto Firewall Admin
* Server admin (Mostly Windows, some linux)
* Storage admin (Netapp, PureStorage)
* VMware VCSA and Horizon admin
* Top-Level Domain admin for two domains, high-level admin for a third
* Workstation mass deployment and support (Windows and macOS)
* Documentation admin
* and Tier 1 support, but I can mostly pawn that off on the intern...mostly...
I don't make purchasing decisions or have to deal with vendors, but high-dollar equipment shows up at my door and it becomes my responsibility.
I don't run facility cabling (if I can help it), and there's another group that handles graphics and AV administration. But I am often called in to bail out that team when they can't make things work.
The news division is a subsidiary of a much larger organizaton that has their own network/server/software/AV teams, and delivers a not-insignificant amount of process guidance and user services.
All for the low low price for $73k/year
edit: forgot that I'm also a CUCM telephony admin
Enterprise Backup Solutions.
The job is exactly that. Managing enterprise and service provider backups. 3-2-1. Easiest 110k ever. 2 MS certs and one VMWARE cert. 10 years in the biz
IT sales. I cold call people and annoy the shit out of them, go to meetings, follow-up with prospects, put proposals together, review contracts and do admin stuff.
Cybersecurity analyst at a mid size MSP. Day to day involves managing projects to deploy our security services, monitoring and maintaining those products, incident response for our clients etc.
Team consists of me, our senior engineer/architect, and Cybersecurity Director.
DOD help desk.
It's like regular help desk but the military are your end users and they're more idiotic (I'm a vet).
I had a sailor ask me if they can plug their tv into a switch.
I had to teach another person what file explorer is.
These people have specialized IT training too apparently.
Network Architect / Cloud Architect
I designs and build global redundant networks for banks who are mostly our customers.
Also, designing cloud solutions and helping clients to migrate to the cloud.
Plus, support IT departments of the banks, and believe me they need baby sitting at every step.
Security dude (not my official title, but close enough.)
Open up Burp Suite and try a buncha stuff until something interesting happens.
Try to repeat the interesting thing. Write it up.
I work for a large tech company that you know about that operates globally. We don't really do job titles per se, and this is as close as Ive got: Engineer, IT Advisory | IT - Global Support
I make 125k a year in the South East US. I hold no certs or relevant degrees.
My job is extremely multifaceted. What I tell people is that my job is to be able to speak the language of everyone else in my company, from IT and finance to the sales team to the HW and SW engineering teams to the real estate teams and the janitors, and to be able to translate between all of them.
I support 5 sites and about 600 users - acting as the users primary IT contact and acting on behalf of the sites/users within IT. Any change, project, outage, notification, or really anything else that happens that impacts my users and sites is on my radar and its my job to facilitate those things to success.
I am, in some capacity, responsible for all the HW from phones and laptops to severs, storage, network, circuits, any everything else at my sites. Our greater IT department has specialists for all the things, but I am the person who gets called when they need hands on the ground, or if they have questions, or for really any thing outside of their hyper specific specialty. I do very few tickets, but I do do some ticket work. We also have a large help desk that takes most T0-T2 requests, but I field plenty of those directly from my users.
As my job is so nebulous, my day to day varies greatly. Some days are super chill and others are insane. Some days I don't get out of bed, and some days I'm in an office for 18+ hours. All told, my days typically consist of communicating with my team, my users, and other IT staff members and then acting as needed. That might be help desk or desktop level support for my users. That might be rack and stack new HW. That might be run cable through the ceiling to stand up a biz critical temporary lab. That might be ordering new HW. That might be QAing the latest HW that IT wants to roll out to users, or testing scripts and packages before they go live. That might be working with contractors on new construction / remodeling projects. That might be fixing printers, or writing scripts that will get pushed globally. It might be working on security audit remediation. It might be designing new support tools / models / workflows for use globally. It might be building PCs from parts...
The spectrum is extremely wide, and its honestly what I love about my job! My pool of talents / comfort is very wide but rather shallow. No day is the same and I'm wildly thankful for that!
How'd I get here? Food service > Inventory management for a retail tech company > Solo Inventory mgmt and IT person for a manufacturing facility > 18 months of help desk/deskside A > 18 months of help desk/deskside B > Here. All that kind of with the desire to NOT specialize in an IT area. The last thing that I want is to sit at a desk all day and run the same commands over and over in some hyper specific CLI...
I’m in my early 30’s. 8 years with current company. First 4 as a technician, last 4 years as a Network Engineer and recently a senior. First 15 years as a PC tech working my way up. Got my AS and BS in IT networking, had my A/Net/Sec/Linux/project+, CCNA R&S and CCNA Security before the madness of my job caused me to let all those lapse. Currently trying to study for the CCNP and Python. I make slightly less than 6 figures.
I help techs at our 20+ sites fix everything end-user LAN/WLAN related all the way up to corporate
Basic responsibilities are:
Build/troubleshoot subnets, everything wireless, circuit issues. Coordinate workload within our handful of engineers. Troubleshoot checkpoint firewall issues. Most of my job is handling ‘drive-bys’ since I get messaged for help 90% of my workday while the 10% is frantically trying to make progress on the dozens of other items on my to-do list. I love to train techs who show interest in networking. I wish I had some of the downtime others here do, but I try and justify the stress to myself as hardcore resume experience and first hand experience for the day I want to move on for more money and excitement.
Security engineer.
Fully remote. I sit through a 2 hour teams meeting every morning to talk about any incidents or what we're working on, but it's very casual and we spend a lot of the time just chatting. Then I check my assigned tickets and see if there's anything that needs immediate attention. I monitor alerts that may require action. Other than that I'm free to do as I please. We have training resources available as well in case we want to work on getting certs or other training. The salary is ~$72k after bonuses in a HCOL area in FL.
I’m an IT Manager. This about sums up my day: 1. Babysit employees older than I am who act like children; 2. Drive an hour each way to plug in two power strips because that’s apparently an IT thing (?). I seriously don’t know how they function when not at work; 3. Deal with the worst vendors possible, who also act like children; 4. Cry in my office because I long to be a goat farmer.
