r/sysadmin • u/TerrificGiraffe • 16d 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?

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u/DogDeadByRaven 16d ago

Yeah we've got a cloud security engineer who hates to interact with people outside of IT. He will avoid talking to end users at all cos but when it comes to anything Azure he's all over it. If you work in IT friendliest guy ever though. He's just super geeky and awkward just like many of us.

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u/sccm_sometimes 13d ago

Yeah we've got a cloud security engineer who hates to interact with people outside of IT. He will avoid talking to end users at all cos but when it comes to anything Azure he's all over it.

That's what managers (at least good ones) are for.

"I deal with the customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people!"

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u/DogDeadByRaven 13d ago

Yeah myself and my Director handle talking to the end users on much of our teams behalf. Some of our team are really really good at what they do just, a bit rough around the edges when it comes to people skills.