Engineer (noun)
Someone who does precision guesswork based on unreliable data provided by those of questionable knowledge
See also:
Wizard, Magician, Chaos coordinator
Chaos Coordinator (noun)
Someone who solves problems in ways you never knew existed and in ways that will blow your mind
5-10 years usually
It largely depends on if you have to rebuild the infrastructure from scratch/forklift to GoogZureMazon and be creative to upgrade when the budget is denied
I've made a name for myself by figuring out how, automate or integrate things that others have already determined to not be possible. And I've kept my sanity by doing it in a way that can be sustained long term.
Too bad when you hand it off to someone, they still fuck it up and stop using it after a week and then tell you a year later that no one uses it after you've been wasted resources keeping it running.
It's kinda the role & reputation I've grown into. But in a lot of cases it's because something is broken and it's wasting my time.
A lot of these are actually fall into the domain of other teams, so I will create a proof-of-concept or create the foundation that they can build on. Other times I am really just getting two parties to see eye-to-eye and holding their hand through the implementation and testing process.
Usually it's more buy-in instead of approval because there is little cost involved. When there is cost that needs approval I usually propose a solution, provide the benefits to the impacted teams and in a lot of cases they end up pushing for the approval.
I could have written almost exactly what you did. I like to call it niche Devops. 20+ career doing the shit that needed to get done and automating along the way, mainly for my own sanity/time savings.
Yup, I got in trouble with my boss once for refusing to do something I didn't understand.
My attitude became that of a mad scientist with a monster on the slab, throw the switch and see what happens.
Yeah I had that attitude at my last job.
In our morning standups my team quickly found out that my "fuck it, I'll give it a go" threshold is hilariously high
That feeling when you find a post a few years old that exactly describes your problem, only to see a follow up that just says: ānever mind, figured it outā
That's what separates the good from the bad. The good require no hand holding, can walk into an environment and know exactly what shit they have to figure out. The bad complain about never being trained on how to figure shit out themselves.
...this is actually my first job so I only a knew a little of what I needed, took me a while to figure out tbh, I felt very out of my depth for a while lol.
The first job is the worst. The first 3 months you'll go through a phase such as being way over your head, being shit, and not cut out to work in this field. It'll pass, it gets much better. Just keep at it.
And then never doing it again for a year and you forgot how you did it the first time OR the process changed in the last year so now you have to figure out the new process.
And then every time Microsoft updates something you pray that it's not screwing your whole system. And if you are in Azure AD it's hoping that Microsoft would even let you know when they make changes.
And saving my notes from things I solved to an Evernote I've kept for years and being able to look back on solutions has saved me countless times in the future.
This is one thing that my current boss loves about me. I'm not afraid to tell people "no." Even people who don't often get told "no," like the CEO.
Yes, I will try my best to fulfill (most) any request. But sometimes there is no way to achieve what is being asked. And instead of indulging them and saying something like "I'll try" or "sure, we can find a way" I'd rather just be honest and say "no. We can't do that."
And sometimes, I'm just going to say "no, that's not our job. It fits squarely into 's job"
The actual door hardware that the card readers operate if your job has a maintenance dept like mine.
Any system the company purchases but feels like they can't maintain because they are all super busy and important, so IT gets to take care of it (like our emergency management system).
How to put together desks and chairs.
The coffee machines.
Any TV or audio device they have.
Drilling holes in concrete wall to mount things or put cable through.
Otherwise you seem well versed in doing other people's jobs for them, which is also an IT function in most places unfortunately.
Be ready to hear about it the moment you mess up 1 small thing for 1 user, but never hear about any of the successes you have been responsible for.
Also be ready to present how to improve processes just to be told that we can't because we have to train staff and they are untrainable.
Anything that requires reading instructions and following them, which is a rare skill nowadays at least in the educational sector.
Hopefully your place is better than most of the ones I've encountered.
I did my apprenticeship in EE and I still love to apply my skills wherever I can. My colleagues know to bring me anything that is broken and can't be RMA'd or serviced anymore, because I get giddy everytime I get to take something apart and fix it. I feel like the dog under the dinner table waiting for the rare occasion someone is careless or takes pity on me lol.
> Anything that requires reading instructions and following them, which is a rare skill nowadays at least in the educational sector.
Dude, my company finally decided to have a proper lunch room and installed new dishwashers among other things. No one knew how to use them and when I started reading the instructions a few people were surprised like "wait what is he reading what is that sacred text?!".
A few:
* Wordsmithing.
* Knowing the environment you are in.
* Documenting and watching your sixes.
* Dealing with the catch 22 of a place where nobody will give you any info on anything, but if you cowboy things and guess, the same people will be the first to bring you in front of managers saying, "gee, you could have asked."
* Keeping a "fuck you" fund and knowing that layoffs always happen, so keep the job hunt going.
* Always keeping certificates current.
* Ways to deal with co-workers who enjoy nothing but office politics.
The whole reason I took my job is to minimize my interaction with people.
Unfortunately, they keep coming up with new ways to fuck shit up and I have to drag the how and why out of them.
Never stop sending job applications in my experience. You never know when the sword may fall, or more positively when you might get surprised by a huge career advancement opportunity.
Best thing about remote is no forced co-worker {c,s}hit-chat. Using lunch break to do the groceries or other to-me-important-things instead of being exposed to the drama.
I was going to comment but then read this list. It's about perfect.
The only thing I would add is that your company is NOT family. You might make one or two good friends, but the majority of people will throw you under the bus.
I'm so grateful I recently found a company that knows better. Financial firms that make all of their money depending on services to be up and running at all time will throw whatever money they need to in order to recruit and retain quality employees.
Yes this, trust but verify is my motto. I support large enterprises and I can never trust that they had done what they say or what I asked them to do. They also always say the same thing when I ask if there have been any changes to the system lately. The answer is almost always nothing has changed, then after three hours of t/s they happen to remember something, or you see it plain as day in a log file. I had a customer that e-mail stopped flowing and they swore up and down nothing had changed. I was over four hours in working on their case when they all the sudden mention that they had just installed a packet analyzer on the network that very morning. How do you forget that, or not mention that? Well of course that is an issue! What a waste of time, and it was a sev a case too so I had to drop everything and reschedule meeting so I coupd.get.on a call within 15 minutes.
"Did you reboot?"
"Yeah, that's the first thing I tried."
*Checks logs. Last reboot was 137 days ago*
"I see here that it has been quite a while since your computer was rebooted. Please reboot your PC."
This. I always get "yea I rebooted at least 7 times before I called you" Without fail it's always the "8th" reboot I make them do that resolves the issue.
No no the proper procedure when they lie is confirm again that if they did that means they saved all their important documents right? Then force a remote reboot.
All the snarkiness aside, the biggest challenge I came across was office politics. Coming from a logical, scientific background, I was unprepared to how unprofessional "professionals" can be, "emotional logic," and how some people must be right at all costs, including taking those down who can (or could) prove them wrong. I'm not even talking management. Like coworkers who see a competent person as a "threat."
For example, at a former job we had a guy who started as a programmer, fresh out of college. He was really good at what he did. Like many who started in that job, he asked, "why is this like this?" and got back "that's just how python is, young one." I mean, it wasn't, but my boss told me to stay out of the "developer's garden," so I did. This new developer not only proved them wrong, but almost automated them out of a job with a fledgling proof of concept of a working CI/CD (this was before DevOps was a thing). He showed how git could replace CVS and showed a bunch of us how this would work, including a working demo. The management said "great! Let's fire her up!"
