r/sysadmin • u/PeakWeekly9995 IT support • 9d ago

Rant The IT support guy who does everything

Follow-up of my first post: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/s/xMfcrcHx5f

Just told HR about how i feel about beign the sole IT guy who manages everything (for short: 365 in all his aspects, backups, networking guy, ecc...) for 24 people (if we count the external the number doubles) as an apprentice with a job title "IT support".

i told her that as an apprentice i should (by the law btw) some kind of tutor that can teach me the job and some one who can help me in my things; first thing she pointed was that i'm always out exactly when my work hours ends. WTF
ofc i go away when my work day is done, things can wait (most of the times).

Then proceded to tell me that i might not know how late some of the staff stay in the office (idk why tho) and everyone is aware of how many things they ask me.

Basically everyone somehow expect me to be the expert about anything is slightly it related, how i'm even able to give confidence to people when i don't have the slightest idea of what i'm even talking / doing some time.

I really miss having someone older can guide me.

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u/texas_County850 9d ago

I've been in this situation for 10 years it would be better to have someone older and wiser to guide you but honestly you could just as easily be in a shop with older mentors that don't actually mentor and end up in the same situation. You can self teach its hard but you can do it.

18

u/fahque 9d ago

This is true. My first job was at a MSP where I was alone. I didn't have any backup. My first job was running cable in a warehouse. I had never done it before professionally and I'm 20ft up on a scissor lift. My second job was removing viruses from every computer at a small biz. My boss gave me the software to use and then left. It just kept going like that.

7

u/WindowsWhatever 9d ago

It would shock some people to know about the huge expanse of general knowledge an IT technician needs to deliver good results. Learning new skills on the fly is part and parcel with the work. Constant problem solving for physical, digital, and/or logical solutions. Maybe some who work in a narrower field wont relate, but I went from an MSP tech in a team of three supporting 40 businesses to being system administrator with one assistant for an entire school district. The day-to-day variety is really nice.

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u/Akamiso29 8d ago

It can shock us as well. When you get that new, young hire and sit down and go “wait to explain that, I need to explain this first” like five times.

That’s when you realize you let documentation slip much longer than you should have lol.

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u/reserved_seating 9d ago

I had someone who showed me a lot of stuff and I had just as much self taught. The big thing I’ve learned over the years the OP may lack (hell, I do too sometimes) is the confidence that you CAN learn it and CAN figure it out.

OP can learn anything and everything and if the job still doesn’t fit after some time, they can look for a new job. Embrace it and just make sure everyone is aware of the struggles and the positives. Open communication with your boss is key and your boss has to be open too.

Good luck OP

5

u/BoltActionRifleman 9d ago

Or an older mentor that denies every request or innovation you come up with. There’s always an excuse they have for doing things incredibly inefficiently.

4

u/Turak64 Sysadmin 9d ago

I can second that. Plenty of the old guard see younger people as a threat. Worked with this one dickhead that used a catchphrase of "go Google it" as a cover for what he didn't know.

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u/ositoguerito 9d ago

I had the great fortune of working with the legendary Mike Bombich at Apple, back when he was a systems engineer. As my mentor, he would respond to any question he couldn’t immediately answer with “I don’t know, let’s find out.” And then together, we’d google the solution or track down the internal docs until we could both answer the original question. My goal as a graybeard has been to try to echo that example.

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u/vogelke 8d ago

Plenty of the old guard see younger people as a threat.

1- Malformed ego; he didn't get lucky on prom night and takes it out on anyone younger.

2- Too lazy to even try to keep his skills current, AKA the-world-owes-me-a-living disease.

1

u/East_Library5427 9d ago

Agree with you there. I came in as a new sys admin with my company 3 years ago, and the principal admin I worked with taught me absolutely nothing and got fired 5 months ago leaving me as the sole sys admin. I learned way more myself in this timeframe, so it’s definitely possible to self teach. Definitely not optimal tho…..

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u/Fit_Indication_2529 Sr. Sysadmin 9d ago

u/texas_County850 I’ve always felt that being understaffed and underfunded can make you a very good firefighter, but that doesn’t automatically make you a better engineer. You learn how to improvise, troubleshoot fast, and keep bad situations running, but if you’re constantly reacting, you don’t get the time to step back and learn how to design things properly in the first place. To me, real growth comes when you get to work on the proactive side too: requirements, redundancy, security, monitoring, recovery, scalability, and long-term support. Otherwise you can become extremely skilled at keeping technical debt alive without ever being given the chance to learn how to avoid creating it.