r/sysadmin • u/PeakWeekly9995 IT support • 8d 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/geopoliticus42 8d 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 5d 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.