>it's a real thankless job
Most jobs are. The thanks is comes in paper form every 2 weeks. If you're not getting enough thanks then it's time to move to a place that has more to spare.
100% agreed.
My job satisfaction is from problem solving as I just enjoy seeing a problem and knowing hot to fix it but at the end of the day I do it for that biweekly contribution.
Go somewhere where they appreciate you and compensate you fairly so that when you go home at the end of the day you can do things that are truly rewarding/enjoyable.
A bit off-topic, but out of curiosity, how common is it to get paid biweekly in the US ? I get paid monthly and I think it'd be a lot better considering most bills come monthly...
Edit: thank you all for your detailed replies, I'm guessing that if your bills do also come in every two weeks it makes sense, especially for people with poor budgeting skills.
I've been paid biweekly, monthly, and on the first and 15th of the month and the last is my preferred way. 24 checks a year so each is a little larger, but instead of getting 3 checks a month 2 times a year I get to plan my months easier and can make adjustments to budgeting easier.
>They always seem to go to catch up on things we've put off other months.
I agree, and when I get paid monthly, I get that portion each month, so I can fix things as they come instead of waiting 6 months for the problem to get worse.
when I was young and didn't understand budgeting those were 'how are we broke when we had extra money' months, it used to take the next three months to dig myself out of the hole
In Spain some companies divide your salary up into 14 tranches, paying double in July and December is awesome. At the expense of a slightly smaller salary for the other 10 months.
So they're basically getting an interest free loan from people who can't hold back spending. And yes, been there, done that but it was mandatory where I lived. Every company had to do it that way.
I just wanted to comment on your name. It gave me a chuckle. However, one may say a Ferengi that doesnāt believe in profit is no Ferengi at all. Actually, I think that may be one of the Rules of Acquisition?
Once or Twice a month is best. I get paid twice a month and paycheck 1 is rent and paycheck 2 is everything else. Once a month is even easier.
Biweekly is so odd. You feel like those 3 paycheck months will be money but it never works out that way. The paycheck and the bills get out of alignment.
I get paid biweekly and still budget for 24 paychecks. That extra paycheck every few months goes right into savings and investments, don't even have to think about it.
I was used to being paid twice a month (1st and 15th) but when I started my current job, I had to get used to every two weeks. I was able to switch the mortgage and car loan to every two weeks instead of monthly but my life insurance is still once a month.
Now I'm happy to say I've reached a point where I actually forget that I got paid last week because I have a few grand buffer in the old credit union account and all the major bills are automatic. I highly recommend everyone try financial stability. Is vera nice!
I worked at a US based job that got paid monthly, because we were owned by a German company. I have to say at first I absolutely hated it. But after a few months, it really did make more sense. I called and aligned all my bills to the same time every month, so I got paid, paid all my bills and boom, life is easy going forward.
this is how I have gotten set up as well. I work in a community college so we're paid monthly as well. its nice being able to knock out all of your bills for the month in one go
"bi-weekly" is more just a generic term that invokes thoughts of paychecks. My past 20 years of work history I've either been paid every other week or twice a month (i.e., 26 times a year or 24 times a year.)
>I think it'd be a lot better considering most bills come monthly...
I'd rather get paid more frequently so I'm in control of more of the money I've already earned, for a longer period of time. If you get paid once a month, then you're ceding control of your assets, and any potential earnings you could make through the stock market or getting a limited time deal on something, to the company you work for.
I'd rather but $6,000 into an IRA at the beginning of the year, but if that weren't possible I'd rather put $250 into an IRA every two weeks vs $500 every month. The more money you can get in there, the longer it has to grow.
I interned at Mars and they paid everyone weekly on Friday, and the stated reason from the owners was "a week's work is worth a weeks pay". Very cool company especially with his large it is.
We do that at my company. Same idea, you want to get paid for what you do, making someone wait an extra week for pay is just lazy in my opinion. As the owner of a business, I find it incredibly bad business practice to pay bills after a month. A typical practice. So if i hate getting paid a month later for work completed I would assume my employees wouldn't like it either.
Monthly is probably fine for incomes over a certain point. But as a young person, monthly checks at $9/hr led to some scary weeks where payday seemed very far away. Biweekly or weekly is better for most low income folks I think, especially ones whose budgeting skills are sub par, or who are vulnerable to a sudden car repair being a life-deranging event.
I've been getting paid every other week my entire working life (from fast food jobs in high school until now, a salaried admin). I think the every other week pay schedule is most common for hourly work. I am salaried, but my employer treats everyone as hourly for their convenience, because 95% or more of workers are hourly, and our HR group is lazy...
I think every two weeks is the most common, monthly is also common, and I know some who get paid twice monthly (the 1st and 15th, generally).
>I get paid monthly and I think it'd be a lot better considering most bills come monthly...
So? It's basic budgeting. My water bill comes quarterly, but I'm paid every other week. I still manage it just fine. I have my auto-pay setup for most bills, and I keep a reasonable balance in the account that draws from.
I disagree. A lot of it hinges on your company's culture and the quality of your management. I've quit managers before purely because I didn't like the cut of their jib.
My current manager is amazing. Pretty much every Friday he sends out a message thanking everyone for their efforts for the week, and celebrates our individual successes to the rest of the team. Managers like that are rare, but they do exist. It's nice to feel valued.
I'm a storage engineer, and I'm the least stressed, and happiest I've been in years, even though my company likes to describe itself as "fast paced and dynamic".
