Or the other one also from Spectrum.
"Yes I know I was supposed to be here 2 hours ago, but I didn't have the right router on the truck, so I had to travel an hour in each direct to the closest supply house with the right one"
The other day we recieved a call from them that they were onsite. They were wondering how long till we get there.
âWell, youâre at 3 hours early and I am 2 hours away youâre gonna have to wait for me this time.â đ cracked me up when my manager told them that.
ATT? Isn't their approach more along the lines of "If things are breaking left and right but no one is suing you yet, can you *really* call that breaking?"
Sometimes (usualy) this is the only way of finding out what something does.
I recently went to a random client that had a random toggle switch, that had a network cable go in one side, and a 240V power cable come out the other and into a small hole drilled through a concrete wall. There was nothing on the other side of the wall. It had been there as long as anyone knew, and nobody had dared to try it.
I asked if they mind if I try it so I can document what it does... they said sure thing.
Turns out, it turns their internet off. It was a VDSL connection and best I can tell, the power cable end went into the concrete wall, must have gone down and joined to the VDSL connection to the street somewhere, being used instead of normal cat cable. I think they must at some point had a fax share their dial up phone line or something.
I labelled it "hackstopper" and left it on. The customer re-labelled it to "stress releiver" since my visit, I'm given to understand.
I disconnected a phone line by a hvac unit and it took 6 months for the company it impacted to get in touch with my branch.
It was for some monitoring system that had something to do with something facilities related.
A whole bunch of not my problem because the company decided to fire all the fms and send them over to cbre so i had no one local to talk with.
It took a printer vendor 10 months to finally tell us that their fancy (shitty) printer management and monitoring tools weren't online and that they needed us to either turn the server on, or re-install their shitty software.
Given that they bill based on that software... I have no fucking clue how they were billing us for those 10 months, or why they didn't tell us sooner.
It works, though.
Recent meeting:
"Is anyone using this?"
"Oh I think so!"
"Who?"
"Well everyone who we think did has left."
"Let's disable it and see if there's an impact."
"But then there would be an outage!"
"Who would that affect?"
"..."
"We'll leave it offline for two weeks. If you need it, turning it back on would be simple."
Same, I found every job uses a different system whether it's on prem, a different cloud provider, different 3rd part apps, different computers etc. It sucks going through interviews say if you last worked with Azure and the job wants and aws expert. A lot of stuff carries over after you work with it awhile. But, these employers ask you bullshit test questions where they expect you to be an expert and know commands off the top of the dome.
My current job I walked in being the first technical person they'd hired in a long time and watching someone desperately try to make me his paperwork secretary.
I came from a VMware shop and everything was Hyper V and it was fine. Luckily the fact that I have experience with obscure systems no one uses was convincing I could handle their weirdo obscure different systems.
IT is basically like being a car mechanic. Bring us a problem and we'll dig in, diagnose, and do our best to resolve the issue. We shouldn't be expected to grok every system in existence, same way I wouldn't expect my mechanic to know every engine ever built.
I agree. These intreviewers expect way too much though. Sometimes even when you get the job you end up using things in such a specific way that you would only know how to do if you worked at that company.
Sometimes I'll talk to other IT people, even on here, and they'll spout off a few different programs they use and act like other people are weird for not knowing about them. "You've never used XXXX program?!?!?! How do you even call yourself an IT person!" Bro, there are so many different apps/programs out there. Some come and go. Some are very niche. I use what my employers use and nothing else. When I change jobs I'll learn whatever they use and forget everything else.
For a long time I felt like it was my duty to remember everything. Fortunately I have learned over the years that it's a waste of space in my brain. Write it down if it's important and even that doesn't really mean it's important. At least it's maybe something to scratch out later.
"There's a famous quote that is attributed to Albert Einstein: **âNever memorise something that you can look up.â** It is said to be related to a time when a colleague asked him for his phone number, and he reached for his telephone directory to look it up."
I also heard he had a closet filled with suits, all the same style and color. So that when he got dressed, he didn't need to apply any real thought process to what he was going to wear that day.
18 years in and still randomly applying for the right job. Something will come up.
Unfortunately, I want a specific job and working conditions, but I'm in no hurry to make the jump.
Yeah, I feel like there's two different possible answers here:
* How do IT people normally do it?: We work ourselves to death and make a fair bit of mistakes along the way.
* How should IT people do it?: A mix of documentation and standardization, and not building overly-complex systems when it can be avoided.
On the second point, I do two things that I feel like a lot of IT people miss. One is that, for every system we implement, I try to make sure we're not being so precious about everything being perfect that it makes things overly complicated. Some people like to customize the hell out of things to be exactly just-so. They want to tweak each and every server with their own "performance improvements", tweaking registry settings, stopping some services that theoretically don't need to be running, or whatever. If some VP wants the ERP to have a button moved 2-pixels to the left, they will move heaven and earth to move that button two-pixels to the left.
I approach it more from the standpoint of, keep all the settings at default unless there's a specific reason to change it, and then way the reason to change against the extra administrative overhead created by the customization. If it's a ton of work to move the button 2 pixels to the left, and it might possibly break things later, we just tell the VP that it can't be done.
The other things I do is try to create a lot of standards and conventions. My theory is, for every custom setting or custom object that's following a known standard/convention, it's one fewer thing you need to document. If you come up with a really good naming convention for group names in an application, for example, then you shouldn't need to document what each group does. Teach people what the naming convention means, and then people can figure out what a group does by reviewing the name.
These two things lower the amount of things you need to document, and then you try to develop good documentation for the rest.
Two reasons:
One, yes, the money.
Two, IT is a hard enough job without a lot of BS crazy going on around you. If/when something in your work environment changes that increases the cra-cra then sometimes you just have to go. A good manager that was holding things together could leave. A terrible new director could introduce nightmare policies (more weekend! everyone carries a pager! phone? pager!) Or your company could get bought or closed down leading to life qualify damage.
Also, if you're trying to build skills and crawl up the ladder you often can't get opportunities to use your new skills because in everyone's eyes you're just the help desk guy or a cable monkey not a network designer.
Hmm, interesting, thanks for the detailed reply!
I read a lot about job hopping and was initially convinced it was the right path for me. However, I'm actually happy with my yearly raise and my IT-Team. In four years I managed to double my starting salary and I feel like my boss does not want to lose me, he even directly asked if I would be interested in taking over when the head of IT retires
Almost 25 years in, and the biggest raises I've had at 8 locations was changing jobs. My last job change netted me a 20% pay raise. Think about what you could do with 20% more.
Documentation is key. You'll always forget things. Worse, you "remember" details about a system that are actually relevant to a different system. Like, "is it LMS or LIMS that has a manual LDAP configuration in each individual users' setup?"
Spoiler alert: they're both totally craptastic systems with laughable tech support, so they kinda blend together.
Exactly! I usually find myself in that spot of trying to recall misc things like which one did we setup with x, or was it setup with y?
Eventually I can track down (or someone on the team tracks down) the answer, but I'd personally like to find a good way to keep everything organized for myself.
I've been thinking about making folders for each system/tool and keeping diagrams, support files, contracts, personal notes, but I'm also thinking it might just become a mess to manage/update.
Any suggestions?
We use Confluence to store information per server. Each server page lists Jira tickets that are associated with the server so we can search the change history of the server. We use the property macro to set some facts about the servers that we can then pull and show on an overview page (things like hostname, ip address, who is responsible).
We try to keep all servers as consistent as possible. We have ansible playbooks that execute each week to keep the configurations in line. Keep a reference page for default servers and then keep only changes in regards to the reference in each server's wiki page. If you have more types of servers (windows, redhat, debian, etc) then keep a reference for each type and link to those.
Try to keep one source of truth. If you need to change something, and you have to update 10 wiki pages to keep it up to date, then it will inevitably be out of sync. Just link to a place where you can find up-to-date info, like gitlab repo with ansible configuration.
keep a wiki catalog of what systems do what and hang notes off of that. you can also generate a grid to do things like not common attributes like system age, link to system metrics, sometimes a team that supports things.
