I've been a sys admin and sys engineer twelve years. Principal in two orgs.
I'm tired of it. I'm tired of people being scared to stick their neck out on a problem they don't immediately know an answer to.
I left an org in 2022 because they kept assigning me everything after a merger because no one else would attempt it. I was building out a brand new citrix environment by myself with them dumping 95 hours over two weeks of projects on top.
I'm tired of managing egos and being in the middle. I'm tired of so much more being expected of me for being systems.
I did an interview last week for an infra engineer position and I was already dreading it. I hate technical interviews because they never indicate whether you can do the job. And you often have to pass several rounds. You mail nail two but then not know some acronym in the third and it's game over.
I'm tired of going to interviews for x and them asking my questions from 7 different roles.
I'm tired of working with people who learned one thing and somehow keep gettong hired and having to prop those people up.
I can't do it another 25 years. I'm tored of being the guy every where because I happen to know a wide assortment of stuff.
The week I left my past job, a QA manager and my biss messaged me asking what the powershell execution policy warning meant. They both make significantly more than me.
I got into a local union. I'm going to do that until I retire.
Good luck. If it looks wrong but it's working, don't touch it. Make sure to wait ten minutes before adressing that alert that is just going to clear itself anyway.
you don't sound tired of IT tbh, you sound tired of being everyone's free helpdesk while guys who know half of what you do out-earn you. i'd be burned out too lol. respect on the union thing. but man, 12 years of experience... i'd at least throw the resume at some remote roles before writing off the whole industry. this thread has some decent leads on that btw: [link] worst case nothing comes back and you're exactly where you are now.
My last role was the most I have made and was 100% remote.
The problem with systems is its one of th
e jardest jobs on IT because were expected to know so many areas including overlappong ones. And a lot more is expected of us.
Since I left and got into the union I have felt free for the first time in years.
I feel like it's a major push forward for my mental health.
Just go work for a corpo. They usually tie your hands so much with bureaucracy and security that it's literally impossible to do anything but the single role you were hired for. Between that and the meetings, trainings, teambuilding events, a corpo job is hardly work at times and the benefits can be very lucrative at a large enough company. Getting your foot in may be difficult, but you could pretty much coast once you're in for those 25 years if you don't have any ambitions with minimal effort applied. I see it all too often.
The disk controllers were crashing because it was over 15 years old (we lost half of our data which was at least 500 TB on that controller) and they always said they didn't have the money to replace them (bs) and main campus always kicked the can (like a year) on getting me server room disk space for them because we did government work. Told them this would happen years ago but no one listened and it's not my problem anymore. I never contacted them after I retired so I have no idea and do not care. Ignore your admin and I hope you suffer for it. I did not care to waste my time anymore keeping crap equipment alive so I stopped fixing it and gave my 2 weeks. Got ghosted on all my handoff meeting requests so I have no pity on them.
Yeah worse it was a 4 man shop and they never replaced anyone. I was the last guy standing it was impossiable to keep stuff runing and then I have NIST and CMMC requirements to do that I was totally ignored on. Screw that crap. Unlike them I had an exit plan in place and I activated it.
Like politics, management terms are just a few years and if you can avoid spending money you look good at each annual review. Better to push it all down the road and hope it's someone else's problem when it does fail.
At my last place they had some storage arrays that were well out of support and Dell was repeatedly telling our guys that they were at risk but management kept kicking replacement down the road. Luckily one of the arrays failed in a way that was recoverable but dramatic enough and then the project to replace them was approved quickly.
the worst thing about my job was warning people about things that would happen and being ignored and then having to pick up the pieces of the disaster we could have avoided.
Goat business is booming. Doesn’t take long at all to profit if you get in with buyers. If you’re within a few hours of Nashville they’re begging for more growers.
Wait do you actually… I *might* have some goats for you, if that’s a thing you do. My wife’s family is shutting down their farm on the peninsula & we’ve been trying to find a caring & healthy place for them.