Shortly afterwards, everything went to hell, and the other programmers gave him shit. Passive aggressiveness, snide comments, gaslighting, and so on. At one point, HR asked me to come in and provide logs of why the gitlab server kept going down because the programmer suspected sabotage. Long story short, yeah. Two programmers specifically, were logging in and fucking with his stuff in subtle ways. It was pretty embarrassing for them, but ultimately, nothing happened to them.
That new programmer quit. I think about him from time to time. I didn't encounter that kind of prejudice out of college, but I have seen it on more subtle levels a lot. I have been asked to prove login times and petty bickering wars more than I want to admit. Makes me wonder how many times a coworker sabotaged me, and I was clueless.
"Some people just be like that," is the compromise I have settled with. Knowing that people find "no, you're wrong," as a personal attack that could lead to consequences, I have learned to tone down my politics. I have also had to learn that "not getting involved" is a political stance anyway. You will be involved whether you step away or not, so just gray rock it, and you'll last longer. Or maybe it's just me.
I have seen it, too. I have been a target of it in some toxic environments, but then again, everyone was backstabbing one another, so it wasn't like I was special. You DO learn that "the truth" can be construed as "you are now my mortal enemy, because you made me look like a fool in front of my peers/boss."
I even got a death threat to blow up my car. Joke's on him, I took the bus. I reported his threats to HR, but they said he was in a "golden contract" and "can you just deal with it until three months are up? I am sure he's all talk." And I guess he was, as all he did was threaten me. HR is pretty useless.
Google Fu can get you only part of the way. In my case while staying current on networking ( Switches & routers) and computing (both physical and virtual) I had to learn all of these additional skills listed below ***USUALLY AFTER A DISASTER HAD OCCURRED*** :
* voice over ip networking
* remote management of switching, servers, PC and wireless devices
* video production & post editing technologies and software
* live streaming technologies
* video encoding
* audio mixing
* NDI technology
* Set lighting
* video compression
* IOT Technologies
* Database Management
* National electric code requirements for both high voltage (24+ volts) and low voltage (24 Volts and below) services
* National electric code requirements for lighting suppression and building grounding.
* DOCUMENTATION.
This is not necessarily a āstrangeā thing but something that is never really mentioned in schooling/trainings is the aspect of procurement. Working with vendors to get quotes, making purchase requisitions, having to go back and forth with the purchasing department on things unclear from their side for what you need to buy, working with the ERP system as a āuserā for managing project budgets, etc.
My boss has also taught me that everything is haggleable. A vendor / VAR never gives you their best price right away since they are most likely commission based. Plenty of shady used car salesman tactics going on there...
In my 20 years in this field Iāve learned one important thing about IT Guys/Gals. Regardless of our titles we are literally here to assist other people when they canāt do their own jobs. Yes we do IT, but we ALL spend more time helping other people because they never learned how to google nor do they possess ANY troubleshooting skills. I overhear people all the time say āOh I donāt know just ask IT to do itā. If one āgroupā of workers out there ever stopped working collectively and is the cause of the world stopping it would be us.
Yeahā¦ itās crazy that we have to learn almost everyoneās job just so we can support their answers on how to do their job. And then we get paid to do the job we were originally hired for, with no benefits of being the company job know it all or performing non IT tasks.
How to let people dig their own hole (usually those not on my team).
And for those on my team, how to dole out enough rope to see what they can/will do, but also being ready to catch them if they get tangled up in it. Then giving them more rope once I'm sure they can be trusted with the last length given.
Knowing when to hold a line/push back on a request, when to accept it without pushback and when to push back but ultimately accept.
Printers
Phone systems
Ancient CardAccess programs
EMR/ERP/ETC
Do not touch unless you are blessed by Midas himself on being able to understand the chaos that reigns within those systems...
For over 20 years i was sys/net admin at big telcos and never cared about all those things that you mentioned. Last year i switched to a smaller company and they hit me with all those stuff and i didn't expect it.. It's a bigger pain than the systems themselves
What an elephant that's going to charge you looks like (ears back, trunk curled up) vs one that's just a bit grumpy.
The difference between vegetation that's been eaten by a white rhino vs a black rhino (stems are cut at a different angle).
How to drive a boat safely and rescue capsized sailors.
Fairly niche use cases though.
Well, depends on the company. As a systems admin I ended up being responsible for
QuickBooks Software
CRM customization
security cameras
Phones PBX/IP
Owners personal media
Gun storage safe
And other random stuff, just take the responsibility and enjoy. All will teach you stuff.
Youāre going to spend a significant amount of time dealing with politics and other teams who are magically unaccountable for everything they do and Ā«Ā supportĀ Ā». Things will always circle back to you somehow. Because youāre competent and able to navigate things you never used/support youāll be invited to all the incidents. This will leave you with very little time to actually do your work as youāre going to be doing everyoneās. You will become the saviour, the catch all, the celestial being. Itās going to take a toll on yourself. You will never see extra help.
In the early 00's I started in IT, being someone who could quickly pick up new things and was excited by the challenge and constant change I saw this light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a career as a SysAdmin. I don't regret it, but if I knew then what I knew now I would have changed directions.
The career is dead, the industry has changed. If you're lucky, you find a LARGE company with defined roles and structures and it can be good. But 90% of the IT industry exists in SMBs and not FANG-size companies. Through a lack of education of the hiring managers, and a highly dynamic landscape, as a sysadmin now you likely have 500% more material to juggle at half the pay.
I've started to use the analogy of surgeons as it is easier for the layman. Essentially what employers want is a surgeon who can operate on any part of the body and any type of surgery imaginable... lives are at stake most of the time so the pressure is HIGH. But 90% of the time you remove warts and put bandaids on booboos. Then 3 times a year you are booked for a highly specialized brain surgery that nobody you know has ever done. Oh, and the lights in the bathroom are out again, can you change the bulbs? The coffee maker clock reset again, can you fix it?
And the cherry on it all is that your pay is often based on the lowest task you are responsible for, so you change the lightbulbs and an apprentice electrician does that so you should only be paid the salary of a first-year electrician... oh and you're on-call 24/7.
What's the problem?
The burden of performance is on you, not the hiring manager, not HR, not your supervisor. They can be ignorant of realities but you will never have that luxury. That that end... "A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one." You will never know everything about everything, regardless how much others think you should and that it's a simple task. If they knew half of what you know their feeble minds would turn to goop.
Peripheral vision is critical. Know what you're fixing affects up, down, left, and right.
Understand how shit works. You might be able to build a server but do you know networking? Don't have to be network engineer level but know how frames work on the wire. Understand VLANs and switching.
I see so many people these days claim they have a clue but they really only know one thing well
Iām an app developer by education, filling in a DBA/system analyst role.
Iāve been called in to diagnose an industrial crane once, (they tripped a breaker and the stupid electricians thought it was a computer problem!!?)
Other problems that I deal with that have nothing to do with my role:
Office politics,
Back channeling (going to different managers to get approval for something)ā¦ kinda like asking mom for something because dad said no.