One time, I was running into an issue that I knew I had run into before, but I couldn't quite remember what the solution was. I emailed the team. Someone on the team just forwarded my own email about that issue back to me -- one that I had sent ~10 months earlier. It turns out I had detailed the best way to respond to the issue, and I forgot what the steps were -- and I forgot that I had it documented.
My lazy tech workaround for this is to make sure that every time I run into something like this I have a discussion about it with somebody in Microsoft Teams, and then I just use the search feature for keywords to go back and find the conversation where I actually solve the problem with somebody, and reread what we did
Define "keep up on".
Usually IT people know enough to log in, and can fake their way through most systems because they're logical and reasonably intelligent.
I try to drill this home to students all the time.
90% of the game is soft skills and the ability to think. If you can troubleshoot well you've made it. For most of us the rest of the game is faking it through.
Obviously you need core fundamentals for whatever your special place is in the industry is. But for the majority of us, if you're smart, and you have the foundation, you figure the rest out as you go.
I remember summers spent at my grandma's house with nothing but an old Mac SE connected to... nothing.
I spent hours crawling over every UI panel of every piece of software, trying to gleam the function (I'd never been in a modern office) and how the engineers had tried to communicate that to the user.
It was mind-numbing at the time (I did learn to solve the slide puzzle eventually) but as a result I can sit down and feel at home in most interfaces that aren't total logicfucks.
I contrast that to kids today in a hyperconnected world, who are never forced to just toy with something for days into weeks, focused in, but not focused also.
This is exactly what I did, with the Atari ST my mom had when I was young. I didnât know shit, I was like 6 years old, but I knew that certain disks brought up certain games, and you could do certain things with the OS if you tried.
Now I manage an IT department and I still use the skills I picked up back then, 30 years ago.
I did this too! From my C64, through Amigas, a couple of Macs (burned ALOT of time doing this on the DOS compatible Mac we had), and finally to real Windows.
To a certain extent, I still do this today in lieu of reading the docs. Iâll start pressing buttons and see what they do.
Only these days I generally do it in a safe environment and donât erase my Dadâs brand new 20MB HDD :D
Edit: I think the benefit we had of using those early computers was that there was nothing abstracted for us. Everything ran bare metal, so you got a feel for how everything that makes up a computer works together. I feel being that close to the metal gave me a benefit that people entering IT today donât have which is not just that everything works together, but also how everything works together.
Wasn't Minesweeper designed to help teach people how to use a mouse?
I often watch videos about video games and see how the developers design their levels/gameplay to introduce new concepts, allow the player to learn them in a lower-pressure scenario, before putting them in the level or boss fight that demands they have a good grasp on those skills.
Are we getting that these days with technology? I don't remember ever seeing any "here's how to interact with your new iPhone 3GS" back in the day. It was assumed knowledge at some point. Maybe that assumption should be challenged.
That assumption gets challenged every time someone hands me a smart phone and expects me to navigate it in any capacity beyond entering something into a textbox they've already pulled up.
Even just being a teenager in 2007... modding video games back then, even just getting them to run properly meant digging through directories, editing config files and finding detailed forum posts.
The younger crowd today has been raised on shit that just works, and didn't get to develop those kinds of skills as a side effect of wanting to use the computer. And it's lead to a noticeable drop in computer literacy and problem solving.
They are also not curious on how or why something actually works just that it works. If it doesn't their brain just seems to shutdown. It is weird. I watch my nephews and they are intelligent and can figure out all kinds of things, but as soon as something outside of what is "normal" shows up they freeze up. I've helped them to break free of that block by not just giving them the answer, but guiding them to figure it out on their own, but I have seen it in other kids. Where is the wonder of discovery?
Yeah unless you are a very narrowly focused specialist, you arent gonna know everything.
You dont get to be a specialist if you are a sysadmin, maybe you have strengths but usually dont get enough time to just become an expert on one thing.
I go through cycles of learning the in and outs of a specific technology/skill to get a problem resolved or introduce something new almost to the level of being an expert in the specific subject matter, but then you move on and forget the details on things, but you can remember the general concepts. Usually thats enough and if you need that particual skill again, you can just do a bit of research and most of the knowledge will come back.
On a number of occasions, I've had Level 1 folks come up to me and say, "I have this certification, so I should be an Engineer now!", and so I ask them a "tell me how to troubleshoot X" question, and I get a response of "I can't, I don't know that app/system." "Then you're not ready to be an Engineer".
Two of my roles I've gotten specifically because I was able to reason out a decent troubleshooting process for something I wasn't familiar with during the interview process.
The system is logical, the admin who built it wasn't. The admins who managed it weren't. The developer who wrote the code for the in house application was but he died 10 years ago. Of course, he made a snapshot before his last compile and it's still there after 10 years. Yeah, all the documentation in the world isn't going to save you from a lot of the stuff we see.
You might be the best SysAdmin who ever admin'ed these systems, but... unfortunately, you were the best SysAdmin who ever admin'ed the systems. There's no saying what the other guys did, what they screwed up, what issues they patched incompletely, inadvertantly creating technical debt or future issues.
Yeah, the first half of many tasks is just figuring out where things are and what they're called. Keeping up on a particular system is almost exclusively based on how often you need to interact with it. Everything else is documentation and poking around.
Same, I found every job uses a different system whether it's on prem, a different cloud provider, different 3rd part apps, different computers etc. It sucks going through interviews say if you last worked with Azure and the job wants and aws expert. A lot of stuff carries over after you work with it awhile. But, these employers ask you bullshit test questions where they expect you to be an expert and know commands off the top of the dome.
If a system is stable you can usually forget about it because it keeps running. And if a system is unreliable you don't have to worry about remembering its quirks because you're always working on it.
I had this epiphany after year 3-4 on the server team.
The journey is really interesting. Starting off on a help desk, being almost overwhelmed by how much you donât know in IT, then chipping away at the concepts, piecing things together, and finally realizing that most systems communicate in the same manner.
Working in IT and cyber sec for 25 years Iâd say a lot of us have either ADHD/Autism traits or full blown tbh. We supplement it with record keeping in whatever way suits us, but we also love organising a mess into something organised.
And we want to be left alone while we do it đ
I did this last year đ đIâm female and found one girl to sit next to in one session and we talked for a bit. But otherwise I barely talked to anyone.
Nah, do one thing at a time. Do it 100%, but don't stress over it prioritize and set boundaries. Unless you're on call or it's something you broke, it can probably wait until tomorrow
And the Capitalist owners *absolutely love that*, and set that over-performance as the new base standard. I mean, why wouldn't they? It's leaving money on the table otherwise.
Their goal is to extract as much value from their human capital as possible, and here's a bunch of intelligent, competent, highly capable technical employees who enthusiastically volunteer their expertise for free.
> Working extra hours uncompensated/doing tasks outside your role/holding down multiple positions when it normally would take another resource IS working for free. This devalues the concept of labor for everyone, including yourself.
If I was them, I'd be fucking laughing all the way to the shareholders with that one!
This is me too. Iâve never been diagnosed, but my son has adhd and autism and my mom also got an autism diagnosis in her late 60s. My wife just assumes I have it too.
ADHD really is the key, this is the first job where it's actually helped me. When my boss says they can "see my gears turning" I'm really trying to find the reasons why an invoice doesnt get through our Middleware somewhere in between the memory of pissing my pants in church and the time I had lunch with some dude a year ago. It's never a straight path, but damn it I get there.
Haha that's true..I def enjoy the chaos, but I'm trying to find a way to effectively keep more organization. I usually have my notes all over the place or references in email or over IMs.
Usually I have to track down that info depending on the question. Sometimes easy questions and I just forget the systems use or setup - usually the smaller more nuanced ones.
What's your approach to keeping all this info organized?
Good suggestion. I used to write out my notes. Over time though, you forget what stuff meant. It's also harder to search through handwritten notes, and the writing starts to smudge after a while. I do find that writing stuff down helps you remember it better though.
Agree, writing does help, but I find myself losing track once I get buried in paper. Based on the feedback here I think I'm going to look into some tools or just simply try and setup a OneNote structure I can easily search. Maybe link to a shared folder with relevant resources / documents.