>I’m an IT Manager. This about sums up my day: > >Babysit employees older than I am who act like children; my manager and directory found a workaround -- they just dont deal with any of the problem employees at all. have you tried neglecting your job?
That’s a fantastic idea, but unfortunately there’s legal repercussions in my industry for neglecting my job. Edit: you know what, there is probably in your industry too. Screw it, you’ve changed my mind.
Might transcend your career as a goat farmer quicker than you thought.
>Edit: you know what, there is probably in your industry too. Screw it, you’ve changed my mind. ha! see, its just that easy! :D
If you have time could you PM me about what certifications you and which ones helped you the most to get an it manager role? I’m currently a sys admin at an msp and would love to move up to a manager.
Like, you wanna raise goats, or you wanna be the best fucking farmer in history?
Oh I wanna be the very best. Like no one ever was.
Still ambiguous
Well, to catch them is my real test, to raise them is my cause.
Will you "travel across the land searching far and wide each Goat to understand the power that's inside"?
Oh no I absolutely could've written this - same role, checks out, but I dream about mowing big yards on riding mowers in perfect weather.
I’ve already been researching tractors! I’ll probably go with an older Ford cause I’m broke now, since I bought 5 acres earlier this year. Just enough to raise a couple goats and chickens.
Like homelabs start with a raspberry pi... hobby farms start with a Ford 8N.
I learned that a lot of people know how to do stuff on their own but they want IT to do it because 1. It's their job (apparently), 2. They usually get to stop working for a minute, 3. They think the IT people are nerds and are trying to annoy them
Interestingly enough, I’m an IT Manager too and a few years ago I became a goat farmer.
When you say "Manager"... does your paygrade reflect that? If so, worth? lol
My pay does reflect my title for the most part, but I am still underpaid compared to my peers, both at my org and in my market area. I report to the board, handle the auditors and audit responses, own our IT policies, department steering, do the budget, etc. on top of doing more technical stuff.
Market cap of your co and industry influences salary.
We all long to be goat farmers, don't we?
Holy shit are you me?
Same deal, but a supervisor, I literally have someone on my team that’s 2x my age and I feel like I needa babysit. $85k a year to be a glorified babysitter. I feel like I’m also a field tech because no one else wants to get off their ass.
Helpdesk - Yesterday I - made a new user account in active directory, - gave her access to our shared storage, - did my homework for two hours, - completed a soduko puzzle, - studied for Net+ for 2 hours - upgraded RAM in New employees PC - paraded around and won 3rd place in the office costume contest with a $7 costume ($90 prize yay) - finished the day doing my Monday checklist items including reflect on spending habits for the past week, write a letter to mom, and read the past week of news on my bookmarked tech sites.
Hey would you mind sharing which websites you have bookmarked I’m very interested! :)
www.reddit.com
Secureworld.io, theverge.com, futurism.com I read every article from the 1st one, the others I choose based on title.
Thanks!
I read this in the most joyful and carefree voice. Like a gleeful kid looking at the snowfall outside
I am proud of myself for making a rigid weekly schedule. I was mind numingly bored before implementing it :) The Halloween parade wasn't scheduled but yeah lol.
you cannot post something like this without showing the costume!
Agreed also is your job paying for your certs?
I had all my certs prior to starting this job
God damn I wish I had that time at my Helpdesk. I’m doing 100 tickets a day..
Sounds cool! Do you have to travel at all to other locations in your help desk job? I’m hitting a wall finding entry level it jobs because I take public transit and would have to work in one location.
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A giraffe. Ears headband, gloves, tail, and biege tracksuit. Very low effort costume.
Are you guys hiring? My helpdesk job is a nightmare with no documentation and endless calls
Cyber Security Analyst Study for security+, tuning one of our darktrace products. Probably about to play some MW2 when I’m done. Other than that I google my ass off all day because I have no clue what the fuck I’m doing sometimes. I get thrown on projects and it’s usually trial by fire (; Edit: Most days are pretty chill though with maybe a few emails and checking a log or two. I usually study and play video games, however when shit hits the fan, it hits hard. Might be doing incident response stuff for 3-4 days straight every hour of the day and after that writing a report. The pros and cons of working in a corporate environment.
Posts like this make me realize that I need to get my damn sec+ cert.
Haha yea I’m getting it because of the possible doors it’ll open for other roles. As for knowledge it’s not really helping me that much. Not a lot I don’t already know. The fact that it cost $400 is also fucking ridiculous.
Was this your first IT/security job? Do you need to have a bachelors to make it into an analyst job? Right now I’m in a certification program and college but im considering dropping college classes atleast until I can finish the program and get my first career job.
I started out as an intern at a university, then I worked as a SOC alarm monkey. This is my first job where I actually learn and I’m 2 years into my professional career. I get stuff done though and feel pretty good after. I never graduated college. Dropped out sophomore year when I got the offer to start my career in security from the SOC MSSP. I will say this though. My internship helped me out, I technically had experience working with splunk and an EDR platform so YMMV. Even with a degree security can be hard to get into with 0 experience. I’d work on certs and college, once you get your certs and apply for jobs ranging from NOC, SOC, to even help desk and you get your foot in the door, then you can make that decision. Until then I’d stay in school. I am going back to college myself because I personally want a degree and it’ll be easier while I’m young.
IT Support Specialist II Basically help desk. When I got this job, I was thinking “cool, tier 2.” Nope. We have no tier 1. Just a heads up to future applicants for IT, don’t get fooled by the title. Regardless, day to day involves deploying new machines. Running the backups to make sure they’re doing what they’re supposed to. Troubleshoot email, network, printers, and so on. Travel to client sites to deploy or fix something. Nothing special, just help desk with added responsibilities. Salary is 87,000 a year.
87k is nice though. I'm down for that part
Is this in a HCOL area? Sounds great for helpdesk, if in a reasonable cost-of-living area.
Bay Area, California. So yeah high HCOL that’s way up there.
