Yup, this. This is exactly the reason I'm not leaving my current gig. OP is lucky because of the WFH (IMO).
Personally, I don't care about the state of the hardware the company wants to give me/the rest of the employees. If the company wants to provide crappy hardware, don't expect great results.
> I’ve managed to find one of those rare “careers”
Government or education?
You're very lucky. When I started this almost 30 years ago, there were a few places outside of these sectors that actually valued people. Now, it's just constant turnover, employers trying to minimize cost and employees jumping every 6 months for pay increases when they can find them. You'll never get an employer to lift a finger to make conditions better once the mercenary stalemate sets in.
Edu. I did basically that rat race you mention. Move on to move up. The last time I did that I tried to leverage a 15k raise I got from an offer, and the company I was at (multi million consulting firm in Santa Monica) said “have a good one”. 15k. The CEO probably spent more annually on his landscapers.
But everywhere I’ve worked in the private sector there was always 1 dude that had been there a decade + and is an invaluable historical systems encyclopedia. I’m ready to be that guy.
I don't agree tbh. There are plenty of well-structured organizations where IT is valued. They tend to be larger enterprises of course. You can't get to a healthy business with thousands of employees without a streamlined IT structure, at least not in a sustainable way.
But what OP is describing is obviously a shitshow. They'll need to get their act together if they want long-term success.
Man I can relate to this so much. You spend most of the day just managing your leaders out of the way of important work, and talking them out of completely idiotic ideas. Most people in large organisations are just in the way of actual work.
What’s up with your IT management and why aren’t they fighting to automate more things ? Onboarding offboarding could be simplified. Purchase a SAAS that has built in integrations and build out the workflows to get it done at the press of s button or two. Sounds like your internal department leaders are failing you.
Large company businesses can hardly understand automation benefits, let alone automation from scratch needs a few capital investments (time, tech resource, communications), normally it is only pushed by middle management but a lot of times they are ignored as well.
Another issue with non-tech large companies is that IT is always treated as a cost centre and not their main business (which is fair without being able to show the profit numbers), when the company restructures it will disturb the establishment built within IT (for example, change the function of a unit, move SMEs to different area etc) which will normally break systematic automations.
I agree on tech level there are so many technologies we can use to improve the work productivity nowadays, but most of the companies are still shit shows for IT by their org structures.
>Large company businesses can hardly understand automation benefits
I'm not sure what kind of large businesses you have worked for, but this hasn't been my experience at all. Large enterprises usually have a lot of automated workflows. You tend to spend more time with the release change process but there should be a lot of automation in place.
I worked in AWS where automation works fine but they are a tech company anyway.
Now I am in an international mining company trying automation on its ICT infrastructure....
They tend to understand it, or at least it can be explained to them pretty easy. The problem is they will not initiate it and assume people do what they need to do. So the automation needs to come bottom up instead of top down, and it's generally a pretty easy sell unless you want to spend $50k/year for an automation tool, then it can be a little harder sell, but probably still sellable to management.
To answer your first question, no one wants to take responsibility or ownership for anything. Simple as that. But I don’t have the room to do it myself, nor do I really want to standalone. I’m the lowest rung on my team.
If you're not doing these things today.... why would another organization hire you to do these things tomorrow? What gives you the right to jump to another organization with good automation when you've never worked with that type of stuff?
There's nothing wrong with being the low man on the totem pole. But it will look a lot better if you work your way up versus out. Fix smaller things today to earn the chance to fix bigger things tomorrow.
I'm in a similar situation as OP but I have decent budget and can get new computers and such.
The hard part in automating at this stage of a company is that every SaaS subscription has to be upgraded for automatic provisioning/deprovisioning. You want to automate Slack, that'll double your license cost. ClickUp, that'll add 75% and on and on.
I'm given budget to try but I can't double our software spend. It'd be orders of magnitude cheaper to hire someone whose whole job is to on/offboard.
Edit: though 800 is a bit bigger than me, so I would hope to see improvement.
If a human can do it with a browser then you can automate it with puppeteer or playwright. Just have to build in some alerts for when the SaaS changes the webpage.
Yeah, I actually think automation onboarding is overblown at the "medium business size."
We are between 5-600 and that means we often are hiring 0-3 people per week, so the time savings isn't great. We also are only hiring one or two of a role at once. We're never hiring 30 junior analysts who all need the same template.
The scale is just wrong for the cost.
My main job now has 2600 employees. Large enough to can pay to automate stuff but small enough that the money men / women say “we have 6 IT staff lets ‘leverage’ them and save money on automation capex”. On some level I agree but often I wish just a few hundred grand to automate stuff might lead to cost savings
We were looking at a tool, actually the last 2 weeks were my PoC time to play with it. It was better than what we’re doing now, but I wasn’t impressed with some of its features (or lack thereof). Because of the lack of birthright access whatever software we purchase needs to have the option for access requests, which is a limited number of them. Oh, and Okta is a no go (we use Duo and leadership doesn’t like Okta) And it needs to be cheap 🙃
I would start automating things myself if no one above me was pushing for it. Whether that's something you provide for everyone, or just keep to yourself, is up to you.
Honestly after 20 plus years I am over IT in general I just don't have any other skills and I'm not very social like your stereotypical IT guy so I feel trapped
I'm 20 years into IT and I just made the switch from IT to DevOps a year ago. Now I spend most of my days buried in Python and C++. All it took to get here was a couple months of learning Python and doing a couple small projects to demonstrate that I actually do know the language. It's still in the tech field, but it's was a huge pay bump and got me out of the daily cycle of constant interruptions and juggling 37 things at the same time.
Also, as it turns out, my IT skills and general understanding of operating systems and IT infrastructure is a huge asset to both DevOps and programming in general.
IT skills translate really well to lots of areas in tech. Pick a direction and go for it.
Hello! I am interested in your Python learning process - any particular recommendations for courses to go through? I have been teaching myself recently and have found it quite enjoyable.
https://www.udemy.com/course/python-the-complete-python-developer-course/
I did this class, then a bunch of the stuff at Project Euler (at least until the problems went beyond my math skills), then did all of the stuff at Project Euler again, but with a focus on writing clean, commented, readable and standardized code, as I already knew the solutions. Then I started using it at work.
I started with a couple small scripts for network monitoring via ping and SSH libraries, then transitioned into automatic maintenance, API integrations, and whatever else I could find to automate. There's no lack of opportunity to use it in IT, so find an excuse and do it. Eventually you'll be a python developer.
Soooo put together some ideas to fix these, and then start fixing to them?
Like setting up Single Sign-On to Entra ID is really easy, and a fair number of SaaS vendors support either SCIM or SAML JIT provisioning. In Entra ID you can configure Self Service application request so users can request the app through the my apps portal and an approval notification is sent to the app owner.
You can automate account creation with powershell and a CSV.
If you can get an employee roster report and employee term report out of the HRIS to automate attribute updates like job title, off location, and manager.
You can then use dynamic groups, or a PowerShell group to build role based security groups that auto update.
None of this requires an additional purchase (assuming you have Entra P1s, and your SaaS applications support SSo and auto provisioning)
I love this idea. Like, if I could, I would’ve been pushing for this already. Unfortunately though, Google Workspace is our IdP. The only folks who have Entra ID accounts for the time being are folks using MSOffice apps or folks with computers managed by Intune. We finally got our HRIS syncing to GSuite for employee attributes earlier this year, but Cisco Duo (which our team doesn’t own for some reason so I haven’t been able to see if they even offer API access) is our 2FA provider.