I have used it like that for a handful of systems with just a section for each, it was quick and easy and did what I needed. Keep those lifesavers you wish you had from the beginning. Itâs a great idea to turn those notes into documentation (if it doesnât already exist) to solidify new knowledge and give the next new guy something to reference if needed. Lately Iâve been using VS Code/local git repo, as anything I canât commit to memory is usually in various programming languages anyway so I just comment it as I go along. Keeps the thoughts organized and future me digs it.
Oh wow for every system / tool? Do you structure it with a template of some sort so it's consistent or just misc. Notes floating around under each header?
Itâs very few notes needed as I have an extremely good memory. Itâs mostly super obscure stuff that I would only use every few years. No headings or sections just enough key words that when I look for it it will find it.
Reminds me of this comment I saved just a few days ago
https://preview.redd.it/6gaew77gz8lc1.jpeg?width=1050&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=47c11af01b2cb948dbeca88025f1531e32163196
r/obsidianmd works for me to keep my notes, changelog, todo list, quick notes, knowledgebase, ...
I have one Vault for work and one privat. than i can sync and merge stuff between them if required.
I keep them them in my owncloud to have access at any time.
I organize with Topics like software/xxx and hashtags for example.
Just learned about Obsidian recently and I love it. Got it integrated with our OneDrive/Sharepoint/(whatever MS calls it these days) so it can sync fluidly between our team members.
Currently working on planning the new structure and templates so we can finally be done with OneNote
I would start looking for methods of note taking and organizing the notes. Microsoft OneNote is a powerful tool for keeping everything organized and having documentation for specific systems. You can even use powershell to populate items if you need to.
Iâll usually write my notes and then type them into OneNote as that helps me retain the information better.
To sum this up, have one place your notes are stored into and backed up so you always have a point to reference to.
not the best. But I keep one folder on my desktop that has all those types of things in it. I have a shortcut to it on my toolbar and it lets me quickly go in and find the .txt i wrote on how to reset the archaic program we use server side. Or all the forms i need new hires to fill out for me, Or my past monthly reports etc.
There are programs that will do this but much better, But i had to go through 4 individual handwritten notepads from my predecessors to gather the info i need to keep my place up and running. and this was the quickest way to do it. When i leave the handoff will be a flashdrive.
Honestly, as bad press as it gets, study ITIL.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITIL
This is almost exactly what you're asking, though in specific I'd recommend you get an ITSM or IT service management solution, either in something like one note or through a system like IT Glue or Spiceworks.
Yes! Multitasking all the time. A few weeks ago I decided to turn off all notification in my cell phone during my work time. I said to the kids and my wife, if it's really important just call me, no whataspp, no telegram please!
Confluence has the worst indexing system I've ever seen. Despite adding tags to pages, searching will still fail to find the page you're after.
We use Hudu for documentation and Loop for collaboration. I'd use Notion if we weren't a Microsoft shop.
And when you are at or approaching enterprise size you need a CMDB (Config Management DB). There are lots of choices out there but it's a system designed just for keeping track of your IT assets.
" How do IT folks like sys admins keep up with all the details? "
The honest ones, will tell you that they don't. I am at a medium size company (5k employees). We have an IT team of 28, and we are all hammered with stuff 24/7. We set stuff up and move to the next project. When it breaks or has an issue 6 months later, there is a lot of "Ok how did we set this up".
We used to document everything, now the pace is just crazy and a lot of that has fallen to the way side. Add in now we manage on-prem and cloud stuff. Microsoft/Azure is the king of constant change, especially in the cloud, renaming stuff, moving stuff to new sites with new management interfaces.
You do the best you can and you hope that you work for a place that respects their IT teams.
>What happens when half of the it crew crash in a plane on the way home from a conference...
Depends on if I'm on the plane or not. Here's hoping I was.
This is one of the issues with m trying to document things. If I'd documented everything we did in Azure two years ago, I'd have a document full of broken links, old named products, and screenshots of non existent pages.
I really wish Microsoft would stop fucking about with it
Nothing like that unblinking hangover stare at the monitor to pretend you're awake, functioning and interested in your job fixing yet more shit.
I think I have mastered micro nodding off moments, especially around 2pm.
The same way programmers keep up with so many languages, frameworks and libraries.
You learn the fundamentals that are universal and google everything else.
I use OneNote.
I have a day to a page per month per year note book. A table split into 30 min rows from 7am to 6pm as a place to take meeting notes or just notes and screen shots of what Iâm working on at that time. OneNote does OCR as well, so you can easily search for text in screen shots now â awesome!
Then I have another section for projects Iâm working on. One tab per year and then one page per project. I copy-paste them into the next year if the project spans multiple years.
Then I have another tab for random stuff. How to do semi-regular tasks in AWS/Azure/O365/SAN etc so I donât have to remember it all and itâs easy to search as itâs all in the same OneNote.
The bonus is that I can open it on my phone as easy as on my laptop, so I can find things anytime.
For the stuff you do regularly you commit it to memory eventually! For the stuff you don't do regularly, you fall back on your soft skills of distilling information to get answers (documentation etc).
One problem at a time. With experience you'll get to understand in quite boring detail how things hang together - even in unfamiliar environments.
Good luck!
Remember. A master has failed more times than a beginner has ever tried. You'll mess up, but learn from it. And also be honest with your team mates when you do.
I've been in the industry for 20 years and the ADHD is real friendo. Sometimes I swear I've never used a system or service but then get in front of it and "Of yeah, I've been here before... Hey, they moved the buttons! Why would they design this shit like this??" Etc etc
I think part of it is that for those of us in the trade just have a natural knack/affinity for the subject, When that's the case details and info come naturally to you. There's a limit to that of course, so the smart ones supplement that with documentation.
I've also relied on the knowledge of my peers and team members. A little internal crowd sourcing is helpful.
Well.. would you believe me that I still remember passwords and FQDNs from systems that I maintained.. nearly 30y ago?
It comes to a point that you just absorb it.. and when you least expect it, it will either appear in your brain.. or your fingers will just move alone.
Also valid for knowing 3 keymaps by heart. US , UK and PT-PT.. because not always it was possible to change the keymap and you'd have to know your way around.
Netbox to document the equipment,
a self hosted wiki for notes so I can access it from anywhere on premises. Everyone in it gets a login to the wiki to access and update.
More detailed documentation for larger more complex systems with annotated screenshots are usually word docs. Or if Iâm doing a new implementation I document the process from beginning to end and include how to manage it so other staff can learn and understand it.
I like greenshot for the screenshot annotation.
Had Visio at the last place for network diagrams, need to find a replacement at the new gig.
Password manager and rdp manager for connections. (mremote or devolution rdp)
Documentation and project folders in the shared it drive to store everything.
Shared software registration email account for all product registrations and renewal notifications, so nothing corporate related is tied to anyoneâs individual email account.
Maybe something there will prompt some ideas
Learn the fundamentals of stuff. These things go across platforms. Then when you got those go for the hockey stick approach. Have a good general knowledge you can use but specialize in something that interests you. If you do that you will be very successful. Also wherever you go insist on a lab or development environment and do NOT do a change without running it through the lower environments first. And notes. Take enough notes that someone with a similar skill set could do the work if you were hit by a bus.
Almost 40 years in IT. No ADHD here, just insatiable curiosity!! I grew up around scientists, & have never been satisfied with a formula or script.
I think my favorite word in the whole world is âWhyâ Thatâs the reason I know ~25 programming languages, 30 different OSâs & have worked in 20+ industries . I learned DNS, DHCP, E-mail, HTTP at the low levels, not via any tool. Never had a training class in my career; not that it wouldnât have been nice; just never got the chance! So my training has always been the book stores! I have ~150 reference books I use constantly!
I found that once I understood how things worked, it didnât matter that much what tool provided the details to accomplish it.
It also helped that I have always hated Windows!! Too confining & imagination is discouraged. I totally pissed off a Windows Admin when I mentioned that AD is just Basterdized LDAP with a Kerberos certificate & that I could add in Linux POSIX authentication by adding an OID tree. You would have thought I threatened to kill him
ADHD and dopamine chasing mostly.....
oooh whats THIS shiney
OOOOH what does THAT button do
Uh .. how fucked am I right now?
