Everywhere I look, I see our industry engaging in practices that abuse others for profit. This applies to how we treat our customers, how we treat society, and even how we treat developers.
For a microcosm of the problem, look at how often comments here focus on being a developer in order to get rich rather than being a developer in order to do great things.
Medical, Legal, Accounting, and other professions including various categories of engineer.
This is part of a knowledge work career-- staying up to date with new knowledge and incorporating it.
5-15 hours per month really ain't so bad.
To anyone considering a Systems Admin role, be aware, you have a lot of work ahead. SysAdmins are commonly generalists. We don't go super vertical in a lot of things, but we do go wider every day. There comes a point where it's really hard to keep up with the breadth of tech, UIs, concepts, some jackass's better mouse trap that isn't any better but uses a shit UI, etc.
Most SysAdmins pick a few things and specialize. Then there are the crazy people like me that try, and I emphasis try, to keep up with it all. smh.
Generalists are needed. We're usually the best at integration, since we've likely seen/worked on something with similar concepts or the systems involved, before. We usually sight read (borrowed term from music) UIs better than most and once we have enough time in, we realize that it's really all syntax. Whether its NTFS or CHMOD, we're still determining read, write, execute, modify, etc.
Both are rewarding and whichever you choose, remember, without the other half, you're mostly useless. ;)
o7 Coders!
Once you have a year or 2 under your belt in environments that provide training wheels (not insulting, we all started somewhere and noobs need training wheels), you can move on to a higher support tier, or leave and go work for a non-IT company, in the IT role.
The next step is commonly small companies that only have the FTE budget for 1 technical emp, but need someone in-house. This person will spend their time addressing any and all issues for an entire small company, and farm out the things that require specialties.
This is a great learning experience, imo. You get to touch damn near everything, from firewalls, to PCs, to printers, etc.
After that, assuming you picked up the info, apply it well, deliver good customer service, etc. you have many more options.
As far as where to look?
I'd start with small computer companies (break/fix shops), MSPs or similar also often need more Tier 1s.
I also play tabletop and board games, watch TV with my wife each night, and even play Mario kart with my kids. There's plenty of time.
That said, my advice was primarily targeting recent graduates or young developers who are looking for a job. That implies they have plenty of time and are trying to put the bulk of it towards finding a job. If I were in that position, I'd treat building my resume and finding a job _as_ my full time job.
I've got two young kids (youngest 4 months) and I spend pretty much all my free time either playing with them, cooking, cleaning and life admin. I've only recently started carving out time again to do plural sight courses etc at home. And to do that I'm having to reduce time lifting weights in the garage (which was only about 1.5 hours a week). In fact I should be doing a plural site course right now!
I’d love to hear how people succeeded in developing any of these habits early in their career.