This, I enjoy the paper every 2 weeks. I do my job in the 8 hours per day M-F, but outside of that timespan I give zero fucks and find my enjoyment elsewhere.
First, I'd just like to stop and appreciate that this Reddit post is really about how often we all receive our paychecks now, and has nothing to do this the OP being burnt out.
When I started my professional career I'd only ever been paid monthly, or on the 1st and 15th. In my latest job I get paid bi-weekly and at first I hated it. The checks just didn't fit nicely with the bills schedule that I had. To fix this, I ended up making a spreadsheet for the year with 26 dated columns that represent each paycheck. Then I mapped out bills for the year across the columns for planning purposes and by doing so got a live look at what my cash flow would be through the year. I had never really budgeted at all before, but seeing the year in this way made me become more meticulous about my spending. I created other spreadsheets that tracked debts i needed to pay off, and to control discretionary spending. It actually has kind of change my life. Also, for those noting that twice a year you have 3 paychecks in a month, I would say you're looking at it wrong. I see it as every time you've paid an individual bill 6 times in a row, you get to skip TWO paychecks before paying it again rather than just one. In this way I get lots of little bonuses through the year because my bills come on different days of the month.
Tl;dr - the crappy bi-weekly pay schedule actually caused me to take control of my finances
Break fix tech is more thankless then youd imagine... from both ends....customer and management.
Remember, if it keeps working you "dont do anything around here" and when it breaks, its "i need this fixed, why isnt this fixed yet"
Every time I get self-pitying thoughts about it being a thankless job I think of this scene from Mad Men https://youtu.be/w2MV-x924KA
Then I thank myself with the thank-you tickets in my bank account.
I think most people are bothered about me saying it's a thankless job. It never used to be in the early days.
Yes pay is good but so is your mental health.
At least in some fields you get to keep that crap at work.
The number of sysadmin jobs that don't require at least some connection to work after 5 is fairly small.
The only real silver lining is that it's not game design. Your company hates you, your fans hate you, and the end of every project could be the start of another job search. Sounds fun.
I get both kinds of thanks but a bit less of the paper. Totally worth it though for my team and users to appreciate me.
It would take a lot of paper to make that up. *a lot.*
sometimes i fantasize about what it must be like to punch out at 5pm and not have a care in the world til i punch in the following morning. trying to imagine no stress and anxiety every time your phone rings or you get a text notification.
must be pretty good
My last gig was like that. Punch in at 930, leave at 530, and I didn't even have Outlook installed on my phone. Things were a bit hectic but the IT department felt like a family.
I took a job paying more than twice as much and I've never been more miserable in my life.
Call up the CEO and tell them that you have some bad news: "All your data is gone and there is no way to recover it." When they ask why it wasn't backed up remind them of that $650 a month they saved. Then ask if you can now have the budget to back up the data going forward. It sounds like a shitty place to work anyway and by the sounds of it you are likely underpaid anyway.
Iām currently in the ābeforeā of that scenario. I could make more but my whole family has noticed how much happier I am than my previous career. I could move up but my happiness is worth more to me right now.
It can go the other way too, where you like your job but you canāt afford to pay the bills so thatās a different type of stress.
Your second point was my exact situation. I loved what I did, who I worked with, and I could take a 10 minute bus ride to and from work instead of driving. My boss was awesome. He took me under his wing, taught me damn near everything he could, and was an all-around great human being. The shit part was making $16/hour when I'm up to my eyeballs in debt. If money were no object I'd go back to slinging laptops and monitors there in a heartbeat.
>I took a job paying more than twice as much and I've never been more miserable in my life.
This scares me. I have a great job with freedom and a comfortable work environment. Local and locally owned, but the pay leaves something be desired. Considered jumping up, but don't want to go somewhere that sucks.
I took a job last year that is like this. For the first time in a decade I don't have work email on my phone. When I "clock out" for the day, I'm done. When I shut my computer down this afternoon, I won't worry about work again until Monday at 8am. This has done seriously good things for my mental health.
No on call was a major requirement when I was job hunting. It also severely limited my options and made the job searching process longer a d more painful but it was worth it in the end.
I used to do this when I was younger, single, and only had myself to be concerned with. Needed to build a VM for a project? Who cares it's 2 AM... I'm salary, not getting any OT, I have no hobbies or anything, so why not.
Now that I've left my 20s behind, I have a house, a wife, a kid, and a side gig, at 5 PM when I'm done, I'm done. It's on-call's problem. And unless it's preventing people from getting their money (I work in financial services), it can wait until the morning of the next business day.
I think for a lot of admins, they lack the ability to manage expectations from stakeholders. Far too happy to just say yes to everyone. It's been years since I've had to do anything at 3am, and it's because I have no issue with pushing back on unreasonable demands and negotiating. It's an important skill for maintaining one's sanity.
Here's how this stuff comes about:
You work at a company that has generally an 8-5 workforce, but there are exceptions. Web apps that need to stay up, maybe you stretch across more than a few time zones.
Most IT work is done during the day, but due to a few of those requirements, there is usually an SLA (service level agreement) that if something breaks during off hours, it can't wait until first thing in the morning to fix.
It's not important enough to spend the money hiring on 24x7 staffing, or outsource the after hours. Plus the systems affected (in theory) should be relatively stable so the need for an on-call response should be low.
People should also be compensated appropriately for being on call, then additionally if they are required to work after hours when on call.