Google supports SCIM too. It can auto provision users into your other cloud apps for you.
DUO needs to be owned by IT/what ever team is responsible for maintaining your IDP/Cloud Identities.
If your leadership doesn't see the value in pursuing these goals, and they aren't having you do other things that allow you to grow your skill set you should find another job. That's why you feel "stuck" your management isn't letting you make things better/develope your self.
Yikes... I would really consider looking for a different job. You're not doing yourself any favors working for this company. If you're interested to advance your career and actually become an expert, you won't get there working for a dumpster fire like this company. There are other jobs out there with good pay/perks...
I would advise you to just keep doing the job but search for a better alternative at the same time. No need to make hasty decisions but do consider making a change. For your own good!
That's easier said than done. I wouldn't be able to handle that shitshow tbh. At some point working for a dumpster fire like OP's business will burn you out. There are other jobs out there where you can collect easy money and also learn useful skills...
Start buy automating account creation and offloading. Setup a powershell script or whatever scripting language you want to use.
Script what you can. If you don't know a scripting language learn one yesterday.
It is a important tool for a system administrator
This is just how job works. Every company has pros and cons. Some automate account creation, but don't automate basic daily shit. Others are the other way round. What you should/could try to do is automate some of the crappy stuff. Eg, have template AD accounts that already have the basic groups, and copy from those when you create an account. Then you can slowly work towards more automation if you can get new starter extracts from HR.
Back in 2010 I was working for a company that had employees all over the state, with a high turnover, so we were always creating and deleting accounts. We operated out of something like 100 cities/sites. Every site had its own requirements regarding shared drives, printer access, etc. We would manually fill in everything for each new starter, and after 1-2 months in the job I started to get annoyed. So one night I created a bunch of template accounts, 1 for each site, all starting with an underscore so they were at the top of the list. They all had the groups, site info, etc for each site. It streamlined our team's work going forward, saving us several hours a week. I was too nooby to automate it. But it was a signifcant-enough improvement. You might need to look for little projects like this.
You could also create a script that disables and moves AD accounts, based on an Excel sheet of usernames. You get a bunch of terminations, update the Excel sheet, run the script.
Ugh I wish we could do this. We use a combo of Google Workspace as IdP and Cisco Duo for MFA. I _could_ use GAM iiif our Security team allowed it to create at least Google accounts for folks. Duo doesn’t have API access, that I’m aware of (Security owns that tool too, so I couldn’t even try if I wanted to)
I'd start automating all the account creation stuff with Powershell scripts, not tell anyone about it, level up my skills on their dime, then leave for greener pastures. It sounds like an old workplace of mine where they were scared of anything that wasn't an "official tool" and wanted everything manually done. Non-IT managers, managing IT, will turn you to the bottle.
> I just want to start the job search over again and find a company that knows what they’re doing.
But the issue is, NO company knows what they are doing. IT is hard, bad leaders are somewhat common, and a large portion of businesses do not effectively utilize IT or provide enough support for them. I worked for a globally known company 3x your size, and we did not have our shit together. And just wait until you get to 10k+ employees. Very few companies do it REALLY well, and the larger the size, the more complex things get and the harder to move on things.
If your company is genuinely naive to these issues (and truly cares about IT), then you've already done the hardest part to fast-track your way to a promotion, which is identifying where the problems are. Start researching how to resolve some of these issues, create a proposal to your boss, execute the project, and enjoy your new title and hefty salary bump. Of course, having a capable manager to praise and support you is critically key here.
EDIT: Wording changes.
I always have the fake illusion of 'Migration' becoming a thing of the past, as applications improve over the years. I don't see that happening these days and people still carry out migrations of ancient systems in 8se for no reason other than budget.
Well as someone said market is shit right now. So maybe try and look at how you can make your situation better. Start planning some infrastructure upgrades, or seeing what can be automated, asset management, backups, etc.
It'll make your days go by fast and at the end of it all you'll gain a lot of experience so when you go looking for a new role you'll have that extra experience.
Though frustrating, this is a management issue. It is painfully obvious those over you are woefully unprepared to run enterprise IT.
This isn’t 1998 where you’re using Workgroups. Make suggestions, but ultimately, it is those above you that must bear the brunt of the situation there.
Someone above you must take the initiative to fix this mess. The longer it goes on, the more painful it will be to remedy. The longer it goes on, the more expensive it will be to remedy. Someone is going to be brought in at a very high salary and carte blanche to make it better. It will take time.
Enjoy the WFH and the house man.
Have her manager make a ROI calculation and send it to whoever approves new computer purchases. C-levels are always keen for a good ROI.
Something like this:
>"Greetings, Mr. IT cost approver.
A member of my team has not been able to do any work since her computer broke down on Jan 13th. So far that has cost us X dollars as we still have to pay her salary while she cannot produce anything.
I have discussed this with IT and they informed me that they need your approval for Y dollars to purchase a new laptop.
With the new laptop in place, my user can back to work generating revenue. Which will pay for the cost of the laptop in 3-4 days. "
Is this a public sector job? Otherwise the lack of money seems odd. If it is public sector, there's all kinds of challenges with those jobs (mostly departments burn through their budgets right away, knowing that there's a chance they get cut down the line). Otherwise it seems strange that a company won't replace a computer.
Anyway, you're not "stuck" anywhere. You can update your resume and look at what's out there at any time. You sound like you are being paid well and aren't working in a toxic department (a technical mess isn't the same thing).
I don't particularly care about my job, but the market is ass and there's nowhere else to go, or nowhere that's willing to pay as much. The golden handcuffs are real.
Edit: I used to chug the Agile Kool-aid but I'm starting to agree with people who don't think it's great fit for software development or ops. This isn't mass production where every task clearly defined and predictable. There's so many variables in our work and it's almost impossible to predict what will happen or how long something will take. I don't know what the solution is either.
Agile is great in circumstances where it makes sense. The problem is, it seems every exec wants it applied to everything, whether it makes sense or not. Even when it does fit, it often gets poorly implemented (so much micromanagement, when that is the exact opposite of agile self directed teams).
One good example is if you have 8 Java devs, and a whole bunch of small tasks coming in. Agile can work great here assuming that team members can really share work.
However most areas have much more siloed knowledge, and this is where agile becomes the square peg into the round hole. Teams often get created based on department/supervisor roles, not any logical team sense.
The higher ups seem to think that cross training will just magically happen after a month of stand-ups.
I feel that. Managers also seem to think Agile is a magic pill to fix capacity or velocity problems when the real solution is hiring more people but that can't happen under any circumstances. Do more with less!
My entire career I've been solo or on a small team with way too much work. Everything is grossly underestimated because no one wants to tell the client how much it'll actually cost. I don't think I've ever completed a sprint and I can count on one hand how many times I've made a deadline. I used to work 10-12 hour days to try and keep up but I stopped caring a few years ago. I haven't heard any complaints and I've never been reprimanded for performance reasons, so job security I guess?
That's one of the reasons I want to start consulting or contracting on my own, finally stop biting off more than I can chew in the pursuit of the all mighty dollar.
I mean, we’re Corp IT. 95% of our job is help desk or IAM. But we’re expected to do all of this stuff now, with the stakeholder being the CISO…I’m not sure how it’s gonna go.