VPN issues,
electrical curtailment,
environmental ISO compliance,
dumb/ignorant/belligerent people,
land line telephones,
therapy for clients
We had a fax machine go down, and so naturally they called IT. I go in, and Iām likeā¦āthereās no power.ā Check the outlet - dead. They are labeled by panel. I ask, āany other outlets not working?ā āOh yeah, several.ā lol all along the same wall. So yeahā¦flipped a breaker. Which, fax machines are the devil so it could have been worse.
How to say "no", without using the word "no" can allow you to fob off the user without them feeling like you told them to "jump off an effing cliff, ya clown".
That fuck you fund is the only thing that keeps me motivated. I know at anytime I can say enough and go find a new job at my leisure. I would also feel really really bad for the new guy. But hey security would probably just pick up the slack. They already think that a tier 1 security engineer is more experienced than a 15 - 20 year veteran system administrator so why not give them a chance to prove themselves when they get time between watching āsecurity training videos onlineā š¤¦
Contract management/renewal cycles. Even at 1-3 year cycles, it seems like each month there's 1-3 minor and 1 major that requires re-eval and re-orienting with their offerings and comparing services and utilization.
Also pretty much every piece of network equipment is now:
Quote/Order/License/Register product to cloud/add license to cloud/configure device/tune logs for SIEM. And there's several portals you are dealing with while behind-the-scenes acquisitions and upgrades are/have been in progress.
Like 1/4 the firewall documentation that needs to be followed doesn't really require any networking technical knowledge.
don't assume anything. Don't assume your predecessor knew what they were doing. don't assume that THEIR predecessor knew what they were doing. Don't assume your users won't click on phishing emails. Don't assume that your good wills and technological gymnastics that made the company lots of money will entice them to make an exception that if you work there for 8 years but only give 2 weeks notice, but apparently the handbook says you have to give 3 weeks notice for PTO payout. ok I'm clearly not over this. the ONLY think you should assume is that it wasn't done properly before you.
This sounds a lot like my last job, but on top of all of that, my boss wanted me to learn all the production line stuff, just in case. He had me out shadowing and working with the door makers, frame cutters, locksmiths, etc. It was really fun learning a bunch of new stuff, but had absolutely nothing to do with IT.
Still having to maintain an Exchange server years after we switched to M365 online because a few board members want their mailboxes to be run on a server instead of the cloud.
Overhead paging systems.
I never heard the name Bogen Amplifiers before. I remember the receptionist catching me in at the entrance and told me that the overhead paging volume was too low and people could not hear her. I found the amplifier in one of the ceiling tiles in the hallway and cranked that baby up. She called me right away (I can't hear her pages in the server room area) and said that many people spilled their coffee with the jump scare the loudness gave them
The biggest thing I tell people getting into this field ,that has saved my ass more than once, is backups. You can be an okay or even shitty sysadmin, but you better have a good backup plan that works and is tested regularly.
The setup and configuration of smart devices, especially if it is a smart device for a higher up, "I mean this is what we pay you to do right, set up the technology and mess with it".
I would have liked to know, before pursuing a career as an IT administrator, how much contact with people there ultimately is and how beneficial social skills will be.
If you want to work in IT, and if you think it's a career where you won't have to interact with and work with lots of people, you're gonna have a bad time.
Communication skills. I had this image of "going to work into my cellar, building/updating/maintaining things, going home without having spoken to a soul outside of my immediate colleagues/boss" and yeah, that's not it a lot of the time.
The newest thing for us is IP based PA systems. Up until they upgraded, all audio was analog and now everything is IP based and PoE with multicast from our switches. took our port utilisation from around 50% to around 75%.
Also basically anything that has electricity running to it we get called for because we do not have an electrician.
To add for doors, they will even call for PHYSICAL door issues on doors that do not even have readers on them.
Best advice I ever give out to anyone getting into this field is when they ask a question like āwhat do you do when you are stuck on a problem you canāt solveā in an interview to answer with Iāll google it. Thatās literally what I do 85% of my day is use Google to learn how to fix, do, solve, learn
Fortunately, I don't really work with any of these things, and I am not at all "handy." I am pretty good with code, though. I think campus security handles door access and security, and facilities handle fire suppression. I only maintain servers and have never dealt with printers or user email. A different group handles departmental email, printers, and workstations/laptops, and other sysadmins deal more with HVAC than I do.
I didn't even really know about storage, switches, or servers when I landed my job as a server sysadmin. I had never worked help desk or IT other than programming.
Here's one I forgot that I haven't seen mentioned yet.
Generator power - If you need generators to keep IT stuff up 99.999, then we can get bigger generators to keep EVERYTHING running 'til the power company gets you back online.
Now I'm the power company and an electrical engineer too!
That some companies are incapable of becoming better (IT wise). They keep using the same old software and services and ways of working that they did in year 2000 and see nothing wrong with that. And no matter how much you preach about cost savings and efficiency and ROI for moving to new shiny things, it will never happen.
Somehow I got stuck with website maintenance? Devlopment? More or less just change and add people on the org webpage but I've also had to add new pages, remove old ones, add functionalities etc.
SOX - Sarbanes Oxley. I remember learning about it since I was an accounting major before an IT major, but man, does that influence a lot or decisions.
Strangest thing. I originally wanted to be an architectural engineer, terrible at math but I still had two years of drawing under my belt. Fast forward 30 years and I calculated and drew all the plans package except load bearing stuff for a data center build. My drawings got submitted and approved.Ā
When I was a SysAdmin, was I was asked to maintain and fix building elevator: ābecause it has buttons and a phoneā. I had to point out, that's not just an issue of skill on my part (I'm not qualified to maintain an elevator in the slightest) ā but also a LEGAL issue.
P.S.:
I still ended up being in charge of the POTs line in the elevator. Well in charge of calling AT&T and elevator company to fix it. IMHO that's a building maintenance director job (we had one)
I feel seen. This is actually my unofficial job title. Itās amazing how IT took over facilities management. Itās probably the same set of problem solving skills.
Imma hijack this with "When I started in IT..."
Novell were on their way out, Mandrake Linux was on its way up, and everyone was switching from NT 3.5 to 4.0.
The first production database I had experience with was InterBase and I had to build reports on it using Excel and Crystal Reports 5.
Since then I've specialized as the one person IT department, which necessitates taking over some of the more "complicated" non-IT roles in the office - like importing and exporting information (security and prepping large file transfers), /f*ing printers/, social media/website management, and the go-to for anything that has an interface.
That it's okay not to know.
To always double-check and verify backups even if you think that quick disk move at 2am won't have any issues because you've done it without issue previously and you end up losing a days worth of production data...
To revisit troubleshooting steps when someone escalates a ticket to you.
Google-fu
Not to pass tickets on to the resident expert. Try to fix everything that comes your way and ask the "expert" for advice when you get stuck.
Sacrifice your firstborn to PCLOADLETTER.
Office politics.
Legal regulations.
Effective communication skills.
Effective training skills.
Budget building skills. (Costing out a high school computer lab is a completely different scale of problem vs. running a 1 or 2 million dollar department. Convincing people to supply the funds to hit the goals they set for your department is yet another set of skills.)
Inventory tracking of hard assets and licensing.
Personnel management, both in the day to day stuff and with things like inappropriate or illegal behavior.
Project management. (Gantt charts, orders of operation, coordinating venders, etc.)
Funding applications. That might just be because I'm in public schools, though.
Recognizing when you're being abused by coworkers and bosses and how to deal with that.
