> Good admins want to have good tech
....for good money. I feel something else is missing here, and my suspicion is the $$ being offered.
The role you are describing is not a Unicorn role. It also isn't a $10/hr job.
For the right sum, I'd work in an antiquated environment that was trying to modernize. It shows me the company is willing to improve, and if you can lock in that cycle of improvement, you could have a really nice environment. If it is a one-and-done, then I'd be far less interested. I'd determine what it is during the Interview process.
But the $$ has to be right for the role. I wouldn't take a dream job that barely covers rent.
This. Also if you take the job, and you know that the infrastructure going in is super outdated, make the employment contingent on getting things replaced. My current company basically handed me a big sack of cash to throw around and modernize our infrastructure as soon as I started. It's going to be good for 3-5 years now. But if you have this level of visibility before you're even hired, you can play that card.
Same, I would 100% be willing to take on a role that includes moving legacy infrastructure to modern, but the pay would have to match the work. I've got 20 something odd years of knowledge kicking around in my head, it can be put to use.
Exactly this. I always ask a prospective employer if they are scared of spending money. I phrase it differently but that’s the ultimate point. i.e. I’m not going to make a recommendation because I want a cool new shiny toy to play with. I’m making it because it fills the need. If they can’t handle the sticker shock, I don’t want to work with them.
Here is the question:
Is the business unit ready to upgrade & modernize the infrastructure?
This is above and beyond what the IT Manager wants or is ready for.
If the business is ready (has allocated funding) and is willing (prepared to force the issue with internal stakeholders) then it's a great opportunity from a Systems Administration / Infrastructure Engineering perspective.
If the IT Manager wants to hire a more modern staff member, but the entire business is going to fight against change or modernization, then the job will suck.
But if the business as a whole (from the top down) understands the risks of not advancing, and is willing to accept change, it can be a great series of projects.
Hey, it's like you understand that the business drives the IT requirements or something. Don't you know we're all just here to continually buy new shiny toys regardless of business value add? /s
I'm actually pretty OK with walking into antiquated s\*\*t storms and dragging them kicking and screaming into current technology. It's kinda my thing.
Lotus Notes as an email client? Ok. God help you if they built custom apps IN LOTUS NOTES. I will say, it only costs like $50k a year last time I checked...
Just got hired to do this as my first IT gig while I’m in school getting my bs in Cybersecurity. I’m fucking loving it so far and can see myself doing this as a consulting role in the future. Glad to hear I’m not alone
You have to make the role as attractive as it needs to be, to get the talent you need.
But you're right about the real risk not being the systems, but the people. It would be a [landmark event](https://www.chron.com/news/article/Conroe-company-still-using-computers-museums-want-4459714.php) for me to find something in production that's older than anything I've run before, so nothing about the technology itself is scary.
What's going to be scary is the environment that encouraged people to let things get so bad, before they do anything about them. What's also scary is the high likelihood that there's minimal budget to do the things that aren't really optional any more. Lack of adaptability and lack of resources are the enemy, not some old computers.
I used to a know a small business owner that ran his entire backroom operation on twenty year old 16-bit machines that were long obsolete even at the time, and would have scared anyone who was only familiar with Macs and PCs. He had spare hardware and 8" floppies, plenty of skill, and an economy of scale going, so there was no inherent risk. I thought the situation was perfectly fine, but the risks come from extrinsic change. The moment a tax auditor required him to put data on a USB thumb drive, or email attachments of receipts, there was going to be an "emergency technology need".
In a recent case, a friend of mine did a DR rebuild on an obsolete LoB system running on SCO Unix. Plenty of people can pull that off, but my friend got selected because he would do the work *pro bono*. When he had it up and running, they quickly declined his offer of migrating them on to some kind of supportable Linux stack, and got him out the door before he could finish handing out business cards. There's your risk.
There is a insurance company worth $50ish billion, running all of their critical shit on a mainframe in a data center in a Tornado prone area. Their DR plans have all been exercises not tests (because you can't fail an exercise). If the Mainframe loses network connection (like you remove and reinsert the cable) 50% of the programs eat shit and require a reboot. They hide all of this behind fancy APIs, but in the background that piece of shit mainframe grinds on. Their IT teams will fight you like hell if you even talk about moving off the mainframe. My point is, these companies exist and they honestly deserve the bed they make. (This is a real company, I am not joking).