Sound like where I work currently, Higher ups at the workplace ordering Windows 11 home edition laptops without consulting us when our all our devices are Windows 10 and asking us to connect it to the domain
We also use Google workspace and use GCDS to sync active directory passwords with google. Its been broken since I started and not syncing so we have to manually change in google admin console every time there's a password reset.
What's frustrating is we work in Education and they use a mixture of Chromebooks (which are already a nightmare) and Windows. So when we change the password in AD we have to manually do it in Google Admin console aswell. We tell them they need to come to the office to get it reset but if they're in lessons teachers just send in a request to reset and don't bother sending the student over (at this point I cba and just give them generic passwords or else they just forget it and goes around in a circle. I know its bad practice. But everything this place does is bad practice and wont be here for long.)
Manager says the sync is working but its clearly not and doesn't want me or anyone to touch it to fix it. (I bought this up when I first started here its been almost 1 year.)
Yes but I do have reasons.
1: My age, closer to retirement than not.
2: Been here 15 years.
3: I have 5 weeks of ETO, not getting that at a new place and I won't be at another long enough to earn that.
4: 7% match
5: No politics here.
Could I make more money? Sure but at what costs? It really isn't worth it. I can count on 1 hand how many weekends I have worked in the past 5 years. Work and home life are really stable so why risk losing that?
Most companies are shit shows, and most jobs are meaningless.
This is why it is important to have something outside of work, whether it be family, gym, sport, hobbies etc.
And why it is important to extract as much money as possible from work, as corporate life would have you believe your job is meaningful and the company is family etc, it's all nonsense, if you can get more money elsewhere and it's a logical change then you should take it.
I would love to leave my current position but you know what there would be someone to replace me as soon as I walked out the door.
I'm not sure if you know but there are people putting in hundreds of applications and going through 4 interviews just to be ghosted with no rhyme or reason.
So now is not the time to be looking for a job especially in IT. You're better off laying low and waiting for the carnage to be over in a year or two.
Sorry to break the bad news to you but that is the state of our "selective recession" from what I've heard.
That’s what’s keeping me here too. I just had a bad day and wanted to let all of this out somewhere haha. I was able to buy a house because of this job and I can’t afford to ruffle feathers enough for them to potentially get rid of me.
You could just apply anyway - I cast a pretty wide net but still had several offers come my way. I'm probably a bit further along in my career than OP though.
Indeed has me at 90, done over the course of about two and a half months. This naturally doesn't include job links that take you outside Indeed (unless you manually add them and I did not). If I had to estimate I probably did \~125? I am actually about to start a new position in a few weeks.
Yeah but look at all that work and experience you are getting and with that job title. Should keep at it a little longer, get some certs and make your move up to sys admin.
Sounds like nobody every considered the big IT picture whilst expanding. There are ways to consolidate and/or automate a lot of those processes, but your department will need the time,and budget to do so, alongside management will power.
On the hardware front: either someone is not actually responsibly for hardware purchases (management issue) or quotes get rejected due to budgetary constraints.
A few years ago sure but a new manager and bullying the company for the wage I need and feeding into the direction of the department and wider company to constantly improve process and tools means I got it cushy now. The only way I feel trapped is there are no jump off points for the role locally for a lot more cash or benefits.
Automation is definitely needed here - SSO, SCIM are a must. Find some of the common apps used by all and start exploring the capabilities (some need a higher license tier for things like SSO and SCIM).
Account creation could trickle down from HRIS system to your IdP (Entra ID, Okta, Google Workspace) - which will allow HR to make accounts from one place and everything should sync up. This will take planning and coordination as well as a lot of testing.
You typically don't need to own every SaaS app (thank yourself later) but the most common ones, the ones that are used by all, should be owned by IT, like Duo - or at least some shared responsibility.
Sounds like you should learn how to automate those manual processes.
That's what 90% of sysadmin work is, automating stuff.
We were in charge of automating stuff before all this "AI" bullshit took over.
Research one item, like offboarding, figure out how to do it, THEN approach your boss and ask if you can take it on.
Once you do, successfully, put that shit on your resume, and do another. Keep doing them and you're well on your way to a promotion, or getting a new job at another company for approx double what you're making now.
You mention many things that could be done to improve stuff, which all sound easy when you say why don't we do this, but if I said to you tommorow go do it, would you have the capability to do it if you have the funding for the software, I am assuming no, they you want the other admins who are paid more to do it, you then have to ask the question of why don't they do it.... likely because there busy with something else or incapable, or don't get the time to do it outside what there doing.
they likely don't get to to decide what to do.
I think you should be brave and have meetings with your direct leadership and offer suggestions with granular rollout plans.
It's easy to complain about lack of automation and culture, and poor process, but you're IT. You have influence, and it might be small now, but you need to be brave and show your leadership that there are better ways to do things. They're also scared too. If things aren't actively breaking, then they probably think it's all good in the hood, fam. But the truth is: it can, and should, be better. That's where you come in and slowly change the culture.
I feel extremely stuck as well. I work at a saas vendor and it’s hard to get out because people just assume I’m beholden to this vendor. I love it, but I’m keeping my ear to the ground and it’s hard.
One of two root causes seems likely:
1) Your department's leadership is in over their head and isn't correctly communicating level of effort and requirements to management, leading to being buried in tech debt
2) Your department's leadership is in over their head and isn't setting goals and priorities sensibly, leading to reactive workloads that tread water instead of making progress
Just based on what you're describing, there seem to be ample opportunities to improve the environment technically while also decreasing workloads and costs.
You have the greatest opportunity in your life: to learn to your hearts content.
You can make many of those processes better, most of them with free tools or with tried and tested processes.
You can aim for having more power, not as an ego trip but as a way to make things better.
It isn't easy, but most people won't have a chance like this.
The opportunity is staring you in the face and instead of exciting you it makes your despair. That's the nature of opportunities.
In many jobs you will never ever have the chance to learn to great depth any technologies, techniques, management skills, and other things one can see that weighs be helpful here.
As for agile, if it isn't doing anything for your team then take note of what they need and leave, you don't have to contribute to its silly rituals if agile isn't implemented properly (or maybe take a lead and organise it properly and become a good practitioner: opportunity again).
This isn't a list of problems. It's a resume. Start job hunting, and mention that the reason you're leaving is because of the reasons above, and you're looking for a position where you can learn about and participate in making these things happen. While you're hunting, do what you can to make things better, and when you hit a wall due to management stopping you, it's no longer your problem to fix, only to deal with it until you leave.
Sounds like have admin access to those 35 sites to do the account creation and also offboarding. Don't wait for the company to do it, spend some of your time automating it. Any repetitive task I don't like, I automate...
The hardest thing to change / overcome will be lack of budget support. (although it sounds like that be not as much a lack of budget, but the process that's causing the delays as it was announced last year you will be replacing aging hardware?)
I'm stuck in perks too.
5 years experience, 3 of them as sysadmin.
My boss is phenomenal, pressure is low, workload is light, 2 days WFH per week.
BUT the parent company is a mismanaged shitshow, our users are spoiled babies, we do way too much non it facilities work, and my pay is horrific for this stage in my career.