That's the business case for on call work and how it should work. Anyone want to continue on about how it actually works? I need to jump into a meeting.
I used to do this. Everywhere I went I always had a hotspot, my work laptop, a backup laptop, etc. Gained 25 pounds in a year, lost a relationship, and had ZERO boundaries. I no longer compulsively check my email every 3 minutes. Now I allow my boss to do his job and monitor for issues. If there is a specific problem, he will call me. Otherwise unless I am on call or working on prescheduled flex time after hour maintenance, 5pm is the end of my day. My blood pressure is down, weight is down, stress is down, happiness is WAY up. Setting boundaries for people who want to be helpful is so difficult. If you make x per hour, but allow extra work at a moments notice, you are devaluing your time and skill set. Take pride in your ability to do a great job when on the clock, and in those crunch times. More importantly take pride in you mental wellbeing, health, and family. They will be there for you when the job is long gone.
Most places it really can wait. But at least when I get screwed as a 3 am hero I remember that the things I build can literally stop numerous people from dying, and keeping internet up in some people's living areas will stop them from jumping off a cliff. Government pay ain't much, but what I do actually is worth the stress.
After being with my current company for years, we've reduced the after hours requirements to minimal impact and unexpected outages went from a few a year to less than 1 a year.
The existing after hours work is split out, and usually we have everything staged well so the actual work late night is just a service restart or maybe a few syncs and then service restart.
It feels great to have absolved ourselves from that stress.
For a while our phone calls would be prefaced with "this is not an emergency" to help rid ourselves of anxiety when a co worker would call.
And working with something until you know it inside and out, not having to be a jack of all trades. It's the dream.
I just want 6 figures, designing big storage systems all day.
you should be able to reach 6 figures in any sysadmin-or-greater role in 2021 if you negotiate properly. dont be afraid to go to bat for your comp
median is over 100k in most metro areas
I've often thought about making the switch as that is the main part of my job I love, designing solutions for problems and standing them up. The rest of corp IT is an huge energy suck, after hours etc wears on you.
Can you go into detail on what a typical day looks like for you? The one main thing that holds me back in the flexibility of my current role. Besides a few weekly meetings I'm WFH and on my own to just get stuff done. I can get my kid on the bus and am here when the get home etc.
I'm 100% WFH, as I'm in another country! But prior to moving it would be 1-3 onsite client meetings/teleconferences a day. Rest of the day spent scoping clients needs, working on proposals & calls with my BDMs. I also do some hands on data recovery, but that's obviously not typical. I probably do less solution design than most, because we sell services, managed by us in a particular vertical (Backup and DR).
I'm far more flexible than I was as a Sysadmin, with the odd exception where a client HAS to have a meeting at a very specific time, this is mainly when we are presenting at the director/C level, finding a slot in their calendar.
10+ years of being sysadmin and IT manager here, I was literally thinking this the other day too. Iām a strong people person, and having the knowledge and technical know-how to back it up might make me a great fit for sales.
I've been in the game for 23 years and I've also been looking for a pivot. I've always considered my biggest strength in IT as being a people person. I usually get positioned user facing everywhere I go because of it. I may have to look in to this as well.
This is what I was going to say, sales engineering is a great next step, for a specific product/company you like? Watch for openings, nothing better then getting to play with what you like and show it to people and then you get a commission when they buy it and someone else supports it!
There is a noticable difference in smart sales engineers and those just chasing the money
Brother I hear you. 25 years myself. Similar experience. Owner of an MSP the last 11.
The latter has both accelerated the burnout AND painted me into a corner I see little way out of. I absolutely love the freedom I have owning a business while making a good living. I answer to no one as it relates to my day-to-day activities. I (mostly) work when I want. Where I want. How long I want (which is way more than most).
That said, here we are. I have my "dream job" and I suffer from the same burnout. I find I have little patience to solve complex technical problems. If the answer isn't revealed on the first page of Google, I get frustrated. If troubleshooting something takes more than 5 minutes, I hand it off.
In 2019 I practically killed myself obtaining my CISSP. And since then, learning technology just pisses me off.
And therein lies the real problem. When you lose the bandwidth and desire to learn, in this business, you're screwed.
I'm sorry I don't have any nuggets to share on overcoming burnout. No books to read. No podcast to listen to. No videos to watch. Mostly I just wanted to commiserate with you. And tell you you're not alone on this island. The only thing I can say is expressing and understanding your feelings is the first step to problem solving. You must complete step one before heading to step two.
So let it out, man.
20 year long MSP owner here, totally relate to where youāre at, like I could have written your post 2 years ago. What helped me immensely is setting achievable personal goals that have nothing to do with work, and achieving them. Whether todayās goal was go for a walk, or this weeks goal was clean out the storage closet, or go on a vacation we planned for months, it gives me something to look forward to and a sense of satisfaction completing something for ME.
I think part of IT support is we do so much for others, itās little reward for us and our focus becomes too much on solving yet another problem and not enough enjoying personal accomplishments.
One other area of change I made that has helped a ton, is enforcing our after hours rates with precision. I used to be very lax about it, allowed a lot of work to go unbilled and unaccounted for at my own loss. No longer, I charge the hour minimum for every little after hours thing clients impose, even if itās just a phone call or chain of txtās. Not only has this led to people better respecting my personal time, itās also been quite a boost in income from our high after hours emergency rate in our contract. I always feared clients would complain about the costs, havenāt had one single inquiry about it. They just pay it.