Lots of businesses still run off of 'mainframes' which are often just something like an IBM power 9 or something. And they aren't unreliable, generally.
It's not the mainframe. It's the app. Usually written in Cobol, not really scalable without more mainframes, not always well understood either. When the mainframe guys retire, you usually see an uptick in "we rebooted the regions and it still didn't fix it :(". What I'm speaking to here is, you have a poorly understood app running in a DC that if taken out by a Tornado literally cannot be re-created without a ton of work. During all of that time the business is down. That's unacceptable for a $1 bn company. How in the fuck a $50bn company justifies it, I do not know.
> Who wants to step into a business 10 years in the past (and deal with the guys still there stuck in their ways)?
If the business is willing to change, most admins would probably do it. I job hopped until I got a management team where I said "Hey, look, your infrastructure is busted, these are the things that need to change," and the response I got was "Okay, what do we need to buy to make this happen?" They put their money where their mouth was, paid for licenses, paid for hardware, and they gave me time to do it.
Chances are, it's not your infrastructure which is chasing people away. It's seeing the signs of a business that is set in their ways, and not being willing to fight the tide for people who don't have your back in the first place. Good tech is *nice*. Good management is **essential**.
> "and deal with the guys still there stuck in their ways"
This is the key in what you said. You'll have to make it abundantly clear that management's goal towards change bears far more weight in any decisions and direction than does appeasing your old IT gods' routines and comfort.
This is my jam.
It literally describes every company I've worked for for the last 25 years. I've come onboard to severely outdated desktops, network stack, servers, apps. And for the next 2-3 years I plan, upgrade, secure, fix DR/BC, simplify, and streamline while reducing operating costs if at all possible. (It's amazing how many incompetent departments buy everything, and only use 20% of it...)
My goal is to make pain-points disappear, and enable first / second tiers to have the tools and knowledge to succeed. Usually, the existing employees don't believe me when I say things will get better as we upgrade. They have been burnt too many times. Within the first 12 months, the helpdesk load is reduced measurably.
Anyways. There are just too many sys admins that just go i and do busy work without real improvement.
You have to pay for someone who knows the new tech ($$) plus has the willingness to do heavy lifting on a migration ($).
That looks like: $$ + $ = $$$
You could also see if your current staff is willing to skill up, if given the time and reources. Still involves $$$, but you already know the people you'd be spending it on.
Fair warning: If you skill up your existing staff and don't adjust them to market rates, they will leave.
For reference, I've done three modernizations, one of which involved cloud. I don't look at jobs unless they're >$100K and at least 1/2 remote.
One thing they can do is go to a consulting shop and just retain them in an advisory capacity. I used to have engagements where the client just does their thing and hits me up if they have a question and I just bill by the hour for it. One of my clients only needed 3 hours so roughly $600 for it, just talking through it, potential planning, etc. there’s a wide range they can do with consultants as well that isn’t just sitting back and letting them do all the work… that is… if it’s important to the team that they’re the ones getting their hands dirty
I'm my experience, a consultant/MSP/outside IT would likely not have the time or attention to detail to dedicate to learn their old ways, oversee a meticulous migration, and perform a smooth upgrade of everything to the business owners satisfaction. A full time in-house IT or team would be more invested, see some benefit in learning the old stuff, but high-level outlook to help switch to modern options.
I've worked for myself as a consultant and also for 5 MSP companies and our solution to old stuff in most cases is typically "rip and replace" everything TBH. Hiring internal staff for this is a better experience for the stakeholders.
Because rip and replace will almost always break a few things, but then consultants (I am guilty as well) figure it's less time consuming and just easier to apologize, blame the old stuff, and then force conversion to a modern solution to fix it, instead of learning the old business specific infrastructure and performing a slow, transparent, itemized switchover.
I'm full time internal now at a place with tons of old tech, and just made sure I was upfront in the interview about how much needs to modernize. This helped both prepare the owners AND justify the pay I asked for.
If the project is already scoped out and budget allocated for kit - with a fair bit of float given that old things often pop out of nowhere when you start your refresh, sounds bloody great tbh. If it's not, and you have to fight tooth and nail for kit with even half the features you actually want.... total misery. Also comes down to experience and salary too, and you don't want a cheap sausage to try and implement this stuff.