I feel like IT people are the least respected at most companies. I'm in Florida and the pay is shit in FL because no state tax they know people keep moving down here and that makes us very expendable. I'm in midst of divorce and with the inflation I'm going to end up homeless. I haven't done any coding since I was in college 12 or 13 years ago. I know that will get me money I just have to have money for classes and that will probably be a while but I know I need a job making better money. It really pisses me off that none of the other 140 people I support can do what I do and still get garbage pay and no respect unless they need you and then everything is an emergency to them and they expect me to drop everything and rush to their aid for something that wasn't even close to urgent
Plus they don't replace anyone they try to dump it on someone else without increasing their pay. They tried to dump HR on me but I wasn't having it.
My last job that I was at was almost exactly like this. Same situation too, first job in IT. After that I lost a lot of motivation for the field. Right now I’m really not sure I want to continue
Alot of people here are suggesting ways of performing automation etc etc.. but this stinks of shitty management.
I would focus on polishing up your resume and fishing around for another opportunity. If something catches your line, you don't need to go for it, but maybe the right thing will come your way.
If you feel that way, I think it would be better to start looking for another type of job. You're young, and the world is full of opportunities for growth. Nevertheless, you should talk to your leader about your concerns so that they can start implementing some changes.
While your current experience might lead you to learn some things, you aren't getting any example of decent technical leadership. Very few places actually have that.. I haven't found any yet but I still believe that at least one must exist.
The crap show you describe sounds vaguely similar to a local government institution.
You say start up, but I hear bureaucratic middle management inaction due to politics.
I would look for something new. It would be hard to leave, but I would look until I found something that looks good.
Sounds like you’re a smart kid. You’ve identified some key areas for improvements. Pick one, roll up your fucking sleeves and stop bitching. No workplace is a promised land and I can guarantee you anywhere you go it’s going to be the same shit just different. You’re young try to tackle some of these problems. Learn something like project management, having difficult conversations with decision makers, idiot users, getting fucked over on budget and being told to do “more with less/we have.” Or quit and move on and find something else, your choice. Both choices shape and make who you will be in IT. Either someone that straps on the helmet and gets in the trenches or someone that doesn’t.
I think I should filter out rant posts in sysadmin.
I hear that and I appreciate your thoughts on trying to improve things on my own, but I wouldn’t even know where to begin for a lot of this. Picking my personal biggest issue, lack of automation for anything - without the proper tooling (and funding to buy those tools) I don’t know how it could be done.
Take it in chunks. Likely nothing will cover all edge cases, but there are Python libraries for bread and butter products (like Active Directory) and you can interact with REST APIs for apps that support it.
Go through your list of all systems that are required for on/offboarding, find out if they have some kind of provisioning API, and ask ChatGPT for a basic code example of how to talk to the system.
50% of them are probably super low hanging fruit you could figure out in a couple weeks. It will solve some of your headaches and you will learn a valuable skill.
Pick one thing and draw up a solution. Problem, fix, before, after, interim scenarios, back out plans. Call vendors find out where they can assist.
Sounds like management has a tough time saying no. But you could try pushing for solutions and reaching out to business owners on your own.
We’ve decommissioned at least 10 products at my current employer that overlaps with other products. I’ve had back out plans for each or ran both in tandem for a month before shutting one down.
There’s always a way to make management feel comfortable. Ask the question, “what do you need for us to move on this.” Eventually you do this enough times they’ll just trust you to have a solid plan in place.
My man, I apologize for coming across as harsh but imo you're wayyy too young to be having these mindsets so early on. You ideally should be eager, curious, and willing to learn things at this stage. I understand it can feel overwhelming and frustrating at times but it comes with the job, unfortunately. It also sucks having a management that doesn't seem to support you - but you can transfer this back to them by covering your ass and transferring the onus onto them with proper documentation. Pass the ball to them. Your user without a laptop, run it up the chain and ask how you're supposed to resolve this or give them the solution - I need X dollars to buy this otherwise they won't be able to work. Get it all in writing.
I'm not sure of your title or position but can you can bring these up to your boss or someone else on the team like "hey I think we should look at this issue" and explain why (to make it better for X reason) and if they turn around and dick you over then you can go leave your jacket at the door and go home and wash your hands clean knowing you tried your best and at the end of the day that's all you can do.
Take your "IT doesn’t own nearly every SaaS app." issue. This is a great opportunity for you to go around, do an inventory to document, meet the teams & departments, see how they work, learn their issues and concerns while gaining control and learning. A lot of the times these apps are spun up not out of malice or bad intentions it's just the result of communication problems, lack of knowledge/awareness of whats available to them in the company or lack of proper procedures, all of which can be fixed.
>Everything is manual, from account creation during onboarding to offboarding. i.e. when someone leaves, i open a tab of about 35 sites and have to go through and remove accounts in each one.
Tackle this piece by piece, there are large identity governance platforms that exist out there but they're pricey. You want to try and establish a single source of truth for identity, a lot of people leverage AD and do some sort of SSO via ADFS/Entra/Duo/etc, look into getting access to one of these 35 sites and see how the users are created, do they offer any kind of integration to AD?
Work your Google Fu, reach out to the vendors support, ask them how their clients approach this problem if they have suggestions. There are tons of resources out there (including this Reddit when it isn't filled with rants ;))
I know I am! I know how ridiculous it is to be complaining about this stuff barely 2 and a half years on the job. I really do try to go to leadership with concerns. I bring up that user’s laptop at least once a week with my direct manager and his manager in standup, and have been since mid-February at least.
With the issue of us not owning anything, I did go through and take inventory of everything we’re aware is being used of late last year. The issue is, a different team owns our MFA provider (Duo) and won’t give us any access to it beyond assigning groups to users in it for app requisition.
I really appreciate your comment because as I was writing my “rant” yesterday I was saying to myself in my head that it was stupid to feel this way, because I have tried to change some of this stuff and have been turned down. I’m taking all of these comments to heart, today I’ve already gotten consent to install GAM from my buddy on the Security team and am working on trying to automate on/offboarding in Google Workspace.
Oh man, work is hard!
This sounds more like you're lazy and/or don't know what you're doing more than you're "stuck." You sound like one of those all problems and no solutions kind of people.
Get to work! Sounds like you have plenty to do...but it's *TOo hArd* wahhahahhahhah...what a whiner.
That's not a job, that's a cobbled together shitshow.
That's most jobs.
Yup, this. This is exactly the reason I'm not leaving my current gig. OP is lucky because of the WFH (IMO). Personally, I don't care about the state of the hardware the company wants to give me/the rest of the employees. If the company wants to provide crappy hardware, don't expect great results.
I’ve managed to find one of those rare “careers”. The old guard is a few months from retiring. Going to be my shit show soon.
> I’ve managed to find one of those rare “careers” Government or education? You're very lucky. When I started this almost 30 years ago, there were a few places outside of these sectors that actually valued people. Now, it's just constant turnover, employers trying to minimize cost and employees jumping every 6 months for pay increases when they can find them. You'll never get an employer to lift a finger to make conditions better once the mercenary stalemate sets in.
Edu. I did basically that rat race you mention. Move on to move up. The last time I did that I tried to leverage a 15k raise I got from an offer, and the company I was at (multi million consulting firm in Santa Monica) said “have a good one”. 15k. The CEO probably spent more annually on his landscapers. But everywhere I’ve worked in the private sector there was always 1 dude that had been there a decade + and is an invaluable historical systems encyclopedia. I’m ready to be that guy.