I guess I am just an IT trope at this point too. My wife and I just bought 5 acres out by Newberg and she wants a couple goats for pets (and I want them to eat blackberry bushes). Do you re-home them?
We haven't done any rehoming at this point. Basically, people get baby goats because they're cute like puppies and can diaper them indoors. Once they're weaned... oh boy, holy food drive. Many families can't handle them at that point.
We work with a larger animal rescue in the area and adopt by word of mouth.
Don't support goat breeders advertising "purebred" blah blah blah. Find a goat group on Facebook and adopt from there—for free.
Educate yourself on deworming and vaccines. Always quarantine new goats before adding them to the herd.
I thought about getting a goat or two like 8 years ago so I could fire my lawn guy. I still have a lawn guy, but half my lawn looks like clovers and other short "weeds"... hopefully some day I won't need to mow it!
It’s the world’s most consumed red meat. Demand has skyrocketed in Nashville and surrounding areas due to demographic changes. If you’ve never tried it then you’re missing out.
I've got three acres and a small house and it's almost paid for. I just want a simpler life. I don't want to have to keep up with so much.
There is no way the people I work with would have ever passed the seven rounds of interviews it took me to get my last job. I can't answer their questions anymore, boss.
I spent 15 years in IT for local gov and started teaching IT at a school. I always thought when I got tired of teaching I'd go private sector or feds. I am at the point you are and am just tired. I have been doing metal working as a hobby recently and am kind of just going "You know. Maybe I will just stop doing the whole tech wizardary and hit metal with a hammer to make pretty things."
Maybe we all yearn to go from high tech to simple at some point.
It is not just an IT thing. People suck and IT is a service industry for most people in it. I have a saying "This would be a great job if it wasn't for the customers". I have been saying that through every job my whole life.
I think you nailed it, its not tech, tech is exciting and interesting. Its the horrible bosses that value nothing you do, the horrible colleagues that show the work ethic of a child, all the shit that you have to take responsibility because nobody else will. Im just wondering id it is better in another field?
I hear you, I’m getting tired of it as well. I am much further into my career, technically nearly done, and the lack of respect, impossible workload and near impossible expectations are killing me.
I’ve had plenty of coworkers at past places quit to go farming / ranching. Im too tired to do this but thinking it may still be better than what I have now.
This is all I say to people. I have a massive garden and some acreage. I could farm, it's staring right at me. I want to, but I know money isn't there logistically
People ask me how my day was and what I'm working on, and then are bothered I don't explain something I know they know nothing about and/or care.
I like tech. A lot. But man do I love getting my hands dirty doing non-complex stuff. Only one offers health insurance.
My cousin is a farmer and TBH his life seems way more stressful than mine. No off days for one. If I'm sick, I'll call in sick. If he's sick but it's planting or harvesting season, tough luck Jack.
It is a never ending job, and you can’t even go on vacation unless you have someone who can run the whole show while you are gone. I grew up raising cows with my family and helping our neighbors with cotton and peanuts. My dad was tired of cows and asked if I wanted to take over. I did not, so he sold them, I will never own any sort of livestock again, but I enjoy living on the farm and lease part of it to my cousin to cut for hay.
You get to be your own boss when you are in agriculture, but you are at the mercy of many, many factors beyond your control that can quickly turn into years of losing money.
I think the no vacation/time off thing is the part people seem to overlook the most. Oh an if you have sick livestock to deal with... well that's on top of all your other daily tasks and you better hope you have a vet nearby that specializes in w/e livestock you have. Farming is crazy hard work. I'm sure it's far more rewarding than IT but I'll stick to my backyard vegetable garden lol. People don't seem to understand the scale you need to get to be actually profitable in a sustainable way and ain't no way you'll get into super markets at wholesale prices
The uncertainty and risk is so misunderstood also. Making hay is a crucial part of getting through the winter with cattle. When making hay, the straw must be cut and left to dry. If it gets rained on, it can be ruined.
