I joined my current company as a web developer after completing a coding bootcamp. A few months later, the help desk technician left, and my boss asked me to take over IT. I accepted because it came with a pay increase and I already had some basic troubleshooting experience.
About a year later, I was promoted to IT Manager, even though I am still the only internal IT employee. We use an MSP for servers and networking, while I handle day-to-day support, budgeting, phishing-awareness training, hardware replacements, onboarding and offboarding, MDM, VoIP phones, and general service tickets. Most issues are straightforward, and for anything more complicated I research the solution as I go.
I earned my A+ certification after moving into IT and have started studying networking. I have now been in this role for more than three years. Our environment is mostly Microsoft-based and hybrid, so I am studying MD-102, planning to learn more Azure, and gradually using PowerShell in my daily work.
Because the company only has around 100 employees, I know there are probably many areas I have not encountered yet. Would my current experience be enough to compete for a systems administrator position, or should I focus on advancing toward another IT management role? I am interested in developing my technical skills, but I am also unsure whether moving into a sysadmin position would be viewed as a step backward.
4 Answers
You effectively skipped the traditional systems administrator stage and moved into a small-company IT management role. Because of that, a sysadmin job may be viewed as a lateral move or even a downgrade in title and pay, but that does not mean it is the wrong choice. If you prefer hands-on technical work and dislike meetings, HR responsibilities, budgeting, and performance reviews, moving back toward engineering can absolutely make sense.
Be realistic about the market: you would be competing with administrators who have several years of dedicated infrastructure experience. Based only on what you described, I would expect you to be considered around the junior sysadmin level rather than as an experienced administrator. That is not an insult; your current role simply has not exposed you to every area of enterprise infrastructure. You may need to accept a lateral move or temporary pay reduction if gaining deeper technical experience is your priority.
Also, not knowing everything is normal. Strong administrators are good at investigating unfamiliar systems, testing safely, documenting changes, and knowing when to escalate. Confidence comes from repeatedly doing that work, not from memorizing every technology.
Your experience could probably qualify you for junior systems administration roles, especially in a Microsoft-focused environment, but hiring managers may want more evidence of deeper infrastructure work. Make your resume specific: describe the number of users and devices supported, the MDM and identity tools you administer, onboarding and offboarding processes, security improvements, licensing and budgeting, migrations, automation, and measurable results. A lab or documented projects involving Active Directory or Entra ID, Group Policy, PowerShell, Microsoft 365, Azure, backups, monitoring, and networking would help fill in the gaps.
Studying MD-102 and Azure is useful, but practical projects will usually communicate your abilities better than a list of planned certifications. Build something, document what you changed, and be ready to explain why you made those choices.
Before choosing a path, decide what you want your next five years to look like. If you enjoy ownership, planning, vendor coordination, security, budgeting, and influencing company-wide decisions, target IT manager or technical lead roles at a larger organization. Look for positions where you manage a team but remain technically involved. If you mainly want to design, automate, troubleshoot, and maintain systems without managing people, pursue sysadmin or infrastructure roles despite the possible title change. Either path is valid; management is not automatically better, and technical work is not automatically a step backward.
Titles vary a lot between companies. Some IT managers are mostly people managers, while others are still highly technical, so compare the actual responsibilities and compensation rather than relying on the title alone.