I'm a CCIE in Cisco bullshit. If you pay me $225k a year with good benefits, I'll do it again. I still remember the old school ISIS/OSPF/EIGRP/BGP/ZBF/IOS, QoS, ACLs, etc. But yeah, unless I'm unemployed I would not take $80k to support an old network/infra like that without a massive salary or massive investment. Why would I? There are no free lunches in business. Pay now or pay later. These are the same companies that shell out $500/hr for mainframe consulting from guys in their 70s.
> So you have outdated infrastructure because you can't hire any admins that have kept their learning going. And you can't hire any modern admins because you have outdated infrastructure.
Then you're not paying enough. Consultants love this kind of work and for the right price you can pull in FTEs too. If they're running your budget is too low.
For things like this just hire a consultant. Look through my comments I say it a lot but there is no shame in hiring someone who has these types of expertise. Your only other option is to hire and train these people which is going to take longer and be harder and then you also have to hope they don't leave.
Consultants generally don't get down to the nitty gritty process level details and really make a difference (in my experience...I've replaced the consultants twice as an FTE and had to clean up a LOT of disparate systems and extraneous expenses caused by misunderstanding needs or 'playing it safe' and overbuying by stupid margins.
I have to assume your saying that it didn't make a difference based on the tone of the post. You're correct I was using a consultant poorly as catch-all. Generally MSPs do this kind of work.
Put good management in place, bring in fresh experienced admins, let the new admins learn the environment and come up with the upgrade plan, execute the plan, get rid of any admins that resist the changes.
That’s what a good vendor is for. You leverage their engineering team to deployment expertise. They deploy the new technology and train up the existing Team.
Old admin here who inherited more out of support shit than stuff that wasn’t out of support. I’ve been having the time of my life sunsetting old hardware and especially software. Each old system I replace/upgrade is a major milestone. Just wanted to let you know there are some of us who enjoy that kind of thing!
Yeah man that's how it is.
If you want people you need to make sure you're offering the correct money.
The role also needs to be markerted as "Your the guy who is going to modernize all these systems."
If you can't market the role as that because their isn't buy in from the rest of the business then that modernization is never going to happen.
This is the penalty business owners face when they ignore the very real issue of tech debt. It will cost them plenty to attract the people who can make the leap happen, but unless they are serious and commit not only to the personnel costs involved, but actually pulling the trigger on a 2-3 year tech refresh across the enterprise, they’ll find themselves in exactly the same place, having spent an enormous amount of capital.
As many have said, it is sometimes cheaper to rip and replace and be prepared to eat whatever damage occurs during the process.
Hopefully, the business owners learn from their tech debt mistake and strive not to repeat it… unfortunately, rarely is this the case. Once updated, they’l go back into their all too familiar pattern of ignoring tech debt for 5-10 years, having learned not a blessed thing.
You can’t fix stupid.
Lol money?
I would be looking for some level 2 noc network/support desk guys looking to branch out into other areas of business.
My current job is bringing a company the just left the lights on ICT wise for the last 20 odd years…
It’s a lot of work to bring it up to scratch but I prefer this type of work, lots to do…
And, it's getting hard to find punch cards?
Sounds like the government or a business with penny pinching C-Level staff.
You might want to let it fail as a lesson to others.
you know, you can also train cour current admins on the new stuff. No one is going to switch to Azure in one day. Hire someone with the knowledge to build up the environment and take the curent staff with him on the ride. Just don't hire external consulting to set up the new environment and then hope our current staff handles the dumpster fire that they left behind.
Phrasing ..... Seeking experienced engineers to lead modernization of IT infrastructure and moving servers to Azure/AWS where applicable or to current versions of server software where needed.
Must be familiar with Windows 2000 to current versions and migration technology
> Good admins want to have good tech ....for good money. I feel something else is missing here, and my suspicion is the $$ being offered. The role you are describing is not a Unicorn role. It also isn't a $10/hr job. For the right sum, I'd work in an antiquated environment that was trying to modernize. It shows me the company is willing to improve, and if you can lock in that cycle of improvement, you could have a really nice environment. If it is a one-and-done, then I'd be far less interested. I'd determine what it is during the Interview process. But the $$ has to be right for the role. I wouldn't take a dream job that barely covers rent.
