u/Infectedtoe32

I live in a really rural area and IT jobs are really the only thing around me. Software positions don’t exist. I am not quite ready to move to the metropolitan city yet, because I would like to try to get a few years of experience while living at home.

However, I genuinely like both software development and IT. My degree is IT as well, and I have mainly been working on game engines, games, web apps, and that sort of stuff on the side. My current internship is well aware that I am currently stronger in software development, but they still brought me on even though the role is more IT heavy. I told them how I’d like to do SRE stuff as my ultimate career goal and everything though.

Anyways, it may sound like a dumb question, but is this a solid path? I’m just assuming a SRE role may prefer a SWE over someone doing SysAdmin work. I do plan to stay on top of programming throughout my career, as a hobby, regardless. It’s just all my actual work experience will be in IT most likely.

Just out of sheer curiosity, is it ok to ask? Maybe not on your first day orientation as soon as you walk in the door. Maybe once you get going after a couple days? I am currently waiting for the background check to come back for a SysAdmin internship, already signed offer letter and everything. I live in a fairly rural area too, so I am just genuinely curious how many people interviewed.

So basically, I am interested in everything tech. I am currently developing a game engine, I have a decent home lab with Virtual Box and everything, I am studying network designing or rather engineering I guess, studying for certs, and just staying up to date on tech news and stuff. This is literally what I love doing, I love learning new things, problem solving, and helping people.

I am a fresh grad with a bachelors in IT, and I just landed a Sysadmin internship at my local ISP which I am very excited about. I emphasized my programming during the interview, since I have experience with Django, NextJS, and setting up JWT's and all that stuff as well (not just C++). They were surprised and said they haven't had someone come through like me ever before. I basically chalked it up to yea, this is just what I do all day every day, so I play around with stuff.

Anyways, I just like doing it all, and I like programming equally the same as IT work. I've built several computers and stuff like that (which is close enough equivalent I have to base it on, outside of class, so far), plus my lab, and studies. I looked into SysAdmin stuff because it seems right up my alley, little bit of programming, little bit of IT work, little bit of helping people, little bit of everything. However, I seen Devops as well, which the one thing I hate about programming is configuring environments, setting up Docker, doing the SSH key id link to GitHub, etc. I haven't even touched Kubernetes (and honestly feel like I don't want to) but have dabbled with Azure Devops and AWS. The next advancement I seen from SysAdmin was stuff like Site Reliability Engineer, but I am not sure how much hands on work that involves.

I just wish software development and IT weren't seen as being completely unrelated. Ideally I would like to be able to bounce around since I am always reading books, and learning new things in my own time. But, the way it seems, doing something like SysAdmin or SRE is my best route of doing both. These also don't even dig into Network Engineering really, but I could settle on not doing that, since I am positive there is tons I don't know and will probably never know. I did see ethical hacking as well and diving into cybersecurity stuff like that, but haven't really dabbled too much with it. I watch John Hammond on Youtube, but its more of just for fun thing, goes in one ear out the other type deal.

Anyways, I am excited about my internship. It is temp to hire, but nothing is guaranteed. So, if I manage to get hired, then I will pretty much skip tier 1 help desk and probably pick up on all of that at the ISP and MSP anyways (its a dual thing, but they are ISP first). Right now I feel beyond confident to reset a password in Active Directory, more so referring to the day to day operations, printer stuff, and places I am lacking a bit. So yea, just looking for some advice for someone in my situation.

Edit: I will say, I do really really enjoy game development and am contempt on doing programming as a hobby making indie games. Then, who cares about all the Ai supposedly taking CS jobs (I supposed its the same for IT) I just make games my way, how I want to. But, at work I would definitely appreciate at least having some scripting to do while also doing IT work.

I signed the offer contract earlier for a SysAdmin internship at my local ISP. When going over the contract, the lady said there will be onsite MSP work that will represent tier 1 or 2 user support and will be about 10% of the job. They said full offers are typically extended, but they cannot guarantee anything.

Anyways, I live in a fairly rural area, and I was just wondering how much weight this would hold when applying elsewhere afterwards. I'm hoping I get the role, because SysAdmin is what I want to do career wise, but other opportunities in my area are tier 1 - 3 help desk. So, I am just seeing if this will significantly help in landing a role at these other places. I have been consistently landing interviews already, but was never selected.

So yea, basically as the title says. I applied to a role about two weeks ago, that I qualify for, and within three days I was declined. I noticed the listing is still up, because it is a fairly large company in my region and I keep tabs on the business. I figured I may as well apply again. I applied earlier this morning, and not even four hours later I get a call to schedule an interview. I'm definitely not mentioning I have applied before. However, it seems odd I go from being a definite no to now seemingly desperately wanted. Maybe they did a round of interviews or something and realized they had a bunch of "phoneys" that appeared better than me. Then I just so happened to re-land in their system and they are praising the heavens. Idk, either way it just seems a bit odd it went that fast after being declined.

Applied for an internship back on March 27th, 2026, at a local company in a fairly rural town. On April 14th, 2026 I received notice that they want to interview me and I had said interview on the 16th which went amazing. Now here we are on May 4th and I have zero notice on if I am moving forward or what. I am definitely assuming I am ghosted, however, I was just curious if I should reapply since they keep reposting the listing. They would probably throw my new application in the trash, or maybe some miracle they have some internal issues going on and they lost all their candidates or something, and this is an act of god that I reapply. Idk, either way, the only one who can advocate for yourself is yourself, the way I see it.

Edit: They could just be really really slow too. The listing did not specifically list it as a summer internship, and during the interview they told me all about what I would be doing, and how this role is for me to have a four month long interview essentially. They said there are monthly performance reports, and they are hiring a couple of their top performing interns full time. He was going into everything, he gave me NDA details of clients they are working with, their software they use, all sorts of information about their software, and we had a full conversation. We were talking about stuff they use that I really have an interest in as well, and he related the work back to my experience and everything. That's why I said the interview went great, he was talking as if I was already working there haha. But yea, I know ghosting is common these days and details in the interview don't really matter or mean anything, but it just sucks. I am about 95% certain I was passed up, but we'll see I guess, will give it one last hurrah.

Edit 2: I am still applying elsewhere and stuff. I am not glued to this specific role. It's just this role is literally word for word exactly what I want to do career wise, and have been doing as a hobby pretty much, along with college work. So yea, this one was just one I got my hopes up slightly for and I'm still attached to it a bit, and just wishing that 5% chance will come true lol. One can dream.

The position is Tier 1 IT Support, which is a perfect fit for me heading out of college with my bachelors in IT and overall being interested in tech. Anyways, the interview was with the IT Director of the company and it just felt like a natural conversation. We talked about the job, my interest in tech and what I do, the director's experiences, and my future ambitions and everything. Like I said, was just a naturally flowing conversation.

When I arrived home about forty five minutes afterwards, I sent a thank you email to the recruiter that set everything up. I didn't get the director's email, but asked her to give him a thank you, if she sees him. Well, she replied in about twenty minutes (if that) and said it was great meeting me too and she will gladly let him know. First time I have ever had a recruiter actually follow up with a thank you. So, maybe things truly went well and they liked me, who knows. Obviously not reading into it too much, but at least getting stronger signals from this interview than others I have had.

Edit: I find out later this week about the results. He said he still has 10 more interviews to do. The entire time though he was almost talking as if I already worked there. However, like everything else in the process, it has no real meaning except for making you feel good about yourself I guess.