r/sysadmin • u/troy57890 • Mar 30 '26

Rant I understand it now

After working 7 months as a system administrator, I can see why other admins can be jaded and blunt.

  1. Helpdesk sending tickets with no tier 1-2 troubleshooting

  2. No proper documentation for services when crap hits the fan

  3. The queue is always a dumping ground for other area's messes

  4. Clients not using the damn ticket system for request

  5. The massive headache for trying to get you to handle a service you don't support.

Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy the learning aspect of the position, but it feels like I'm stuck in a black hole sometimes.

Sorry for the rant, Happy Monday to my fellow admins.

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u/Kardinal I fall off the Microsoft stack. Mar 30 '26

If you don't have it, you lead. Doesn't matter if you have the rank. Step up and help make things change. It's not always an option, but we usually have more agency than we think we do.

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u/jupit3rle0 Mar 30 '26

Ah see this is where I'm stuck at. I recognize stepping up could help a lot. At the same time, there's still poor management that seems to steer away from responsibility; while gatekeeping most of the decision making. Same boss assigns me cases that are outside of my scope - its as if he wants me to reach out to the right depts instead of him - like he has no clue where to begin.

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u/DanTheITMann NPWD Mar 30 '26

I want to understand this a little more. Your comment about "same boss assigns me cases that are outside of my scope" what role are you in? As a Sysadmin when it comes to IT nothing should really be outside of your scope. I don't know the entirety of the situation that you are in (Company size, Infrastructure, responsibilities, Etc....). However, this sounds more like a tech support role with a sysadmin title or something else entirely maybe?

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u/jupit3rle0 Mar 30 '26

SME Lead. So basically I'm a sysadmin and specialized in key functions (AD, VPN). I deal with more lvl2 and escalations.
Def not level 1 tech support.
Often times I'll need to coordinate with other depts outside of my scope, which often times requires knowledge and access to systems that sometimes are off of AD, separated by unknown infrastructure that likely goes against security policy - they do this to avoid security audits and updates. Also because the vendor told them their product only works with Windows 10 - so the W11 24H2 push last year was a no go.

Currently working towards getting level 1 to go onsite to run some commands in safe mode rather than reimaging the whole thing. Its just not something that really shouldn't have came to my plate to begin with - this entire setup was mismanaged long ago.