What is it like to work as an IT Manager | Developer | Systems Administrator?
I thought I would take the time to describe a day in my life. This describes a single day as a snapshot. If you are considering a career in IT, development, or systems administration this article will provide some insight into a typical day.
About my job:
I work as the single IT person, sometimes referred to as one-man show, for a small company, I have been here almost 2 years in this role. I am the IT Manager, System Administrator, and Developer. I oversee the entire IT infrastructure of the business including servers, workstations, network, backup, and security. I also manage and develop our business software, website, and in-house software solutions. I manage my own budget and I plan my own projects and days on an annual basis. I also create and maintain business compliance policies relating to physical, administrative, and technical security.
In this role, I wear many hat's and no two days are the same which is why I love my job so much. Some days I spend 6 hours coding on a new project I'm developing, other days I spend the day putting out small fires and working on projects.
It's Tuesday:
7:45am - Arrive at work, Greet Employees
8:00am - 9:00am - Respond to Emails, Check Calendar, Check Company Email Quarantine, Check Cybersecurity News (breaches, zero-days, malware, etc.), Review any monitoring alert and security alerts, check backup status, listen to voicemails
9:00-12:00pm - Check Monday.com for current projects and tasks. Begin working on projects
Todays' Projects:
Upgrade Crystal Reports on 2 servers
Setup new Server 2019 Domain Controller as part of migration from 2012r2 to 2019
Begin working new new server provisioning and install
10:15am - Interrupted for meeting with office manager, detour from projects. A 🔥 to put out.
Create SQL query to identify impacted records from recent issue
Create new crystal report based on manager request to track impact of issue and ability to run recurring in future
Create SQL job to monitor for new instances of problem and create notification for users
Assign project to staff members to rectify problem
11:15 - Meeting with staff members to educate on problem and resolution
11:30 - Review tech news and forums until lunch, work on projects after lunch
12:00pm - 1:00pm lunch hour 🌮
1:00pm - 4:00pm - Check Email, none urgent so Let's resume projects
New DC Server configured in Hyper-V, provisioned in Cluster
Run Updates
Join Domain
Install AD, DNS, DHCP
Promote to DC
1:30pm - User calls that audio is not working and is needed for Teams call right away, another 🔥. Assist user, 🧯.
1:40pm - Resume projects
Finish setting up dc
Software upgrade for Crystal reports on Server 1
Software Upgrade for Crystal Reports on Server 2 requires downtime, schedule maintenance window for after-hours.
3:15pm - Update projects and tasks on Monday.com, prep for next day
3:30pm - We are in the final stretch. Projects done for today, check email, work on learning Remix as a side project until 4:00pm
4:00pm - 🕓 Time to go home! 🚀
5:00pm - 10:00pm - Aside from family time, I also spend time on my business, my blogs, my projects, and hobbies. At times there is after-hour maintenance work needed which requires night and weekend work, but this is infrequent.
This day was a typical Tuesday in my life. No other day will be the same as this one but I wouldn't change it for the world. I love that every day is new opportunities for growth and resolving business problems. The people I work with are fantastic and provide great solutions to problems along with responsive feedback for issues.
Feel free to ask any questions that you have and I'll do my best to answer them.
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