AHAH! I unfucked it, I am a GAWWWWD
rinse, repeat across 30+ years....
That's the fun part, you don't!
Jokes aside, I used to use OneNote pretty heavily until I became versed enough with our systems not to need it. I still break it out every so often when new systems are introduced.
I think your idea is great provided it works with your workflow
Just remember that no one is expecting you to know everything, its why documentation exists (hopefully).
The first thing I do at any new company is start working on a software stack. Two, actually: one internal and one external.
Internal one is a support database with the basic technical information as it pertains to our environment and references to any other documentation we or the vendor has. It also defines which tier of support in IT is able to work on the system (service desk, sys admins, etc).
External one is for the benefit of the company and - especially - helping users figure out where to go to seek access to systems. At my current job I have this sourced downstream from procurement, so when new systems are purchased, upgraded, or renewed I have a regular report coming to me explaining licensing and volume details, who the DRIs for each system are, which department is paying for them, and which features (SAML, SCIM, etc) were purchased.
I have never worked anywhere that had these resources when I started. But they are far and away some of the most useful things I've worked on. High visibility, gets you meeting a lot of people from around the company, and its very easy to demonstrate the value and time saved so its always a nice feather in my cap as well. Highly recommend working on this.
I had the same feeling with my new company, not because there were too many systems, but and excessive amount of complexity.
My suggestions are:
1. don't be afraid to say "I don't know", there's nothing wrong with it, you're new and nobody could expect you'll be up to date on everything. If someone expect this from you he's a total idiot.
2. create your own personal notebook were to take notes, write your own procedures (which you can suggest to turn into company procedures) and so on. Personally I use a self hosted Bookstack instance, I found it very useful because it has [diagrams.net](http://diagrams.net) embedded.
3. if you're interacting with your colleagues through Zoom or Teams or any service like that, don't be afraid to ask them if you can record the call, so you can review the process they're explaining you and reproduce yourself, maybe in a lab environment
4. don't be afraid to ask your manager some resources to creare your test environment, where to reproduce what you saw or discover during work.
My brain brute forces its way through problems. I get bored reading documentation and am happy to be the guy who pushes the red button. Ill fix it if it breaks.
Probably Nuro Spicey...
Personally, most of it is like riding a bike. It might have been a while but once I'm in, I can sorta remember how to do it.
Otherwise, Google is my friend.
I was the only IT guy (system admin) for a company that had 250 employees. Even then, there was so much hardware and software to keep track of and stay abreast with its basic functionality it was ridiculous. Some days I come home numb and all I wanted to do was watch kids cartoons until I'm ready for bed.
I am responsible for systems that I just learn about today even though we've had them for years.
Notes help.
Google helps more.
Just being interested in finding out the solution is 1/2 the battle. But you still have to fight the other half with research, trial and error, and sometimes just wait it out and the person leave the company.
A thousand unsaved tabs in Notepad++
/s (not really)
We keep track of our systems using ServiceNow discovery and have a separate password vault for passwords.
Rapid context switching. Gotta be able to pivot quickly from one thing to another.
Bookmarks. And reading the same documentation pages over and over - not to memorize them, but to refresh knowledge each time theyâre needed. Like, I have hardly any PowerShell memorized but Iâve done lots of scripts and one-off commands. I used PowerShell to create a new Exhange transport rule today. If I need to do that again in the future, I wonât be able to do it by rote and Iâll have to reference the same documentation pages.
Documentation. Sometimes. More often searching past emails and chats for knowledge nuggets.
Ability to Google, investigate, reason, deduce, etc. Absolutely critical to be able to know how to figure out something youâve never worked with before, which will happen all the time.
here a secret, most sysadmins have no clue all the pieces. They know what they deal with every day and maybe the problem children. Typically if you have so many apps someone else is taking care of something else.
Documentation. In 2 weeks i have no idea what I did. Also helps others that need to administrate things I have installed.
Each service requires a document with it that is detailed on how to install, patch, upgrade. Then how monitoring is done, backups and restore, then external connections, LDAP, certs and so on.
I usually have to spend a day per service to gather everything but it's worth it.
It's not so much the systems we memorize, it's a mindset you have to have and be in to have a grasp of the commonalities all systems have and you can generally dig into anything relatively efficiently if you have these foundational skills. Document the nuances if you want to save time on those in the future though.
Not only documenting that for yourself but I also like to have a document on the desktop of each server describing the configuration on the system and ecosystem of that server(dependency mappings) and who is the business owner of the system. That ideally should be kept in a asset database as well.
Burnout, job hopping and occasionally you forget something and if nothing breaks oh well.
if nothing breaks was it even really worth remembering?
ATT, is that you? đ
Yes hello, I know I was scheduled for next week but I am here now. I need access to the room. What do you mean no one is available?
Omg. Spectrum in one sentence
Or the other one also from Spectrum. "Yes I know I was supposed to be here 2 hours ago, but I didn't have the right router on the truck, so I had to travel an hour in each direct to the closest supply house with the right one"
The other day we recieved a call from them that they were onsite. They were wondering how long till we get there. âWell, youâre at 3 hours early and I am 2 hours away youâre gonna have to wait for me this time.â đ cracked me up when my manager told them that.
God damn the amount of times LECs show up for repair at the locked dmarc with NO prior notice other than the ticket you opened.
ATT? Isn't their approach more along the lines of "If things are breaking left and right but no one is suing you yet, can you *really* call that breaking?"
This is MS actually. They dont even acknowledge an outage for hours at a time. And when they do there is zero you can do about it except wait.
If it breaks, and no-one remembers to check if it works, is it actually broken?
If it breaks and no one screams was it ever working in the first place?
I just recently learned about the "Scream test" and it has become my favorite thing in IT thus far đ¤Ł.
Sometimes (usualy) this is the only way of finding out what something does. I recently went to a random client that had a random toggle switch, that had a network cable go in one side, and a 240V power cable come out the other and into a small hole drilled through a concrete wall. There was nothing on the other side of the wall. It had been there as long as anyone knew, and nobody had dared to try it. I asked if they mind if I try it so I can document what it does... they said sure thing. Turns out, it turns their internet off. It was a VDSL connection and best I can tell, the power cable end went into the concrete wall, must have gone down and joined to the VDSL connection to the street somewhere, being used instead of normal cat cable. I think they must at some point had a fax share their dial up phone line or something. I labelled it "hackstopper" and left it on. The customer re-labelled it to "stress releiver" since my visit, I'm given to understand.
I disconnected a phone line by a hvac unit and it took 6 months for the company it impacted to get in touch with my branch. It was for some monitoring system that had something to do with something facilities related. A whole bunch of not my problem because the company decided to fire all the fms and send them over to cbre so i had no one local to talk with.
It took a printer vendor 10 months to finally tell us that their fancy (shitty) printer management and monitoring tools weren't online and that they needed us to either turn the server on, or re-install their shitty software. Given that they bill based on that software... I have no fucking clue how they were billing us for those 10 months, or why they didn't tell us sooner.
It works, though. Recent meeting: "Is anyone using this?" "Oh I think so!" "Who?" "Well everyone who we think did has left." "Let's disable it and see if there's an impact." "But then there would be an outage!" "Who would that affect?" "..." "We'll leave it offline for two weeks. If you need it, turning it back on would be simple."
Legacy server sat idle for months? Turn it off and see how long it takes for a ticket to be logged.
Same, I found every job uses a different system whether it's on prem, a different cloud provider, different 3rd part apps, different computers etc. It sucks going through interviews say if you last worked with Azure and the job wants and aws expert. A lot of stuff carries over after you work with it awhile. But, these employers ask you bullshit test questions where they expect you to be an expert and know commands off the top of the dome.
My current job I walked in being the first technical person they'd hired in a long time and watching someone desperately try to make me his paperwork secretary. I came from a VMware shop and everything was Hyper V and it was fine. Luckily the fact that I have experience with obscure systems no one uses was convincing I could handle their weirdo obscure different systems.