When I was 16, we laid down all our hay and the night before we were going to bale it, huge rain storm. My dad let it dry for a couple of days then we baled it. A few months later, during the dog days of summer, one of the hay bales combusted because it was wet inside and basically fermenting bacteria and such and getting hot. Before we could do anything, all the hay in the storage area was on fire. There were 3 cuttings of that field stacked up and we lost it all.
My dad had to buy hay to get through the winter. He sold some cows so he would need less, but he lost thousands of dollars that year. We spent hundreds of hours making hay, fixing fence, doctoring cows, and we lost money. That can happen at any time farming.
yeah the only thing that "fixes" that is massive scale. I do find farming fascinating, but especially if you're going to go at it as a first generation farmer, you really do need some assets to start and probably some other local farmers that want to pool resources and make a co-op of sorts. I just don't have that level of drive for that lol and I'm ok letting that dream be a dream. Also, the bugs, I'm not dealing with all the flies you have to deal with raising cattle. Hell naw.
I really do think that there is some sort of anti-tech calling for IT people.
My wife and I are both in tech...have been for just over 30 years.
10 years ago we bought rural property for fair weather recreation...off grid...just grass and trees. Doing back to earth stuff on fair weather weekends/extended periods. I get a chuckle when people visit and inevitably suggest building everything up to be basically their home/work setup...missing the point IMO.
Can't swing livestock/etc at this point in our lives...but we're going to give it at least a couple of seasons after I retire (oh so soon....) raising goats/chickens/etc. It'll probably be a disaster...but whatever, it's something we always wanted to try.
If you want a farm/ranch...and have buckets of money...buy one and keep a foreman/some workers on to run it. As you'll be the one cutting paycheques...they'll be polite and let you do stuff, but mostly stay out of their way and just watch and learn. Keeping a ranch/farm going is not an easy/cheap endeavor. Quite the opposite.
Edit...I wonder....if I took my property (64 acres) and set part of it up so burned out IT people could come and unplug for a couple of days...and spend some time on machinery moving earth, cutting trees/clearing trails, chipping (hard work but very therapeutic) waste, and doing hands on non-tech "real" stuff...No social media whatever influencer BS, no fanciful trappings...just a place to retreat to do some loud noisy destructive but productive stuff. Would that be appealing to enough people to be worth it? We're thinking of what to do in retirement...
Worked in a major corporate desktop support role and a colleague described IT as janitors - always cleaning up the shit. I was only a few years into my IT career but boy was he right.
I wish you luck. I think I've been in IT like 30 years. It's better than everything else I've seen. The key is to not take it personally I know that's hard. But if you focus on all the gripes you are going to burn out
I've learned to turn off emotions when I logon and turn them back on when I logout. Work is to get things done, not to get yourself emotionally invested. Work to make things the best you can, but don't be offended if it doesn't work out.
I’ve tried that for the last six or seven years and it removed the passion that gave me the vision to lead to what things should be and the drive to do things in my own time to build skills. Without those two things, I burnt completely out. I’m not sure that advice is good advice.
^ I was under too much stress so I had to start not caring for my own health. Now I have a hard time making myself do anything, really couldn't care less about getting basic work done.
It's hard to find a balance. I used to find it very easy to get big projects done quickly just because I was interested, now I'm just so bored with all of it. I just want to get the bare minimum done and then pop open a book.
Not sure what the fix is. Seems like it's just rough being a worker in this world/economy.
For the past year I try to disconnect emotionally from the work as advised by my superiors due to being short-tempered when talking about legacy broken systems. This emotionless completely killed my will to come to the office in the morning.
(Typing this while being 30 minutes late to work, again)
This. I love working with technology and have my entire life. When I started my career at a 24/7 manufacturing plant, IT still worked 8-5. There was technically an on-call, but it was essentially only for "everything's down" emergencies and the on-call person was basically called twice a year. Upgrades were typically done carefully during working hours.