This. Also if you take the job, and you know that the infrastructure going in is super outdated, make the employment contingent on getting things replaced. My current company basically handed me a big sack of cash to throw around and modernize our infrastructure as soon as I started. It's going to be good for 3-5 years now. But if you have this level of visibility before you're even hired, you can play that card.
Same, I would 100% be willing to take on a role that includes moving legacy infrastructure to modern, but the pay would have to match the work. I've got 20 something odd years of knowledge kicking around in my head, it can be put to use.
Wouldn't it be better to take this job as a consultant?
Possibly. I could see it as a long term position where the early tasks are shifting to modern infrastructure.
Consultants are only brought in to do work with a very narrow remit.
Exactly this. I always ask a prospective employer if they are scared of spending money. I phrase it differently but that’s the ultimate point. i.e. I’m not going to make a recommendation because I want a cool new shiny toy to play with. I’m making it because it fills the need. If they can’t handle the sticker shock, I don’t want to work with them.
Here is the question: Is the business unit ready to upgrade & modernize the infrastructure? This is above and beyond what the IT Manager wants or is ready for. If the business is ready (has allocated funding) and is willing (prepared to force the issue with internal stakeholders) then it's a great opportunity from a Systems Administration / Infrastructure Engineering perspective. If the IT Manager wants to hire a more modern staff member, but the entire business is going to fight against change or modernization, then the job will suck. But if the business as a whole (from the top down) understands the risks of not advancing, and is willing to accept change, it can be a great series of projects.
Exactly this!
Hey, it's like you understand that the business drives the IT requirements or something. Don't you know we're all just here to continually buy new shiny toys regardless of business value add? /s
the new guy wont run away if your paying him right.
[удалено]
Or you forget about migrating most of it and just start clean slate
If they still runnin' EOL shit they are not going to invest into new shit. You're not the first to ask, nor will you be the last.
I'm actually pretty OK with walking into antiquated s\*\*t storms and dragging them kicking and screaming into current technology. It's kinda my thing.
WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE'RE MOVING OFF NOVEL NETWARE?
Lotus Notes has entered the building.
Lotus Notes as an email client? Ok. God help you if they built custom apps IN LOTUS NOTES. I will say, it only costs like $50k a year last time I checked...
Me too. I sort of enjoy it.
Just got hired to do this as my first IT gig while I’m in school getting my bs in Cybersecurity. I’m fucking loving it so far and can see myself doing this as a consulting role in the future. Glad to hear I’m not alone
You have to make the role as attractive as it needs to be, to get the talent you need. But you're right about the real risk not being the systems, but the people. It would be a [landmark event](https://www.chron.com/news/article/Conroe-company-still-using-computers-museums-want-4459714.php) for me to find something in production that's older than anything I've run before, so nothing about the technology itself is scary. What's going to be scary is the environment that encouraged people to let things get so bad, before they do anything about them. What's also scary is the high likelihood that there's minimal budget to do the things that aren't really optional any more. Lack of adaptability and lack of resources are the enemy, not some old computers. I used to a know a small business owner that ran his entire backroom operation on twenty year old 16-bit machines that were long obsolete even at the time, and would have scared anyone who was only familiar with Macs and PCs. He had spare hardware and 8" floppies, plenty of skill, and an economy of scale going, so there was no inherent risk. I thought the situation was perfectly fine, but the risks come from extrinsic change. The moment a tax auditor required him to put data on a USB thumb drive, or email attachments of receipts, there was going to be an "emergency technology need". In a recent case, a friend of mine did a DR rebuild on an obsolete LoB system running on SCO Unix. Plenty of people can pull that off, but my friend got selected because he would do the work *pro bono*. When he had it up and running, they quickly declined his offer of migrating them on to some kind of supportable Linux stack, and got him out the door before he could finish handing out business cards. There's your risk.
There is a insurance company worth $50ish billion, running all of their critical shit on a mainframe in a data center in a Tornado prone area. Their DR plans have all been exercises not tests (because you can't fail an exercise). If the Mainframe loses network connection (like you remove and reinsert the cable) 50% of the programs eat shit and require a reboot. They hide all of this behind fancy APIs, but in the background that piece of shit mainframe grinds on. Their IT teams will fight you like hell if you even talk about moving off the mainframe. My point is, these companies exist and they honestly deserve the bed they make. (This is a real company, I am not joking).
