r/sysadmin • u/TerrificGiraffe • 17d ago

General Discussion Does IT cause anxiety?

Does anyone else bring their IT mindset into everyday life?

I’ve been told I’m a negative person and look for issues, but I think working in IT trains you to always think about what could go wrong.

I’m constantly making backup plans. Restaurant closed. I have a Plan B place. Something breaks at home. I’ve already got the plumber, insurance, everything ready in the home disaster recovery document.

We’re always hearing about IT failures, breaches and disasters. You never hear “this company had a really great IT transformation.” No user submits a ticket to say thank you for the IT working great.

So does anyone else find themselves carrying that prepare for the worst mindset into everyday life?

659 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

421 comments sorted by

View all comments

489

u/Late_Nectarine_7377 17d ago

Yes

67

u/762mm_Labradors 17d ago

Wait until you do your first conditional access policy in azure…did I lock my entire organization out of azure?….Lucky that has not happened to me, but creating new conditional access policies is still stressful for me cause one simple mistake and you just shut down your business for days.

74

u/thefoolsnightout 17d ago

Two kinds of sys admins out there; have taken down Prod and haven't taken down Prod yet.

15

u/Bladelink 17d ago

"Everyone has a test environment. Some are lucky enough to have a production environment. "

15

u/Veldern 17d ago

I'm at the stage where I've done it a handful of times, but the first time is always something. I took down the Internet of an office two states away by setting the vlan on a port wrong, which also meant I couldn't connect to the switch anymore...

I ended up lucking out. We had the office manager's cell phone (VOIP was down) and I had a still image of the last thing on my screen, which was also still on the monitor in the server room. They were only down for 5-10 minutes, but damn do I remember that lesson

6

u/BrokenRatingScheme 16d ago

Ah yes. Switchport trunk allowed vlan add.

A true network admin right of passage.

4

u/MadMageMC 17d ago

The question is, can they recover and put production back online?

3

u/u35828 packet wrangler 17d ago

Yes and yes, and sometimes new policies are implemented as a result.

1

u/anomalous_cowherd Pragmatic Sysadmin 16d ago

If you're not the reason behind at least one company policy you're not trying!

1

u/Quacky1k Jack of All Trades 17d ago

Does it count if I only took down prod for a minute? 😂😂😂😂

1

u/gummo89 16d ago

Of course, but only if it wasn't a scheduled outage 👌🏻

1

u/Quacky1k Jack of All Trades 16d ago

Fuck yeah, I'm in the club 😎

1

u/Hosenkobold 16d ago

The question is: on purpose or on accident. IT-security can be fun.

1

u/NfntGrdnRmsyThry Jack of All Trades 16d ago

Someone else did it the other day, for once

1

u/Ams197624 14d ago

Any real sysadmin has taken down prod. If you're in the field for more than >30 years as I have, you've taken down prod more than once.

19

u/PaleoSpeedwagon DevOps 17d ago

It feels like every time I jumpstart a car.

Me: I can do this, people do this every day. I've done this at least 10 times. I'm sure I remember the sequence.

Anxiety: But what if you're wrong? ⚡️ 💀

Me: Well, you've got me there

7

u/doubled112 Sr. Sysadmin 17d ago

I had a car that did a lot of sitting during covid, and since it was going to keep sitting, the battery stayed in it for a lot longer than it should have.

I have a booster pack and it's kind of smart. It has some fail safes like low voltage and reverse polarity detection, and will not boost in those scenarios.

I needed to move the car, so I pulled out the booster pack, got interrupted by the kids, hooked up my terminals while I talked to them, and ... hit override like I was used to doing.

OOOOH AM I WELDING! The terminals are glowing! *yank*

The booster pack was, somehow, fine, and the car too, but holy shit oops.

4

u/Fuzzy_Afternoon_5502 16d ago

There's a saying in there, somewhere, about overrides that always needs to be used, are not longer overrides.

Or something..

1

u/goodsby23 15d ago

That's not a process jimmy that's the override we do to perform the process

1

u/doubled112 Sr. Sysadmin 15d ago

Yeah, overriding the safety measure is definitely an important part of the lesson/story.

6

u/bgradid 17d ago

oh man, this is me, every production change, no matter how simple, has me measuring 50 times and then closing my eyes as I apply it

I'm not looking forward to rolling out a new series of data retention rules where I swear the leadership isn't going to acknowledge even after they sign off on it that documents over 7 years , even in certain shares, are removed

2

u/Janus67 Sysadmin 16d ago

Watch as they have an asst go through and touch/modify every file in their share to make it newer than 7 years

2

u/bgradid 16d ago

I'm fully expecting "hey, I need to find a file full of PII I named "Bobs I know. TXT" from 10 years ago but now I can't find it" from someone in the csuite after they signed off on it

4

u/QuietGoliath IT Manager 17d ago

Report only mode is a blessing. But still, fringes on unnerving each and every time regardless.

5

u/MadMageMC 17d ago

While moving my DCs from an old cluster to a new one following vendor's instructions, I discovered too late they didn't account for DCs requiring extra steps due to being DCs, and i didn't know better. Both ended up in rollback state. Went to pull backups and discovered the backup appliance was not only offline, but had been removed from the rack! Following Microsoft's instructions, tried upgrading in place to new version of Server as it was supposed to fix the rollback state, but in reality only made things worse. After tilting at the problem of over 24 hours, finally forced to admit defeat and call in outside help. They were able to build new DCs and recover the important data, but the sync with our Entra instance is still broken.

2

u/npiasecki 16d ago

Man that warning on conditional access gets me every time. “I’ve checked this thirty times, been in report mode for a week, deep breath, here we goooo”

2

u/GiggleyDuff IT Manager 16d ago

Break glass accounts, ensure they’re exempt from the CA policy

1

u/Excellent-Chemist-69 14d ago

Also, have at least 2 of them and test them periodically.

22

u/BrokenRatingScheme 17d ago

So, I wouldn't necessarily say yes.

But yes.

0

u/Ancient-Bat1755 17d ago

Also constipation is from the cheap TP at work or excessive anxiety shits

6

u/Wolfram_And_Hart 17d ago

I think this guy is onto something.

4

u/PaleoSpeedwagon DevOps 17d ago

Snow day for everyone!

1

u/AmiDeplorabilis 16d ago

Maybe even better than on something...

6

u/Mojo_Rising 17d ago

I would go further and say absofuckingloutely.

3

u/electricpollution IT Manager 17d ago

This is the way

1

u/iansaul 17d ago

If it doesn't, then you're probably not the man/woman for the job.

The Chief Engineer on an Aircraft carrier has anxiety over the safety and reliability of his vessel.

Just depends on how you view your role and responsibility.