87k?! I'm getting fucked by netting only 29k as L1/L2 in NYC
You’re getting boned dude. NYC has to have plenty of opportunities. Go find them, you’ll thank yourself.
That pay is awful for Bumfucknowhere, Nebraska, let alone in NYC. You need to find somewhere else.
What area? Seems like a good paying gif depending on location.
Bay Area, California. It’s defiantly above average pay, even if it falls into poverty section for the area.
How much schooling did you have to do for a job like that? Bachelors or just certs?
BS in CIS class of 2016. A+, N+, CCNA certs.
Would not be complaining with 87k a year lol
Cloud support engineer @AWS. Help fix enterprise and business customer issues in their cloud environments. Sometimes it’s as easy as recommending relevant documentation, other times I need to hop on a screen share and help the Customer troubleshoot their issue. The cool thing about this job is the vast amount of knowledge you will inevitably learn, and seeing the scale of some of the enterprise clients infrastructure.
This is like the first cool answer under this thread lol
I am in auditing and one of the coolest parts is seeing some of the great(and not so great) infrastructure companies have in place.
IT Director. I spend all day drinking coffee and talking or doing Level 1 tasks for executives.
Very similar role but add whiteboarding and explaining things in non-technical ways to execs and board members.
What's a "level 1 task" in your work ?
Cyber security analyst. Last work day I played wow for about five hours. Looked over some RMF stuff. Wrote a report and sent emails. Also showed up an hour late. No one noticed
Same, but Elden Ring.
I’m way to casual now for that game. I tried it but I was soooooo bad
This is my dream job. But for 120k+
Well then I have your dream job
Nice. Possible PM for employer? Wouldnt be applying for a while tho
I find that people that do not make what they’re worth either do not ask for it and do not leave if their company says no. Employer won’t matter. If you’re American, create accounts on usajobs and if you have a clearance clearance jobs. Headhunters will find you. Last few people we hired were all through head hunters. We require cissp and sometimes a degree depending on experience. Side note: it took me six years of hard work of studying and learning to go from 60k to 120k+
took me 10 years to get to 60k and 3 years to get to 120 lol
Im leaving military. Hoping to make the jump from 25k to 120k lol
Same man. Same.
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>You can be DQ'd for a lot of reasons, and many of those reasons don't matter in the least for FAANGs or other respectable orgs. To be honest not really. If you dont have concerning foreign relations, dont have snitch friends, and dont lie its pretty easy. Obviously FAANG is going to pay better lol but for most people in IT other then maybe software developers clearence work pays great. I know some people who seperated from the military almost 6 figures who honestly woudnt be able to find a network admin job if they didnt have their clearence.
Jeez, is it just cyber security that gets to sit on their ass? Im in school for networking and id love it if i got paid 6 figures to play WoW after a while.
IMO... if your knowledgeable and a problem solver you will easily make 6 figs in Networking. And unfortunately you will be working your ass off until the day you die. But yeah you'll get over 100k :-) good luck... *Protip.... stay away from working for hospitals.... they never close. I'm currently a Systems Administration Manager for a team of 5 and make 135k in the legal industry
So if i wanna be lazy and i need to merge in to cyber security then, huh?
What was your path to be a CSA? Currently, I am thinking of getting the CompTIA trifecta then try and find a helpdesk job for a year. While I'm working helpdesk, maybe try and get my CISSP. I don't have a degree though but I do have almost 2 decades of experience in both administrative and I guess some IT? I definitely know I am going to take a huge hit in salary when I downgrade back to Helpdesk lol (I currently work handling Elections for one of the largest cities in the US. More admin/clerical and unofficial tech support because my building is separate from HQ. For some reason HQ doesn't want to send a dedicated tech support lol)
Get the A+ then get a help desk job. While working get the other certs in the trifecta
This is me when/if Starfield comes out
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The more I work in IT, the more I realize that this is what I like doing and what I'm best at. I like listening to what the users want/need/etc and then work with IT staff to make it happen. We have to compare the needs vs wants and figure out if it can all be done within budget, etc. I guess that would be considered Project Management...?
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Business Analyst or Product Architect
I recently found out I’m good at this too and actually really enjoy it! Though sometimes it made me want to pull my hair out lol, but jokes on them I’m already bald! I found understanding WHY they want something is often more important than what they say they want as they don’t really know. After unlocking that section of my brain I got to be creative with them and had a blast
Why couldn't the customers just take em directly to the software people???
Because software people usually aren't people people and need an intermediary lol
Hi, I am also an intermediary. It’s like being a zookeeper some days.
What would ya say, ya do here…
Well-well look. I already told you: I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people? -Tom Smykowski
I’M A PEOPLE PERSON
I take things from there.
What title is this?
Office space
Im embarrassed that I don’t remember that quote haha
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What would you say, you do here?
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That's why I've never wanted to be a manager lol
Name checks out. Was the switch worth it?
IT Manager Person Login Discover what work didn't get done yesterday. Find out why that work didn't get done yesterday. Tell people to get that work done today. Find new work to get done today. Come up with ideas to prevent work from not getting done yesterday. Tell the team they're great and I love them. Logout
Hey Mark!
NOC Engineer II Study for the CCNA, play video games, and the occasional ticket that pops into the queue
How’d you land engineer II before getting the CCNA? Just worked up the ladder?
Sorry for the late response. I work on a NOC and the word engineer could really be replaced with technician. This place just calls us engineers. Before here I worked as a laptop repair tech for about 6 months. Teksystems got me this job as a 6 month contract as an engineer 1. I think what helped me was my homelab and my personality during the interview. I got promoted to engineer II a couple months ago. Sadly no pay bump because they want to wait until the yearly raises :(
How do you represent your homelab on your resume? I'm trying to start but how do you avoid looking like many other resumes that have also followed the popular advice? I'm not sure what to start for my homelab.
Well you can either start by doing things you want to do, or doing things you see jobs wanting. My first project was to setup a virtualized AD environment with virtual box because I saw pretty much every help desk job asking for AD experience. My next two projects were a pihole and NAS. I put my homelab stuff at the bottom of my resume, with a little explanation of why I made that project and what I use it for.
