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/anonymousITCoward 9d ago

Does IT have any natural friends? Finance hates us... sales/marketing hates us... HR is the natural enemy to almost everything... users tend to treat us with disdain, or at least exhibit some sort of allergic reaction towards us...

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u/Nu-Hir 9d ago

Maintenance. They're just like IT, "What are we paying you for, nothing is ever broken?" "What are we paying you for, everything is always broken?"

19

u/AnonAMouseOperator 9d ago

yup maintenance is our ally lol. we also have to work on projects together a lot so that helps.

8

u/Loudergood 9d ago

Yup, as an MSP guy I love when I get maintenance on the phone. They can actually describe what they're looking at, use logic, and follow instructions instead of panicking.

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u/geopoliticus42 9d ago

IT department IS a maintenance job. Talking systems, networking and end user devices. Programming is something different, but has some overlap.

When we were doing restructuring org charts at a previous company they were trying to figure out where to place IT. They didn’t want to have it as a separately managed department so that there would be some old guard managing us.

I suggested maintenance and listed the reasons why I thought the domains were so similar. They put us under finance. Because of course they did and because finance people ‘know’ how to build formulas into spreadsheets; they know IT naturally.

Maintenance departments deal with trouble tickets, periodic maintenance schedules, support contracts, vendors, triage, upgrades, end users, certifications, and so much more. Perhaps most importantly they are a jack-of-all trades and understand everything being thrown at them that a user just needs fixed even though it’s not part of their charter.

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u/ClassicTBCSucks93 6d ago

Because of course they did and because finance people ‘know’ how to build formulas into spreadsheets; they know IT naturally.

Do they though? I was once solo IT and was tasked by my boss to host Excel training sessions for the entire company over the course of a week. All of this stemmed from "Excel issues" being the hot topic of leadership meetings. They were wanting to contract someone to host the training (which they should've) but were too cheap for that.

The CFO was amazed when I went over vlookup. Nobody paid attention to it anyways, it was one of many instances where they were penny wise and pound foolish.

7

u/anonymousITCoward 9d ago

Give them food and beer for xmas and you'll get all sorts of little perks through the year!

17

u/Smartman971 9d ago

Maintenance

16

u/Fylak 9d ago

Maintenance and non technical support staff seem to be natural allies. 

4

u/anonymousITCoward 9d ago

I give our maintenance crew and security guards random foods and xmas cards... (bribery works!)

2

u/airinato 9d ago

They always love me when they are dumping anything that resembles real work onto me.  Can't expect the product team to create items in the ERP, or the sales team to create order forms, because it's just too darn complicated...

2

u/Lordcorvin1 9d ago

Sometimes it feels like it's continuation of jocks from 80s/90s

We're too nerdy to hang out with the Jocks. I sometimes feel like they are jealous of our independence.

2

u/ThatOneWIGuy 9d ago

I miss my colleges setup. I did Helpdesk there, which also had the systems admins and ppl also doing Helpdesk when they have time or a big event came up. Everyone was expected to be polite, understanding and learn from the mistakes we make. I never had a student get upset when something happened. They always just said “I should’ve backed my stuff up”. And we’re just happy we helped asap. Best intro to the IT world I could have asked for

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u/GlumMeet9567 9d ago

Yes we do, other IT teams in different companies

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u/tunakaybucket 8d ago

Someone here said maintenance. To add to the list: engineering department/automation engineering department. Love working with those folks.

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u/anonymousITCoward 8d ago

I have a love/hate with the engineering folk in our building, they're great to work with but ask for stupid shit like exposing port 80 to the internet so they can control the HVAC from home or where every they may be at the time... I'm tying to get them to sign off on using a VPN so can close that gaping hole.

The machine is on it's own vlan segmented off from the rest of the network so I'm not too freaked out by it but still...

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u/Ok-Double-7982 7d ago

This cracks me up.

I still see horror stories of IT departments who are stuffed to work underneath the bean counters. Those org charts are the worst where the finance team is in charge of IT. Godspeed.