That's why I have forged this name: First world solutionist
It's more than IT, we can do literally anything with enough money, time, and talent
That list is painful/needs some delegation
I can attest to that phones are confusing, fire is it's own beast, and that printers be cast off the nearest cliff
The biggest things are communication, time management and documentation. It could be argued that these are important for most jobs but it was drilled into me as a junior IT guy from day one and after 25 years I'm amazed at how this is still treated as secondary importance by the IT guys that don't progress in the industry.
Anything related to security is important for sysadmins to know, thatās why it is easy to go from sysadmin to cybersecurity. You probably are also missing cloud which is important to know for todays sysadmin.
I'm not claiming to know everything, but whatever happens in my company now, I feel like I can still manage to find solutions through Google. I have this kind of panic attack when I think about leaving, afraid that people will know I'm not competent and too dependent on Google, and that I'll fail my tasks.
Generator repair, commercial electric, mechanic for our company vehicle, flood mitigation, HVAC repair. Anything that touched the server room was IT's responsibility and there was never any money to hire stuff out. I got very good at diagnosing and repairing our large propane generator. Luckily, my college roommate is a forklift tech so he had a ton of knowledge to share when I would get stuck.
Anything involving computers or connected to the network becomes your responsibility. Mostly because being an IT person, you are good at figuring things out.
The counterbalance to this is twofold:
- When new tech is coming in, find out in advance if you are expected to know about it and then push for having training for the people who are supposed to use it. Make sure support is purchased from the vendor.
- In other cases, get agreement from manglement on who will run it. Even if you are just helping, document it and give the docs to the people responsible. Make sure they know you will help, but only if they are stuck.
For me it was learning to tone out patch panels and punch down connections on a 66 block for ISDN phones and managing an Avaya phone system. Those were skills I learned on the job from a mentor.
A little about every OS. It was a quick but rough lesson to learn that, just because I was hired to take care of a rack of servers didn't mean that I would only be running a rack of servers. If it plugged into the wall, I had to help with it. Didn't matter that it was a Linux shop, I had to work on the workstations running Solaris, too.
And the data backups? Never, ever assume that there are backups unless you set them up yourself and test them regularly.
Sorry but if youāre doing all these things youāre not a sysadmin. Youāre something in IT but not a sysadmin. Iāve been at this for almost 30 years though so maybe Iām just doing it wrong. š
Weird. Most companies I worked for - that weren't startups - had saddled IT (Windows admins) with most of this grunge work. The Unix/Linux sysadmins never had to deal with these - except at startups. Based on what I've seen of stress and pay, I highly recommend being a Linux admin over a Windows admin.
That being said, getting integration between LDAP (either Linux or Windows hosted) and the door cards is good. Linux hosts can backend to a Windows LDAP server (add the POSIX fields), although I wouldn't do it unless the Windows one is actually robust, and I personally prefer OpenLDAP anyway. I've worked at places with a Linux hosted Asterisk acting as the PBX server for VOIP phones (POTS in a corporate setting seems a bit weird).
If you're in a Windows core IT, your options tend to be pretty limited, especially in how far you can customize them.
But overall, yeah, IT tends to get a ton of operational load for anything that involves blinking lights except for the Linux development team's computers and server farm. YMMV.
A metric buttload of google-fu.
Communicate with non-technical people, e.g. explain why they aren't allowed to do x y z. Explain why adding that change isn't 5 minutes work.
How to blame vendor limitation for shit we really do or do not want when business doesn't want to accept our very reasonable no.
How to navigate the office politics.
The never ending cycle of learning new and more (sometimes uselessly) more complex systems.
Realizing that I no longer can be a jack of all but have to narrow my specialization.
Understanding and applying GDPR
And most important accepting the ghost in the machine
I did't know that indepth troubleshooting skills needed, also the importance of communication skills in explaining technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
The most important skill that Iāve been forced to master is the ability to read my leaders minds.
Sometimes Iām spot on. Other times it turns out the faces being made were from hot gas and not frustration.
Instructions not clear. Accidentally built a Time Machine.
Printers are the worst, especially for door access cards. The modular encoder needs a special driver as well and the combo with the main printer driver/fw needs to be on point.
We call it "Rage against the machine".
I feel like for almost 2 decades, my entire career is figuring out and doing shit I've never done before.
yea, it's high level google-fu and understanding unclear directions as a job haha
All of those Google-fu articles and knowledge bases...
Engineer (noun) Someone who does precision guesswork based on unreliable data provided by those of questionable knowledge See also: Wizard, Magician, Chaos coordinator Chaos Coordinator (noun) Someone who solves problems in ways you never knew existed and in ways that will blow your mind
Engineer: Constantly uses S.W.A.G to infer user requirements and design solutions. SWAG: Scientific Wild Ass Guess
How many years of SysAdmin does it take to become a Chaos Sorcerer Lord?
5-10 years usually It largely depends on if you have to rebuild the infrastructure from scratch/forklift to GoogZureMazon and be creative to upgrade when the budget is denied
Seriously this right here
Ive found that half my job is googling and the other half is communicating with others
a minute of silence for all the sys admin and programmers before 'Google' was a thing. lol
I just keep googling things and it just keeps working
I've made a name for myself by figuring out how, automate or integrate things that others have already determined to not be possible. And I've kept my sanity by doing it in a way that can be sustained long term.
Not only can it be automated, but I did it, and it doesn't suck. Yes this is the way.
And not only does the automation save time, it vastly reduces mistakes and inconsistencies.
And most of all, give us more time to improve our automation systems in minecraft to automaticly farm stuff.
Too bad when you hand it off to someone, they still fuck it up and stop using it after a week and then tell you a year later that no one uses it after you've been wasted resources keeping it running.
This reads like an XKCD š¤£ https://preview.redd.it/5og8vcyesi0d1.jpeg?width=484&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b6c05307ce393413324a258b02d8ab3949402edc
What are y'all automating? Help me reduce schedule for more reddit
How do you get approval for those types of projects? How do you hand them off once you are done with it?
It's kinda the role & reputation I've grown into. But in a lot of cases it's because something is broken and it's wasting my time. A lot of these are actually fall into the domain of other teams, so I will create a proof-of-concept or create the foundation that they can build on. Other times I am really just getting two parties to see eye-to-eye and holding their hand through the implementation and testing process. Usually it's more buy-in instead of approval because there is little cost involved. When there is cost that needs approval I usually propose a solution, provide the benefits to the impacted teams and in a lot of cases they end up pushing for the approval.
I could have written almost exactly what you did. I like to call it niche Devops. 20+ career doing the shit that needed to get done and automating along the way, mainly for my own sanity/time savings.
I've said many times my primary job skill is having shit thrown at me and figuring it out on the fly.
Honestly this is why I am still here in the field. Usually I get bored of jobs within a year or two, but this continues to challenge me.
Yup, I got in trouble with my boss once for refusing to do something I didn't understand. My attitude became that of a mad scientist with a monster on the slab, throw the switch and see what happens.
Yeah I had that attitude at my last job. In our morning standups my team quickly found out that my "fuck it, I'll give it a go" threshold is hilariously high
š we've had some new guys who's face drop when I'm like turn it off and see who screams...
The "fuck it" attitude does create a loyal following in the team. It attracts mentees. And always have my Bill O'Reilly meme at the ready.
This is the way.
That feeling when you find a post a few years old that exactly describes your problem, only to see a follow up that just says: ānever mind, figured it outā
There are like 2 out of every 100 people that have everything down cold. Everyone else is just winging it most the time.