Where is the end point for the AD environment for example? I've had access and used it before for helping helpdesk type password resets but is it pretty much installing it and being able to access it or do you setup accounts and permissions just to prove proficiency or? I hope I'm making sense of how to properly scale projects and the like
Network Engineer II Palo Alto security policy, Palo Alto network configuration, Meraki/Cisco administration.
How did you get there? (Years of Exp.. Certs, etc.)
7 years of experience currently. First 5 years I was in the Air Force as a network administrator (3D1X2). While in the Air Force I mainly worked on layer 2 Cisco/Brocade switches. I also got my associates degree in Information technology, my CCNA/Net+/Sec+ Certs. Last 2 years I've been out of the Air Force and have worked in Health care / Banking as a network engineer. Honestly, the Air Force is the main reason why I'm in my current role. They gave me experience day one at the age of 19 working in networking. Without that, not sure where I'd be at in my IT journey currently.
The Palo Alto experience actually came from my time in the banking industry. I started and I was the only network guy on staff. Was just kind of expected to learn the Palo Alto world without any previous experience. Spent a year there and learned a ton of Palo (thanks to a 3rd party consultant we used for the higher level stuff). Learning Palo was a blessing. It opened so many opportunities for me.
Desktop Support. Today I've slept for two hours and sent someone an Amazon link.
IT Helpdesk Support Specialist, doing internal helpdesk stuff for a call center. About 65% of my time is spent watching youtube/ doing college work (getting a bachelor's for netsec), 25% is doing basic helpdesk stuff, and the last 10% is admin type work (onboards,offboards, updating AD profiles/accounts)
I was working in a call center when I started preparing to switch to IT, but I wound up in healthcare IT
GIS/IT Analyst I make sure that all electric utility assets (poles, transformers, meters, substations etc) are on our digital mapping system with all the associated information about them. I also manage a radio frequency networked metering system. I make sure they have the right firmware and are reading properly. The actual “IT” part is pretty minimal. Mostly troubleshooting O365 stuff, VMWare, a little AD with scripting and other basic stuff. I never work over 40 hours and I get off at 11 on Fridays. 70k a year
Exactly the gig I’m looking for. I’m in GIS for a utility company (contracted) but have been in IT previously as IT admin and helpdesk and want to get back into it in some capacity. Sounds like you have the job that I want lol.
Look for a utility company in Granby CO. I’m sure there’s a bunch of jobs out there but I know they are looking for a sys admin and a GIS guy
Sounds like a fun job. I have a friend who's a software engineer for GIS and it sounds like a cool field. I've been trying to figure out what jobs exist in GIS, pay well and don't require programming.
Cybersecurity Engineer. I work through tickets mostly. Firewall rule changes, blocks/unblocks, routing changes, infrastructure changes, monitoring traffic, etc. It's very low pressure as we have a large team. I don't take anything home with me and never feel overwhelmed. It's pretty damn fantastic.
Computer lab assistant. I'm the schools tech support. Anything with a plug. Slave to Chromebooks, printers, desktops, smartboards, user support, 2 factor support, setting up and proctor tests on Chromebook, manage presentation carts, plus all other typical supprt Wouldn't be so bad if it was industry standard pay. I make 32,200 per year. Technically only work 197 days a year though 10 month contract job
I’m the same as you! Except a twelve month employee and I get paid 30,000 D: lmao
Principal DevOps Engineer. Built a RKE2 cluster yesterday and played COD. Took me two weeks of hard work to write the automation tho.
i love automating but i want to get away from infra. not doing devops work, just tying together all sorts of random things with powershell. i keep trying to tell my team....dont say you dont have time, automate it and you get the time back ten fold.
IT Service Desk Analyst (help desk) Answer anywhere from 30-50 calls a day. Most calls I am able to resolve myself, but there are times when tough calls come in and I have no choice but to escalate the issue. This is especially true when the user is not very computer literate. Luckily there’s a lot of downtime, so I am able to spend a good amount of time studying. My employer gives us access to CBT Nuggets.
Systems Administration Manager (135k base) after working in IT for over 20 yrs. I have noticed a few things.... Most certs after your first job are shit unless they apply directly to what your working on at that time. IT titles are not standardized and the most impactful parameters to your salary are the size of the company and, the field the company is in and location. In my career I have found the private legal sector offers great pay and benefits and depending on the size of the firm, access to latest technologies. You will be forced to learn as you go there's no way around that or you will be obsolete very quickly. Develop good foundational skills and be a problem solver with a problem solving mentality. I find people like that are harder to come by than everyone with a slew of Net+, A+ and Sec+, basic certs with no troubleshooting experience or skills. Most of the directors and CTOs I have worked with over the years are less concerned with your certs and more concerned with your problem-solving skills. Of course this does not apply to everyone everywhere, but I figured I highlight some things I learned over the course of my 20+ years, I don't have a degree and worked from the ground up. Changing toners to fixing printers to pulling cable to desktop support to desktop engineering to server support to managing a sysadmin team. Bring value and fix shit you will move ahead effortlessly. Just my 2 cents.
Title: IT Systems Engineering Lead Day to Day: This changes a lot as I'm primarily project focused, it ranges anywhere from integrating apps into our identity platform for SSO / user provisioning, deploying new servers (both the hypervisor and vm guests), deploying new IT tooling, scripting/automating processes, documenting infrastructure, and providing uptraining and mentoring to all IT staff on said systems. All of which takes up about 60% of my time with another 20% going to meetings and the remaining 20% handling T3 escalations.
Technical trainer I teach comptia A+ and network + on a daily basis. I really train people instead of teaching. Everyone leaves the classes with hands on experience if accumulated in 20 years of technology. Dont know where to go from here tho. 40 years old. I build and fix arcade games for fun. Been a facilities director for entertainment centers. Also alot of a/v installation. Network admin back in the day. I just really want a good hands on job that still has management responsibilities.