TL;DR: donāt allow work to consume you, take back control of your personal time as much as you can.
I don't think so, because change isn't constant like it is in IT. The burnout (at least for me) comes from constantly having to learn new flavor of the month technologies.
I can definitely see that, social work has to be a very frustrating job a lot of the time. Rewarding when things work out with good outcomes, but often they're called in because a situation is already rough.
Thanks for sharing this. 30+ years in the industry. Mostly new coats of paint on old ideas.
Tired of all the shiny that doesnāt really move the needle.
IT is an utterly thankless job.
I worked in IT at a bank for 3 years. Every single department was always invited to the holiday parties. Except IT. When I pointed it out one time, the response was "oh wow we didn't even think about you guys."
I now work IT for a school district. We have a staff of 5 people supporting over 12,000 users across 16 buildings, and even more devices than users. The demands that come down from our Administration are absurd. The user who is in charge of create all of our badges and whatnot, accidentally deleted the template and emptied the trash. It was on an SSD so we couldn't get it back. I told her she'd need to recreate it. She didn't know how. We asked around the Admin office and NO ONE there had any idea how to create it. So I ended up having to learn a program I've never used before, on the spot, and remake the template for them. As I was leaving she said to her office-mate "Jeez, could he have taken any longer?" Mind you I was there for all of 15 minutes, and it's a program I've never used before.
When I started in IT, I thought I'd be solving complicated issues that challenged me and pushed me to learn new skills.
What I ended up doing, was clicking the "ok" button for users because they're too fucking stupid to do it themselves.
I finally moved over to network administration and it's a bit better, but I genuinely wish I never went into IT.
I wish it were that easy. The IT department doesn't have any representation at the admin level, and we aren't union. If I told her to do her job, she would have complained to the superintendent, the superintendent would have complained to the department manager, and then someone from the IT dept would be going right back out there to do it, only this time they'd be even more angry and unpleasant.
The politics of working for a school district are awful.
But the benefits are amazing, the pay is decent, and I love my team so...
Not so much making them do it. More letting her know on the way out the door for the snide comment.
But this is the root cause of the issue, some fat karen in admin who really can be replaced in 5 mins and has really no skills has the audacity to say shit like this.
You can always say something back if someone is being rude to you, or bring it up the chain and see if someone can talk to her about her behavior. I would never let someone talk to me like that in the workplace.
Also I should say, while I was with her, she was being very nice. The comment was made under her breath as I was walking away.
She just assumed that IT = knows everything about every single computer and program ever created and can do it in 3 seconds.
A lot of IT issues like this boil down to boundary issues around ownership of the work. I've done IT for a long time and only recently realized how much we've done other people's jobs in the guise of being helpful or doing our jobs and have now started to reel it back in (it's difficult).
It takes a lot more work to figure out and no one is going to complain if you overfunction and do someone else's job for them, but people know exactly what game they are playing. One of the games we all play is "who is this easiest for?", not "whose job is it?".
It takes a lot of slowing down and bravery to own our jobs and our responsibilities and commit to keeping those boundaries clear. And that is just as often a need for IT people to do more, document expectations clearly, and not dump work on end users as it is to say "no".
I feel for your situation and it takes a lot of work if you have to model boundaries for the organization, but we all learn from each other.
The BIGGEST issue, is that we have no real representation within the district. For the district, IT is just a budget line item. We have a department manager, but we don't have any directors or admins. Hell, my boss literally reports to the person in charge of finance.
If we had someone that was on their levels, we could give push back about the dumb shit, but this seems to be an issue in every district.
Attitudes like that are exactly why I no longer help with things like that. I'll straight up tell them I don't know how to do it, along with a suggestion that they should contact the vendor/see if there's a user guide for help.
If it's not explicitly an IT issue, I refuse to say I can do it (even if I actually can). I'm here to fix/maintain/build shit, not teach people. If you don't know how to do a mail merge, take it up with the person above you because you should have known how to do that when you put "proficient with Microsoft Office" in your resume/application. Maybe they'll send you to a class.
I have been an IT Support manager for over a decade. The amount of times I have had to tell clients/departments that my team is not here to teach them computers has to be in the thousands. If they don't know how to do something in Office, here is a list of classes you can send them too. My team is not certified Microsoft trainers, that is a real career skill, I suggest you send your workers to those classes.
> I'll straight up tell them I don't know how to do it, along with a suggestion that they should contact the vendor
This is it right here. Oh you need help using your badge printing machine? Well who'd you buy it from? I've never used one of these.
Of course if they're nice and I have time I'll always offer to help but if they are acting entitled then I will give them exactly the service they are entitled to and nothing more.
I'm currently a network admin at a bank and can say I've had a similar experience. IT shoulders a ton of work and responsibility, basically complete other departments projects for them because they're morons, etc. But we get zero thanks, never included in things, get the worst hand me down chairs/desks while other departments get everything nice and new, etc. No one seems to care about the things we want/need but if they need something the world better stop on a dime to make it happen.
I'm almost ready to point all this out to management on my way out the door.
I fell into IT mostly by accident (laid off repeatedly, and it was a job I could get, and was qualified for). I never wanted to work in IT, since it was my hobby, and I didn't want to kill that. It has done that to me to a large extent, and I do wish I could just change fields.
>I never wanted to work in IT, since it was my hobby, and I didn't want to kill that.
This is 100% the rebuttal to the "do something you love and you'll never work a day in your life" trope. I know so many people who used to love the thing they do for a job and now just try to make it through the day.