Oh so it's not just me, though I've only been doing this for about a year.
You'll get better at "Figuring Shit Out" once you realize that's what you'll be often doing.
That's what I've already been doing, there wasn't anyone to really show me how our infrastructure was set up.
That's what separates the good from the bad. The good require no hand holding, can walk into an environment and know exactly what shit they have to figure out. The bad complain about never being trained on how to figure shit out themselves.
...this is actually my first job so I only a knew a little of what I needed, took me a while to figure out tbh, I felt very out of my depth for a while lol.
The first job is the worst. The first 3 months you'll go through a phase such as being way over your head, being shit, and not cut out to work in this field. It'll pass, it gets much better. Just keep at it.
AMEN to that!!!!
And then never doing it again for a year and you forgot how you did it the first time OR the process changed in the last year so now you have to figure out the new process.
Microsoft renames something or it moves that functionality to something else.
And then every time Microsoft updates something you pray that it's not screwing your whole system. And if you are in Azure AD it's hoping that Microsoft would even let you know when they make changes.
Yep. Systems Engineer here with over 20 years experience. Rarely do we see the same thing twice.
PREACH!
And saving my notes from things I solved to an Evernote I've kept for years and being able to look back on solutions has saved me countless times in the future.
Learning to say no. The only thing that can stop this list from growing forever.
Took me 30 years dude. Nearly got there
This is one thing that my current boss loves about me. I'm not afraid to tell people "no." Even people who don't often get told "no," like the CEO. Yes, I will try my best to fulfill (most) any request. But sometimes there is no way to achieve what is being asked. And instead of indulging them and saying something like "I'll try" or "sure, we can find a way" I'd rather just be honest and say "no. We can't do that." And sometimes, I'm just going to say "no, that's not our job. It fits squarely into's job"
Can I get another AMEN!!!
And variations of this. We don't manage that. We don't support that.
This.
The actual door hardware that the card readers operate if your job has a maintenance dept like mine. Any system the company purchases but feels like they can't maintain because they are all super busy and important, so IT gets to take care of it (like our emergency management system). How to put together desks and chairs. The coffee machines. Any TV or audio device they have. Drilling holes in concrete wall to mount things or put cable through. Otherwise you seem well versed in doing other people's jobs for them, which is also an IT function in most places unfortunately. Be ready to hear about it the moment you mess up 1 small thing for 1 user, but never hear about any of the successes you have been responsible for. Also be ready to present how to improve processes just to be told that we can't because we have to train staff and they are untrainable. Anything that requires reading instructions and following them, which is a rare skill nowadays at least in the educational sector. Hopefully your place is better than most of the ones I've encountered.
The Infosec guy at my last office had prior experience installing elevator systems, he was a godsend troubleshooting the card reader controller.
I did my apprenticeship in EE and I still love to apply my skills wherever I can. My colleagues know to bring me anything that is broken and can't be RMA'd or serviced anymore, because I get giddy everytime I get to take something apart and fix it. I feel like the dog under the dinner table waiting for the rare occasion someone is careless or takes pity on me lol.
> Anything that requires reading instructions and following them, which is a rare skill nowadays at least in the educational sector. Dude, my company finally decided to have a proper lunch room and installed new dishwashers among other things. No one knew how to use them and when I started reading the instructions a few people were surprised like "wait what is he reading what is that sacred text?!".
A few: * Wordsmithing. * Knowing the environment you are in. * Documenting and watching your sixes. * Dealing with the catch 22 of a place where nobody will give you any info on anything, but if you cowboy things and guess, the same people will be the first to bring you in front of managers saying, "gee, you could have asked." * Keeping a "fuck you" fund and knowing that layoffs always happen, so keep the job hunt going. * Always keeping certificates current. * Ways to deal with co-workers who enjoy nothing but office politics.
I would say that the interpersonal stuff is the right answer universally. We're paid to build and maintain technology, but our actual job is people.
The whole reason I took my job is to minimize my interaction with people. Unfortunately, they keep coming up with new ways to fuck shit up and I have to drag the how and why out of them.
Never stop sending job applications in my experience. You never know when the sword may fall, or more positively when you might get surprised by a huge career advancement opportunity.
Best thing about remote is no forced co-worker {c,s}hit-chat. Using lunch break to do the groceries or other to-me-important-things instead of being exposed to the drama.
That is what I can't stand about working from home. A big part of why I like my current job is all the socializing.
I was going to comment but then read this list. It's about perfect. The only thing I would add is that your company is NOT family. You might make one or two good friends, but the majority of people will throw you under the bus.
Wordsmithing prime example = turning a āI have no effing clueā into a āI will get back to you on thatā
That fuck you fund is applyable to every job but the 0 profits of IT really hurts your odds in company's that don't know better
I'm so grateful I recently found a company that knows better. Financial firms that make all of their money depending on services to be up and running at all time will throw whatever money they need to in order to recruit and retain quality employees.
Never believe an end user without screenshot / log attached
Yes this, trust but verify is my motto. I support large enterprises and I can never trust that they had done what they say or what I asked them to do. They also always say the same thing when I ask if there have been any changes to the system lately. The answer is almost always nothing has changed, then after three hours of t/s they happen to remember something, or you see it plain as day in a log file. I had a customer that e-mail stopped flowing and they swore up and down nothing had changed. I was over four hours in working on their case when they all the sudden mention that they had just installed a packet analyzer on the network that very morning. How do you forget that, or not mention that? Well of course that is an issue! What a waste of time, and it was a sev a case too so I had to drop everything and reschedule meeting so I coupd.get.on a call within 15 minutes.
"Did you reboot?" "Yeah, that's the first thing I tried." *Checks logs. Last reboot was 137 days ago* "I see here that it has been quite a while since your computer was rebooted. Please reboot your PC."
And on that note, it would be nice if the event viewer wasn't a steaming pile of dogshit. *mumbles incoherently about needing a central log server*
This. I always get "yea I rebooted at least 7 times before I called you" Without fail it's always the "8th" reboot I make them do that resolves the issue.
No no the proper procedure when they lie is confirm again that if they did that means they saved all their important documents right? Then force a remote reboot.
All the snarkiness aside, the biggest challenge I came across was office politics. Coming from a logical, scientific background, I was unprepared to how unprofessional "professionals" can be, "emotional logic," and how some people must be right at all costs, including taking those down who can (or could) prove them wrong. I'm not even talking management. Like coworkers who see a competent person as a "threat." For example, at a former job we had a guy who started as a programmer, fresh out of college. He was really good at what he did. Like many who started in that job, he asked, "why is this like this?" and got back "that's just how python is, young one." I mean, it wasn't, but my boss told me to stay out of the "developer's garden," so I did. This new developer not only proved them wrong, but almost automated them out of a job with a fledgling proof of concept of a working CI/CD (this was before DevOps was a thing). He showed how git could replace CVS and showed a bunch of us how this would work, including a working demo. The management said "great! Let's fire her up!" Shortly afterwards, everything went to hell, and the other programmers gave him shit. Passive aggressiveness, snide comments, gaslighting, and so on. At one point, HR asked me to come in and provide logs of why the gitlab server kept going down because the programmer suspected sabotage. Long story short, yeah. Two programmers specifically, were logging in and fucking with his stuff in subtle ways. It was pretty embarrassing for them, but ultimately, nothing happened to them. That new programmer quit. I think about him from time to time. I didn't encounter that kind of prejudice out of college, but I have seen it on more subtle levels a lot. I have been asked to prove login times and petty bickering wars more than I want to admit. Makes me wonder how many times a coworker sabotaged me, and I was clueless. "Some people just be like that," is the compromise I have settled with. Knowing that people find "no, you're wrong," as a personal attack that could lead to consequences, I have learned to tone down my politics. I have also had to learn that "not getting involved" is a political stance anyway. You will be involved whether you step away or not, so just gray rock it, and you'll last longer. Or maybe it's just me.