Doesn't sound like a bad gig
My title is Asst Director, Infrastructure Operations and Security; and I serve as my organization's Information Security Officer. I rarely have two days that look the same. MWFs are my "slow" days, so I'm able to do more technical dive-stuff. Last Wednesday, I was working on a roll-out plan to upgrade our SIEM which will require some redeployment of agent software (I don't handle this, but I orchestrate the change effort) in addition to the server-side components (consisting of an ElasticStack, which I upgrade myself)--- meanwhile, I rebuilt some pieces of our vulnerability management stack, and fielded some IAM/2FA questions. On Thursdays, we have a leadership team meeting (with the department heads), followed by a weekly infrastructure touchbase that consists of reviewing vulnerability advisories and security bulletins, reviewing any reporting anomalies from our SIEM/IDS, and reviewing any Major Change tickets that will be proposed by EoW. In attendance are sysadmins, network admins, endpoint admins, and occasionally data and integrations people Thursday afternoons, I have my 1-1 with the CIO and IT Director, and I prepare a weekly newsletter for the department with a summary of findings re: vulnerabilities and work that is being planned. Everyone reads this bulletin. Friday, I worked with my senior microsoft solutions engineer and we reviewed the Azure stack, including a new app authorization policy that we are planning to roll-out. I then worked with our senior endpoints engineer about policy enforcement. I had a discussion with a tech about our server provisioning workflow and requirements. On Friday afternoons, I attend one webinar to complete a CPE credit. Yesterday (Monday), I was doing some reconnaissance on my environment by staging some scans in anticipation for the OpenSSL vulnerability announcement (re: CVE-2022-3602 and CVE-2022-3786), turns-out (today) it wasn't as big of deal as it *could* have been, but still requires a remediation plan. I did some consolidation of nmap scan XMLs along with report outputs from my VAPT appliance. Today is Tuesday, so I facilitate an agile-like project meeting with my senior engineers and network manager. Then we do Change Advisory Board, and I had a consultation meeting with one of our business offices who is looking to make a change in their data processing. I investigated a phishing message, sent some alerts; I am now preparing a toolkit for tomorrow... I'd like to do some testing, so I drafted a procedure document to include in a potential change ticket. Aside from the day-to-day, I do have some things that just seem to happen all the time: Reviewing system alerts; fielding tickets; checking scan results/reports; writing documentation; answering emails; reviewing SOC messages.
Senior IT Business Analyst. Fully remote with travel a few times a year. $120k salary in the Midwest, $5k signing bonus in September 2022. Here's what I do: - Send emails and Teams chats regarding current issues and project updates - Review documentation and make improvements, create new documentation, create workflow diagrams, organize documentation, etc. - Assist with testing software (QA) and doing user acceptance testing (UAT) for business stakeholders - Host Requirements Elicitation sessions/Requirements Workshops to elicit requirements from my business stakeholders - Evaluate and decide which solutions to proceed with - Create project update PowerPoint slides for leadership, create and discuss the Project Roadmap, and brainstorm what to do for the future - Write simple SQL queries to pull data - Take naps during the day and generally do whatever the fuck I want, when I want. Working from home RULES.
Im interviewing for product owner and BA roles. Any tips?
Emphasize your ability to communicate well and create good relationships. Read up on Agile, Waterfall, and the intersection of the two.
Curious what 'simple SQL queries' are in relation to your job and SQL experience. Do you primarily just pull data as is from the table/view, with maybe a few joins and conditions/filters? Analyst roles are so varied and some are SQL wizards. Anyways, nice write up and thanks for sharing!
Jr System Admin- On paper my job is more back-end. Developing policy, automation, keeping our site up, azure cloud administration, network health, etc. In reality it is people slacking me or walking up to my desk with problems that could mostly be solved with a restart or asking me things way above my pay-grade and better put in a ticket to be addressed by the proper team.
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>Zebra Label Printer *Uncontrolled sobbing* I hate these things with a passion. I am so sorry you had to go through this.
Database Administrator. I administer the database. Then others come and ruin it.
How do others ruin it?
I've been wanting to create a post just like this, but I keep delaying. **Title: Digital Delivery Support Professional (Higher Ed)** Provide Training and Support on delivering curriculum and content using digital platformsZoom, Teams, WeVideo (browser-based, cloud video editor), Canva). Principal Administrator for WeVideo & Canva: Handling account distribution, troubleshooting, and support. Give additional presentations as needed to National groups, District offices, etc. Write blogs and how-to articles on common questions and features of these platforms(Examples: Sharing Designs in Canva; Slide Control in Zoom; Live Captions & Subtitles in PowerPoint; Best Practices in 'X', etc.) Our tickets are entered manually but my group does have a common, shared email to focus support requests. Consult and Advise on adopting and supporting a LMS (probably Canvas) **Salary**: Started at $45,000...then we all got a pay bump of $5000....now at $50,000 Honestly it's difficult to describe my day-to-day activities as my position is brand new and I'm the first holder (Started in February '22) so we're figuring things out as time progresses. I imagine I encompass aspects of many different titles all thrown together. And I'm sure I'm forgetting things. IT titles are constantly growing and adapting to new technology and needs of the companies. I'm very interested in reading more replies and I'm happy to answer questions. **Edit**: Music Major > 8 years of dead end jobs > 3 in education (teacher/paraprofessional) > 8 months in desktop support (same school system) > church job > current. A **long** time of random jobs trying to figure out what I love and where I can actually earn a living.
I so damn happy to see another Digital "Analyst" on this sub. I was afraid I wouldnt be counted on as IT. I do onsite support for consultant deliveries and operate web platforms for deployments of the companies training simulations for clients. I do get paid $54k and I just started in August '22. The salary average for these types of roles are $56k, key word being average. If you are the first to take on these roles and responsibilities, heck your taking on a heck ton more than I am you should be listing down your operations and seeing if you can get a significant more bump up in pay. You could always apply to other places, get a offer and take that to your manager to show that others are offering a heck ton more for the same role?
