General Discussion - How do you get more responsibility?

Author

How do you get more responsibility?

DSComputers

2003-12-28, 12:47 pm

Right now I'm one of two admins for a company with ~300 users spread across 5 locations in 2 states. Of the two admins, I'm #2, and I should be, given my experience. But I don't feel like I'm doing all I could be doing. So my question is, how do you go about getting more responsibility at work? I do mostly user level support, fixing the PCs and helping users with stuff they manage to break. I do the backups sometimes. I make suggestions for different things on the servers but don't actually make the changes.
That was fine at first but now that I've been there almost 5 months, I'm getting bored only doing upgrades and fixes for the users.
So, any recommendations? Ideas on how to ask the lead admin for more permissions/responsibility? I'm not sure I've completely earned his trust yet

TIA

azimuth40

2003-12-28, 1:31 pm

Simply ask him to evaluate your performance. "Hey Jim can you tell me how am I doing? " Depending on the company you may be up for a review at 6 months anyway. Take the tasks that are in limbo and that no one wants to do.

jimbo2002

2003-12-28, 3:17 pm

Realistically I dont think 5 months is very long in a job. The trouble is, what you want to do and what the boss wants you to do can be very different. It may well be that he knows you can do more and want to do more but he will know what needs to be done and he will have his priorities, he has to use his resources to keep things going. Since there is only two of you, I would say its going to be more of the same. But probably as time goes on and he gets more comfortable with what you are doing it will probably improve, I wouldnt force his hand, but give it more time. As aizimuth40 says, a review might not be far off anyhow, you could sound it out then. Just my thoughts.

eljefe79

2003-12-28, 4:19 pm

Hey DS,

In my experience it takes a while for the Internal Staffers to warm up to your presence... so in that regard I believe Jimbo has given you some good advice. Even though your part of their team and an employee, they need to know that you will do things the way that they want them done with the attention to detail that they deem necessary.

What I have found that helps the process along are:

1. Automate your job as much as possible to save time, energy and money.
2. Ask your harried co-workers..."Is there anything that I can do to help you out?" They may give you scrap work, but like any "relationship" it's the thought that counts. Help is always appreciated.
3. Look for things that cost "the team" time, money, sweat and migraines and see if you can propose a solution to eliminate or limit its' impact.

Here's an Example;

In the time that was the late 90's, a department that I was assigned to was overwhelmed and Engineers were doing PC builds. Turn-over and stress was high. The senior engineer was about to stroke out because they were just inundated with desktop calls and infrastructure tickets. One day, I caught Todd bent over in his cube from an ulcer, and said "Bud you're in pain let me help you out, what can I do... because this ain't healthy for you and not worth it!". He asked, "What can you do?" and I responded that I would take all the PC calls off his shoulders and that would help him get pro active on the infrastucture issues. He said that that would be nice...and I went to town. Didn't really care about the details either. Ultimately with ghost and desktop standardization, both the engineers and users were happier anyway. We formed a bond, I learned more and was entrusted with server management and became the corporate flyboy which led to 90 hr weeks! I got what I asked for...boy did I get it. There were some great times there and that bond between Todd and I still lasts today.

Moral of the story is... look inside yourself to find out how you can do your job better to help others and show initiative.

Best of luck

Sponsored Links