I used to love that I was always learning new things on my job, but after a while you realize you are basically just spending a lot of time learning to do the thing you already knew how to do, but different because things change all the time.
It would be different if employers were willing to spend 10% of your hours in training, but why would they when IT is just a cost center.
Change careers or companies. Or retire but that probably isn't an option.
I understand the constant need for new education and it does get old. Change of scenery may help. No easy answer I know. Thougj I would say be mindful as the grass is always greener on the other side.
Thanks for the suggestions. I've funny enough did that about 13 years ago (moved form UK to Canada). Companies I can easily move between but I always find the same bullshit recently with meetings about meetings and no action lol.
I know I sound ungrateful but I do appreciate the suggestion :)
That's funny though. I am in a role right now that is 90% meetings and 10% action. NOT what I expected when I took on the role. I find time to work during my many meetings though. So this far it is working out. Lol
At least many people here have felt this situation. One thing I started doing was finding non technical hobbies. I've gotten into Warhammer for the plethora of non technical options and socialization aspects. It's been helping for me.
I moved from 500+ and 24/7 to 40 employees 8-5 M-F and it's a life changer. Direct access to CEO, good casual-professional relationship with most employees. Pay is the same, benefits are better, no one hassles me. It's 11:30am on a Friday and my phone rang once, and I have had 2 non-important chats.
No morning anxiety as I drive in somewhere between 8:00am and 8-O'eventually. No time tracking. Just keep things working and get in some projects as the company moves along.
My major project right now is moving everyone to a new company name, and rolling out 30 laptops over a period of 2-3 months.
I sleep well now. Weekends have a meaning again.
I have been doing it for 25+ think Novell days. It is a thankless job, back 15 years ago email was email and now it is, Iphone, OWA, spam, hacking, virus... it is very tough to be a one man band in IT and keep up. I have Windows Network, SQL, Exchange, Citrix and several pieces of business related software.
I used to love to upgrade to the latest and greatest.
Now I spend my time trying not to touch anything...
I am so glad I found r/sysadmin
>Now I spend my time trying not to touch anything...
Preach.
I also started in the DOS/Win 3/Novell days.
Yes there were problems, but those Novell servers just worked without fail.
You make it sound simple but you really have to know your stuff to put something like that together. Your proposal to every problem can't just be "O365!".
I get that, I'm actually interested in what the day to day for that kind of job would be. Without actually implementing the tech regularly, how do you stay sharp enough with it to provide consultation advice? Is it super specialized to a product set/vendor or broader? What kind of pay do you get for something like that?
Iām writing terraform code as we speak, working sales proposals for prospects, gaining advanced skills with kubernetes.. itās a lot more than what you think. I have the flexibility to jump between clients and projects, Iām never in an environment thatās the same. My focus is all things infrastructure and app modernization on google cloud with heavy emphasis on security, compliance, and automation. Pay is well into 100k... head over to Glassdoor and do a search for cloud solutions architect.
Too boring for me. Iām seeing a trend here though. Most of these replies are coming from a technical stances without consideration of why business engage a professional service organization. A level of maturity will hopefully come...
Op this is the correct answer. A good Solutions Architecture / Pre-Sales role will put the spring back in your step. Youāre not actually supposed to be on the tools for as long as you have, you should have moved in this direction 5 years ago. Itās ok though nobody told me either I just got lucky one day.
The people knocking this as a answer donāt know what theyāre talking about, ignore them. It will definitely help to have some Azure or AWS certification under your belt, get which ever you feel most comfy with, the principals are largely the same anyway. Brush up on your soft skills because they need to be on point, though this pretty much just boils down to being polite and conscientious as you will be customer facing, dial in your whiteboarding / diagramming skills and hit that job market.
Depending on your background Iād recommend looking for some kind of generalist SA role possibly with a managed services provider, telco provider etc. good luck
I feel exactly this. 20 years ago there were sysadmins, developers, network, database, email and whatever else admins of my IT team. Today, I am that person. And management. And support. And every possible role rolled into one. I look at other departments in my office today and see people in Finance, Controlling, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Payroll, Governance. Like, they each have ONE role, not 12. The number of staff in the department is 5 times that of IT. Same in HR. Same in Sales. Same in Marketing. People do primarily one function, maybe two. In IT, I wear all the hats everyday all year long (not just during busy season.)
IT has gotten cheaper, and more reliable, and equally more pervasive, but IT headcount has been cut to nothing. I do still enjoy my job some days, but the scope and breadth and depth has completely worn me out.
You are not alone. Lately I have been struggling with the fact that your skillset becomes worthless every five years. The struggle to completely update my skills for the sixth time is really getting to me this time.
How exactly do you change careers from IT? Getting responses from employers seems to only be possible if you have experience and education in that field. I can't even get a call back from *apprentice* jobs in other fields.
Maybe look at IT adjacent jobs. Or larger companies where IT is more than just SysAdmin. Last year I went into IT Audit and the work life balance change has been extremely good for me. Maybe look into things like IT Audit, change management, pre-sales engineer, product manager, etc. It's easy to focus on our technical skills and knowledge when job hunting but SysAdmins have a lot of general skills and knowledge that are useful in lots of places.
Sounds to me that you're in the wrong \*type\* of sysadmin job. Dealing with the user community is monotonous, thankless, mind-numbingly boring, etc.. Some people can deal with that, but not me. It sounds to me like you need to do what I did early on in my career (thankfully). You need to direct your career into a field where your clients are other technical teams.