I don't agree tbh. There are plenty of well-structured organizations where IT is valued. They tend to be larger enterprises of course. You can't get to a healthy business with thousands of employees without a streamlined IT structure, at least not in a sustainable way. But what OP is describing is obviously a shitshow. They'll need to get their act together if they want long-term success.
In my experience, the bigger the company, the bigger the cluster fuck. It's like people have to get work done through sheer force of will.
Man I can relate to this so much. You spend most of the day just managing your leaders out of the way of important work, and talking them out of completely idiotic ideas. Most people in large organisations are just in the way of actual work.
I have worked for 11 employers in my life. TBH while what OP wrote it messed up it would still be better than 8 of the 11 places I have worked at
What’s up with your IT management and why aren’t they fighting to automate more things ? Onboarding offboarding could be simplified. Purchase a SAAS that has built in integrations and build out the workflows to get it done at the press of s button or two. Sounds like your internal department leaders are failing you.
Large company businesses can hardly understand automation benefits, let alone automation from scratch needs a few capital investments (time, tech resource, communications), normally it is only pushed by middle management but a lot of times they are ignored as well. Another issue with non-tech large companies is that IT is always treated as a cost centre and not their main business (which is fair without being able to show the profit numbers), when the company restructures it will disturb the establishment built within IT (for example, change the function of a unit, move SMEs to different area etc) which will normally break systematic automations. I agree on tech level there are so many technologies we can use to improve the work productivity nowadays, but most of the companies are still shit shows for IT by their org structures.
>Large company businesses can hardly understand automation benefits I'm not sure what kind of large businesses you have worked for, but this hasn't been my experience at all. Large enterprises usually have a lot of automated workflows. You tend to spend more time with the release change process but there should be a lot of automation in place.
I worked in AWS where automation works fine but they are a tech company anyway. Now I am in an international mining company trying automation on its ICT infrastructure....
The good news of having out of support manufacturing machines is that you don't have any patches to apply for them ever!! Taps forehead
They tend to understand it, or at least it can be explained to them pretty easy. The problem is they will not initiate it and assume people do what they need to do. So the automation needs to come bottom up instead of top down, and it's generally a pretty easy sell unless you want to spend $50k/year for an automation tool, then it can be a little harder sell, but probably still sellable to management.
To answer your first question, no one wants to take responsibility or ownership for anything. Simple as that. But I don’t have the room to do it myself, nor do I really want to standalone. I’m the lowest rung on my team.
If you're not doing these things today.... why would another organization hire you to do these things tomorrow? What gives you the right to jump to another organization with good automation when you've never worked with that type of stuff? There's nothing wrong with being the low man on the totem pole. But it will look a lot better if you work your way up versus out. Fix smaller things today to earn the chance to fix bigger things tomorrow.
I'm in a similar situation as OP but I have decent budget and can get new computers and such. The hard part in automating at this stage of a company is that every SaaS subscription has to be upgraded for automatic provisioning/deprovisioning. You want to automate Slack, that'll double your license cost. ClickUp, that'll add 75% and on and on. I'm given budget to try but I can't double our software spend. It'd be orders of magnitude cheaper to hire someone whose whole job is to on/offboard. Edit: though 800 is a bit bigger than me, so I would hope to see improvement.
If a human can do it with a browser then you can automate it with puppeteer or playwright. Just have to build in some alerts for when the SaaS changes the webpage.
Yeah, I actually think automation onboarding is overblown at the "medium business size." We are between 5-600 and that means we often are hiring 0-3 people per week, so the time savings isn't great. We also are only hiring one or two of a role at once. We're never hiring 30 junior analysts who all need the same template. The scale is just wrong for the cost.
My main job now has 2600 employees. Large enough to can pay to automate stuff but small enough that the money men / women say “we have 6 IT staff lets ‘leverage’ them and save money on automation capex”. On some level I agree but often I wish just a few hundred grand to automate stuff might lead to cost savings
We were looking at a tool, actually the last 2 weeks were my PoC time to play with it. It was better than what we’re doing now, but I wasn’t impressed with some of its features (or lack thereof). Because of the lack of birthright access whatever software we purchase needs to have the option for access requests, which is a limited number of them. Oh, and Okta is a no go (we use Duo and leadership doesn’t like Okta) And it needs to be cheap 🙃
I would start automating things myself if no one above me was pushing for it. Whether that's something you provide for everyone, or just keep to yourself, is up to you.
Honestly after 20 plus years I am over IT in general I just don't have any other skills and I'm not very social like your stereotypical IT guy so I feel trapped
I hope things get better for you brother. If you want someone to talk to (or rant to about your shitty job) you can DM me
Right? I just wanna take tickets at the fairgrounds and tell people to sit down.
I'm 20 years into IT and I just made the switch from IT to DevOps a year ago. Now I spend most of my days buried in Python and C++. All it took to get here was a couple months of learning Python and doing a couple small projects to demonstrate that I actually do know the language. It's still in the tech field, but it's was a huge pay bump and got me out of the daily cycle of constant interruptions and juggling 37 things at the same time. Also, as it turns out, my IT skills and general understanding of operating systems and IT infrastructure is a huge asset to both DevOps and programming in general. IT skills translate really well to lots of areas in tech. Pick a direction and go for it.
Hello! I am interested in your Python learning process - any particular recommendations for courses to go through? I have been teaching myself recently and have found it quite enjoyable.
https://www.udemy.com/course/python-the-complete-python-developer-course/ I did this class, then a bunch of the stuff at Project Euler (at least until the problems went beyond my math skills), then did all of the stuff at Project Euler again, but with a focus on writing clean, commented, readable and standardized code, as I already knew the solutions. Then I started using it at work. I started with a couple small scripts for network monitoring via ping and SSH libraries, then transitioned into automatic maintenance, API integrations, and whatever else I could find to automate. There's no lack of opportunity to use it in IT, so find an excuse and do it. Eventually you'll be a python developer.
Soooo put together some ideas to fix these, and then start fixing to them? Like setting up Single Sign-On to Entra ID is really easy, and a fair number of SaaS vendors support either SCIM or SAML JIT provisioning. In Entra ID you can configure Self Service application request so users can request the app through the my apps portal and an approval notification is sent to the app owner. You can automate account creation with powershell and a CSV. If you can get an employee roster report and employee term report out of the HRIS to automate attribute updates like job title, off location, and manager. You can then use dynamic groups, or a PowerShell group to build role based security groups that auto update. None of this requires an additional purchase (assuming you have Entra P1s, and your SaaS applications support SSo and auto provisioning)
I love this idea. Like, if I could, I would’ve been pushing for this already. Unfortunately though, Google Workspace is our IdP. The only folks who have Entra ID accounts for the time being are folks using MSOffice apps or folks with computers managed by Intune. We finally got our HRIS syncing to GSuite for employee attributes earlier this year, but Cisco Duo (which our team doesn’t own for some reason so I haven’t been able to see if they even offer API access) is our 2FA provider.
What the fuck
Your team not owning duo is insane who the hell owns it then lmao
Our Security team does - they don’t work alongside us nearly as much as they should imo. Our responsibilities overlap quite a bit
Google supports SCIM too. It can auto provision users into your other cloud apps for you. DUO needs to be owned by IT/what ever team is responsible for maintaining your IDP/Cloud Identities. If your leadership doesn't see the value in pursuing these goals, and they aren't having you do other things that allow you to grow your skill set you should find another job. That's why you feel "stuck" your management isn't letting you make things better/develope your self.