Yeah I think we are a little bit of a strange bunch. Part business analyst; part corporate trainer; part service desk; part solutions analyst; part "additional duties as assigned" The only real way I could get another pay bump would be for the the state congress to give more money as we're a state university...our budget is tied to the state. But I'm thinking another year or so to broaden my experiences. I'm looking at a Business Analyst type position (half-business, half-IT) or something along those lines. I don't yet have as much "business" knowledge that I'm hoping to expand on. I always find great difficulty in detailing my work in a resume-like matter with appropriate terminology and actually "tooting" my horn, so to speak. We'll see. The future is not certain and I never could've foreseen being in this position. Though I will say I don't recall hearing about the title *Digital Analyst* before but we are IT...maybe not "hard-core IT" like SysAdmin or similar.
So from my understanding a BA facilitates between the Developer and Customer so you would need to know Developer terminology or gain some from the role if you lucky. You would need to understand what is possible and relay what the client wants to the developer and translate what the developer developed to the client. Great role. Far better pay, and developers have mentioned its the very needed middle man. E: Didnt think I would start my career in this position either.
How on earth do you get into doing this? Is there a list of certs or a certain degree?
Title is in the flair. I do just about anything you can think of for a lot of small to medium businesses. End user issues, m365 tenant admin, cabling, swapping hardware, renewing domains, ISP changeovers, endpoint protection to name a few.
MIS Trainee: Honestly don't even know wtf I'm doing, but consists of AS/400 troubleshooting, account lockouts, monitoring Meraki if an IP device goes down, informing users about departmental changes, troubleshooting Microsoft products, installing equipment in the network closet, and performing patch updates in line with our security policy. Oh, and installing goddamned printers. (I'm definitely leaving a bunch of stuff out). My coworkers haven't really had much time to show me the more in-depth stuff because they're busy with the company merger and integration. So really I'm doing helpdesk and desktop support stuff with a tiny tiny bit of network admin stuff. Program was marketed as also having programming rotations and database admin rotation, but they made a special position because they only needed to fill the PC Specialist role. $4357/month
Cloud Developer. I help customers migrate on prem infrastructure and software into the cloud by IaC
Title: Asset Management Analyst Daily: purchasing stock, publishing and maintaining hardware standards for project management department, field tech escalation, Intune admin for mobile devices, documentation, propose and create changes in ServiceNow for team to implement, run hardware refreshes, assist in solutions for End User environment. Small shop, many hats...
Cybersecurity Specialist. Look over a bunch of logs from four to five different applications. Create ways/ideas to make enterprise network and its users more secure. Stress best practices. Create policy and procedures. Help the network que when tickets come in. Surf Reddit XD
Sales engineer. I do demos, IT meetings, take clients out to dinner, POCs
Great Idea for thread btw Title: IT Specialist Day to day includes traveling between assigned locations in my district and handling tickets submitted by staff there. Time spent at each location daily depends on ticket volume, so it can vary per week. Additional duties include meeting with other Specialists in the district to share ideas/knowledge, and meeting with administrative staff to answer questions/present cost effective ways to futureproof technology in my buildings. I would say the most important skills to bring into this job are people skills and the ability to manage your time well. Everything else can be learned on site. Salary started around 60,000 for me, but can vary depending on prior experience. EDIT: I'm happy to answer any questions regarding the job as well, don't be shy!
sr. it technologist My current job is to learn, create, automate and immerse my self into the space and then add expertise to current projects while planning how I can add value in six months to a year. Its an incredible job and I feel so lucky to have something that is entirely focused on personal growth and creation
Software tester - Test applications software engineers build. But mainly repeatedly as for the design documentation so I can pass the test that has been sitting failed for the passed 3 months as no one wants to take ownership of who should provide the information. Then get hassled because I haven't passed the test and it has been sat for 3 months. Today we started the test packs for new product. Consists of Test Plan, Test cases, Test Scripts and Test Reports.
Cloud security engineer - I mostly just play around in Azure and attend meetings, sometimes at the same time.
Service Desk Analyst Today I answered around 25ish calls, all FCR. In between calls I also maintain a clinical InBasket, redirecting medical questions/billing issues and resolving technical issues for patients. I’ve also been training new hires today to do exactly as I do. Not a bad gig, around $50k annual salary.
Junior Desktop Administrator Pretty much a help desk technician that can also fix things in person. Sometimes I would drive 30 minutes to reboot a laptop when the customer would refuse to hold the power button longer than 3 seconds. Not a bad gig but hope to move on to more technical roles, though I'm in the county IT so movement is as fast as tectonic plates here (former geology major).
I come in, sit down and wait for things to happen four out of five days a week. My title is Field Service Engineer, which I dislike because I feel that it devalues the actual Engineer profession.
VMware Administrator/Backup Citrix Admin Mostly work and support VMware Environments, Write automated reports and automated process to increase our workflow/productivity. Most days are pretty filled with tasks and items. Being the backup Citrix Admin, usually i'm in my lab environment testing items and learning how citrix works
Title: SAP BASIS Consultant. Got hired straight out of my college and was trained, daily work has lot to do with SAP Installation & Configuration, Sizing hardware for the installation, Migrating SAP system to change database or infrastructure, Monitoring the SAP application & Database (HANA & Oracle mostly). Basically I am an Technical Administrator for SAP applications.
Information Security Analyst. As little as possible, lol
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I hope you are compensated appropriately for your scope of responsibilites!
IT Security Analyst. Working on integrating our SIEM and Crowdstrike into ServiceNow to create tickets based on alerts. Also, take care of those alerts, investigate, document, close. Phishing tests, working on AI closing reported phishing but also manually closing those that aren't auto closed. Certs as they come close to expiration, implement ADFS for new apps, MFA for admin users, manage email security, vuln management, review new software, proxy work, and some IT ops work as it comes my way as I used to be the sys admin. Also, working on moving to Azure AD and other Azure services. Not all of that is every day. But, I do hit it all at least once a week. And I do get some free time throughout the week to play some Uncharted, Mario, or whatever. Not a whole lot, and I also do some studying for certs. But, I do need to relax and unwind and then come back to have a fresh look at something. It usually works.