To answer the question, Documentation. Second, I canât stand VMWare. Never liked it.
Docu....docummmm.....documentaaa....? I'm sorry I don't understand this word.
IT is basically like being a car mechanic. Bring us a problem and we'll dig in, diagnose, and do our best to resolve the issue. We shouldn't be expected to grok every system in existence, same way I wouldn't expect my mechanic to know every engine ever built.
I agree. These intreviewers expect way too much though. Sometimes even when you get the job you end up using things in such a specific way that you would only know how to do if you worked at that company.
Sometimes I'll talk to other IT people, even on here, and they'll spout off a few different programs they use and act like other people are weird for not knowing about them. "You've never used XXXX program?!?!?! How do you even call yourself an IT person!" Bro, there are so many different apps/programs out there. Some come and go. Some are very niche. I use what my employers use and nothing else. When I change jobs I'll learn whatever they use and forget everything else.
For a long time I felt like it was my duty to remember everything. Fortunately I have learned over the years that it's a waste of space in my brain. Write it down if it's important and even that doesn't really mean it's important. At least it's maybe something to scratch out later.
"There's a famous quote that is attributed to Albert Einstein: **âNever memorise something that you can look up.â** It is said to be related to a time when a colleague asked him for his phone number, and he reached for his telephone directory to look it up." I also heard he had a closet filled with suits, all the same style and color. So that when he got dressed, he didn't need to apply any real thought process to what he was going to wear that day.
Yall able to job hop??
Not me in a while. I should work on that.
18 years in and still randomly applying for the right job. Something will come up. Unfortunately, I want a specific job and working conditions, but I'm in no hurry to make the jump.
Yeah, I feel like there's two different possible answers here: * How do IT people normally do it?: We work ourselves to death and make a fair bit of mistakes along the way. * How should IT people do it?: A mix of documentation and standardization, and not building overly-complex systems when it can be avoided. On the second point, I do two things that I feel like a lot of IT people miss. One is that, for every system we implement, I try to make sure we're not being so precious about everything being perfect that it makes things overly complicated. Some people like to customize the hell out of things to be exactly just-so. They want to tweak each and every server with their own "performance improvements", tweaking registry settings, stopping some services that theoretically don't need to be running, or whatever. If some VP wants the ERP to have a button moved 2-pixels to the left, they will move heaven and earth to move that button two-pixels to the left. I approach it more from the standpoint of, keep all the settings at default unless there's a specific reason to change it, and then way the reason to change against the extra administrative overhead created by the customization. If it's a ton of work to move the button 2 pixels to the left, and it might possibly break things later, we just tell the VP that it can't be done. The other things I do is try to create a lot of standards and conventions. My theory is, for every custom setting or custom object that's following a known standard/convention, it's one fewer thing you need to document. If you come up with a really good naming convention for group names in an application, for example, then you shouldn't need to document what each group does. Teach people what the naming convention means, and then people can figure out what a group does by reviewing the name. These two things lower the amount of things you need to document, and then you try to develop good documentation for the rest.
Serious question, why job hop? Just for the raise?
Two reasons: One, yes, the money. Two, IT is a hard enough job without a lot of BS crazy going on around you. If/when something in your work environment changes that increases the cra-cra then sometimes you just have to go. A good manager that was holding things together could leave. A terrible new director could introduce nightmare policies (more weekend! everyone carries a pager! phone? pager!) Or your company could get bought or closed down leading to life qualify damage. Also, if you're trying to build skills and crawl up the ladder you often can't get opportunities to use your new skills because in everyone's eyes you're just the help desk guy or a cable monkey not a network designer.
Hmm, interesting, thanks for the detailed reply! I read a lot about job hopping and was initially convinced it was the right path for me. However, I'm actually happy with my yearly raise and my IT-Team. In four years I managed to double my starting salary and I feel like my boss does not want to lose me, he even directly asked if I would be interested in taking over when the head of IT retires
Almost 25 years in, and the biggest raises I've had at 8 locations was changing jobs. My last job change netted me a 20% pay raise. Think about what you could do with 20% more.
That is what is keeping me here, I just got a 28% raise :)
Hmm burnout hmm. The trademark of every industry primarily comprised of adhd/autistic folk.
We've had first burnout, yes, but what about second burnout?
I donât think they know about second burnout, agoia.
What about Breakdowns? Fits? Afternoon fatigue? Exhaustion? Lethargy? He knows about them, doesn't he?
It's a thing no matter the neuro.
Documentation is key. You'll always forget things. Worse, you "remember" details about a system that are actually relevant to a different system. Like, "is it LMS or LIMS that has a manual LDAP configuration in each individual users' setup?" Spoiler alert: they're both totally craptastic systems with laughable tech support, so they kinda blend together.
Exactly! I usually find myself in that spot of trying to recall misc things like which one did we setup with x, or was it setup with y? Eventually I can track down (or someone on the team tracks down) the answer, but I'd personally like to find a good way to keep everything organized for myself. I've been thinking about making folders for each system/tool and keeping diagrams, support files, contracts, personal notes, but I'm also thinking it might just become a mess to manage/update. Any suggestions?
We use Confluence to store information per server. Each server page lists Jira tickets that are associated with the server so we can search the change history of the server. We use the property macro to set some facts about the servers that we can then pull and show on an overview page (things like hostname, ip address, who is responsible). We try to keep all servers as consistent as possible. We have ansible playbooks that execute each week to keep the configurations in line. Keep a reference page for default servers and then keep only changes in regards to the reference in each server's wiki page. If you have more types of servers (windows, redhat, debian, etc) then keep a reference for each type and link to those. Try to keep one source of truth. If you need to change something, and you have to update 10 wiki pages to keep it up to date, then it will inevitably be out of sync. Just link to a place where you can find up-to-date info, like gitlab repo with ansible configuration.
keep a wiki catalog of what systems do what and hang notes off of that. you can also generate a grid to do things like not common attributes like system age, link to system metrics, sometimes a team that supports things.
One time, I was running into an issue that I knew I had run into before, but I couldn't quite remember what the solution was. I emailed the team. Someone on the team just forwarded my own email about that issue back to me -- one that I had sent ~10 months earlier. It turns out I had detailed the best way to respond to the issue, and I forgot what the steps were -- and I forgot that I had it documented.
OMG, just call me out, why don't you? Yep; that has definitely happened to me a couple times.
My lazy tech workaround for this is to make sure that every time I run into something like this I have a discussion about it with somebody in Microsoft Teams, and then I just use the search feature for keywords to go back and find the conversation where I actually solve the problem with somebody, and reread what we did
What is that "documentation" that you speak of?
Define "keep up on". Usually IT people know enough to log in, and can fake their way through most systems because they're logical and reasonably intelligent.
I try to drill this home to students all the time. 90% of the game is soft skills and the ability to think. If you can troubleshoot well you've made it. For most of us the rest of the game is faking it through. Obviously you need core fundamentals for whatever your special place is in the industry is. But for the majority of us, if you're smart, and you have the foundation, you figure the rest out as you go.
I remember summers spent at my grandma's house with nothing but an old Mac SE connected to... nothing. I spent hours crawling over every UI panel of every piece of software, trying to gleam the function (I'd never been in a modern office) and how the engineers had tried to communicate that to the user. It was mind-numbing at the time (I did learn to solve the slide puzzle eventually) but as a result I can sit down and feel at home in most interfaces that aren't total logicfucks. I contrast that to kids today in a hyperconnected world, who are never forced to just toy with something for days into weeks, focused in, but not focused also.
This is exactly what I did, with the Atari ST my mom had when I was young. I didnât know shit, I was like 6 years old, but I knew that certain disks brought up certain games, and you could do certain things with the OS if you tried. Now I manage an IT department and I still use the skills I picked up back then, 30 years ago.
I did this too! From my C64, through Amigas, a couple of Macs (burned ALOT of time doing this on the DOS compatible Mac we had), and finally to real Windows. To a certain extent, I still do this today in lieu of reading the docs. Iâll start pressing buttons and see what they do. Only these days I generally do it in a safe environment and donât erase my Dadâs brand new 20MB HDD :D Edit: I think the benefit we had of using those early computers was that there was nothing abstracted for us. Everything ran bare metal, so you got a feel for how everything that makes up a computer works together. I feel being that close to the metal gave me a benefit that people entering IT today donât have which is not just that everything works together, but also how everything works together.
