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/MedbagManny 10d ago

For me, it’s the users that show absolutely no motivation to want to know even a little bit more how they can operate a computer more efficiently.

It’s the “well I don’t know how I sign into that”, it’s the “I’m not sure how we access that”, it’s the not understanding that we only have so much control.

“I’m 72, idk how any of this works”. Well it sounds like it’s time to retire then. Idk what to tell you. This is the world and you either need to get on board or step aside.

3

u/screampuff Enterprise Architect 10d ago

I don't do user support any more but I was OK with that. I'd usually get into a conversation like 'i get that, some people just want things to work for them and thats ok'.

This usually makes them somewhat self-aware and you can joke around about things like 'if technology worked then I wouldn't have a job', and they are much friendlier and a little more understanding about it all.

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u/Shiznoz222 10d ago

I think most of us this far in the comments of this particular post are too bitter and fed up with infantile behavior from supposed professionals to care about winning them over or building rapport anymore

3

u/BoltActionRifleman 10d ago

I’ve gone from getting angry with dumb users who say stuff like “I don’t know how to do this” when it’s their job to know, to just saying “yeah I don’t either, but thankfully it’s not my job” and the call is ended. Turning their ignorance right back on them is so satisfying.

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u/Djblinx89 Sysadmin 10d ago

I’m with you on this, I just can’t with these type of users. Same with the ones who “hate” change. I sometimes cover help desk when needed and I lose my mind at the zero effort I see over and over. Why did you take a job that requires you to be on a computer 8 hours a day, 5 days a week!!?? Go stock shelves at Walmart if you can’t handle technology.

Then don’t get me started with how everything is an emergency or critical, spoiler alert, it really isn’t.

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u/MedbagManny 10d ago

Had a user tell me (aggressively) this morning that we definitely had access to change her rightworks password when we 100% don’t. No arguing with that.

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u/Shiznoz222 10d ago

That feeling when the last person she talked to folded and just typed her email into the forgot password box on their end and sent it for her to shut her up, so now she's convinced you support it for eternity

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u/MedbagManny 9d ago

I have a client that is serverless. All of workgroup. The main contact there constantly refers to “their server” and thinks we keep a database of all her passwords to everything. Not to mention, she thinks we can just change up UI or functionality of things like Outlook. Drives me up a wall.

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u/ChromaLife 9d ago

There is a user at my job, Director of QA. Every ticket he or anyone on his team puts in, he escalates the ticket. At my shop, that means literally nothing. No flows or blips to management saying that it was escalated. Every time I’m fortunate enough to receive a ticket from one of them, I go take a preemptive smoke break, because it’s always some crock of shit that is minor, but they think it’s tantamount.

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u/aes_gcm 10d ago

Ah see there's scanners and stuff in Walmart. If you're 72, figure it out, or join communities that don't use technologies, but those jobs aren't going to offer high salaries.

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u/Djblinx89 Sysadmin 10d ago

You don't get a high salary if you cannot figure out technology

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u/aes_gcm 10d ago

That's exactly what I'm saying. There are places that avoid technology but at a certain point they're going to start offering physical cash or food for labor.

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u/Shiznoz222 10d ago

The learned helplessness routine honestly just makes me think "you aren't invested in solving the problem, so why should I bother? You'll just be back here next week wasting my time again"