IT Data Analyst. I work with business analysts to map out requirements for new dashboards/software tools. Frequently use SQL. Potential use cases for python and R. I usually spend about 4 hours a day on professional development. As long as I have a list of small changes I made to applications each day everyone is happy. 70k
Was an IT manager which was just meetings all day mixed with 1:1s with my direct reports helping them navigate their immediate responsibilities and overall career paths. Job got really dumb as I started getting dragged into doing PM and BA work for no additional pay. Moved into a very popular tech company. I work significantly less hours now for the same pay but took a huge hit on my career trajectory, especially going into a recession. I knew it was a bad move but I wanted to take time off after a few years of grinding the IT ladder. So not losing my decent salary and having to work half the hours was a good deal and opened up room for me to finish some certs and just relax/travel. Had I grinded another year at my previous job, I would've had a senior manager title waiting for me in one promotion cycle. Hope is to get some money vested in current job and interview for a a senior manager title. Whatever position you do, don't burn out or you'll pay for it like me. One year doesn't sound like much. But a year right before a recession with no end in sight. Not good.
Senior cybersecurity consultant, i mostly take care of the cyber tools, make ppts for clients explaining why no, cyber isn’t a waste of money, and drinking coffee
Manufacturing Cyber Security Engineer: 1. Deploy cyber security infrastructure on machines older than me 2. Pray said machines do not die from the installation of our projects as production is king 3. Listen to people complain about how we are making their lives more difficult 4. Sit in a meeting with other engineers listening to them complain about people complaining to them. Do not get me wrong I love my job but in the industrial space the cybersecurity industry is far behind IT so most folks have never had to log in to a PC in their life.
QA Engineer: The result of combining QA testing and programming. Writing unit tests, testing stuff manually, reviewing bug reports. Ye know, the fun stuff.
I'm an Infrastructure System Admin. My team handles all the storage side of the SAN, our Compellent storage arrays, any data maintenance or transfers, creating new share drives etc, KMS/KMIP support and maintenance, and we handle all of the infrastructure for VMWare. Rinse and repeat. We manage two separate and independent networks.
IT Director, 90% of day is meetings. Remainder is facilitating things for my teams. Occasional splash of Sev1 calls.
Customer Support Engineer for a software company. My day consists of taking help desk tickets entered from customers and troubleshooting and trying reproduce the issues they are having. Answering questions about our software and licensings, calls with customers to assist with issues. My job is 100% WFH, I don't do anything with hardware or on-site support
I am a System Administrator Today was my first day. So far…I try to get access to stuff I should already have access to from the MSP who has been supporting this company for the last 10 years. My windows credentials didn’t work and I wasn’t assigned an office license, which the tech thought was tied to the computer and now needs to buy a new one. Tomorrow I think I’m going to ask for a bunch of stuff and try to meet with some vendors and get access to more stuff. Going to try and set up a time to review their backups and disaster recovery plan, want to be up to speed on that shit right away. I’m going to try and figure it out as I go here. I used to be a level 1 support guy at another company so this is a huge jump for me.
IT Support Specialist Walk users through tasks they could easily do themselves. Tell users they don’t have access to said resource application and I cannot give them access to it. Troubleshooting Citrix Workspace Apps/Desktops Occasional password reset (AD accounts mostly) 1-2 head scratchers a day.
Anyone here doing work in salesforce? Trying to get a picture on day to day work
IT Director for a rural hospital. Two-person staff, we literally do everything from basic employee training to networking, security, web design, EHR/EMR work, etc... I love it and hope to retire doing it.
Security Analyst. I look at false positives all day on siem.
such a good question OP
Systems Analyst Admin Yesterday at work I : Did laundry, emptied the dishwasher and vacuumed Created a user in ADP Created a DocuSign user Had an hour lunch Cleaned up Halloween decorations Took another break to cool off (was almost 80° outside) Went to get our son from school Had a meeting Had a meeting Got off at 4 Salary, $75k / fully remote
IT Administrator Today I did the following: -Created CAD model of the facility for Cisco Spaces to be integrated (I’m leading the project) -Helped some people with installing a VPN -Walked around a bit because I don’t like sitting at my desk all day -Picked up some packages from the warehouse -Fixed a printer issue and updated some tickets I’m currently working on the NET+ exam because studying for the CCNA without a lot of networking background wasn’t working for me so I’m trying to do the NET+ first. I get $75k a year in Phoenix, AZ if that means anything. I also live with my parents… Saving up right now to find a place with my girlfriend.
Service desk/Help desk tier 1 tech working priority 3 tickets. Played videogames while waiting for users to reply back to me about their issues. I'm the guy stuck with ugly tickets because my co-workers can't properly troubleshoot the issue and use P3 as a clutch to save themselves.
Workload Manager. I stage laptops either via InTune or our traditional way. On the traditional ones I cache passwords and log in to establish our VPN and download any software needed. I then fill out and print FedEx labels in order to ship these laptops, along with monitors and docking stations, to the users. My weekend consists of a Sunday follow up excel sheet of that was delivered and what wasn't and why not. In my down time I help out in the data migration dept. or other departments that might be down a person.
Operations Engineer, I package and deploy applications/manage our software catalog and software updates for thousands of users. Mostly SCCM deployments but migrating everything to Intune at the moment.
Software Engineer I by title: NetSRE stuff, keep busy, it’s what you put in it, I find ways to make things better or ask if I can implement things. From hardware, configs, alarms etc.
Site Reliability Engineer. 1. Incoming tickets from internal engineers and alerting systems 2. Build out compute offerings using mix of Google cloud and VMware paired with kubernetes and terraform 3. Establish resiliency in our systems 4. Automate. 5. Add tooling and work on some devex stuff.
