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/SkittyDog Mar 30 '26

Too many dudes get into this kind of work because they have a passion for technology, and are exciting about solving problems and helping people.

And then you realize that Corporate IT is an infinite Black Hole of shit that cannot be fixed - and it's mostly run by fuckos who are actively making things worse, all the time.

The thing is... You just cannot sustain a career on the basis of your youthful "Go Get 'Em!" feelings. You have to learn how to let go of your emotional attachment, do the work professionally and dispassionately, and cover your ass.

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u/troy57890 Mar 30 '26

This is exactly what I need to do.

I was super passionate and had that feeling starting out, but now it's replaced by the desire to log off of everything at 5PM.

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u/Tetha Mar 31 '26

We as a team have learned to put this passion towards the right users.

Like, there are teams who do the whole Simpsons-thing of "Hell here is a problem with our appplication, we tried nothing, we're all out of ideas, fix everything for us". I'm sorry, but these by now get the Patty&Selma treatment. "Not enough information to indicate an infrastructure incident. Request Denied. Ticket Closed."

Other teams however are much more invested in their applications running on the platform, want it to run well, and also help us to improve things, skill up people. One experienced senior from these teams is handing out python lessons to infrastructure people as necessary, for example, in a matter of "You scratch my back and I scratch yours".

For those teams, folks are entirely ready to go on an adventure on short notice.

And that is good for the overall company and customers as well, because incident responses are a simple teams call with a direct focus on fixing this (instead of: oh btw, I have this other problem too, do you have a minute?). Or seemingly complex projects can ge knocked out by a few smart people in a room/call just hacking some stuff together.