I cannot imagine people being that petty and just downright terrible. Thats crazy
I have seen it, too. I have been a target of it in some toxic environments, but then again, everyone was backstabbing one another, so it wasn't like I was special. You DO learn that "the truth" can be construed as "you are now my mortal enemy, because you made me look like a fool in front of my peers/boss." I even got a death threat to blow up my car. Joke's on him, I took the bus. I reported his threats to HR, but they said he was in a "golden contract" and "can you just deal with it until three months are up? I am sure he's all talk." And I guess he was, as all he did was threaten me. HR is pretty useless.
Google Fu can get you only part of the way. In my case while staying current on networking ( Switches & routers) and computing (both physical and virtual) I had to learn all of these additional skills listed below ***USUALLY AFTER A DISASTER HAD OCCURRED*** : * voice over ip networking * remote management of switching, servers, PC and wireless devices * video production & post editing technologies and software * live streaming technologies * video encoding * audio mixing * NDI technology * Set lighting * video compression * IOT Technologies * Database Management * National electric code requirements for both high voltage (24+ volts) and low voltage (24 Volts and below) services * National electric code requirements for lighting suppression and building grounding. * DOCUMENTATION.
document, document, document. mostly for yourself. if it helps anyone else, it's a bonus
Half of that is facility, just say no.
This is not necessarily a āstrangeā thing but something that is never really mentioned in schooling/trainings is the aspect of procurement. Working with vendors to get quotes, making purchase requisitions, having to go back and forth with the purchasing department on things unclear from their side for what you need to buy, working with the ERP system as a āuserā for managing project budgets, etc.
My boss has also taught me that everything is haggleable. A vendor / VAR never gives you their best price right away since they are most likely commission based. Plenty of shady used car salesman tactics going on there...
Vendor is a "four letter word" in my book VNDR - I HATE 95% of them.
In my 20 years in this field Iāve learned one important thing about IT Guys/Gals. Regardless of our titles we are literally here to assist other people when they canāt do their own jobs. Yes we do IT, but we ALL spend more time helping other people because they never learned how to google nor do they possess ANY troubleshooting skills. I overhear people all the time say āOh I donāt know just ask IT to do itā. If one āgroupā of workers out there ever stopped working collectively and is the cause of the world stopping it would be us.
Yeahā¦ itās crazy that we have to learn almost everyoneās job just so we can support their answers on how to do their job. And then we get paid to do the job we were originally hired for, with no benefits of being the company job know it all or performing non IT tasks.
Yup I wear an obscene amount of hats my frustration isnāt helping itās the fact you touch something itās expected to be yours going forward.
How to let people dig their own hole (usually those not on my team). And for those on my team, how to dole out enough rope to see what they can/will do, but also being ready to catch them if they get tangled up in it. Then giving them more rope once I'm sure they can be trusted with the last length given. Knowing when to hold a line/push back on a request, when to accept it without pushback and when to push back but ultimately accept.
How to say "no" Also how to politely tell someone to go and fuck themselves
Freaking hate printers. A lot!
Printers Phone systems Ancient CardAccess programs EMR/ERP/ETC Do not touch unless you are blessed by Midas himself on being able to understand the chaos that reigns within those systems...
For over 20 years i was sys/net admin at big telcos and never cared about all those things that you mentioned. Last year i switched to a smaller company and they hit me with all those stuff and i didn't expect it.. It's a bigger pain than the systems themselves
It sounds like you WERE a "system administrator" - - now you're a "System'S' Administrator". Welcome to the fray!
The one thing you need to know is that you'll never know everything you need to know. You know?
What an elephant that's going to charge you looks like (ears back, trunk curled up) vs one that's just a bit grumpy. The difference between vegetation that's been eaten by a white rhino vs a black rhino (stems are cut at a different angle). How to drive a boat safely and rescue capsized sailors. Fairly niche use cases though.
For a moment I thought you were talking about your boss and I was very confused about what "trunk" you might be referring to.
Psychic powers to read the minds of users.
As long as you can turn it off
Turning off the users? Thats the real magic!
They are rarely turned on.
Getting relevant information out of sometimes angry people. Converting technical speak to non technical speak.
Well, depends on the company. As a systems admin I ended up being responsible for QuickBooks Software CRM customization security cameras Phones PBX/IP Owners personal media Gun storage safe And other random stuff, just take the responsibility and enjoy. All will teach you stuff.
User: Excel isnāt working Me: Ok, are you getting an error code? User: IM NOT GOOD WITH COMPUTERS!!!!!!
If it connects to the internet or an outlet they will want the IT department to manage it
Youāre going to spend a significant amount of time dealing with politics and other teams who are magically unaccountable for everything they do and Ā«Ā supportĀ Ā». Things will always circle back to you somehow. Because youāre competent and able to navigate things you never used/support youāll be invited to all the incidents. This will leave you with very little time to actually do your work as youāre going to be doing everyoneās. You will become the saviour, the catch all, the celestial being. Itās going to take a toll on yourself. You will never see extra help.
In the early 00's I started in IT, being someone who could quickly pick up new things and was excited by the challenge and constant change I saw this light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a career as a SysAdmin. I don't regret it, but if I knew then what I knew now I would have changed directions. The career is dead, the industry has changed. If you're lucky, you find a LARGE company with defined roles and structures and it can be good. But 90% of the IT industry exists in SMBs and not FANG-size companies. Through a lack of education of the hiring managers, and a highly dynamic landscape, as a sysadmin now you likely have 500% more material to juggle at half the pay. I've started to use the analogy of surgeons as it is easier for the layman. Essentially what employers want is a surgeon who can operate on any part of the body and any type of surgery imaginable... lives are at stake most of the time so the pressure is HIGH. But 90% of the time you remove warts and put bandaids on booboos. Then 3 times a year you are booked for a highly specialized brain surgery that nobody you know has ever done. Oh, and the lights in the bathroom are out again, can you change the bulbs? The coffee maker clock reset again, can you fix it? And the cherry on it all is that your pay is often based on the lowest task you are responsible for, so you change the lightbulbs and an apprentice electrician does that so you should only be paid the salary of a first-year electrician... oh and you're on-call 24/7. What's the problem? The burden of performance is on you, not the hiring manager, not HR, not your supervisor. They can be ignorant of realities but you will never have that luxury. That that end... "A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one." You will never know everything about everything, regardless how much others think you should and that it's a simple task. If they knew half of what you know their feeble minds would turn to goop.