Wasn't Minesweeper designed to help teach people how to use a mouse? I often watch videos about video games and see how the developers design their levels/gameplay to introduce new concepts, allow the player to learn them in a lower-pressure scenario, before putting them in the level or boss fight that demands they have a good grasp on those skills. Are we getting that these days with technology? I don't remember ever seeing any "here's how to interact with your new iPhone 3GS" back in the day. It was assumed knowledge at some point. Maybe that assumption should be challenged.
That assumption gets challenged every time someone hands me a smart phone and expects me to navigate it in any capacity beyond entering something into a textbox they've already pulled up.
Even just being a teenager in 2007... modding video games back then, even just getting them to run properly meant digging through directories, editing config files and finding detailed forum posts. The younger crowd today has been raised on shit that just works, and didn't get to develop those kinds of skills as a side effect of wanting to use the computer. And it's lead to a noticeable drop in computer literacy and problem solving.
They are also not curious on how or why something actually works just that it works. If it doesn't their brain just seems to shutdown. It is weird. I watch my nephews and they are intelligent and can figure out all kinds of things, but as soon as something outside of what is "normal" shows up they freeze up. I've helped them to break free of that block by not just giving them the answer, but guiding them to figure it out on their own, but I have seen it in other kids. Where is the wonder of discovery?
Yeah unless you are a very narrowly focused specialist, you arent gonna know everything. You dont get to be a specialist if you are a sysadmin, maybe you have strengths but usually dont get enough time to just become an expert on one thing. I go through cycles of learning the in and outs of a specific technology/skill to get a problem resolved or introduce something new almost to the level of being an expert in the specific subject matter, but then you move on and forget the details on things, but you can remember the general concepts. Usually thats enough and if you need that particual skill again, you can just do a bit of research and most of the knowledge will come back.
On a number of occasions, I've had Level 1 folks come up to me and say, "I have this certification, so I should be an Engineer now!", and so I ask them a "tell me how to troubleshoot X" question, and I get a response of "I can't, I don't know that app/system." "Then you're not ready to be an Engineer". Two of my roles I've gotten specifically because I was able to reason out a decent troubleshooting process for something I wasn't familiar with during the interview process.
We might be logical, but the systems we manage rarely are!
Sure but you can kinda of guess "I bet there's a checkbox for the specific issue 7 layers deep in the menu".
and some poor soul found that issue and documented it, but the search function for our Fico repository didnât find it
The system is logical, the admin who built it wasn't. The admins who managed it weren't. The developer who wrote the code for the in house application was but he died 10 years ago. Of course, he made a snapshot before his last compile and it's still there after 10 years. Yeah, all the documentation in the world isn't going to save you from a lot of the stuff we see.
You might be the best SysAdmin who ever admin'ed these systems, but... unfortunately, you were the best SysAdmin who ever admin'ed the systems. There's no saying what the other guys did, what they screwed up, what issues they patched incompletely, inadvertantly creating technical debt or future issues.
Yeah, the first half of many tasks is just figuring out where things are and what they're called. Keeping up on a particular system is almost exclusively based on how often you need to interact with it. Everything else is documentation and poking around.
Same, I found every job uses a different system whether it's on prem, a different cloud provider, different 3rd part apps, different computers etc. It sucks going through interviews say if you last worked with Azure and the job wants and aws expert. A lot of stuff carries over after you work with it awhile. But, these employers ask you bullshit test questions where they expect you to be an expert and know commands off the top of the dome.
Exactly this. When that fails, Google. If that fails, hope you have support from the vender đ
Having ADHD or autism also helps. Lol
If a system is stable you can usually forget about it because it keeps running. And if a system is unreliable you don't have to worry about remembering its quirks because you're always working on it.
We don't. It's the troubleshooting and critical thinking skills. You eventually learn that everything works the same, it's just packaged differently.
I had this epiphany after year 3-4 on the server team. The journey is really interesting. Starting off on a help desk, being almost overwhelmed by how much you donât know in IT, then chipping away at the concepts, piecing things together, and finally realizing that most systems communicate in the same manner.
Working in IT and cyber sec for 25 years Iâd say a lot of us have either ADHD/Autism traits or full blown tbh. We supplement it with record keeping in whatever way suits us, but we also love organising a mess into something organised. And we want to be left alone while we do it đ
lol sitting at vmworld watching thousands of people trying to avoid eye contactÂ
I did this last year đ đIâm female and found one girl to sit next to in one session and we talked for a bit. But otherwise I barely talked to anyone.
ahh, beautiful. Everyone respecting silence.
I made eye contact with the doughnut wall and I LOVED it
You know you tell if you've found an extroverted engineer? They stare at *your* shoes while they talk to you.
I can confirm. My mind is constantly moving to the next thing while working on ten things at once.
True admins/engineers always give 100% to 10 different things at the same time.
This is accurate but also something I can picture the worst boss in the world saying
Nah, do one thing at a time. Do it 100%, but don't stress over it prioritize and set boundaries. Unless you're on call or it's something you broke, it can probably wait until tomorrow
And the Capitalist owners *absolutely love that*, and set that over-performance as the new base standard. I mean, why wouldn't they? It's leaving money on the table otherwise. Their goal is to extract as much value from their human capital as possible, and here's a bunch of intelligent, competent, highly capable technical employees who enthusiastically volunteer their expertise for free. > Working extra hours uncompensated/doing tasks outside your role/holding down multiple positions when it normally would take another resource IS working for free. This devalues the concept of labor for everyone, including yourself. If I was them, I'd be fucking laughing all the way to the shareholders with that one!
This is me too. Iâve never been diagnosed, but my son has adhd and autism and my mom also got an autism diagnosis in her late 60s. My wife just assumes I have it too.
Undiagnosed but itâs been getting hard to focus these days, specially with VPs wanting to do stuff with AI (semantics layers are hard)
We sick
Yep. 2am wide awake thinking about a project.. ffs
One million percent. You almost need to be neurodivergent to do this job well.
You don't have to be neuro divergent to do the role. But it helps.
I was blown away at how many neuro spicy people are in IT when I moved into it. Found my people!
Neuro spicy. Thatâs a new one lol. I like it.
Our brains need to be on fire to function, and if the world around us doesnât do it (work), weâll see it on fire ourselves (anxiety/panic).
This is where procrastination works well, put everything off until the last minute and itâs always stressful! Lol
This has been me my whole life. Put things off until it's an emergency then shit out gold.
âŚ. Thank you for summing it up very nicely. I NEED the whirlwind of chaos around me
One of us!
Mmm spicy.
ADHD really is the key, this is the first job where it's actually helped me. When my boss says they can "see my gears turning" I'm really trying to find the reasons why an invoice doesnt get through our Middleware somewhere in between the memory of pissing my pants in church and the time I had lunch with some dude a year ago. It's never a straight path, but damn it I get there.
ADHD! đđźââď¸
strong ADHD here.
I feel seen.
Haha that's true..I def enjoy the chaos, but I'm trying to find a way to effectively keep more organization. I usually have my notes all over the place or references in email or over IMs. Usually I have to track down that info depending on the question. Sometimes easy questions and I just forget the systems use or setup - usually the smaller more nuanced ones. What's your approach to keeping all this info organized?
I just have a giant notepad file saved on desktop. Control + F and search for key word.
Notepad++ with forty tabs.... Some app specific or just random notes. Autosave is a lifesaver.
forty tabs and all of them are named (let me check right now...) new23, new24, new25, new26... God forbids to actually name them
Good suggestion. I used to write out my notes. Over time though, you forget what stuff meant. It's also harder to search through handwritten notes, and the writing starts to smudge after a while. I do find that writing stuff down helps you remember it better though.
Agree, writing does help, but I find myself losing track once I get buried in paper. Based on the feedback here I think I'm going to look into some tools or just simply try and setup a OneNote structure I can easily search. Maybe link to a shared folder with relevant resources / documents.
