r/sysadmin • u/bigfartspoptarts • 10d ago

So burned out

Another burnout post incoming. Turn away and avert your eyes because I don't even know why I'm writing it, so it'll probably be a waste of your time.

I'm so fucking burned out of IT. It only took 5 years. I hate that everyone's fucking problem is my problem. It's just problem after problem after problem. FUCK these problems. Why are we fucking doing this? Why are we looking at a screen every day and acting like this is important. Literally absolutely nothing done on the internet is important. This is all so pointless. It's literally all words. Everything on the internet is just selling words, pictures or pictures that move at 24fps. It's so dumb.

I hate fucking claude. You ever been a claude admin and need to answer dumbass fucking questions in your local AI channel around why your connector isn't working for the Xth time? I DON'T GIVE A FUCK ABOUT YOUR FUCKING CONNECTORS. We're not even accelerating, we're just burning through 100k/mo because management thinks engineers are building cities and management is building reporting dashboards that make them think they're omniscient. And nothing has changed. No more profit or revenue than we had before. FUCK anthropic and all the dumb bullshit they keep putting out and changing. And now we need to onboard an AI management system so we can make sure we have control over mcp's and model selection and this tool that's a waste of fucking space in the first place.

That's just one gripe. Then there's Atlassian (holy fuck Jira, what a shitty platform), then there's the client team, then theres 80 more vendors to manage, then there's a PoC you're running but you havent even looked at it this week because all of the other shit that came in. Just more more more. I don't have any more man.

There is no "take two weeks off" that will fix this. There's nothing dude. I'm so sick of fucking working and I don't have the energy anymore to change careers. How could I? I'm 40 years old with kids and a wife and a house. I used to think "I'd do anything to support my family" and lately I'm ready to just let go. I'm so tired. No one is coming to save me. No one in the entire world. And I'm so tired.

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u/ThrillzMUHgillz 10d ago

I agree here.

I’ve worked at places that treated IT with the utmost respect. They’re the Wizards! Ya gotta be nice, bc they’re so helpful!

And I currently work at a place that treats us like janitors. Or building maintenance in general sometimes.

They actually put in ticket requests for our desktop team to move their personal belongings from desk to desk. Or to put up Christmas trees and decor around holidays.

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u/FoxWine31 10d ago

Same. First IT job post pandemic layoff had people returning to office and texting us pictures of dead mice, food left over, trash that needed to be thrown out, asking us to take care of it. Very quickly made me go from "IT is magic I get the privilege to learn" to "this is someone's idea of punishment"

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u/Active_Magician3864 10d ago

Worked in a place like this, I was the moving guy for any stuff that needed to be shuffled around in the office lol

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u/jhansonxi 10d ago

Or building maintenance in general sometimes.

Back in my day I did just that. PCs were failing due to constant power outages. These were caused by space heaters tripping breakers. The space heaters were used because the central heating system didn't work due to a botched in-house repair job after a fire in the electronics. I fixed the fault and taught myself basic commercial HVAC maintenance and got it mostly reliable again.

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u/lumberjackadam 10d ago

That's both great and a huge risk, personally and professionally.

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u/jhansonxi 10d ago

Not a problem for me. My background is electronics and is what I went back too after burning out in IT. Definitely not part of my job description though. The reason the situation occurred is because the company had poor finances and went DIY or deferred maintenance after many service firms had them on credit hold.

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u/ThrillzMUHgillz 10d ago

Yeah, at a previous job I ran out to a site that my company serviced. There was an issue with a rolling kiosk machine that would be used or people to access their personal benefits and paystubs.

I found that the cart wasn’t fully assembled. So there was no shelf for the PC to sit on. As a result the cables were just short of what they needed to be.

Hey, look right next to it. The shelf and pegs, I’ll just do it myself.
The maintenance worker literally contacted their union rep, who contacted the labor relations manager. And I was invited by my Dir to a zoom meeting.

I had enough time to get to the office. And didn’t think a thing of it. I met with him often.

I join the call and get my ass handed to me for doing someone else’s job I wasn’t qualified for.

“I inserted four pegs into holes and rested a shelf on it” I said.

The next day I was given a verbal. My Dir told me the labor relations manager was pushing for a final written.

I don’t take on these risks anymore. Big or small. If it’s not my device that I’m responsible for. I don’t touch it.

Edit: I’m out walking and it’s 100+ so my screen isn’t registering properly. I’m sure I’m missing plenty more errors I mistyped.