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Ask HN: Should I move from in-house SysAdmin into Development

7 points by noknownsender ↗ HN
I've been working as IT Support, then as a(mediocre-at-best) Sysadmin for about five years, with a few years of Tier 1 Help Desk before that.

Currently, my job pays well enough ($85k in rural PA, US) But I don't have much growth potential where I'm at, and am looking to advance my career.

Would it be a worthwhile endeavor for me to build my development skill on the side, in the hopes of moving into the developer job market, or should I look for more advanced work in the SysAdmin realm?

Thanks in advance.

3 comments

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noknownsender
I should note that I work at a non-technical company, and my exposure to new technologies is essentially non-existent. Which is why I am looking for a change.

Most of my experience is in maintaining servers and networks in offices and manufacturing, as well as supporting end users with all of their various issues.

I don't have much of a network to learn from, as I'm essentially entirely self taught, and have been googling my way through every job I've had for most of a decade.

Alex63
If you are looking for salary growth, then moving into an Operations management role is probably your fastest path. If you want to stay involved in the technical side of service delivery, building on the investment you have already made in your sysadmin skills is probably the safer bet. SysAdmin and developer roles are quite different, so you may find that moving into a developer role is a bigger change than you anticipated. If you are really interested in software development (do you do it as a hobby?), then by all means try landing a junior developer role.
noknownsender
I definitely want to stay on the technical side, though management is my fall-back.

I guess moving into Dev role isn't exactly what I'm looking for.

Mainly, I want to move into a systems operations roll where I can work with newer technologies, and continue to advance my technical knowledge.

A problem I'm running into is that there seems to be a large gulf between "SysAdmins"(Like Myself) Who manage office systems, and don't really have to know too much beyond their environment, and SysAdmins who actually work with developers, more in the DevOps realm.

In the roles I've had so far, I've never had to speak with a developer. And every 'DevOps' guy I've worked with has really just been an IT manager with an AWS cert.

The only reason I've ever had to run so much as a Bash or PowerShell script has been out of personal interest.

What I'm really striving for is to not just stagnate and take a job managing IT goons who can barely work a command line.