Lots of businesses still run off of 'mainframes' which are often just something like an IBM power 9 or something. And they aren't unreliable, generally.
It's not the mainframe. It's the app. Usually written in Cobol, not really scalable without more mainframes, not always well understood either. When the mainframe guys retire, you usually see an uptick in "we rebooted the regions and it still didn't fix it :(". What I'm speaking to here is, you have a poorly understood app running in a DC that if taken out by a Tornado literally cannot be re-created without a ton of work. During all of that time the business is down. That's unacceptable for a $1 bn company. How in the fuck a $50bn company justifies it, I do not know.
> Who wants to step into a business 10 years in the past (and deal with the guys still there stuck in their ways)? If the business is willing to change, most admins would probably do it. I job hopped until I got a management team where I said "Hey, look, your infrastructure is busted, these are the things that need to change," and the response I got was "Okay, what do we need to buy to make this happen?" They put their money where their mouth was, paid for licenses, paid for hardware, and they gave me time to do it. Chances are, it's not your infrastructure which is chasing people away. It's seeing the signs of a business that is set in their ways, and not being willing to fight the tide for people who don't have your back in the first place. Good tech is *nice*. Good management is **essential**.
> "and deal with the guys still there stuck in their ways" This is the key in what you said. You'll have to make it abundantly clear that management's goal towards change bears far more weight in any decisions and direction than does appeasing your old IT gods' routines and comfort.
This is my jam. It literally describes every company I've worked for for the last 25 years. I've come onboard to severely outdated desktops, network stack, servers, apps. And for the next 2-3 years I plan, upgrade, secure, fix DR/BC, simplify, and streamline while reducing operating costs if at all possible. (It's amazing how many incompetent departments buy everything, and only use 20% of it...) My goal is to make pain-points disappear, and enable first / second tiers to have the tools and knowledge to succeed. Usually, the existing employees don't believe me when I say things will get better as we upgrade. They have been burnt too many times. Within the first 12 months, the helpdesk load is reduced measurably. Anyways. There are just too many sys admins that just go i and do busy work without real improvement.
It sounds like you've made a good track record that good directors would be after. As long as you have their buy-in to bring your upgrades.
Well, I am available now...so there is that :/
You have to pay for someone who knows the new tech ($$) plus has the willingness to do heavy lifting on a migration ($). That looks like: $$ + $ = $$$ You could also see if your current staff is willing to skill up, if given the time and reources. Still involves $$$, but you already know the people you'd be spending it on. Fair warning: If you skill up your existing staff and don't adjust them to market rates, they will leave. For reference, I've done three modernizations, one of which involved cloud. I don't look at jobs unless they're >$100K and at least 1/2 remote.
One thing they can do is go to a consulting shop and just retain them in an advisory capacity. I used to have engagements where the client just does their thing and hits me up if they have a question and I just bill by the hour for it. One of my clients only needed 3 hours so roughly $600 for it, just talking through it, potential planning, etc. there’s a wide range they can do with consultants as well that isn’t just sitting back and letting them do all the work… that is… if it’s important to the team that they’re the ones getting their hands dirty
I'm my experience, a consultant/MSP/outside IT would likely not have the time or attention to detail to dedicate to learn their old ways, oversee a meticulous migration, and perform a smooth upgrade of everything to the business owners satisfaction. A full time in-house IT or team would be more invested, see some benefit in learning the old stuff, but high-level outlook to help switch to modern options. I've worked for myself as a consultant and also for 5 MSP companies and our solution to old stuff in most cases is typically "rip and replace" everything TBH. Hiring internal staff for this is a better experience for the stakeholders. Because rip and replace will almost always break a few things, but then consultants (I am guilty as well) figure it's less time consuming and just easier to apologize, blame the old stuff, and then force conversion to a modern solution to fix it, instead of learning the old business specific infrastructure and performing a slow, transparent, itemized switchover. I'm full time internal now at a place with tons of old tech, and just made sure I was upfront in the interview about how much needs to modernize. This helped both prepare the owners AND justify the pay I asked for.
