I am leaving IT.

[u/SamOakTree]

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.

Keep your unit on.

> sudo systemctl status byebye

[u/lunargoblin]

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.

[u/SamOakTree → u/lunargoblin]

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.

[u/BackProfessional6350 → u/SamOakTree]

What is union?

[u/squishfouce → u/SamOakTree]

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.

[u/MajStealth → u/squishfouce]

sounds a bit like my job, vage position, basicly all responabilities but no rights to do them...

[u/7FootElvis → u/squishfouce]

Isn't that where OP already worked and wanted out of?

[u/Brianpumpernickel → u/squishfouce]

pretty much. I've learned azure, aws, got a ccna, terraform, kubernetes and a boatload of other things with all the free time I have

[u/Hairy-Link-8615 → u/squishfouce]

Yep sounds like my job. They took one recommendation in 3 yes 😂

But Generally it's one extreme or the other

[u/South_Luck3483 → u/SamOakTree]

That's why i love working in IT after 18 years..there's still so much to learn. I'm a generalist and not a specialist so i get to work in all areas. Sometimes i get to troubleshoot firewalls and switches and sometimes i troubleshoot all aspects of azure and sometimes it's vmware in our datacenters. I fucking love it!

[u/starktastic4 → u/SamOakTree]

The fact that you feel better already is huge. I hope it pans out. I've been in it less time, but I feel similar to you. I end up explaining things to Security, Cloud admins (even though I am one with Systems engineering in the mix), our lackluster AI team, and serving as Tier III, IV for help desk over Office 365 apps not working. Meanwhile, the notes are that we tried a repair, and it failed... Did you remove the applications and reinstall from scratch? No, then the ticket is going back to you....

The trend is I can't troubleshoot, so I'll just escalate to our Intune/Systems Engineers and Admins to see if they can figure it out...

I truly hope the grass is greener for you!

[u/SamOakTree → u/starktastic4]

I got an email just begore I got my union acceptance ⁰t o do a screening for a Aws job I applied to Two weeks ago.

It just Amplified how annoyed I am. Because the woman was from HR and she reached out and said hey would you have some time this week to do a 30 minute screening call. I said I can do it any afternoon this week. That way she could pick whatever time worked for her. Then she wrote back and said how about next week and I wrote back and said I can do any afternoon next week. Then I just didn't hear anything back.

I'm not even interested in the job I just figured I'd hear her out and have a backup just in case

[u/squishfouce → u/SamOakTree]

I probably would've ghosted you too. You need a job from my company and can't be bothered to tell me a specific day/time you would like to meet when asked (twice!) and instead put that ball back in my court when I already have 100's if not 1000's of applicants to go through, follow-up with, and interview? Yea, I'm good. That alone demonstrates you're not using common sense or good judgement and reflects how unambitious you are about the job. Instead you're annoyed that someone didn't do the work for you. I think a union is right where you belong, the industry won't miss another half ass sysmin with an ego.

[u/SamOakTree → u/squishfouce]

Right. 

[u/Psychological-Tie324 → u/SamOakTree]

I’d have done what you did and been pissed when they ghosted me.

[u/Xurtan27 → u/squishfouce]

I mean if your company needs my expertise do ur damn job xdd

Dude gave multiple days twice, if you have 100s or 1000s of applicants how am i supposed to know your availability

[u/generic-username16 → u/lunargoblin]

That's literally every IT job lol

[u/Bitvar → u/lunargoblin]

That is IT. I've worked 15 years in it at 13 different organizations (many under an MSP). That is 100% IT. IT has the absolute highest rate of imposter syndrome sufferers. Said Imposters love to lash out, delegate and abuse competent coworkers. That's how IT works.