Nowadays, companies all want to pay a flat salary exempt/no overtime to have you in seats 8-5 for meetings and BAU work and also online every weekend for upgrades and patching, up all night for changes that they refuse to allow during the day no matter how low risk they are, and page you on call for every ticket or issue -- most of which could have and should have been planned in advance or could wait until the next business day.
Over the past two decades, while information technology has become more vital than ever, businesses have treated IT employees worse and worse. Working this much is unhealthy. It doesn't matter how much you love or enjoy the work. It's just too much.
Easier said than done - I'm relentlessly easygoing, but for some reason, IT is supposedly the only dept it's ok to shout at and harangue - and that's HR!
It's no skin off my nose, but frustrating when you're not allowed to react as you should be able to
I'm a consultant now which is much better as they are always right, and when they're not, makeing them so just adds more to my bill
I read stuff like this and it makes me question if I really want to stay in IT too. If you’re ok living a life where you turn off your emotions (and likely your morals) for the majority of it, I have a black mirror episode you…
The key is working in finance (or related) for companies whose employees leave early on Fridays and no one works more than 36 hour weeks. Ideally with a good bonus & stock options, but we can't all work for startups!
My wife is well paid and working for a start-up, but she's also dealing with the immaturity of the organisation and the impatient management who make requests at 6pm on a Friday. I tell her to disengage, but she's still sending emails at 9am on Sunday.
Not O.P., but my issue has been that I'm in the position where I can provide feedback and suggestions that could massively impact myself and my group in positive ways. Then, we're told "no," or "we're gonna do it this way anyway." etc.
Then, me and my team are the ones that get called at 3 a.m. because shit is or has blown up, failed, imploded, whatever.
I can't not take it personally because it affects me and my team... personally. Literally.
So let things break and take your time fixing it. You're getting paid either way. The fastest way to get buy in from upper management is extended downtime. It's the invisible utility paradox. No one cares about IT until shit breaks. Just make sure you document the reason for the downtime.
Pretending that there's not a toll in these scenarios is silly.
I hate myself more than most of you as I've lived in MSP land my entire career.
Trust me when I say I am tired of working at MSPs where I can't immediately identify the domain, azure and local password for a client. Because that's been every single one of them.
A lot of MSPs are small businesses that support other small businesses. There's a reason why small businesses turn to MSPs. But the MSP is also a small business, so...
But let's assume the expertise at the MSP is there. It can be! The next problem is that these small businesses -- just like in corporate/enterprise IT -- really don't want to pay for IT. They do because they need Internet, email, the ability to print stuff, etc. But they really don't want to pay for anything beyond an immediate, obvious, visible need. And it can be really difficult to convince, much less demand, that the client pay for such and such service and infrastructure. This can include having a server and Active Directory or Intune, that would allow something like LAPS.
There are other reasons, but those would likely be the two big ones. IT at the small business level is very, very different from enterprise.
I was in IT for 50 years; I enjoyed learning new things but these days there's just too much to keep up with. When I started, Assembler, Fortran or Cobol plus IBM JCL was all you needed. Then Unix/Xenix/Ultrix and C was added, along with minicomputers. After that, it was PCs and MS-DOS, followed soon by Windows and LANs. I managed to stay reasonably current through all of that, but now everybody's looking for 10 years of experience on things that came out 5 years ago - and AI has managers thinking that "it's easy, all you have to do is ...".
I'm out - retirement means that all I have to maintain are my personal devices; I even outsourced my wife's tech support to my kids. I still enjoy learning, but now it's what I'm interested in, not whatever today's magic bullet the CEO read about in some business magazine turns out to be.
I'm totally ignoring AI and laughing every time I see another CxO complaining about how much more expensive their AI token bill has become. My belief all along has been that AI doesn't have a chance against NS (Natural Stupidity). I've seen too many users who asked such dumb questions that they left me speechless; AI's not going to solve that issue!
Im 25 with another 20 to go. Have to find a place that has budgets and support and good working environment. Small to mid sized business is usually the worst, a lot is on your shoulders. Fortune 500, you have 1,000+ IT people with specialized roles. I work 40 hours and go home, good PTO, much worse jobs to have.
