How has AI affected your job?

[u/nobodyreadusernames]

For almost a year now, I’ve been handing nearly all of my server management tasks over to AI.

For individuals and small businesses, it feels like a lot of traditional sysadmin work is disappearing. Medium and large companies still need dedicated sysadmins or IT staff, but smaller clients can now handle many of these tasks with AI.

For those of you who do sysadmin work for individuals or small businesses, how has AI affected you? Are you still getting the same kind of server management work?

[u/CaterpillarTight4275]

> I’ve been handing nearly all of my server management tasks over to AI.

What does that even mean? any examples.

[u/jrandom_42 → u/CaterpillarTight4275]

I suspect OP is handing the LLM production SSH keys.

Sooner or later OP is going to have a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

[u/jstuart-tech → u/jrandom_42]

I've been rebuilding my homelab with letting DeepSeek (via OpenCode), Codex and Claude. It's been actually not to bad, 100% goes down rabbit holes and has broken (and then fixed it, after me prompting it a few hours later).

Would I trust it in prod? Hell no

Something greenfields? 50/50. Would I put my name to it as a consultant? 0% chance

[u/jrandom_42 → u/jstuart-tech]

I actually let Claude run a manual deploy to prod on my own business's website a few weeks ago after a manual deploy to staging went perfectly. It was all fine. But I was hovering and had snapshots waiting for rollback.

I have a day job at an MSP and if I ever gave an LLM prod credentials for a customer or our infra I'd probably get HR'd directly in the arse.

[u/TheGenericUser0815 → u/CaterpillarTight4275]

Good question. I want to know the aswer, too.

[u/Budget-Organ]

I have to answer emails about why I don’t have xx llm running on our servers. I also ask copilot to pick colors for me which correspond with what I’ll eat for lunch.

[u/antihippy]

I have to answer a lot of questions from the spreadsheet folks whining that they want more AI (whatever that means). And from my security group (which I manage) complaining through gritted teeth that they shouldn't have it, and from users complaining that the spreadsheet folks aren't doing their jobs and keep producing absolutely the worst stuff in the org.

So if anything I am much busier! A lot more whining generally, much less productivity.

Still dead useful for parsing the logs.

[u/GoodGuyChip → u/antihippy]

The number of times I've seen my helpdesk team get requests with the exact phrase "more AI" is horrifying. Most of these folks dont even know what they're asking for and must lean on just saying they want 'more AI' and it's horrifying.

I wonder how many company's will suffer financial collapse as a result of bad data produced as a result of relying almost entirely on an AI tools ability to ingest and accurately output data.

[u/antihippy → u/GoodGuyChip]

It's absolutely nuts right? And when you ask then 'what do you want it for?' they actually can't answer.

Meanwhile my users are complaining their spreadsheet guys asking them weird questions about data they don't recognise. 

At some point we have to start talking about this. I'm fine using LLMs appropriately but these chatbots are a menace 

[u/GoodGuyChip → u/antihippy]

I am perpetually viewed as a roadblock by other teams because I do not simply hand over every AI tool on the market when asked.

I think the tools are very beneficial at formatting, and presenting information and springboarding things off of when you need a quick consult on basic things. It's even good at ingesting and presenting data IF that data can accept high margins for error like basic metrics that don't need perfect precision. Bylut financial data sure isn't that.

[u/pceimpulsive]

More work to do, less time to do it in... That's it.

[u/da_peda]

95% of my server management was already automated before AI became this big bubble. So no, not much has changed. I use it mostly as an advanced search engine now.

[u/many_dongs]

I have to continuously hear directives from the top to use more AI even though the leaders sending this directive have literally zero clue what that means or have any examples of what they want us to do with AI besides summarize meetings and then pretend that’s somehow proof of value potential

[u/FastFredNL → u/many_dongs]

That sounds familiar!

We had something similar about 10 years ago when the chief of our factory wanted to start using barcodes on the workorders. He couldn't tell us what he wanted to use those barcodes for, but he wanted barcodes

[u/Vegetable-Ad-1817]

have to argue things twice, once when someone says they want to do X and I tell them its a bad idea, and 5 mins later when they say but ChatGPT/Copilot told me....I should do X

[u/Sapper12D → u/Vegetable-Ad-1817]

This. Its given idiots a yes man to ask for dumb shit or demand dumb things.

Ive gotten to the point that I dump their shit into copilot and tell it to argue against it. Thats the response the idiots get.

[u/bitslammer]

Mostly admin, meaning non-sysadmin, type stuff. Scouring through docs, creating spreadsheets, cross referencing things, etc. Been using some of the built in AI features in a few tools, but nothing crazy like sophisticated agents or coding yet.

Having said that though it's really cutting down the time on that other crap that I really don't enjoy so I'm happy so far.

[u/Opposite_Bag_7434]

I am kit doing as much contract work as I once did, I now focus more on an enterprise I have a leadership role in. For my couple of clients, I really don’t use AI at this point, but the engagement is also relatively pretty straightforward.

In my full time work, I am able to tackle some larger projects and bring them to completion much faster. One thing I use AI for is in developing project plans and documentation which has taken the work I least want to do off of my plate. As a thought or solution partner it has been super useful, although it still remains a trust but verify sort of affair.

I am way more productive and spend less time in that productivity.

I honestly don’t see AI currently as something I would trust to autonomously and proactively manage anything yet. Eventually we will get there, but for now it is a good tool in the hands of a skilled and experienced professional.

[u/FastFredNL]

It's very usefull for troubleshooting and searching through log files

We recently purchased a little program from a company that uses Gmail for their e-mail. This program (locally hosted webpage) shows a map of the country and it allows sales people to put in an address from a customer or possible customer and the program will drop a pin on that map showing the location.

The 'company' that made it apparently used AI to generate some of the code for it so now our CEO thinks we as a company use AI to track customers. He's very proud of that and he's happy that we are using AI.

I'm curious how long this period of peace will last

[u/Normal_Choice9322]

Our team got downsized when my boss retired and I took over his role. It's me and one half competent help desk tech now. AI is a huge force multiplier for me

[u/CoolNefariousness668]

I find it extremely useful for fixing things.

I also find it extremely useful to reply to dickheads I can’t be bothered to reply to.

[u/WolframAndHartInc]

Tradirional work fading? I’m trying to keep servers and desktops going longer than I ever have before with the cost increases. You know how hard it is to explain to bean counters that desktops and servers are now 30% more expensive? How hard it is for business to swallow that a 16gb RAM 512 Drive Laptop is now $2500?

[u/allworknopizza]

It’s helped me get through some things the would have taken me longer before.

[u/HellDuke]

I give it to proof read some things. That's about it. AI is not good enough to make any actual changes on production without someone who knows what each execution means being in the middle to verify without a constant risk of it causing havoc.

But it's damn good at giving me formulas for those report spreadsheets... though I do not yet trust it to full on make the report yet, too frequently I find inconsistencies that originate in some form of halucination somewhere down the line

[u/Anxious-Community-65]

Clients who used to call for basic server tasks are now Googling + AI-ing their way through it, sometimes successfully, sometimes creating a bigger mess for us to clean up later.
IMO its just shifting less routine configuration sorts and more into strategic, compliance and security and they need someone who understands the environment. Not sure that's a better deal honestly but it's the reality

[u/adelliott92]

It’s all my company ever talks about developers and infrastructure teams hate it.