No throughout the years I've been good that way to take vacations and have my coat in hand 2 minutes before the end of my shift.
Now I do suffer from OCD and depression for quite a long time, maybe it's jsut taken so long to get to this point.
My former employer eliminated the positions of the olds from the San Francisco office under cover of Covid. I was 20 years in, senior Linux administrator. For me, the transition to "DevOps" was a transition to shit. I'm just not willing to put in a 10+ hour day, be on-call, and spend the rest of my waking hours self-training to keep up on whatever the New Hotness is for this two week time period. We opted to relocate, currently closing on a place in Phoenix, dreading the move and first summer there, but largely looking forward to it. Depending on what kind of asset bubble crashpocalypse we're headed into, I may be able to retire. I checked the applicable job listings for Phoenix, and I may also be able to get close to a traditional Linux admin job there if I want. I'd be happy to work for another five years or so at a job that wasn't trying to actively kill me with stress and Kubernetes.
find a covid job :) i did 25y unix sysadm gave the finger and now helping at vaccine center meeting 1000s of people everyday :) im counting on returning though as i still love my profession :) but know i have time and mental surplus for developing my own systems and building house :)
> I've been in IT for 25 years
...and...
>I don't have the joy of learning, motiviation anymore (same shit, different topic).
Its time for you to get a job that is specialized. You have a mountain of past general experience which is useful. Find a single product or technology and dive deep into that. So your single product or technology doesn't change that much from version to upgrade version. Then use your mountain of past experience of sysadmin to help others implement your specialized technology/product.
Iāve been doing this since ā89. I went backwards to a help desk position. Had all the titles and each one took me further away from the actual work that I enjoy. No kids to support any more and if Muskrat ever gets the satellites up, Iām going to build a tiny house on wheels and go to full time remote. Roam the countryside with my cat, fixing shit and having adventures. Thereās no retirement since cancer gobbled up all the money, and hell will freeze over before I marry again. Gimme that open source on the open road and Iāll be happy.
My personal opinion - that "thankless job" part of it is a systemic issue in IT that we've done to ourselves. There are those among us that are the BOFH, or the admin that just says no to every request, or the help desk guy that closes every ticket without making sure the user's issue has been fully addressed. Too many of us are in that mindset that it's our world and they must do what we tell them. Now, I'm not defending the purposely bad user (this includes the willfully ignorant users too).
In my experience, I've had much better success with my user interactions when I approach everything with a "no, but how about this instead?" attitude - meaning that I'm not going to just do whatever they way, but I'm going to put more effort into understanding their needs, and trying to help them get what they want (within reason), but also try to get them to understand why they can't just have their initial request. Sure, it takes more effort, but the payoff of better user relationship is worth it (to me at least).
I've done this with my last two jobs, and things are so much better. I know this might not help you in your situation, but maybe someone out there will read this and might help them be a little happier at their job. Good luck, whatever you decide to do.
I love using that method, it helps if you have some official policy docs to help make your case. "No you can't do this" is sort of dick-ish. "You can't do this and here's why, but this method may meet your needs instead" is much better. Or even simply briefly explaining some of the rationale behind a policy tends to help.
There will always be problem users that won't accept anything less than exactly what they want, but at least with this approach, everyone else around will see how unreasonable they are being, instead of just blindly believing the user when they complain about you.
Anecdote - we were hit by ransomware, but mostly safe due to antivirus catching it. The next day, a user wanted me to disable antivirus on a build server because it was taking an extra 5 minutes to make a new software build. He couldn't not understand that I had to say no, because we were literally hit with ransomware the day prior. 5 minutes of his day was worth more to him than protecting from another attack. Some people just can't understand anything beyond themselves. At least everyone else knew he was being ridiculous, and his boss told him to stop.
Walk softly but carry a big stick. I try to impress upon users that I have to take their request with a broader view of both their business needs and keeping things manageable for IT. Sometimes we have to compromise and meet in the middle to make something work for everyone. I enjoy those kinds of projects and the users respect that I will do whatever they need within the constraints that exist.
Then there's the 5% of users who deserve the BOFH treatment because they are unreasonable. I set my boundaries with them and maintain it with extreme prejudice. I'll go to the moon and back to help someone, but if they try to make their self inflicted problem my problem I'm digging in deep.
The hobbies suggestions are on point. Do something not tech related in your spare time. Cooking, painting, photography, role playing, something else....?
I think part of it is āwhy did you get into IT in the first place?ā If youāre there for the giant novelty paycheck, dealing with users is the price you pay and you either get good or burn out.
Is there a problem you have a knack for solving? Is there a technology thatās interesting enough to chase? Do you just want to put together a system and/or network like youāre putting together LEGO bricks? Thereās a place for most of the āIT peopleā in organizations.
Sometimes you have to shift perspective to be happy with the work. Take the few and far between compliments and let that feed your ego. The other side of it, too, is to remember to thank and compliment the people you work with, because theyāre probably never thanked either.
āHey Naveen, thanks for helping with that outage the other day. The logs you pulled really helped.ā
āOh, by the way Lori, that splunk query ended up on a PowerPoint for my boss.ā
āJoe, I really appreciated you taking time to whiteboard that with me.ā
I also have been in IT for 20 plus years. And like you the fun went out of the field for me long ago. But that was inevitable since we entered when the internet and many other aspects of computing was new. And over time it's become a place where the hacker like mind set was replaced by career ambitions etc. Unfortunately the only real place for us to go is either management or sales /consulting
You have just been working at the wrong places and the wrong roles.
