I was hired into help desk with no formal IT education, certifications, or previous experience. After two years of learning on the job, I was promoted to sysadmin. My responsibilities now include managing switches and firewalls, troubleshooting networks and subnetting, administering Microsoft 365 services such as Entra, Intune, Exchange, and Teams, handling Jira, and supporting users.
The week after my promotion, the entire help desk team disappeared—some people were fired and others left for better jobs. We have now gone about a month without help desk staff, leaving me as the only IT person for more than 1,000 employees. I receive roughly 15–20 tickets per day, prepare five new hires each week, and still have to handle infrastructure and administrative work. The onboarding process alone can take most of a day when several people start at once, and the ticket queue has more than doubled.
My workload keeps increasing, I am mentally exhausted by the middle of every day, and I am worried that speaking up could put my job at risk. I earn close to six figures, so abruptly leaving could seriously affect my family and housing. At the same time, this situation is clearly not sustainable.
I had planned to study for the A+ certification, partly because I am not a strong book learner and thought it would help me build a foundation. Should I still pursue A+, move directly to Network+, or consider something like CCNA or Security+? More importantly, how should I set boundaries, communicate the staffing problem, protect my health, and decide whether to start applying elsewhere?
5 Answers
You need to make the staffing shortage a documented management problem instead of silently absorbing it. Ask your manager for a meeting, bring ticket counts, onboarding hours, backlog growth, project delays, and the risks of having no coverage, and ask for clear priorities and a hiring plan. If everything is labeled urgent, ask which item should be done first and get that decision in writing. Keep the ticket system accurate so there is a record of what you completed and what could not be completed with one person.
You have already demonstrated that you can learn difficult systems quickly, but being capable of doing several jobs does not mean the company should expect one person to perform them indefinitely. You can present management with two realistic choices: rebuild the help desk so you can focus on infrastructure, or formally expand your role into an IT lead or manager position with appropriate authority, staffing, and compensation. If they refuse both options, treat that as useful information and keep moving toward another employer. Protect your hands, sleep, and mental health too—burnout and repetitive strain can follow you long after the job ends.
Start applying immediately, while you still have a paycheck. Do not reject yourself before employers do—two years of experience running networks, firewalls, Microsoft 365, endpoint management, onboarding, and user support is more substantial than many people have at that stage. Describe the actual work you perform rather than focusing on the lack of a degree or certifications. A junior sysadmin role at a larger organization may give you better support and a healthier workload without necessarily requiring a pay cut.
The compensation is the part that makes me hesitate, but I agree that applying cannot hurt. I am going to update my résumé and see what the market looks like.
For certifications, A+ is probably not the best use of your time if you are already doing full sysadmin work. It can be useful for someone entering IT or needing a structured fundamentals review, but it will not accurately represent your current responsibilities. Network+ is a reasonable broad networking option, while CCNA is more focused and valuable if networking is the direction you want to pursue. Security+ may also help depending on the roles you target. Choose one that supports your next job rather than collecting certificates just to validate experience you already have.
You do not have to wait for a certification before applying. Document your projects, technologies, troubleshooting work, and measurable results now, then study when you have enough energy.
Work a sustainable schedule, take your lunch and breaks, and stop using unpaid overtime to hide the staffing failure. Prioritize issues based on business impact: outages, security problems, and work affecting many employees come first; minor inconveniences and optional projects wait. When something slips, explain that the available capacity was already consumed instead of trying to rescue everything after hours. Taking PTO may also make the situation visible, since the company needs to know what happens when its only IT employee is unavailable.
I am worried that letting things fall behind will be used against me, but I can see that constantly working faster is only concealing the real problem.
This is also a security and continuity risk, not just a personal workload issue. A company of this size should have coverage for illness, vacations, emergencies, and basic separation of duties.