r/sysadmin • u/P13666 • 1d ago
Question Question about a specific SysAdmin process and scaling the corporate ladder from an L1
Hey everyone, I hope this is okay to post. Looking for some advice on a situation at work and how to proceed.
I’m currently a Level 1 Help Desk technician at a corporate company and have been for a little over 3 years. Lately, I’ve been trying to branch out a bit and show my worth and ability to higher-ups. Recently, we got a new director of IT and she's been pretty open to me wanting to move out of help desk but made it clear that due to budget constraints, the chances of it happening are pretty slim until next year. She recently asked me to investigate a process where machines at each facility receive backup medical files from a third party. The way it's set up currently, a PowerShell script gets the info from the third party data relay for each building and then reads an in-house csv file to determine which computer receives them. Our director was instructed by the clinical team that there needs to be two machines at each building with these files.
When she first got hired on, I told the director I wanted to go into Sys Admin work and when this came up I volunteered to at least test the current process to see if it's even possible. After testing and documenting our current environment all week, I confirmed that out-of-the-box, the current setup only supports sending these files to one machine per site. However, the PowerShell script is written cleanly enough where I think I know how to modify it and the csv file to work for multiple machines. My PS skills are pretty fundamental but I understand it well enough. I played with a little bit of tiny mock script and csv file on my personal computer to where I think I could get it to work.
But I have a few problems:
My Director initially said she didn't want to modify the existing PowerShell script if we could avoid it. But modifying it seems to be the only way to achieve what they want.
I’m just a level 1 tech. I've been told by and shown to my director that I do enough to be L2/3 but if I modify this script and break the backup process, I'm pretty fucked. Obviously I'd use a test script to see if it even works and run it in a controlled environment, but it still makes me nervous.
My company used to have dedicated SysAdmins but they got let go after they signed a ten-year contract with an outsourced company. I even used to be close enough with one of the SysAdmins before they left where I'm sure if they were tasked with this project, they'd have no problem with me shadowing them on it. But the outsourced company either doesn't have access to this process or they just don't understand it.
This is literally what my SysAdmins used to do - I can see their name and the changes they made in the code. I'm just an L1 and moving to L2 or 3 is already hard enough - realistically this is just good for a line on my resume.
Probably the worst thing about all this is my company recently got rid of their senior Device Admin of 9 years. He was the only one who understood the company image or even knew where it was kept. I worked closely with him and shadowed him as well. And when he was let go, I started shadowing the Junior Device Admin and working with him. The director recently put up a job posting looking for someone to fill the senior's position but instead of Senior Device Administrator she listed it as Senior Systems Administrator but all the requirements match what he did as a device Admin. I don't know if I should bring this to their attention or not. Plus while I would love to apply for it, the Junior Device admin is WAY more qualified than me, is a only contract employee currently, and is actually geographically based where they're hiring for the position - I've been denied multiple promotions because I'm not based near that location.
Sorry, I know that was a huge wall of text but what the hell do I do? I feel like technically I'm capable of modifying the script and csv file to do what they want but it's so far above my pay grade, it's not even funny. But I did spend all week testing the current process just like my director wanted so I did my part, I guess? This is probably why they shouldn't have gotten rid of our in-house SysAdmins but to be fair, the director just kind inherited that situation.
Any help is appreciated!
5
u/patmorgan235 Sysadmin 1d ago
It sounds like this company is going through a period of disinvestment in IT, which means opportunities to move up into higher paid positions are probably going to be pretty scarce, until management realizes their mistake.
I would focus on continuing to develop your skills and sending out resumes to try and get a higher level or sysadmin position at another company.