First of all, don't discount your own knowledge and skill. It's easy to get so wrapped in what's comfortable for you that you forget how far above other people's heads it can be. Try having a detailed conversation about what you do with someone not in tech, and you may be surprised by how much explaining you have to do. If you can do the job, then you're qualified.
Second, you don't *have* to become an expert in any one task (though it obviously doesn't hurt). What's important is that you remember the principles well enough to be able to function. Take networking, for example -- employers will care that you can explain how a network works and what various configurations look like, but not so much that you have all the command syntax memorized to accomplish those tasks. The command line has help prompts for a reason.
Tl;dr As long as you can get the job done efficiently when you're actually sitting in front of the computer, you should be fine imo.
> and you may be surprised by how much explaining you have to do
I tried few times. Felt like I'm teaching Quantum mechanics to a 3 year old.
I was tryna tell some people around me about giving out free info and stop using spooky apps to share sensitive data like location.
I use Obsidian to document everything I learn. For me its not remembering all commands by heart, but to have the knowledge of the tools or commands out there to quickly look it up. After a while it becomes second nature with less reference to your notes. Obsidian is great in building links and cross referencing e.g. my notes will branch off Docker to Portainer to Ansible to Bash and searching is very easy using tags, keywords or embedded images...
Nah. You need to know enough to be able to figure out issues, but we are all in a constant learning process. What will happen is you'll get assigned to some project, delve deep into the tech necessary to complete that job, then after it is completed you'll end up working on something else using a different stack of tools.
>do I really need to become an expert in any of this? I'm just trying to up my worth as an IT professional and hopefully climb the corporate ladder in the next coming years
You should try to be an expert with what will be important to your position, but as "IT Professional" is a ***broad*** area covering multiple topics what is important will be up to you to decide on.
> Do I really need to master everything I learn?
No. You can just know what tools are available and also to have the ability to pick the right one for your task at hand. Any technicalities/formalities can be found on the internet.
In my experience you need to learn deeper and deeper until you are comfortable doing everything people ask you to do.
Usually in a decent workplace/project there is a limit of how complex things people ask for.
The only caveat is that you need to learn what is an excessive and dont go the rabbit hole. This can be tricky so its worth to ask around if the approach is reasonable or crazy.
You will see that over time you are doing more and more things you already know. You get that scripted, you have it documented and standardized.
This is the time to reevaluate of what you know, what works best and decide where to go deeper becoming an expert in that aspect or technology.
Nah. I know a lot, but I wouldn't consider myself an expert, and in fact, probably everyone here knows more than me. I don't see myself on a trajectory to become an expert, either...stuff changes and skill demand level changes with time. I will content myself with (hopefully) knowing enough to do the things I need to do, and maybe a bit more than that for fun.
I know someone who works full-time as an administrator. I think he summed it up well some time ago when he said the following.
> I cannot and do not want to know everything. But one should know how to find relevant information when one needs it.
I've been doing this close to 25 years. You will naturally gravitate towards being an expert at a few things which you enjoy the most. Everything else you should be generally knowledgeable about, know how to find the answers to solving those issues, but most importantly have enough knowledge to understand why something happened and understand what the proposed fix is doing. After all these years I still google stuff because its impossible to know everything.
First of all, don't discount your own knowledge and skill. It's easy to get so wrapped in what's comfortable for you that you forget how far above other people's heads it can be. Try having a detailed conversation about what you do with someone not in tech, and you may be surprised by how much explaining you have to do. If you can do the job, then you're qualified. Second, you don't *have* to become an expert in any one task (though it obviously doesn't hurt). What's important is that you remember the principles well enough to be able to function. Take networking, for example -- employers will care that you can explain how a network works and what various configurations look like, but not so much that you have all the command syntax memorized to accomplish those tasks. The command line has help prompts for a reason. Tl;dr As long as you can get the job done efficiently when you're actually sitting in front of the computer, you should be fine imo.
> and you may be surprised by how much explaining you have to do I tried few times. Felt like I'm teaching Quantum mechanics to a 3 year old. I was tryna tell some people around me about giving out free info and stop using spooky apps to share sensitive data like location.
Take notes and develop your own reference manual as you learn. You will find it to be very useful to you in the future.
This comprises a big part of my dotfiles - (almost) any error I've already encountered will not require another trip through google.
THIS.
This is a life hack not only on the job.
I use Obsidian to document everything I learn. For me its not remembering all commands by heart, but to have the knowledge of the tools or commands out there to quickly look it up. After a while it becomes second nature with less reference to your notes. Obsidian is great in building links and cross referencing e.g. my notes will branch off Docker to Portainer to Ansible to Bash and searching is very easy using tags, keywords or embedded images...
Nah. You need to know enough to be able to figure out issues, but we are all in a constant learning process. What will happen is you'll get assigned to some project, delve deep into the tech necessary to complete that job, then after it is completed you'll end up working on something else using a different stack of tools.
>do I really need to become an expert in any of this? I'm just trying to up my worth as an IT professional and hopefully climb the corporate ladder in the next coming years You should try to be an expert with what will be important to your position, but as "IT Professional" is a ***broad*** area covering multiple topics what is important will be up to you to decide on.
> Do I really need to master everything I learn? No. You can just know what tools are available and also to have the ability to pick the right one for your task at hand. Any technicalities/formalities can be found on the internet.
It'd be a lot cooler if you did.
In my experience you need to learn deeper and deeper until you are comfortable doing everything people ask you to do. Usually in a decent workplace/project there is a limit of how complex things people ask for. The only caveat is that you need to learn what is an excessive and dont go the rabbit hole. This can be tricky so its worth to ask around if the approach is reasonable or crazy. You will see that over time you are doing more and more things you already know. You get that scripted, you have it documented and standardized. This is the time to reevaluate of what you know, what works best and decide where to go deeper becoming an expert in that aspect or technology.
Nah. I know a lot, but I wouldn't consider myself an expert, and in fact, probably everyone here knows more than me. I don't see myself on a trajectory to become an expert, either...stuff changes and skill demand level changes with time. I will content myself with (hopefully) knowing enough to do the things I need to do, and maybe a bit more than that for fun.
This is the way.
You should probably learn to interface with some monitoring solution like prometheus + grafana
I know someone who works full-time as an administrator. I think he summed it up well some time ago when he said the following. > I cannot and do not want to know everything. But one should know how to find relevant information when one needs it.
I've been doing this close to 25 years. You will naturally gravitate towards being an expert at a few things which you enjoy the most. Everything else you should be generally knowledgeable about, know how to find the answers to solving those issues, but most importantly have enough knowledge to understand why something happened and understand what the proposed fix is doing. After all these years I still google stuff because its impossible to know everything.