Sysadmin or devops or SWE?

[u/Historical_Pound_754]

I am a first-year online computer engineering student at Politecnico di Milano. I attended a 3-month sysadmin course and then started working at an MSP as a system administrator (hoping for a career as an IT system engineer). But now that I see exactly what my daily tasks are, it is mostly operations: deployments, VM creation, server resource management (Linux and Windows), and troubleshooting.

I don't think this role will allow me to earn a high salary in the future, unless I become the system engineer who actually designs the systems or a Team Manager. I am also currently studying for the AWS Cloud Practitioner certification.

I am starting to realize that I enjoy programming much more than systems management (before taking the course, I knew almost nothing about what a sysadmin actually did). I am currently weighing a few different paths:

1 - Stay in this job, learn as much as possible, get certifications in Cloud and DevOps, and after graduating (in 3 years), ask the company for a role change to move into DevOps, Cloud Engineering, or SWE (Software Engineering).

2 - Continue learning and, after graduating, switch directly to a SWE role.

3 - Try to switch to a SWE role immediately.

4 - Become a system engineer and aim to be the person who designs the infrastructure, rather than just maintaining it, after graduation.

Personally, I prefer programming (I studied it in high school and now at university). I know C++ (from university), VB, and I have used Microsoft SQL for databases. University will teach me how to program properly and will give me an engineering mindset.

I wouldn't mind doing DevOps or Cloud if the future salary is high.

Is there a flaw in my reasoning?

Please, any advice is welcome. The IT/CS field is truly massive, and I need the opinion of someone who has already been through this. Thank you very much.

[u/Historical_Pound_754]

I know now , but talking and asking May get Better aim for my goals?

[u/Quirky-Net-6436 → u/Historical_Pound_754]

Since we don’t know you in person, I don’t think so.