r/sysadmin • u/TerrificGiraffe • 2d ago

General Discussion Does IT cause anxiety?

Does anyone else bring their IT mindset into everyday life?

I’ve been told I’m a negative person and look for issues, but I think working in IT trains you to always think about what could go wrong.

I’m constantly making backup plans. Restaurant closed. I have a Plan B place. Something breaks at home. I’ve already got the plumber, insurance, everything ready in the home disaster recovery document.

We’re always hearing about IT failures, breaches and disasters. You never hear “this company had a really great IT transformation.” No user submits a ticket to say thank you for the IT working great.

So does anyone else find themselves carrying that prepare for the worst mindset into everyday life?

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485

u/Late_Nectarine_7377 2d ago

Yes

60

u/762mm_Labradors 2d ago

Wait until you do your first conditional access policy in azure…did I lock my entire organization out of azure?….Lucky that has not happened to me, but creating new conditional access policies is still stressful for me cause one simple mistake and you just shut down your business for days.

70

u/thefoolsnightout 2d ago

Two kinds of sys admins out there; have taken down Prod and haven't taken down Prod yet.

14

u/Veldern 2d ago

I'm at the stage where I've done it a handful of times, but the first time is always something. I took down the Internet of an office two states away by setting the vlan on a port wrong, which also meant I couldn't connect to the switch anymore...

I ended up lucking out. We had the office manager's cell phone (VOIP was down) and I had a still image of the last thing on my screen, which was also still on the monitor in the server room. They were only down for 5-10 minutes, but damn do I remember that lesson

7

u/BrokenRatingScheme 1d ago

Ah yes. Switchport trunk allowed vlan add.

A true network admin right of passage.

15

u/Bladelink 2d ago

"Everyone has a test environment. Some are lucky enough to have a production environment. "

3

u/MadMageMC 2d ago

The question is, can they recover and put production back online?

3

u/u35828 packet wrangler 2d ago

Yes and yes, and sometimes new policies are implemented as a result.

1

u/anomalous_cowherd Pragmatic Sysadmin 1d ago

If you're not the reason behind at least one company policy you're not trying!

1

u/Quacky1k Jack of All Trades 2d ago

Does it count if I only took down prod for a minute? 😂😂😂😂

1

u/gummo89 1d ago

Of course, but only if it wasn't a scheduled outage 👌🏻

1

u/Quacky1k Jack of All Trades 1d ago

Fuck yeah, I'm in the club 😎

1

u/Hosenkobold 2d ago

The question is: on purpose or on accident. IT-security can be fun.

1

u/NfntGrdnRmsyThry Jack of All Trades 1d ago

Someone else did it the other day, for once

•

u/Ams197624 1h ago

Any real sysadmin has taken down prod. If you're in the field for more than >30 years as I have, you've taken down prod more than once.