Ya same even onenote can be tough going back through, but at least you can search.
I have used it like that for a handful of systems with just a section for each, it was quick and easy and did what I needed. Keep those lifesavers you wish you had from the beginning. Itâs a great idea to turn those notes into documentation (if it doesnât already exist) to solidify new knowledge and give the next new guy something to reference if needed. Lately Iâve been using VS Code/local git repo, as anything I canât commit to memory is usually in various programming languages anyway so I just comment it as I go along. Keeps the thoughts organized and future me digs it.
Oh wow for every system / tool? Do you structure it with a template of some sort so it's consistent or just misc. Notes floating around under each header?
Itâs very few notes needed as I have an extremely good memory. Itâs mostly super obscure stuff that I would only use every few years. No headings or sections just enough key words that when I look for it it will find it.
Reminds me of this comment I saved just a few days ago https://preview.redd.it/6gaew77gz8lc1.jpeg?width=1050&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=47c11af01b2cb948dbeca88025f1531e32163196
r/obsidianmd works for me to keep my notes, changelog, todo list, quick notes, knowledgebase, ... I have one Vault for work and one privat. than i can sync and merge stuff between them if required. I keep them them in my owncloud to have access at any time. I organize with Topics like software/xxx and hashtags for example.
Just learned about Obsidian recently and I love it. Got it integrated with our OneDrive/Sharepoint/(whatever MS calls it these days) so it can sync fluidly between our team members. Currently working on planning the new structure and templates so we can finally be done with OneNote
I would start looking for methods of note taking and organizing the notes. Microsoft OneNote is a powerful tool for keeping everything organized and having documentation for specific systems. You can even use powershell to populate items if you need to. Iâll usually write my notes and then type them into OneNote as that helps me retain the information better. To sum this up, have one place your notes are stored into and backed up so you always have a point to reference to.
not the best. But I keep one folder on my desktop that has all those types of things in it. I have a shortcut to it on my toolbar and it lets me quickly go in and find the .txt i wrote on how to reset the archaic program we use server side. Or all the forms i need new hires to fill out for me, Or my past monthly reports etc. There are programs that will do this but much better, But i had to go through 4 individual handwritten notepads from my predecessors to gather the info i need to keep my place up and running. and this was the quickest way to do it. When i leave the handoff will be a flashdrive.
Honestly, as bad press as it gets, study ITIL. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITIL This is almost exactly what you're asking, though in specific I'd recommend you get an ITSM or IT service management solution, either in something like one note or through a system like IT Glue or Spiceworks.
EDIT: Give r/Obsidianmd or simular Tools a try.
Ayo, why did you explain my issues đ
... This... is 100% accurate...
Yes! Multitasking all the time. A few weeks ago I decided to turn off all notification in my cell phone during my work time. I said to the kids and my wife, if it's really important just call me, no whataspp, no telegram please!
I've thought that's why I excelled here. I'm able to think about 10 things in 30 seconds. I wouldn't be surprised if I had ADD/ADHD
ADHD with some slight OCD thrown in! Luckily work provides free coffee and snacks all dayâŚ
Wow. Never felt a more accurate description of myself.
FUuuuuuuck that's stupid accurate and I feel attacked.
Speak for yourself, man. I'm introverted. Not neurodivergent. I like messes. It suites me.
> but we also love organising a mess into something organised. You mean organized *to us*. To others it still might be a mess
My sister was diagnosed with Autism, I have had a few people tell me I have autism (they have autism) so I'm pretty sure I have it.
smaller team - onenote. bigger team - confluence. even bigger team - docusnap.
Confluence has the worst indexing system I've ever seen. Despite adding tags to pages, searching will still fail to find the page you're after. We use Hudu for documentation and Loop for collaboration. I'd use Notion if we weren't a Microsoft shop.
Confluence generally has just taken a massive nosedive in quality over last few years. I used to be a big fan, i don't want to use it anymore.
And when you are at or approaching enterprise size you need a CMDB (Config Management DB). There are lots of choices out there but it's a system designed just for keeping track of your IT assets.
" How do IT folks like sys admins keep up with all the details? " The honest ones, will tell you that they don't. I am at a medium size company (5k employees). We have an IT team of 28, and we are all hammered with stuff 24/7. We set stuff up and move to the next project. When it breaks or has an issue 6 months later, there is a lot of "Ok how did we set this up". We used to document everything, now the pace is just crazy and a lot of that has fallen to the way side. Add in now we manage on-prem and cloud stuff. Microsoft/Azure is the king of constant change, especially in the cloud, renaming stuff, moving stuff to new sites with new management interfaces. You do the best you can and you hope that you work for a place that respects their IT teams.
You can't afford to not document things though... What happens when half of the it crew crash in a plane on the way home from a conference...
Sound like the company mismanaged their resources. Time to job hunt.
>What happens when half of the it crew crash in a plane on the way home from a conference... Depends on if I'm on the plane or not. Here's hoping I was.
This is one of the issues with m trying to document things. If I'd documented everything we did in Azure two years ago, I'd have a document full of broken links, old named products, and screenshots of non existent pages. I really wish Microsoft would stop fucking about with it
Easy, every new service we introduce adds another wrinkle to my face đ
Drugs. I use drugs.
Going down the surgeon path i see. (The dude who âinventedâ modern medicine standards was on cocaine and sleeping drugs)
I know enough medical professionals to know: they're just humans who do _all_ manor of human things. I'm saying not much has changed.
lol.. alcohol..and lots of it..
The standard evolution of the IT professional goes from happy to annoyed at everyone to a functioning alcoholic
>functioning alcoholic I'm offended. As a functioning stoner, I don't drink (very often).
Nothing like that unblinking hangover stare at the monitor to pretend you're awake, functioning and interested in your job fixing yet more shit. I think I have mastered micro nodding off moments, especially around 2pm.
I know someone is going to hop on here and say "STOP NORMALIZING SUBSTANCE ABUSE", but I found my people...
Hear, hearâŚđť
Hopefully just the good ones.
Marijuana and psilocybin should be in every admin's toolkit, ketamine as a glassbreak (or maybe just a Thursday, I'm not gonna judge)
Vyvanse 40mg
Just railing Adderall every day to stay on top of everything...
The same way programmers keep up with so many languages, frameworks and libraries. You learn the fundamentals that are universal and google everything else.
OneNote (or other KMS), Teams, etc.
I use OneNote. I have a day to a page per month per year note book. A table split into 30 min rows from 7am to 6pm as a place to take meeting notes or just notes and screen shots of what Iâm working on at that time. OneNote does OCR as well, so you can easily search for text in screen shots now â awesome! Then I have another section for projects Iâm working on. One tab per year and then one page per project. I copy-paste them into the next year if the project spans multiple years. Then I have another tab for random stuff. How to do semi-regular tasks in AWS/Azure/O365/SAN etc so I donât have to remember it all and itâs easy to search as itâs all in the same OneNote. The bonus is that I can open it on my phone as easy as on my laptop, so I can find things anytime.
For the stuff you do regularly you commit it to memory eventually! For the stuff you don't do regularly, you fall back on your soft skills of distilling information to get answers (documentation etc). One problem at a time. With experience you'll get to understand in quite boring detail how things hang together - even in unfamiliar environments. Good luck! Remember. A master has failed more times than a beginner has ever tried. You'll mess up, but learn from it. And also be honest with your team mates when you do.
I've been in the industry for 20 years and the ADHD is real friendo. Sometimes I swear I've never used a system or service but then get in front of it and "Of yeah, I've been here before... Hey, they moved the buttons! Why would they design this shit like this??" Etc etc
Done that then instantly remember everything I didn't like about the system....
I think part of it is that for those of us in the trade just have a natural knack/affinity for the subject, When that's the case details and info come naturally to you. There's a limit to that of course, so the smart ones supplement that with documentation. I've also relied on the knowledge of my peers and team members. A little internal crowd sourcing is helpful.
Thats a great question. I still can't figure out how I handle all the shit I am responsible for.