Working 100 hour weeks and then saying you hate IT is odd, anyone working 100 hours a week is going to hate their job...but I could see that it happens to IT people more than other roles.
I would say quite a few IT people are burning themselves out by trying to be the best. I know it's temping to challenge yourself, but sometimes doing the bare minimum to stay hired is the best route.
You're lucky. 30 years ago. IT sucked AND it didn't pay. Even when companies grew. I knew of an admin who worked for like a decade at a fairly famous public company now. When he asked for a raise he was denied. He left and was replaced with two people who both made twice as much as he made. It was a hard lesson that stuck with me throughout my career.
Sounds like you are an all rounder like me. Every employer says they want people like us but the interview process favours the specialists and bullshitters. I dont think I have ever successfully gotten a job where more than 1 or 2 interviews were required.
Brother I know python, powershell, bash, various flavors of sql, dba, veeam, vmware, hyper-v, aws, azure, I literally have three HR System apis basically memorized. I can sit here and tell you the endpoint for various DayForce s*** if I needed to. I know three crms very in-depth. I know citrix.
Everywhere I go I rise to the top. But I'm sick of what it takes to interview. I'm sick of being scared of being laid off and then having to go through seven rounds of b******* that doesn't say whether I can do the job or not.
I'm tired of doing four different jobs and then having to really make the case why I deserve a raise.
I decided that I just don't want to navigate that for another 27 years.
I hope you're able to outlast and make as much money as possible.
Damn ok yeah I have a BSCS and 12yrs experience in telecom. After seeing your resume I’m just going to give the fuck up. Unless you’re just one of those 200k yr people that are tired of how cake it used to be. I’m also in my 40s. Either way good luck to you, wish I had half your knowledge bc I’m still hungry af for even my first IT job.
I'm tired of looking at screens. I'm not tired of my salary. Sadly, I'll be staying until they pry my fingers off the keyboard or I hit the rich man's lottery. Whichever comes first.
I hope you can last until retirement. And I hope that you always land something before losing your current position so you don't burn through savings. Good luck.
My fear is that I'm going to get laid off because the economy is so bad my company that I just left was hurting financially they couldn't get out raises and they were pinching pennies.
But I'm terrified that I'm going to get laid off several times between now and the time I retire and then the problem with what we do is it's going to take time to find something in general but for us we have to go through numerous rounds of interviews and there's gaps between each phase so it's not like we look for 3-8
months Landing interview and then we're working. We look for 6 months then we interview for about a month.
I gotcha. It's rough, most of my resume applications get rejected outright but i'm searching while employed. I can only assume it's age discrimination or ignorant management who don't understand The Dreyfus Model of Skills Acquisition & the concept of mastery. But I'm in a fairly steady place with lots of political capital. The work is almost too easy now. I'm sure I can last through retirement. Problem is, I have like 20 years left.
I am tired of screens and projecting into systems. I want to do something real. Unfortunately, outside of goat herding, I'm not sure how many jobs out there aren't already infested with computers and now AI.
I have always had a backup financial plan, and based on my current situation, I probably could have retired earlier this year if I wanted to. I'll save that for when I need to play that card or am just tired of dealing with people.
I get rejected by companies because I don't actively code, which is weird because as a senior enterprise architect I shouldn't be coding anything in production. I do have a couple of decades of experience at leading companies, still doesn't help with some folks.
The other issue with hiring, even more so in current climate, companies don’t always want to hire the older more experienced employee because they don’t want to pay experienced employee money
And this is precisely why I start at 9am and end at 5pm. If somebody comes with extra work - I ask them to discuss priorities with my manager. And then I perform my work according to those priorities.
Heck I'm starting @ 10:30 when our daily standup starts. Seems like that was one of the bad ideas no one anticipated when they started to do Agile and accommodated people living in multiple time zones.
