“You can’t find good help anymore.” That age-old complaint may well hold true when it comes to networking professionals. Companies are finding it difficult to fill positions that require expertise in today’s complex networks.
According to a recent survey by Ipswitch Inc.’s Network Management Division, companies reported that system administrators were the most difficult to find with network managers in second place.
The survey highlights the difficulty of finding new IT talent specifically in the vital network support roles. System administrators and network managers are needed to mitigate network downtime and take remedial action in time to prevent loss of availability and ensure business continuity.
The survey of 300 companies asked, “What IT positions are the most difficult to find talent for today?” The results were:
- System Administrator – 27.9 percent
- Network Manager – 22.7 percent
- IT Manager – 17.2 percent
- Software Developer – 14.6 percent
- Program Analyst – 10.4 percent
- Telecommunications Manager – 7.1 percent
“System administrators and network managers are often the unsung heroes of IT. In many cases, especially among small to midsize enterprises, the network is the business. After all, the network enables collaboration, communication, and commerce — everything that helps an organization to run and grow,” said Azmi Jafarey, CIO, Ipswitch, Inc. “It is paramount that organizations invest more in training and skills development to ensure that system administrators and network managers have the expertise to transfer to new recruits.”
Organizations should also consider outsourcing their system and network administration needs to a qualified managed services provider.
The reason sysadmins are so hard to find is that it’s a thankless job. Half the time it’s not even considered a technical position, and the other half of the time you get less respect than the QA guys do. After all, if you were any good you’d be a programmer, right? Or at least a QA guy.
No one knows what you do, but they sure know who to complain about when the Internet goes down.
The best you can hope for is invisbility; after all, if the Internet *doesn’t* go down you stay invisible, but if it *does* go down they’ll replace you with a contractor.
It’s a rare shop that recognizes the value of a good sysadmin team and an even rarer one that’s willing pay them enough to keep them around never mind budget for all that proactive DR stuff. When I make CTO I’m not going to have system administrators. I’m going to have infrastructure engineers and enterprise imbrication analysts. That way no one will give me any grief when I want to pay them as much as programmers.