I was hired into help desk with no formal IT education, certifications, or prior experience. After two years of learning on the job, I was promoted to sysadmin. I now manage switches, firewalls, networking, subnetting, Microsoft 365 services such as Entra, Intune, Exchange, and Teams, along with hardware setups, cabling, onboarding, and day-to-day support.
A week after my promotion, the entire help desk team was gone. Some people were fired and others left, and the company has not replaced them after roughly a month. Now I am effectively the only IT person supporting more than 1,000 employees. We receive around 15–20 tickets per day, onboard about five new hires each week, and still expect me to maintain Jira, Microsoft 365, the network, and larger administrative projects. The ticket backlog has more than doubled, while management continues assigning additional work.
I am exhausted by the middle of every workday and feel like I am constantly falling further behind. I know the obvious advice is to find another job, but I have only two years of experience, no degree, and no certifications. I had planned to study for A+, though I am wondering whether I should skip it and focus on Network+ or another certification instead. I am not a strong book learner, so I am unsure what path makes the most sense. How should I handle the current workload, communicate the staffing problem, protect my health, and plan my next career move?
3 Answers
You probably do not need A+ at this point. A+ is mainly useful for establishing basic hardware and support knowledge, which you already have through experience. Network+ could help if you want a broad networking foundation, while CCNA may be more valuable if networking is your target, though it requires more focused study. Security+ may also help depending on the jobs you want. More important than any single certificate is documenting your projects, technologies, responsibilities, and measurable results.
Do not wait until you are completely burned out to use your PTO or set boundaries. Take time away, protect your hands and eyes, and avoid turning every evening into unpaid overtime. The company may be unhappy when work is delayed, but a visible backlog is useful evidence that the current staffing model does not work. Your health and ability to keep earning are more important than rescuing an organization that chose not to replace its entire support team.
This company needs to rebuild the help desk or bring in temporary or managed-service support. One person cannot sustainably provide front-line support, onboarding, network administration, cloud administration, and security for 1,000 users. Present it as a business-risk and continuity issue: what happens when you are sick, take vacation, or leave? Include examples of delayed work, security risks, and projects that cannot be completed with the current capacity.
Frame it around outcomes rather than refusing work. Explain which projects will slip, which risks remain open, and what additional headcount or outside support would cost compared with an outage or security incident.
Choose a certification that supports your next job rather than collecting one just to feel qualified. Your hands-on experience already demonstrates that you can learn unfamiliar systems and operate them in production.