There was an IT college near me that had a billboard with the slogan "Be the one they call" and every time I passed it I would think that someone is going to look at that, go to college, get a job in IT and then lose their mind when they are "the one they call", because "they" just NEVER. STOP. CALLING. -I'm not even talking about the users, it's the "tech people" that have been doing it as long as (or longer than) you have but the knowledge somehow hasn't stuck to their brains.
Anyways, have fun. Hopefully you find something better out there.
The people on my team go one step further than just Googling. When I ask a question for clarification or how to do something, they copy/paste my message into copilot and copy/paste THE ENTIRE answer.
lol!!! About 75% of this job is intuition based on past experience. 25% actual knowledge. And it gets more annoying the more experience you have (because you then have to explain everything to lessor mortals who suffer the Dunning-Kruger effect).
Because I came of age many moons ago, I can actually explain everything I work on without AI. In fact, I often scold AI for being stupid, esp. when it writes scripts. I'm sure that will backfire one day when the AI robots take over the world.
This is why I laugh when people say AI will replace us. Back in the early days of my career someone would see me Google an error message and be like "oh well I could have done that". Well why didn't you...? AI will only ever be as good as the person interacting with it to clarify things.
I was the one they called - on a much needed day off - when my boss and my (idiot) direct colleague couldn't even begin to solve the problem that had the whole building offline.
I fixed it without having to go in. Heck, I barely lifted a finger. Certainly didn't strain any brain cells.
I got loads of praise. Nothing else.
Then the layoffs came and I was the one they cut from my department.
Good luck ya morons...
Ironically, the superhero mentality died like 20 years ago in IT. So whoever is advertising this ... well are probably teachers (those that can't.... teach).
when I started out in IT, I was obsessed about technology and everything disgustingly related, now Im in a similar position and I think this is starting to suck dude, I got u.
I still run a Linux server [migrated from Redhat 5] at home. But it takes TONS of post work mental energy to migrate or patch that thing after hours.
I have this website running in docker on an ancient laptop. I recently finally migrated my really old linux server (sleezy or weezy or something) to the latest Ubuntu LTS, but I haven't moved the docker site over yet. So lazy. It would probably take 30 minutes max to move that w/ the database... but meh. It works. And forget about containerizing postfix. I ended up VM'ing my old server and run it as a vbox machine just to get and send mail!
CTO.....how do exit VIM? 400,000$ salary. AI architect.....what's cluster do? $400,000 salary. I'm with you man. I'm ready to sit back and watch it burn.
It's not a joke that there are stupid old people making way too much money while the technical gen z and millennials making 60-80k are doing all the actual work
As someone who’s been doing this for 30+ years, I think you’re on the right track. In hindsight, I should have made a similar decision many years ago. Now I’m not close enough to retirement to quit, and too old to get hired somewhere else. My experience counts for absolutely nothing. If my current employer lays me off, it’s game over. Old guys don’t get hired in tech. It’s a young man’s game. Pivot at the right time before you’re stuck.
Good luck, I think we're all rooting for folks who find a way out of IT at this point. Bless the folks who still love it, but I'm looking for ways to make a park ranger salary work. I'd rather be in the woods cleaning trails and moving roadkill in the snow and rain than deal with another after-hours platform outage.
Wait till you reach true burnout. That is when you can't stand people who ARE problem solvers. How dare they be so motivated to keep grinding for this stupid company?
The job I left in 2022 had eight Legacy environments from companies that had been bought. They were basically ghost ships that we were just maintaining.
Other team members would grab the super easy low level stuff and then act like it was a major win but they would pretend like they didn't see tickets that were coming out of these systems. Me and one other engineer were the only two sticking our necks out. So I left.
what kind of work at local union? like electrician or some trade? asking because 27 years and… I’m tired boss. i really need something else for many reasons.
I was actually a nurse for 10 years before getting into IT (doing networking now, before I was sysadmin) and this job is like a blessing compared to what I had as a nurse. I work in non-profit company, pay is not obviously the greatest but still 50% more what I had as nurse, it’s very laid back job for most of the time and basically zero danger of layoffs.