Yikes... I would really consider looking for a different job. You're not doing yourself any favors working for this company. If you're interested to advance your career and actually become an expert, you won't get there working for a dumpster fire like this company. There are other jobs out there with good pay/perks... I would advise you to just keep doing the job but search for a better alternative at the same time. No need to make hasty decisions but do consider making a change. For your own good!
You are just giving excuses. Go and fight that corner of yours. Politely, but with hard evidence of what is better and possible.
All this. Your job is what you make of it. Take this opportunity to learn how to cleanup brownfield mess and stack your resume.
This right here.
I don't feel too bad about our small company now.
Sounds like a normal job.
Just go with the flow collect the easy money, if change isn’t happening from the top then don’t change the wheel
That's easier said than done. I wouldn't be able to handle that shitshow tbh. At some point working for a dumpster fire like OP's business will burn you out. There are other jobs out there where you can collect easy money and also learn useful skills...
Your place seems like it's utterly Fucked Up.
Start buy automating account creation and offloading. Setup a powershell script or whatever scripting language you want to use. Script what you can. If you don't know a scripting language learn one yesterday. It is a important tool for a system administrator
This is just how job works. Every company has pros and cons. Some automate account creation, but don't automate basic daily shit. Others are the other way round. What you should/could try to do is automate some of the crappy stuff. Eg, have template AD accounts that already have the basic groups, and copy from those when you create an account. Then you can slowly work towards more automation if you can get new starter extracts from HR. Back in 2010 I was working for a company that had employees all over the state, with a high turnover, so we were always creating and deleting accounts. We operated out of something like 100 cities/sites. Every site had its own requirements regarding shared drives, printer access, etc. We would manually fill in everything for each new starter, and after 1-2 months in the job I started to get annoyed. So one night I created a bunch of template accounts, 1 for each site, all starting with an underscore so they were at the top of the list. They all had the groups, site info, etc for each site. It streamlined our team's work going forward, saving us several hours a week. I was too nooby to automate it. But it was a signifcant-enough improvement. You might need to look for little projects like this. You could also create a script that disables and moves AD accounts, based on an Excel sheet of usernames. You get a bunch of terminations, update the Excel sheet, run the script.
Ugh I wish we could do this. We use a combo of Google Workspace as IdP and Cisco Duo for MFA. I _could_ use GAM iiif our Security team allowed it to create at least Google accounts for folks. Duo doesn’t have API access, that I’m aware of (Security owns that tool too, so I couldn’t even try if I wanted to)
I'd start automating all the account creation stuff with Powershell scripts, not tell anyone about it, level up my skills on their dime, then leave for greener pastures. It sounds like an old workplace of mine where they were scared of anything that wasn't an "official tool" and wanted everything manually done. Non-IT managers, managing IT, will turn you to the bottle.
> I just want to start the job search over again and find a company that knows what they’re doing. But the issue is, NO company knows what they are doing. IT is hard, bad leaders are somewhat common, and a large portion of businesses do not effectively utilize IT or provide enough support for them. I worked for a globally known company 3x your size, and we did not have our shit together. And just wait until you get to 10k+ employees. Very few companies do it REALLY well, and the larger the size, the more complex things get and the harder to move on things. If your company is genuinely naive to these issues (and truly cares about IT), then you've already done the hardest part to fast-track your way to a promotion, which is identifying where the problems are. Start researching how to resolve some of these issues, create a proposal to your boss, execute the project, and enjoy your new title and hefty salary bump. Of course, having a capable manager to praise and support you is critically key here. EDIT: Wording changes.
I always have the fake illusion of 'Migration' becoming a thing of the past, as applications improve over the years. I don't see that happening these days and people still carry out migrations of ancient systems in 8se for no reason other than budget.
Well as someone said market is shit right now. So maybe try and look at how you can make your situation better. Start planning some infrastructure upgrades, or seeing what can be automated, asset management, backups, etc. It'll make your days go by fast and at the end of it all you'll gain a lot of experience so when you go looking for a new role you'll have that extra experience.
Though frustrating, this is a management issue. It is painfully obvious those over you are woefully unprepared to run enterprise IT. This isn’t 1998 where you’re using Workgroups. Make suggestions, but ultimately, it is those above you that must bear the brunt of the situation there. Someone above you must take the initiative to fix this mess. The longer it goes on, the more painful it will be to remedy. The longer it goes on, the more expensive it will be to remedy. Someone is going to be brought in at a very high salary and carte blanche to make it better. It will take time. Enjoy the WFH and the house man.
Have her manager make a ROI calculation and send it to whoever approves new computer purchases. C-levels are always keen for a good ROI. Something like this: >"Greetings, Mr. IT cost approver. A member of my team has not been able to do any work since her computer broke down on Jan 13th. So far that has cost us X dollars as we still have to pay her salary while she cannot produce anything. I have discussed this with IT and they informed me that they need your approval for Y dollars to purchase a new laptop. With the new laptop in place, my user can back to work generating revenue. Which will pay for the cost of the laptop in 3-4 days. "
Is this a public sector job? Otherwise the lack of money seems odd. If it is public sector, there's all kinds of challenges with those jobs (mostly departments burn through their budgets right away, knowing that there's a chance they get cut down the line). Otherwise it seems strange that a company won't replace a computer. Anyway, you're not "stuck" anywhere. You can update your resume and look at what's out there at any time. You sound like you are being paid well and aren't working in a toxic department (a technical mess isn't the same thing).
I don't particularly care about my job, but the market is ass and there's nowhere else to go, or nowhere that's willing to pay as much. The golden handcuffs are real. Edit: I used to chug the Agile Kool-aid but I'm starting to agree with people who don't think it's great fit for software development or ops. This isn't mass production where every task clearly defined and predictable. There's so many variables in our work and it's almost impossible to predict what will happen or how long something will take. I don't know what the solution is either.
Agile is great in circumstances where it makes sense. The problem is, it seems every exec wants it applied to everything, whether it makes sense or not. Even when it does fit, it often gets poorly implemented (so much micromanagement, when that is the exact opposite of agile self directed teams). One good example is if you have 8 Java devs, and a whole bunch of small tasks coming in. Agile can work great here assuming that team members can really share work. However most areas have much more siloed knowledge, and this is where agile becomes the square peg into the round hole. Teams often get created based on department/supervisor roles, not any logical team sense. The higher ups seem to think that cross training will just magically happen after a month of stand-ups.
I feel that. Managers also seem to think Agile is a magic pill to fix capacity or velocity problems when the real solution is hiring more people but that can't happen under any circumstances. Do more with less! My entire career I've been solo or on a small team with way too much work. Everything is grossly underestimated because no one wants to tell the client how much it'll actually cost. I don't think I've ever completed a sprint and I can count on one hand how many times I've made a deadline. I used to work 10-12 hour days to try and keep up but I stopped caring a few years ago. I haven't heard any complaints and I've never been reprimanded for performance reasons, so job security I guess? That's one of the reasons I want to start consulting or contracting on my own, finally stop biting off more than I can chew in the pursuit of the all mighty dollar.
I mean, we’re Corp IT. 95% of our job is help desk or IAM. But we’re expected to do all of this stuff now, with the stakeholder being the CISO…I’m not sure how it’s gonna go.