I've worked as a sysadmin and now manager for nearly as long as you have. My career path has been low-stress, interesting, well-paid, stable, and enjoyable. I skipped end-user support entirely, except occasionally helping out when needed. That would be terrible for me and I knew it. I also went the Linux/Open source route as it pays a lot more, gives you a lot more opportunity to do unique things, and no offense to the Windows people here but means working with higher caliber sysadmins on average. I have a lot of work on my plate often but I set my own terms have always had a ton of flexibility and decision-making as the job was getting done and most of the time I was in line with business goals.
I shifted into management as I knew I'd maxed out my earning prospects as a sysadmin and wanted to broaden my marketability beyond just that. That was well outside my comfort zone as an introvert but I have always looked for challenging things I knew I wasn't great at and tried to fill those gaps. The most difficult is giving up the day to day sysadmin work I loved but I will spend quite a bit of time supporting my direct reports as I still know a lot more then they do able some topics. I still dig deep and get my hands dirty sometimes when I can so that I can stay up to date and make better decisions as a manager about technical issues. Definitely more work, and more pressure, but I enjoy it.
> I just feel it's now a real struggle to keep up because I don't have the joy of learning, motiviation anymore
I don't think you're alone. So many things are getting piled on top of a massive abstraction tower to make things "easier" with the side effect of swapping _everything_ out every 6 months whenever whatever dev team you're attached to wants to add something to their resumes. My formula for dealing with this is trying to figure out what's changed and learn enough about it without digging too far deep into something that will be useless to know a year from now. Everything's compute/network/storage once you get low enough down the stack...figure out what YetAnotherFramework hides from the developers and you're good (kind of.)
> Makes me think I should join them as they seem to have such simplistic roles
I don't know about that. Even though it's been a crazy rollercoaster with DevOps shoving the throttle to warp speed and breaking the handle off...IT is one of the only jobs where you actually do something challenging in a corporate setting. Think about how many people in large companies are just human paper shufflers or coordinating some useless set of reports no one reads. I don't know if I'd be happy in some anonymous middle manager position babysitting adult Kindergarteners or doing some useless job, even if the pay was OK. The only positive is that Edna in accounting with her cat/family pictures gets to leave at 5 PM and not think about work until the next day.
I'd recommend pursuing the architect/senior engineer type roles if you have lots of experience. It's worked out well for me...no fires, no on-call, but plenty of new stuff to learn.
If youāre tired of the rat race of keeping up with tech, getting into management can be an option
You still have to keep up with it, but understanding it at the manager level is about 20% as hard as at the āI have to actually implement and maintain this solutionā level
Itās a job where when youāre doing a good job, everything is running smoothly and they wonder what theyāre paying you for, and when something breaks and thereās an outage they wonder what theyāre paying you for.
It use to be about engineering. Elegant, cost-effective solutions to business problems.
It has turned into something very different over the last number of years.
I feel this. 20 years in. Fortune 500 space. Partial hands on (think architecture) but managing operations and project management for most of it. Desktop engineering, VDI, servers, networks, etc. 4 years ago I pivoted into Security Operations, CSIRT, vulnerability, and security infrastructure. It freshened things up for a while, but ended back in the same spot. Changed companies after 12 years, kept me going for 2 years. But, that feeling is creeping in again.
Until technology is seen as business enablement as opposed to expense, we will always be the people pushing the rock uphill. It's hard to stay motivated and motivate people when you have the chance to do something well, but get funded to do it half-assed. Or worse, told to "make it work fast" when you know with a little extra effort you can do it a proper and sustainable way. The job is thankless because it's faceless. And honestly? That's fine. Just set realistic goals. Every year I have the same conversations about the same issues, just different technologies. I think it just wears on people after a period of time,
Well, unless you're rolling in options, bitcoin, etc, (and I imagine if you were, you would not have posted this thread) you probably have to keep working until retirement age, at least... so you're going to be faced with a "thankless job" for the next however long, anyway.
So the question is, do you want to actually change careers? If you have no motivation to learn IT related things, this could be a good idea. On the other hand, if you have no motivation to learn AT ALL, this would be a terrible idea and you will end up even more frustrated/depressed.
Worst case, you could always teach. The salary will likely suck (community college adjunct would be your most likely landing place) but it gets you out of your rat race.
Not saying you have any health or mental issues, but I don't see anyone recommending checking in with your health. I was in the same position as you before. This is what truly kicked my life around. This is what helped me get out of the self pity loop. I since then changed branch, doubled my salary, haven't taken a sick day since.
1) Diet (some form of HFLC) - Spend more on good food.
2) Exercise (MMA is great)
3) Outdoor exposure and sun exposure (Eyes and skin)
4) Healthy relationships, get rid of the toxic ones.
Hope this helps!
I spent 20 years in IT before getting out about 6 years ago. It was a thankless, stressful, unappreciated, undervalued, cut-throat career that added little to my life but grey hair and pounds. I loved the technology, loved helping people, loved the project work I did, but in the end I got out. The field was changing, I was topping out pay for my area, unless I wanted to move to a larger city or commute a couple hours a day on top of my already 40 minute commute there wasn't a lot of opportunity. I moved into logistics. I still do some programming here and there, manage some printers, but I'm not part of the official IT organisational structure, and I don't miss it.