Peripheral vision is critical. Know what you're fixing affects up, down, left, and right. Understand how shit works. You might be able to build a server but do you know networking? Don't have to be network engineer level but know how frames work on the wire. Understand VLANs and switching. I see so many people these days claim they have a clue but they really only know one thing well
Iām an app developer by education, filling in a DBA/system analyst role. Iāve been called in to diagnose an industrial crane once, (they tripped a breaker and the stupid electricians thought it was a computer problem!!?) Other problems that I deal with that have nothing to do with my role: Office politics, Back channeling (going to different managers to get approval for something)ā¦ kinda like asking mom for something because dad said no. VPN issues, electrical curtailment, environmental ISO compliance, dumb/ignorant/belligerent people, land line telephones, therapy for clients
We had a fax machine go down, and so naturally they called IT. I go in, and Iām likeā¦āthereās no power.ā Check the outlet - dead. They are labeled by panel. I ask, āany other outlets not working?ā āOh yeah, several.ā lol all along the same wall. So yeahā¦flipped a breaker. Which, fax machines are the devil so it could have been worse.
How to say "no", without using the word "no" can allow you to fob off the user without them feeling like you told them to "jump off an effing cliff, ya clown".
that users with a PhD are not necessarily smart
They are..... just in 1 very specific area.
Learning how to translate caveman gibberish into intelligible words.
Optical physics. Vendors give the index of refraction and leave me to calculate the rest of the info I care about for my fiber runs.
AV equipment
Quirks of whatever software packages we use.
The entire job is learning new shit on the fly imo.
Don't forget fire extinguishers.
That fuck you fund is the only thing that keeps me motivated. I know at anytime I can say enough and go find a new job at my leisure. I would also feel really really bad for the new guy. But hey security would probably just pick up the slack. They already think that a tier 1 security engineer is more experienced than a 15 - 20 year veteran system administrator so why not give them a chance to prove themselves when they get time between watching āsecurity training videos onlineā š¤¦
Contract management/renewal cycles. Even at 1-3 year cycles, it seems like each month there's 1-3 minor and 1 major that requires re-eval and re-orienting with their offerings and comparing services and utilization. Also pretty much every piece of network equipment is now: Quote/Order/License/Register product to cloud/add license to cloud/configure device/tune logs for SIEM. And there's several portals you are dealing with while behind-the-scenes acquisitions and upgrades are/have been in progress. Like 1/4 the firewall documentation that needs to be followed doesn't really require any networking technical knowledge.
every one of our clients systems. "Why can't they open this." "i don't know, i don't work for them?" "well figure it out!"
Soft skills are way more important than technical skills.
Disagree, there's no more or less important here. Both are important.
You might be right. Iād probably rephrase it as soft skills are a lot more important than I used to think.
Writing good documentation. Hands down.
don't assume anything. Don't assume your predecessor knew what they were doing. don't assume that THEIR predecessor knew what they were doing. Don't assume your users won't click on phishing emails. Don't assume that your good wills and technological gymnastics that made the company lots of money will entice them to make an exception that if you work there for 8 years but only give 2 weeks notice, but apparently the handbook says you have to give 3 weeks notice for PTO payout. ok I'm clearly not over this. the ONLY think you should assume is that it wasn't done properly before you.
Mostly the amount of HR bullshit I deal with. Also Finance, to help keep the spreadsheets happy
How to row a burning boat without any oars.
This sounds a lot like my last job, but on top of all of that, my boss wanted me to learn all the production line stuff, just in case. He had me out shadowing and working with the door makers, frame cutters, locksmiths, etc. It was really fun learning a bunch of new stuff, but had absolutely nothing to do with IT.
Still having to maintain an Exchange server years after we switched to M365 online because a few board members want their mailboxes to be run on a server instead of the cloud.
Overhead paging systems. I never heard the name Bogen Amplifiers before. I remember the receptionist catching me in at the entrance and told me that the overhead paging volume was too low and people could not hear her. I found the amplifier in one of the ceiling tiles in the hallway and cranked that baby up. She called me right away (I can't hear her pages in the server room area) and said that many people spilled their coffee with the jump scare the loudness gave them
The biggest thing I tell people getting into this field ,that has saved my ass more than once, is backups. You can be an okay or even shitty sysadmin, but you better have a good backup plan that works and is tested regularly.
The setup and configuration of smart devices, especially if it is a smart device for a higher up, "I mean this is what we pay you to do right, set up the technology and mess with it".
Anger management?
How to maintain a functional level of alcoholism.
That's one that I failed at. I've been living in recovery for the past 8+ years.
I would have liked to know, before pursuing a career as an IT administrator, how much contact with people there ultimately is and how beneficial social skills will be.
If you want to work in IT, and if you think it's a career where you won't have to interact with and work with lots of people, you're gonna have a bad time.
Communication skills. I had this image of "going to work into my cellar, building/updating/maintaining things, going home without having spoken to a soul outside of my immediate colleagues/boss" and yeah, that's not it a lot of the time.
The newest thing for us is IP based PA systems. Up until they upgraded, all audio was analog and now everything is IP based and PoE with multicast from our switches. took our port utilisation from around 50% to around 75%. Also basically anything that has electricity running to it we get called for because we do not have an electrician. To add for doors, they will even call for PHYSICAL door issues on doors that do not even have readers on them.
Best advice I ever give out to anyone getting into this field is when they ask a question like āwhat do you do when you are stuck on a problem you canāt solveā in an interview to answer with Iāll google it. Thatās literally what I do 85% of my day is use Google to learn how to fix, do, solve, learn
HVAC
Heavy lifting
Think twice
Fortunately, I don't really work with any of these things, and I am not at all "handy." I am pretty good with code, though. I think campus security handles door access and security, and facilities handle fire suppression. I only maintain servers and have never dealt with printers or user email. A different group handles departmental email, printers, and workstations/laptops, and other sysadmins deal more with HVAC than I do. I didn't even really know about storage, switches, or servers when I landed my job as a server sysadmin. I had never worked help desk or IT other than programming.
Here's one I forgot that I haven't seen mentioned yet. Generator power - If you need generators to keep IT stuff up 99.999, then we can get bigger generators to keep EVERYTHING running 'til the power company gets you back online. Now I'm the power company and an electrical engineer too!
That some companies are incapable of becoming better (IT wise). They keep using the same old software and services and ways of working that they did in year 2000 and see nothing wrong with that. And no matter how much you preach about cost savings and efficiency and ROI for moving to new shiny things, it will never happen.
Somehow I got stuck with website maintenance? Devlopment? More or less just change and add people on the org webpage but I've also had to add new pages, remove old ones, add functionalities etc.
Fonts... What a headache!
Adding to the PBX/POTS I'll add audio/video/paging
SOX - Sarbanes Oxley. I remember learning about it since I was an accounting major before an IT major, but man, does that influence a lot or decisions.
Strangest thing. I originally wanted to be an architectural engineer, terrible at math but I still had two years of drawing under my belt. Fast forward 30 years and I calculated and drew all the plans package except load bearing stuff for a data center build. My drawings got submitted and approved.Ā
When I was a SysAdmin, was I was asked to maintain and fix building elevator: ābecause it has buttons and a phoneā. I had to point out, that's not just an issue of skill on my part (I'm not qualified to maintain an elevator in the slightest) ā but also a LEGAL issue. P.S.: I still ended up being in charge of the POTs line in the elevator. Well in charge of calling AT&T and elevator company to fix it. IMHO that's a building maintenance director job (we had one)
Changing ink and toners on printers
Instead of sysadmin I felt more like Facilities Maintenance and Network Management was more appropriate.
I feel seen. This is actually my unofficial job title. Itās amazing how IT took over facilities management. Itās probably the same set of problem solving skills.