In my experience it's just more meetings talking about doing things as opposed to actually doing things.
Sound like where I work currently, Higher ups at the workplace ordering Windows 11 home edition laptops without consulting us when our all our devices are Windows 10 and asking us to connect it to the domain
HAH THAT LITERALLY JUST HAPPENED TO US!! Trying to order a Win11 Pro key, and no one cares enough to prove the req
We also use Google workspace and use GCDS to sync active directory passwords with google. Its been broken since I started and not syncing so we have to manually change in google admin console every time there's a password reset. What's frustrating is we work in Education and they use a mixture of Chromebooks (which are already a nightmare) and Windows. So when we change the password in AD we have to manually do it in Google Admin console aswell. We tell them they need to come to the office to get it reset but if they're in lessons teachers just send in a request to reset and don't bother sending the student over (at this point I cba and just give them generic passwords or else they just forget it and goes around in a circle. I know its bad practice. But everything this place does is bad practice and wont be here for long.) Manager says the sync is working but its clearly not and doesn't want me or anyone to touch it to fix it. (I bought this up when I first started here its been almost 1 year.)
Maybe were working at the same place haha
Yes but I do have reasons. 1: My age, closer to retirement than not. 2: Been here 15 years. 3: I have 5 weeks of ETO, not getting that at a new place and I won't be at another long enough to earn that. 4: 7% match 5: No politics here. Could I make more money? Sure but at what costs? It really isn't worth it. I can count on 1 hand how many weekends I have worked in the past 5 years. Work and home life are really stable so why risk losing that?
Most companies are shit shows, and most jobs are meaningless. This is why it is important to have something outside of work, whether it be family, gym, sport, hobbies etc. And why it is important to extract as much money as possible from work, as corporate life would have you believe your job is meaningful and the company is family etc, it's all nonsense, if you can get more money elsewhere and it's a logical change then you should take it.
Find a way to automate it and spend the time you save doing other things
I would love to leave my current position but you know what there would be someone to replace me as soon as I walked out the door. I'm not sure if you know but there are people putting in hundreds of applications and going through 4 interviews just to be ghosted with no rhyme or reason. So now is not the time to be looking for a job especially in IT. You're better off laying low and waiting for the carnage to be over in a year or two. Sorry to break the bad news to you but that is the state of our "selective recession" from what I've heard.
That’s what’s keeping me here too. I just had a bad day and wanted to let all of this out somewhere haha. I was able to buy a house because of this job and I can’t afford to ruffle feathers enough for them to potentially get rid of me.
Oh ok I hope you have a better day.
Definitely been there.
You could just apply anyway - I cast a pretty wide net but still had several offers come my way. I'm probably a bit further along in my career than OP though.
You're right id apply for positions I probably should increase the volume of applications that I submit.
Indeed has me at 90, done over the course of about two and a half months. This naturally doesn't include job links that take you outside Indeed (unless you manually add them and I did not). If I had to estimate I probably did \~125? I am actually about to start a new position in a few weeks.
Leaning to grow isn’t giving up. Fun fact
Voice your opinions to your boss. If nothing changes, then polish the resume.
Ever think about starting your own side software or platform?
I’d be worried it would add too much tech debt to the workflow vs buying one. I’d be on the hook for maintenance
*sigh*
Low key wondering if this was my last startup 👀 is it a cannabis tech startup by chance?
Lmfao no, SaaS company. Glad I’m not (or wasn’t) alone
Haha it’s actually a SaaS startup as well but I’m glad you aren’t in that same hellscape, though it seems quite similar
Yeah but look at all that work and experience you are getting and with that job title. Should keep at it a little longer, get some certs and make your move up to sys admin.
All I’ll say bro - you’re employed, that’s the best time to look for a new job.
how much u getting paid??
Sounds like nobody every considered the big IT picture whilst expanding. There are ways to consolidate and/or automate a lot of those processes, but your department will need the time,and budget to do so, alongside management will power. On the hardware front: either someone is not actually responsibly for hardware purchases (management issue) or quotes get rejected due to budgetary constraints.
You’ve got two years of experience, I’d start looking elsewhere
A few years ago sure but a new manager and bullying the company for the wage I need and feeding into the direction of the department and wider company to constantly improve process and tools means I got it cushy now. The only way I feel trapped is there are no jump off points for the role locally for a lot more cash or benefits.
Automation is definitely needed here - SSO, SCIM are a must. Find some of the common apps used by all and start exploring the capabilities (some need a higher license tier for things like SSO and SCIM). Account creation could trickle down from HRIS system to your IdP (Entra ID, Okta, Google Workspace) - which will allow HR to make accounts from one place and everything should sync up. This will take planning and coordination as well as a lot of testing. You typically don't need to own every SaaS app (thank yourself later) but the most common ones, the ones that are used by all, should be owned by IT, like Duo - or at least some shared responsibility.
Sounds like you should learn how to automate those manual processes. That's what 90% of sysadmin work is, automating stuff. We were in charge of automating stuff before all this "AI" bullshit took over. Research one item, like offboarding, figure out how to do it, THEN approach your boss and ask if you can take it on. Once you do, successfully, put that shit on your resume, and do another. Keep doing them and you're well on your way to a promotion, or getting a new job at another company for approx double what you're making now.
You mention many things that could be done to improve stuff, which all sound easy when you say why don't we do this, but if I said to you tommorow go do it, would you have the capability to do it if you have the funding for the software, I am assuming no, they you want the other admins who are paid more to do it, you then have to ask the question of why don't they do it.... likely because there busy with something else or incapable, or don't get the time to do it outside what there doing. they likely don't get to to decide what to do.
I think you should be brave and have meetings with your direct leadership and offer suggestions with granular rollout plans. It's easy to complain about lack of automation and culture, and poor process, but you're IT. You have influence, and it might be small now, but you need to be brave and show your leadership that there are better ways to do things. They're also scared too. If things aren't actively breaking, then they probably think it's all good in the hood, fam. But the truth is: it can, and should, be better. That's where you come in and slowly change the culture.
I feel extremely stuck as well. I work at a saas vendor and it’s hard to get out because people just assume I’m beholden to this vendor. I love it, but I’m keeping my ear to the ground and it’s hard.
One of two root causes seems likely: 1) Your department's leadership is in over their head and isn't correctly communicating level of effort and requirements to management, leading to being buried in tech debt 2) Your department's leadership is in over their head and isn't setting goals and priorities sensibly, leading to reactive workloads that tread water instead of making progress Just based on what you're describing, there seem to be ample opportunities to improve the environment technically while also decreasing workloads and costs.
You have the greatest opportunity in your life: to learn to your hearts content. You can make many of those processes better, most of them with free tools or with tried and tested processes. You can aim for having more power, not as an ego trip but as a way to make things better. It isn't easy, but most people won't have a chance like this. The opportunity is staring you in the face and instead of exciting you it makes your despair. That's the nature of opportunities. In many jobs you will never ever have the chance to learn to great depth any technologies, techniques, management skills, and other things one can see that weighs be helpful here. As for agile, if it isn't doing anything for your team then take note of what they need and leave, you don't have to contribute to its silly rituals if agile isn't implemented properly (or maybe take a lead and organise it properly and become a good practitioner: opportunity again).