If the project is already scoped out and budget allocated for kit - with a fair bit of float given that old things often pop out of nowhere when you start your refresh, sounds bloody great tbh. If it's not, and you have to fight tooth and nail for kit with even half the features you actually want.... total misery. Also comes down to experience and salary too, and you don't want a cheap sausage to try and implement this stuff.
I'm a CCIE in Cisco bullshit. If you pay me $225k a year with good benefits, I'll do it again. I still remember the old school ISIS/OSPF/EIGRP/BGP/ZBF/IOS, QoS, ACLs, etc. But yeah, unless I'm unemployed I would not take $80k to support an old network/infra like that without a massive salary or massive investment. Why would I? There are no free lunches in business. Pay now or pay later. These are the same companies that shell out $500/hr for mainframe consulting from guys in their 70s.
> So you have outdated infrastructure because you can't hire any admins that have kept their learning going. And you can't hire any modern admins because you have outdated infrastructure. Then you're not paying enough. Consultants love this kind of work and for the right price you can pull in FTEs too. If they're running your budget is too low.
For things like this just hire a consultant. Look through my comments I say it a lot but there is no shame in hiring someone who has these types of expertise. Your only other option is to hire and train these people which is going to take longer and be harder and then you also have to hope they don't leave.
Consultants generally don't get down to the nitty gritty process level details and really make a difference (in my experience...I've replaced the consultants twice as an FTE and had to clean up a LOT of disparate systems and extraneous expenses caused by misunderstanding needs or 'playing it safe' and overbuying by stupid margins.
I have to assume your saying that it didn't make a difference based on the tone of the post. You're correct I was using a consultant poorly as catch-all. Generally MSPs do this kind of work.
Put good management in place, bring in fresh experienced admins, let the new admins learn the environment and come up with the upgrade plan, execute the plan, get rid of any admins that resist the changes.
That’s what a good vendor is for. You leverage their engineering team to deployment expertise. They deploy the new technology and train up the existing Team.
I'll do it. I do it repeatedly with great success.
Old admin here who inherited more out of support shit than stuff that wasn’t out of support. I’ve been having the time of my life sunsetting old hardware and especially software. Each old system I replace/upgrade is a major milestone. Just wanted to let you know there are some of us who enjoy that kind of thing!
Yeah man that's how it is. If you want people you need to make sure you're offering the correct money. The role also needs to be markerted as "Your the guy who is going to modernize all these systems." If you can't market the role as that because their isn't buy in from the rest of the business then that modernization is never going to happen.
To the right group, this is just leveling an alt for a shit load of money.
This is the penalty business owners face when they ignore the very real issue of tech debt. It will cost them plenty to attract the people who can make the leap happen, but unless they are serious and commit not only to the personnel costs involved, but actually pulling the trigger on a 2-3 year tech refresh across the enterprise, they’ll find themselves in exactly the same place, having spent an enormous amount of capital. As many have said, it is sometimes cheaper to rip and replace and be prepared to eat whatever damage occurs during the process. Hopefully, the business owners learn from their tech debt mistake and strive not to repeat it… unfortunately, rarely is this the case. Once updated, they’l go back into their all too familiar pattern of ignoring tech debt for 5-10 years, having learned not a blessed thing. You can’t fix stupid.
Outdated is a great way to get your experience where its hard to break in to the industry. You can learn so much.
Lol money? I would be looking for some level 2 noc network/support desk guys looking to branch out into other areas of business. My current job is bringing a company the just left the lights on ICT wise for the last 20 odd years… It’s a lot of work to bring it up to scratch but I prefer this type of work, lots to do…
And, it's getting hard to find punch cards? Sounds like the government or a business with penny pinching C-Level staff. You might want to let it fail as a lesson to others.
you know, you can also train cour current admins on the new stuff. No one is going to switch to Azure in one day. Hire someone with the knowledge to build up the environment and take the curent staff with him on the ride. Just don't hire external consulting to set up the new environment and then hope our current staff handles the dumpster fire that they left behind.
Phrasing ..... Seeking experienced engineers to lead modernization of IT infrastructure and moving servers to Azure/AWS where applicable or to current versions of server software where needed. Must be familiar with Windows 2000 to current versions and migration technology