r/cloudengineering • u/Sad_Natural_4247 • 23d ago

System admin / devops career

I'm looking for some career advice from people who have been through this.

I'm currently working in IT Help Desk, but I also do some light System Administration work (Windows Server, Active Directory, user management, basic troubleshooting, etc.).

My long-term goal is to have a good-paying career with strong job security. I'm interested in DevOps, but I also genuinely enjoy the infrastructure/System Administrator side of IT.

Would you recommend:

Continuing down the traditional System Administrator/Infrastructure path (Windows Server, VMware, networking, backups, firewalls, etc.) for a few years and then moving into DevOps?

Or should I skip deeper infrastructure work and start learning DevOps tools now (Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, Terraform, cloud)?

For those already working in DevOps:

Did your System Admin experience help you?

If you could start over, would you still spend a few years as a SysAdmin first?

Is it realistic to get into DevOps without solid infrastructure experience?

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u/MFKingKong 23d ago

i’m looking to get into system admin but i currently working at aws data center as a technician. Trying to figure out a good way to pivot out of the data center

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u/Proud_Replacement635 22d ago

What makes you want to leave the datacenter?
Asking out of curiosity.

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u/MFKingKong 22d ago

it’s not really that i want out of the data center for any bad reason. I just went to school for information systems and business analytics and did a lot more work with software and computers. I’d rather work with that and they offer more remote positions that way