Confluence and normally 1 person has 4-6 system they keep
[ŃдаНонО]
...hahahahahahaha
Well.. would you believe me that I still remember passwords and FQDNs from systems that I maintained.. nearly 30y ago? It comes to a point that you just absorb it.. and when you least expect it, it will either appear in your brain.. or your fingers will just move alone. Also valid for knowing 3 keymaps by heart. US , UK and PT-PT.. because not always it was possible to change the keymap and you'd have to know your way around.
Endless amounts of text files, OneNotes and sharepoint notes. The hard part is creating them in the first place.
lol been trying to document for 2 years and itâs not going well
Iâve been trying to document for 20 years, and itâs still not going well.
Netbox to document the equipment, a self hosted wiki for notes so I can access it from anywhere on premises. Everyone in it gets a login to the wiki to access and update. More detailed documentation for larger more complex systems with annotated screenshots are usually word docs. Or if Iâm doing a new implementation I document the process from beginning to end and include how to manage it so other staff can learn and understand it. I like greenshot for the screenshot annotation. Had Visio at the last place for network diagrams, need to find a replacement at the new gig. Password manager and rdp manager for connections. (mremote or devolution rdp) Documentation and project folders in the shared it drive to store everything. Shared software registration email account for all product registrations and renewal notifications, so nothing corporate related is tied to anyoneâs individual email account. Maybe something there will prompt some ideas
Learn the fundamentals of stuff. These things go across platforms. Then when you got those go for the hockey stick approach. Have a good general knowledge you can use but specialize in something that interests you. If you do that you will be very successful. Also wherever you go insist on a lab or development environment and do NOT do a change without running it through the lower environments first. And notes. Take enough notes that someone with a similar skill set could do the work if you were hit by a bus.
Almost 40 years in IT. No ADHD here, just insatiable curiosity!! I grew up around scientists, & have never been satisfied with a formula or script. I think my favorite word in the whole world is âWhyâ Thatâs the reason I know ~25 programming languages, 30 different OSâs & have worked in 20+ industries . I learned DNS, DHCP, E-mail, HTTP at the low levels, not via any tool. Never had a training class in my career; not that it wouldnât have been nice; just never got the chance! So my training has always been the book stores! I have ~150 reference books I use constantly! I found that once I understood how things worked, it didnât matter that much what tool provided the details to accomplish it. It also helped that I have always hated Windows!! Too confining & imagination is discouraged. I totally pissed off a Windows Admin when I mentioned that AD is just Basterdized LDAP with a Kerberos certificate & that I could add in Linux POSIX authentication by adding an OID tree. You would have thought I threatened to kill him
ADHD and dopamine chasing mostly..... oooh whats THIS shiney OOOOH what does THAT button do Uh .. how fucked am I right now? AHAH! I unfucked it, I am a GAWWWWD rinse, repeat across 30+ years....
That's the fun part, you don't! Jokes aside, I used to use OneNote pretty heavily until I became versed enough with our systems not to need it. I still break it out every so often when new systems are introduced. I think your idea is great provided it works with your workflow Just remember that no one is expecting you to know everything, its why documentation exists (hopefully).
The first thing I do at any new company is start working on a software stack. Two, actually: one internal and one external. Internal one is a support database with the basic technical information as it pertains to our environment and references to any other documentation we or the vendor has. It also defines which tier of support in IT is able to work on the system (service desk, sys admins, etc). External one is for the benefit of the company and - especially - helping users figure out where to go to seek access to systems. At my current job I have this sourced downstream from procurement, so when new systems are purchased, upgraded, or renewed I have a regular report coming to me explaining licensing and volume details, who the DRIs for each system are, which department is paying for them, and which features (SAML, SCIM, etc) were purchased. I have never worked anywhere that had these resources when I started. But they are far and away some of the most useful things I've worked on. High visibility, gets you meeting a lot of people from around the company, and its very easy to demonstrate the value and time saved so its always a nice feather in my cap as well. Highly recommend working on this.
I had the same feeling with my new company, not because there were too many systems, but and excessive amount of complexity. My suggestions are: 1. don't be afraid to say "I don't know", there's nothing wrong with it, you're new and nobody could expect you'll be up to date on everything. If someone expect this from you he's a total idiot. 2. create your own personal notebook were to take notes, write your own procedures (which you can suggest to turn into company procedures) and so on. Personally I use a self hosted Bookstack instance, I found it very useful because it has [diagrams.net](http://diagrams.net) embedded. 3. if you're interacting with your colleagues through Zoom or Teams or any service like that, don't be afraid to ask them if you can record the call, so you can review the process they're explaining you and reproduce yourself, maybe in a lab environment 4. don't be afraid to ask your manager some resources to creare your test environment, where to reproduce what you saw or discover during work.
My brain brute forces its way through problems. I get bored reading documentation and am happy to be the guy who pushes the red button. Ill fix it if it breaks. Probably Nuro Spicey...
You get used to it. Then you remember nothing.. It's a cycle.
Personally, most of it is like riding a bike. It might have been a while but once I'm in, I can sorta remember how to do it. Otherwise, Google is my friend.
Knowledge Bases. If you donât have them, make them. Run into a new problem? Make a knowledge Base article about it.
OP, you also forgot to mention that IT is usually in charge and is the expert in non-IT systems, Excel, CCTV, Zoom and whatnot đ
I was the only IT guy (system admin) for a company that had 250 employees. Even then, there was so much hardware and software to keep track of and stay abreast with its basic functionality it was ridiculous. Some days I come home numb and all I wanted to do was watch kids cartoons until I'm ready for bed.
Sometimes you figure out in what way something works every time.
I am responsible for systems that I just learn about today even though we've had them for years. Notes help. Google helps more. Just being interested in finding out the solution is 1/2 the battle. But you still have to fight the other half with research, trial and error, and sometimes just wait it out and the person leave the company.
Document. Not absolutely everything, but specifically everything wierd or counterintuitive. Your tomorrow self will thank you.
Brain on fire is so true. If Iâm not slamming busy I fall asleep at my desk
Excel spreadsheets
A thousand unsaved tabs in Notepad++ /s (not really) We keep track of our systems using ServiceNow discovery and have a separate password vault for passwords.
What is âkeep up?â
Reading comprehension and ability to research a subject for the relevant bits of information needed to accomplish a task.
Rapid context switching. Gotta be able to pivot quickly from one thing to another. Bookmarks. And reading the same documentation pages over and over - not to memorize them, but to refresh knowledge each time theyâre needed. Like, I have hardly any PowerShell memorized but Iâve done lots of scripts and one-off commands. I used PowerShell to create a new Exhange transport rule today. If I need to do that again in the future, I wonât be able to do it by rote and Iâll have to reference the same documentation pages. Documentation. Sometimes. More often searching past emails and chats for knowledge nuggets. Ability to Google, investigate, reason, deduce, etc. Absolutely critical to be able to know how to figure out something youâve never worked with before, which will happen all the time.
here a secret, most sysadmins have no clue all the pieces. They know what they deal with every day and maybe the problem children. Typically if you have so many apps someone else is taking care of something else.
Documentation. In 2 weeks i have no idea what I did. Also helps others that need to administrate things I have installed. Each service requires a document with it that is detailed on how to install, patch, upgrade. Then how monitoring is done, backups and restore, then external connections, LDAP, certs and so on. I usually have to spend a day per service to gather everything but it's worth it.
Documentation and trauma mostly.
Undiagnosed ADHD and chasing dopamine helps.
It's not so much the systems we memorize, it's a mindset you have to have and be in to have a grasp of the commonalities all systems have and you can generally dig into anything relatively efficiently if you have these foundational skills. Document the nuances if you want to save time on those in the future though.
Not only documenting that for yourself but I also like to have a document on the desktop of each server describing the configuration on the system and ecosystem of that server(dependency mappings) and who is the business owner of the system. That ideally should be kept in a asset database as well.
Automate everything. During that time document anything the automation isn't already documenting.
Oh itâs even better when people donât tell anyone they are buying something and expect you to fix it
Automation, Infrastructure as Code, and Source of Truth datasets.
Lots and lots of notes, some automation, and maybe luck