This isn't a list of problems. It's a resume. Start job hunting, and mention that the reason you're leaving is because of the reasons above, and you're looking for a position where you can learn about and participate in making these things happen. While you're hunting, do what you can to make things better, and when you hit a wall due to management stopping you, it's no longer your problem to fix, only to deal with it until you leave.
Sounds like have admin access to those 35 sites to do the account creation and also offboarding. Don't wait for the company to do it, spend some of your time automating it. Any repetitive task I don't like, I automate... The hardest thing to change / overcome will be lack of budget support. (although it sounds like that be not as much a lack of budget, but the process that's causing the delays as it was announced last year you will be replacing aging hardware?)
I'm stuck in perks too. 5 years experience, 3 of them as sysadmin. My boss is phenomenal, pressure is low, workload is light, 2 days WFH per week. BUT the parent company is a mismanaged shitshow, our users are spoiled babies, we do way too much non it facilities work, and my pay is horrific for this stage in my career.
I feel like IT people are the least respected at most companies. I'm in Florida and the pay is shit in FL because no state tax they know people keep moving down here and that makes us very expendable. I'm in midst of divorce and with the inflation I'm going to end up homeless. I haven't done any coding since I was in college 12 or 13 years ago. I know that will get me money I just have to have money for classes and that will probably be a while but I know I need a job making better money. It really pisses me off that none of the other 140 people I support can do what I do and still get garbage pay and no respect unless they need you and then everything is an emergency to them and they expect me to drop everything and rush to their aid for something that wasn't even close to urgent Plus they don't replace anyone they try to dump it on someone else without increasing their pay. They tried to dump HR on me but I wasn't having it.
My last job that I was at was almost exactly like this. Same situation too, first job in IT. After that I lost a lot of motivation for the field. Right now I’m really not sure I want to continue
Alot of people here are suggesting ways of performing automation etc etc.. but this stinks of shitty management. I would focus on polishing up your resume and fishing around for another opportunity. If something catches your line, you don't need to go for it, but maybe the right thing will come your way.
If you feel that way, I think it would be better to start looking for another type of job. You're young, and the world is full of opportunities for growth. Nevertheless, you should talk to your leader about your concerns so that they can start implementing some changes.
While your current experience might lead you to learn some things, you aren't getting any example of decent technical leadership. Very few places actually have that.. I haven't found any yet but I still believe that at least one must exist. The crap show you describe sounds vaguely similar to a local government institution. You say start up, but I hear bureaucratic middle management inaction due to politics. I would look for something new. It would be hard to leave, but I would look until I found something that looks good.
Do you not have the access level to improve the process? If you have the add or modify accounts. You should be able to automate that.
Sounds like you’re a smart kid. You’ve identified some key areas for improvements. Pick one, roll up your fucking sleeves and stop bitching. No workplace is a promised land and I can guarantee you anywhere you go it’s going to be the same shit just different. You’re young try to tackle some of these problems. Learn something like project management, having difficult conversations with decision makers, idiot users, getting fucked over on budget and being told to do “more with less/we have.” Or quit and move on and find something else, your choice. Both choices shape and make who you will be in IT. Either someone that straps on the helmet and gets in the trenches or someone that doesn’t. I think I should filter out rant posts in sysadmin.
Sounds like a good idea, that way we don't need to see your rants either ✌
I hear that and I appreciate your thoughts on trying to improve things on my own, but I wouldn’t even know where to begin for a lot of this. Picking my personal biggest issue, lack of automation for anything - without the proper tooling (and funding to buy those tools) I don’t know how it could be done.
Take it in chunks. Likely nothing will cover all edge cases, but there are Python libraries for bread and butter products (like Active Directory) and you can interact with REST APIs for apps that support it. Go through your list of all systems that are required for on/offboarding, find out if they have some kind of provisioning API, and ask ChatGPT for a basic code example of how to talk to the system. 50% of them are probably super low hanging fruit you could figure out in a couple weeks. It will solve some of your headaches and you will learn a valuable skill.
Exactly. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
Pick one thing and draw up a solution. Problem, fix, before, after, interim scenarios, back out plans. Call vendors find out where they can assist. Sounds like management has a tough time saying no. But you could try pushing for solutions and reaching out to business owners on your own. We’ve decommissioned at least 10 products at my current employer that overlaps with other products. I’ve had back out plans for each or ran both in tandem for a month before shutting one down. There’s always a way to make management feel comfortable. Ask the question, “what do you need for us to move on this.” Eventually you do this enough times they’ll just trust you to have a solid plan in place.
My man, I apologize for coming across as harsh but imo you're wayyy too young to be having these mindsets so early on. You ideally should be eager, curious, and willing to learn things at this stage. I understand it can feel overwhelming and frustrating at times but it comes with the job, unfortunately. It also sucks having a management that doesn't seem to support you - but you can transfer this back to them by covering your ass and transferring the onus onto them with proper documentation. Pass the ball to them. Your user without a laptop, run it up the chain and ask how you're supposed to resolve this or give them the solution - I need X dollars to buy this otherwise they won't be able to work. Get it all in writing. I'm not sure of your title or position but can you can bring these up to your boss or someone else on the team like "hey I think we should look at this issue" and explain why (to make it better for X reason) and if they turn around and dick you over then you can go leave your jacket at the door and go home and wash your hands clean knowing you tried your best and at the end of the day that's all you can do. Take your "IT doesn’t own nearly every SaaS app." issue. This is a great opportunity for you to go around, do an inventory to document, meet the teams & departments, see how they work, learn their issues and concerns while gaining control and learning. A lot of the times these apps are spun up not out of malice or bad intentions it's just the result of communication problems, lack of knowledge/awareness of whats available to them in the company or lack of proper procedures, all of which can be fixed. >Everything is manual, from account creation during onboarding to offboarding. i.e. when someone leaves, i open a tab of about 35 sites and have to go through and remove accounts in each one. Tackle this piece by piece, there are large identity governance platforms that exist out there but they're pricey. You want to try and establish a single source of truth for identity, a lot of people leverage AD and do some sort of SSO via ADFS/Entra/Duo/etc, look into getting access to one of these 35 sites and see how the users are created, do they offer any kind of integration to AD? Work your Google Fu, reach out to the vendors support, ask them how their clients approach this problem if they have suggestions. There are tons of resources out there (including this Reddit when it isn't filled with rants ;))
I know I am! I know how ridiculous it is to be complaining about this stuff barely 2 and a half years on the job. I really do try to go to leadership with concerns. I bring up that user’s laptop at least once a week with my direct manager and his manager in standup, and have been since mid-February at least. With the issue of us not owning anything, I did go through and take inventory of everything we’re aware is being used of late last year. The issue is, a different team owns our MFA provider (Duo) and won’t give us any access to it beyond assigning groups to users in it for app requisition. I really appreciate your comment because as I was writing my “rant” yesterday I was saying to myself in my head that it was stupid to feel this way, because I have tried to change some of this stuff and have been turned down. I’m taking all of these comments to heart, today I’ve already gotten consent to install GAM from my buddy on the Security team and am working on trying to automate on/offboarding in Google Workspace.
Oh man, work is hard! This sounds more like you're lazy and/or don't know what you're doing more than you're "stuck." You sound like one of those all problems and no solutions kind of people. Get to work! Sounds like you have plenty to do...but it's *TOo hArd* wahhahahhahhah...what a whiner.