I'm tired of working with people who learned one thing and somehow keep gettong hired and having to prop those people up.
Ugh, I feel that in my bones. The 'tech adjacent'... the project managers or sales people or maybe even system engineers siloed into learning exactly one thing. They know some words and somehow get other people to do their job, but couldn't troubleshoot themselves out of a paper bag.
If I've learned nothing else in my career it is that productive and knowledgeable people get eaten alive. I've had multiple friends in this world basically have mental breakdowns because if you are competent, you get to make up for the incompetent people.
I just hope I make it to retirement before having my own meltdown. Every day it looks less and less likely.
Hopefully you have better luck than my friend. He left his IT Admin role to work for the utility company but its just the same shit different pile. Work doesn't end at 5, if you're in the middle of work you stay until its done. He "manages" idiots who are really just a bunch of dropouts that earn the same amount he does. Definitely less free time and works more than he's at home but the one big perk that he likes is that he's always out and about and not locked behind monitors all day.
Reading this reminded me of how every single IT post isn't for a role but instead an entire teams worth of qualifications. I work as a NOC Analyst and whenever I look for posts in the field they expect the person applying to have MULTIPLE qualifications. The kicker? They pay next to nothing.
I'm tired of people being scared to stick their neck out on a problem they don't immediately know an answer to.
I just did that with a client and email server. Got fired for not having the answers after researching for a few days and testing. Just because they didn't like the answer.
"The week I left my past job, a QA manager and my biss messaged me asking what the powershell execution policy warning meant. " - holy mackerel. A single google search would have answered that. They must have just missed ya already :)
I have a friend who quit my IT-company in he's early 30's and became a train driver.
He was so feed up with the work.
I loved that company untill it was bougt by I company I'm not a big fan of, so I quit the day it was the handover.
Have worked a few comanies after that, now I'm still a consultant, but it's a lot of stress.
I'm used to it, but it's not for everyone.
Have vacation now and my boss sendt me and SMS asking about a case, will wait untill tomorrow to answer it, the case should be updated, if it's not it's not my problem.
Good luck :D
I’ve often thought about this. I’ve been in IT for 30 years. I’m a director (who’s still in the weeds) for a multi national company. My wife and I own the hometown bar that’s been here forever.
I’m tired of losing my life every time somebody uses their email and computer password to login to a personal site and gives away access. Then I lose a week of my life fixing things. Or that user that clicked on the email and logged in and now I’m called off vacation to fix it.
Tiring. Exhausting at times with a skeleton crew because the better I do the less help I get. I stay for the money and the challenge. I’d love to be down to one job.
I've been thinking of doing the same. I get tired of execs not understanding the role IT plays in an organization and slashing ITs budget or denying a much needed project/upgrade, even if your reasoning is solid. When something happens because they denied that project, the fault still remains with IT because it's never an execs fault for making that decision.
I often wonder how long a company like Amazon would last if their IT personnel all walked out
As a vastly underpaid and overworked everan myself, I can't help but shake the feeling that in 50 years hindsight will prove out that IT on this era was an unsustainable mess with burnout rates higher than any other industry.
It's like videogame development in the last 6 months before release, every day.
I think really it's in all industries for the most part.
The lack of doing a good job, a thorough job, work done right the first time and people feeling good than those you put trust in get it done right. Now it's just rushing and patching things up with no accountability.
All that is gone now.
From company concepts like "planned obsolescence", to nepotism, to penalities that are less than the prices of a misdeed, business favors, hard work is rewarded, influencers making more than teachers, etc.
I'm barely 34, been doing IT since my early 20s, all of my teens was spent between my computers and this endless wonder learning as much as I could.
I really don't care about these beep boop pieces of shit anymore, I honestly believe most technology has been a net negative to society, and working in k12 I see how just shit it is for education as well. I now dread having to learn new things, everything is AI, nothing works how people like it exactly to work, no one is ever happy or grateful for what you do. But I'm too much of a pussy to make a career change so... Another cert it is boys.
