Why do you need to wait until you are 30 years old to be an IT manager? I am 25 years old and an IT manager at a company of about 170 employees and I have definitely have a love / hate relationship with the job but I never have come home wishing I didn't jump at the opportunity. I have a staff of 6 people and I got into this position because the CEO (we didn't have a CIO at the time) recognized that I had the ability to take the position and he gave me the opportunity so I always work my hardest to prove his decision a good one each day.
In terms of the technical details and hours, I definitely don't get my hands dirty as much as I used to and I do spend a whole heck of a lot of time in meetings each day. But I also get to see the business side of the organization which is a whole different animal than you will ever see as a sys admin. To me this is just as interesting as the technical details of how IT works and you can't experience this without giving management a shot. It's also easy for non-managers to say that as soon as you take the leap you lose your technical abilities, but I will let you know that I can still write C# code as well as anyone else in my department or setup a EMC SAN as needed. Do I do these things every day? No, but I do generally get to make the decision to buy all this cool new technology and am usually the first one to get to try it out when it comes in.
My hours actually have not changed since becoming a manager, I still work 10 or 11 hour days on average and have to come in on the weekends occasionally to make sure some critical updates happen correctly to our core systems. If you are used to working your butt off then management is not going to be much more of a stretch for you in terms of time commitment. You will have documents to write, procedures to come up with and performance reviews to conduct but that is all part of the game.
Overall the worst thing that can happen is that you decide it not for you and you move away from the management track and back down into the trenches which is a perfectly valid decision and one that any director or VP should respect. I would not go asking for a management position if you have not been at the company for a while though as I do think your work should speak for itself when a senior manager is ready to make the decision to promote someone from within the organization. However, if the the opportunity presents itself and you are interested in the business of IT then I would go for it and see what happens.
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Why do you need to wait until you are 30 years old to be an IT manager? I am 25 years old and an IT manager at a company of about 170 employees and I have definitely have a love / hate relationship with the job but I never have come home wishing I didn't jump at the opportunity. I have a staff of 6 people and I got into this position because the CEO (we didn't have a CIO at the time) recognized that I had the ability to take the position and he gave me the opportunity so I always work my hardest to prove his decision a good one each day.
In terms of the technical details and hours, I definitely don't get my hands dirty as much as I used to and I do spend a whole heck of a lot of time in meetings each day. But I also get to see the business side of the organization which is a whole different animal than you will ever see as a sys admin. To me this is just as interesting as the technical details of how IT works and you can't experience this without giving management a shot. It's also easy for non-managers to say that as soon as you take the leap you lose your technical abilities, but I will let you know that I can still write C# code as well as anyone else in my department or setup a EMC SAN as needed. Do I do these things every day? No, but I do generally get to make the decision to buy all this cool new technology and am usually the first one to get to try it out when it comes in.
My hours actually have not changed since becoming a manager, I still work 10 or 11 hour days on average and have to come in on the weekends occasionally to make sure some critical updates happen correctly to our core systems. If you are used to working your butt off then management is not going to be much more of a stretch for you in terms of time commitment. You will have documents to write, procedures to come up with and performance reviews to conduct but that is all part of the game.
Overall the worst thing that can happen is that you decide it not for you and you move away from the management track and back down into the trenches which is a perfectly valid decision and one that any director or VP should respect. I would not go asking for a management position if you have not been at the company for a while though as I do think your work should speak for itself when a senior manager is ready to make the decision to promote someone from within the organization. However, if the the opportunity presents itself and you are interested in the business of IT then I would go for it and see what happens.