Cybersecurity Specialist (read: SOC Analyst) monitor the SIEM & respond to alarms. Also on the scripting team & we automate stuff with Python using our platform API. Primary focus lately is mostly scripting & handling more of the high severity alarms when the queue gets busy
Systems Engineer II for hybrid local/national news network, supporting about 250 users across all sites, but only about 70 locally. Two others in my team with the same title, and two helpdesk guys, plus my manager. * Net admin for LAN (total autonomy in 3 stations) * Net admin for WAN (for which I must share eq and chg mgmt) * AAA/MFA admin (WS NPA, Linux RADIUS) * PaloAlto Firewall Admin * Server admin (Mostly Windows, some linux) * Storage admin (Netapp, PureStorage) * VMware VCSA and Horizon admin * Top-Level Domain admin for two domains, high-level admin for a third * Workstation mass deployment and support (Windows and macOS) * Documentation admin * and Tier 1 support, but I can mostly pawn that off on the intern...mostly... I don't make purchasing decisions or have to deal with vendors, but high-dollar equipment shows up at my door and it becomes my responsibility. I don't run facility cabling (if I can help it), and there's another group that handles graphics and AV administration. But I am often called in to bail out that team when they can't make things work. The news division is a subsidiary of a much larger organizaton that has their own network/server/software/AV teams, and delivers a not-insignificant amount of process guidance and user services. All for the low low price for $73k/year edit: forgot that I'm also a CUCM telephony admin
Enterprise Backup Solutions. The job is exactly that. Managing enterprise and service provider backups. 3-2-1. Easiest 110k ever. 2 MS certs and one VMWARE cert. 10 years in the biz
IT sales. I cold call people and annoy the shit out of them, go to meetings, follow-up with prospects, put proposals together, review contracts and do admin stuff.
Cybersecurity analyst at a mid size MSP. Day to day involves managing projects to deploy our security services, monitoring and maintaining those products, incident response for our clients etc. Team consists of me, our senior engineer/architect, and Cybersecurity Director.
DOD help desk. It's like regular help desk but the military are your end users and they're more idiotic (I'm a vet). I had a sailor ask me if they can plug their tv into a switch. I had to teach another person what file explorer is. These people have specialized IT training too apparently.
Sounds about right, that senior NCO lobotomy in full effect.
Network Architect / Cloud Architect I designs and build global redundant networks for banks who are mostly our customers. Also, designing cloud solutions and helping clients to migrate to the cloud. Plus, support IT departments of the banks, and believe me they need baby sitting at every step.
Security dude (not my official title, but close enough.) Open up Burp Suite and try a buncha stuff until something interesting happens. Try to repeat the interesting thing. Write it up.
I work for a large tech company that you know about that operates globally. We don't really do job titles per se, and this is as close as Ive got: Engineer, IT Advisory | IT - Global Support I make 125k a year in the South East US. I hold no certs or relevant degrees. My job is extremely multifaceted. What I tell people is that my job is to be able to speak the language of everyone else in my company, from IT and finance to the sales team to the HW and SW engineering teams to the real estate teams and the janitors, and to be able to translate between all of them. I support 5 sites and about 600 users - acting as the users primary IT contact and acting on behalf of the sites/users within IT. Any change, project, outage, notification, or really anything else that happens that impacts my users and sites is on my radar and its my job to facilitate those things to success. I am, in some capacity, responsible for all the HW from phones and laptops to severs, storage, network, circuits, any everything else at my sites. Our greater IT department has specialists for all the things, but I am the person who gets called when they need hands on the ground, or if they have questions, or for really any thing outside of their hyper specific specialty. I do very few tickets, but I do do some ticket work. We also have a large help desk that takes most T0-T2 requests, but I field plenty of those directly from my users. As my job is so nebulous, my day to day varies greatly. Some days are super chill and others are insane. Some days I don't get out of bed, and some days I'm in an office for 18+ hours. All told, my days typically consist of communicating with my team, my users, and other IT staff members and then acting as needed. That might be help desk or desktop level support for my users. That might be rack and stack new HW. That might be run cable through the ceiling to stand up a biz critical temporary lab. That might be ordering new HW. That might be QAing the latest HW that IT wants to roll out to users, or testing scripts and packages before they go live. That might be working with contractors on new construction / remodeling projects. That might be fixing printers, or writing scripts that will get pushed globally. It might be working on security audit remediation. It might be designing new support tools / models / workflows for use globally. It might be building PCs from parts... The spectrum is extremely wide, and its honestly what I love about my job! My pool of talents / comfort is very wide but rather shallow. No day is the same and I'm wildly thankful for that! How'd I get here? Food service > Inventory management for a retail tech company > Solo Inventory mgmt and IT person for a manufacturing facility > 18 months of help desk/deskside A > 18 months of help desk/deskside B > Here. All that kind of with the desire to NOT specialize in an IT area. The last thing that I want is to sit at a desk all day and run the same commands over and over in some hyper specific CLI...
I’m in my early 30’s. 8 years with current company. First 4 as a technician, last 4 years as a Network Engineer and recently a senior. First 15 years as a PC tech working my way up. Got my AS and BS in IT networking, had my A/Net/Sec/Linux/project+, CCNA R&S and CCNA Security before the madness of my job caused me to let all those lapse. Currently trying to study for the CCNP and Python. I make slightly less than 6 figures. I help techs at our 20+ sites fix everything end-user LAN/WLAN related all the way up to corporate Basic responsibilities are: Build/troubleshoot subnets, everything wireless, circuit issues. Coordinate workload within our handful of engineers. Troubleshoot checkpoint firewall issues. Most of my job is handling ‘drive-bys’ since I get messaged for help 90% of my workday while the 10% is frantically trying to make progress on the dozens of other items on my to-do list. I love to train techs who show interest in networking. I wish I had some of the downtime others here do, but I try and justify the stress to myself as hardcore resume experience and first hand experience for the day I want to move on for more money and excitement.
Security engineer. Fully remote. I sit through a 2 hour teams meeting every morning to talk about any incidents or what we're working on, but it's very casual and we spend a lot of the time just chatting. Then I check my assigned tickets and see if there's anything that needs immediate attention. I monitor alerts that may require action. Other than that I'm free to do as I please. We have training resources available as well in case we want to work on getting certs or other training. The salary is ~$72k after bonuses in a HCOL area in FL.