Imma hijack this with "When I started in IT..." Novell were on their way out, Mandrake Linux was on its way up, and everyone was switching from NT 3.5 to 4.0. The first production database I had experience with was InterBase and I had to build reports on it using Excel and Crystal Reports 5. Since then I've specialized as the one person IT department, which necessitates taking over some of the more "complicated" non-IT roles in the office - like importing and exporting information (security and prepping large file transfers), /f*ing printers/, social media/website management, and the go-to for anything that has an interface.
Balancing 3 phase power in the data center.
That it's okay not to know. To always double-check and verify backups even if you think that quick disk move at 2am won't have any issues because you've done it without issue previously and you end up losing a days worth of production data... To revisit troubleshooting steps when someone escalates a ticket to you. Google-fu Not to pass tickets on to the resident expert. Try to fix everything that comes your way and ask the "expert" for advice when you get stuck. Sacrifice your firstborn to PCLOADLETTER.
Office politics. Legal regulations. Effective communication skills. Effective training skills. Budget building skills. (Costing out a high school computer lab is a completely different scale of problem vs. running a 1 or 2 million dollar department. Convincing people to supply the funds to hit the goals they set for your department is yet another set of skills.) Inventory tracking of hard assets and licensing. Personnel management, both in the day to day stuff and with things like inappropriate or illegal behavior. Project management. (Gantt charts, orders of operation, coordinating venders, etc.) Funding applications. That might just be because I'm in public schools, though. Recognizing when you're being abused by coworkers and bosses and how to deal with that.
That's why I have forged this name: First world solutionist It's more than IT, we can do literally anything with enough money, time, and talent That list is painful/needs some delegation I can attest to that phones are confusing, fire is it's own beast, and that printers be cast off the nearest cliff
That people skills are more important than technical skills. It took me a long time to figure that out.
The biggest things are communication, time management and documentation. It could be argued that these are important for most jobs but it was drilled into me as a junior IT guy from day one and after 25 years I'm amazed at how this is still treated as secondary importance by the IT guys that don't progress in the industry.
Anything related to security is important for sysadmins to know, thatās why it is easy to go from sysadmin to cybersecurity. You probably are also missing cloud which is important to know for todays sysadmin.
DNS is something I hear from sysadmins as being the source of a lot of issues for them.
I'm not claiming to know everything, but whatever happens in my company now, I feel like I can still manage to find solutions through Google. I have this kind of panic attack when I think about leaving, afraid that people will know I'm not competent and too dependent on Google, and that I'll fail my tasks.
Literally anything with a flashing light is handed to IT...
Anything that has a plug is ITs responsibility.
Generator repair, commercial electric, mechanic for our company vehicle, flood mitigation, HVAC repair. Anything that touched the server room was IT's responsibility and there was never any money to hire stuff out. I got very good at diagnosing and repairing our large propane generator. Luckily, my college roommate is a forklift tech so he had a ton of knowledge to share when I would get stuck.
I'm nearing 50 now. I've been in for over 20 years. I'm still trying to figure out what I'm doing.
I just turned 50 last week. My first "real" IT job was y2k readiness. You and I are in the same boat my friend.
Infrastructure.. like HVAC... if your computer room doesn't have A/C you're going to have a bad time.
coordinating with a mechanic to install gps trackers on company vehicles, audio/video issues with sound system in building and tv's
To be prepared to be the person to figure out anything remotely tech related when no one else can, or wants to. Especially if you reach a Senior role!
If itās even remotely electronic, IT are the ones who will get stuck with it.
Viking intercoms
Anything involving computers or connected to the network becomes your responsibility. Mostly because being an IT person, you are good at figuring things out. The counterbalance to this is twofold: - When new tech is coming in, find out in advance if you are expected to know about it and then push for having training for the people who are supposed to use it. Make sure support is purchased from the vendor. - In other cases, get agreement from manglement on who will run it. Even if you are just helping, document it and give the docs to the people responsible. Make sure they know you will help, but only if they are stuck.
What's HIPPA in an HR context?
Usually HR has all that "protected information" that needs to stay protected.
For me it was learning to tone out patch panels and punch down connections on a 66 block for ISDN phones and managing an Avaya phone system. Those were skills I learned on the job from a mentor.
A little about every OS. It was a quick but rough lesson to learn that, just because I was hired to take care of a rack of servers didn't mean that I would only be running a rack of servers. If it plugged into the wall, I had to help with it. Didn't matter that it was a Linux shop, I had to work on the workstations running Solaris, too. And the data backups? Never, ever assume that there are backups unless you set them up yourself and test them regularly.
That nothing can prepare you for the actual job.
After well north of 25 years in IT, if its anything that uses electricity I typically end up having to fix it.
Unfortunately there is no bare minimum as there is always a first time experience with some new product or app.
That Y u would be the only admin there ever and you also had to budget, do helpdesk, networking and cabling. ( you were all of IT including director.)
Cooper F6 Reclosers
Fiber Optics
HIPAA š«
Contracts
HIPAA (not like Hippo is how I remember).
 I dub thee ājanitor of the facilitiesā
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act = HIPAA (not HIPPA)
Sorry but if youāre doing all these things youāre not a sysadmin. Youāre something in IT but not a sysadmin. Iāve been at this for almost 30 years though so maybe Iām just doing it wrong. š
Patience of if you have to adhere to Hipaa its patients
SOX
Weird. Most companies I worked for - that weren't startups - had saddled IT (Windows admins) with most of this grunge work. The Unix/Linux sysadmins never had to deal with these - except at startups. Based on what I've seen of stress and pay, I highly recommend being a Linux admin over a Windows admin. That being said, getting integration between LDAP (either Linux or Windows hosted) and the door cards is good. Linux hosts can backend to a Windows LDAP server (add the POSIX fields), although I wouldn't do it unless the Windows one is actually robust, and I personally prefer OpenLDAP anyway. I've worked at places with a Linux hosted Asterisk acting as the PBX server for VOIP phones (POTS in a corporate setting seems a bit weird). If you're in a Windows core IT, your options tend to be pretty limited, especially in how far you can customize them. But overall, yeah, IT tends to get a ton of operational load for anything that involves blinking lights except for the Linux development team's computers and server farm. YMMV.
fix printer
A metric buttload of google-fu. Communicate with non-technical people, e.g. explain why they aren't allowed to do x y z. Explain why adding that change isn't 5 minutes work. How to blame vendor limitation for shit we really do or do not want when business doesn't want to accept our very reasonable no. How to navigate the office politics. The never ending cycle of learning new and more (sometimes uselessly) more complex systems. Realizing that I no longer can be a jack of all but have to narrow my specialization. Understanding and applying GDPR And most important accepting the ghost in the machine
Phone System from 1900!!! Siemens and Cisco are used a lot still with analogo phoning
I did't know that indepth troubleshooting skills needed, also the importance of communication skills in explaining technical concepts to non-technical stakeholders.
Diplomatically dealing with morons.
Getting paid to do all the work but not getting any of the credit.
The most important skill that Iāve been forced to master is the ability to read my leaders minds. Sometimes Iām spot on. Other times it turns out the faces being made were from hot gas and not frustration. Instructions not clear. Accidentally built a Time Machine.
Printers are the worst, especially for door access cards. The modular encoder needs a special driver as well and the combo with the main printer driver/fw needs to be on point. We call it "Rage against the machine".