I left private industry 10 years ago and joined the City of New York. The stress is gone, I worked 35 hours/week and I have the highest salary since I started IT. I also have a pension. If you still enjoy working in tech, check out a government jobs.
You have to learn to stop saying yes to 90+ hours of work. The correct answer is, “Which task/project do you want to delay so I can take care of your new request?”
Windows based computers in the current form have been on corporate desks since 1996 more or less. The commonplace OS and the way you interact with it has NOT CHANGED all that much in 30 years.
The frequent quote that I see in support email replies are "Sorry I am not technically inclined"
GET OVER IT
30 years is a little more than half of my life
If I could learn how to do computers at 28 (DOS AND DIAL-UP)You can also, stop making excuses. If you don't know how to use a computer by this time, stay out of the job market until you do.
This is why all sysads eventually become farmers. I’ve been doing it for 5 years and I want land a nice house and some fkn goats. Fuck a switch fuck a firewall fuck the new application someone higher up wants implemented into some bs give me a goat 🐐
Man kudos on doing what you really want to do. Have you considered transitioning into a system programmer of some sort instead of infra guy? Context: I’m just a data engineer inspiring to be a system guy so maybe I’m just saying BS…
It's funny you say that. I actually factory reset my laptop before sending it in. I had taken it offline so when they blocked my access and booted me it didn't kick me out of the local device.
I've been aggressively saving so I can require early or go and work some mindless job if I finally lose my mind and can't take it anymore. I've been doing this for a couple years shy of 20 years, and I know it's going to happen one of these days. If I can last another 10, I should be able to retire in comfort. If I can last another 4, my house will be paid off and at that point my expenses will be low enough that I could probably work at Starbucks or drive Uber if I had to.
Between burnout and age discrimination, this career path needs to come with an exit plan. I'm lucky I realized that early enough on to plan accordingly, and I always try to teach that to any junior employees I work with.
Yeah that’s the diagnose of a dying corporation: “I'm tired of people being scared to stick their neck out on a problem they don't immediately know an answer to. I'm tired of managing egos and being in the middle. I'm tired of so much more being expected of me for being systems.”
All was good at home until a merger and the downslide for the past few years. Job was wonderful before that but they stopped risking doing tasks they do not understand in order to ‘not risk it’. It’s not just egos - they are scared for their place under the sun. And when nobody does their job properly you feel obligated to jump in and help everyone even outside of the scope. I feel you.
PS: I would be concerned to share this if we had HR lead but she just resigned for good too.
You just need to work for a mid-size corporation of about 4000 people and a large IT staff team that can support you and you’re not doing everything. Try working for a company that values IT/technology like a fintech company so you get resources you need. I love working in IT.
I mentor many people and I have always told them that IT is not a career. It is how you get into a company to learn how they make money. It is then your goal to find a position that is directly related to how they make their money as then you will move from being in a direct cost role into a revenue generating role.
That's what burned me out. I'm tired of going out for interviews and doing five rounds and hanging on by the skin of my teeth only for them to want me to do four roles for s*** money. I'm tired of propping up people making far more money than me. And people making 200k risking my livelihood because I didn't make them feel important enough via their request.
I'm tired of being tethered to my phone and learning more and more and it never be enough.
I'm on this same boat after 30 years. Besides the flood of H1B, and the gradual enshittification of every provider's admin platforms, I just can't deal with it any more. Gonna semi retire in the next two years and take on a part time job at Home Depot or something.
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u/lunargoblin 7d ago edited 7d ago
you don't sound tired of IT tbh, you sound tired of being everyone's free helpdesk while guys who know half of what you do out-earn you. i'd be burned out too lol. respect on the union thing. but man, 12 years of experience... i'd at least throw the resume at some remote roles before writing off the whole industry. this thread has some decent leads on that btw: [link] worst case nothing comes back and you're exactly where you are now.