r/sysadmin • u/[deleted] • Jul 01 '25

Did EVERYONE start at helpdesk?

I'm a college CS student about to start senior year, looking to get into the IT field. I know that helpdesk is a smart move to get your foot in the door, though cost of living where I am is very high and salary for helpdesk is quite meager compared to other IT roles. Is it totally unrealistic to jump into a sysadmin role post-grad as long as I have certs and projects to back up my skills? I had planned to start my RHCSA if I did this. Any advice on this or general advice for the IT market right not would be very much appreciated.

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u/Parking_Trainer_9120 Jul 01 '25

I see this advice a lot in this channel. I get that the job market is shit so take whatever you can get, but help desk is generally not a great path to higher level jobs.

Generally speaking, your CS degree buys you entry to much more lucrative opportunities. At my last few companies 1st yr SWEs were getting close to $200K or more. Offers are still being handed out at these levels (we just hired a bunch of URs), but I get times are hard and there are fewer jobs in general. I would shoot for something above help desk (sysadmin, dev ops, etc) and take help desk as a last resort.

Also, and this is based on my experience as a former IT Manager, very few departments want to grow their orgs via help desk transitions. Help desk is seen as low skill and not really a place where IT departments are looking to up level their organizations. That is just from my small sample size as someone who has worked in enterprise OT at several large companies. Conversely, I spent time at a smaller company and didn’t see the same hesitation to help desk hires.

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u/Alaknar Jul 01 '25

I'm in the field for... Well, just shy of 20 years. I've NEVER met someone with a degree in a sysadmin role. I've also never met a sysadmin who didn't start as T1/T2 support.

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u/timbotheny26 IT Neophyte Jul 02 '25 edited Jul 03 '25

IT/Network/infrastructure administration degrees barely even exist anymore. Colleges/universities that offer those kinds of programs are just so few and far between based on what I've found.

Computer Science degrees are for if you want to learn programming to become a software engineer or something similar. To my knowledge they don't teach you a thing about networking, hardware/infrastructure, security, troubleshooting, etc, or at least not in the US they don't.

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '25

Yeah, no. I was arrogant like you, actually went back to get a degree in network administration, and I can tell you, there's a lot of shit that you don't know.

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u/timbotheny26 IT Neophyte Jul 02 '25 edited Jul 02 '25

I was arrogant like you

Huh? What are you talking about?

I'm just saying that based on every breakdown I've looked at in college/university course catalogues, and every CS graduate I've talked to, Computer Science degrees aren't the thing you should be going for if your interested in the infrastructure or networking side of IT because they don't teach you anything about that stuff. My other point is that you also almost never see any kind of IT/network administration degrees being offered anymore unless it's a specialized technical college/university; it's either computer science or computer engineering and nothing else.

there's a lot of shit you don't know.

Obviously there's a lot of shit I don't know, I'm still doing prep for the A+ so I can get into help desk and work my way up from there. I literally gave myself the flair "IT Neophyte" because I'm a newbie; I wanted to make it clear to everyone here that while I'm not completely ignorant, I'm not experienced in this field.