My Transition to Management

After a few years as a Linux system administrator with the Vanderbilt University IT department, I was approached by our senior leadership to become the manager of our Linux team. There had been a few staffing changes that created a gap in our team. I declined the role. I was grateful for the consideration, but I felt that the timing was not good. I had been working with my peers for several years, and I was not sure how that would impact my transition. I was instead promoted to senior system administrator.

A short time later, the data center manager moved on to another role, and I became the manager for the IT department data centers. As a system admin, I was in the data center practically every day. I was familiar with the processes. A few months later, the org chart changed again. The ironic part is that the Linux admins were merged with the data center team to become a larger IT operations team.