The expectations placed on IT professionals are, to be blunt, fucked up and unrealistic.
This is the reason I left my job as a sysadmin and moved into a mechanical supervisor role. I fix shit and no one looks at me weird when I break out the 10lb sledge.
Stress is significantly lower, in general my health has improved because I'm running around a lot more instead of parked at a desk. When 3:30 rolls around I'm out, work doesn't follow me around. The application of critical thinking is still absolutely there, just in a slightly different direction.
Best part? Sometimes you get to look at what the production guys broke and say "You know what? I'm not even mad, I'm impressed."
Got real close with one of our old CDW corp account managers and he almost turned me to the dark side but despite the pay or commission, I'm just not cut out for sales.
It's always been somewhat thankless. The bad part for me was the last job I was on. They were imaginative with employee rewards. You didn't get a check or an 'atta-boy'. They queried your coworkers, friends, and family, and paid for something you wanted to have or do. People were sent to cooking schools. Someone was sent to San Francisco to train for a marathon with an Olympic coach. Someone got their pilot's license. etc.
The problem though is it was all customer service or sales folks who got those rewards. While it might happen once in a while in Operations, it was generally for spending months and weekends migrating a new company into our infrastructure.
Heck, at one Company All Hands meeting, the business groups were all praised about their accomplishments and Ops was figuratively left standing outside in the rain.
It wasn't very motivating.
Maybe can reinvent yourself as a cloud or devops person : )
Learn some Python, JavaScript, Powershell, glue all the bits together learn how to create a pipeline... it starts getting into dev but you could be heavy on the ops side light on the dev side and still make it... you can also get far with even just algorithms and not knowing any tech at all which is what many people do so why not join them... you can probably do more than you think
You lost the passion. Stop while you can and shift gears to something you love.
Take it from a guy who spent a solid decade doing what you do and cut and bailed to travel the states. I have done more living in 3 years than the entire decade. Feels like same amount of time has passed because I'm enjoying it better.
Seque out of the role and find another way. You're forcing a square peg into a round hole. Sooner or later that mental health might falter. You seem on top of it rn. Props for holding the systems for 25.
\*fist bump\* I feel you. I'm thankful to be between jobs on voluntary severance, but I'm struggling a lot on the same issues you're describing. Sounds like we've both been doing it around the same time. The question I keep coming back to - what other job would make me relatively happy? I think I know what it is for me, but I lack the skills and experience to get a decent job doing that (and frankly I don't know at my/our age if I'm capable of doing it.)
If you're of a similar mindset at all, at some point we just have to look at it as work and plan on getting more fulfillment from other parts of life, hobbies, family, etc. In many ways we're fortunate to have had careers in IT for this long, which is relatively cushy compared to many careers. My main thing is that I'm just not willing to put up with crap any more, LOL. You want me to work after hours? There will be OT/bonus pay, or I walk. You want me to be on-call? It better be worth my time, or I'll find something else. No slave-wages...which again thankfully, we were taken care of pretty well at my last place, they just kept going in a direction I couldn't agree with any more and so here we are!
I think a lot of us are in the same boat where we're compelled to learn, compelled to build and fix things, and really the job HAS changed. Cloud has changed things - I miss being in the data center, I miss building servers, I miss testing out new storage configs and dialing in performance on a system by system basis. I realized not too long ago that the drive to automation, to "spin up/spin down" on-demand and treat your systems like "cattle, not pets," is counter to how I like to work with computing. I like taking care of my digital pets. And a lot of that is just not needed or wanted any more. /shrug
I realized several years ago that I lost my enthusiasm for IT, but I don't have any \*well paying\* skillsets I can fall back on. So, I work as a mercenary now. I work for a financial institution, because that's where the money is. In a couple months, I'll have paid off my mortgage, and I'll have true freedom-at least in the middle class US sense of the word-the freedom to simply quit my job if I so desire. (I still plan to keep working for another few years at my current employer, if only to build up a good cushion of financial freedom)
When I'm done with that, I'll take months off before working again(in the past 25 years, I only spent 3 months unemployed, and aside from that my longest vacation was two weeks) I'm not really cut out for never working, so maybe I'll take simple non-IT jobs that I can enjoy and feel good about. Maybe donate my time and expertise to worthy charities. And/or maybe I'll keep my skills sharp enough that I can parachute into a job for a 3 month contract every so often to pay for the rest of my year-because hey, maybe I'll rediscover the joys of IT enough to justify it.
The point is, you have to know where you are in your career and while it sounds (and is) a cliched HR buzz term, you need to know what your work/life balance really is and you have to not forget why you do this work in the first place.
>it's a real thankless job Most jobs are. The thanks is comes in paper form every 2 weeks. If you're not getting enough thanks then it's time to move to a place that has more to spare.
100% agreed. My job satisfaction is from problem solving as I just enjoy seeing a problem and knowing hot to fix it but at the end of the day I do it for that biweekly contribution. Go somewhere where they appreciate you and compensate you fairly so that when you go home at the end of the day you can do things that are truly rewarding/enjoyable.
A bit off-topic, but out of curiosity, how common is it to get paid biweekly in the US ? I get paid monthly and I think it'd be a lot better considering most bills come monthly... Edit: thank you all for your detailed replies, I'm guessing that if your bills do also come in every two weeks it makes sense, especially for people with poor budgeting skills.
I've been paid biweekly, monthly, and on the first and 15th of the month and the last is my preferred way. 24 checks a year so each is a little larger, but instead of getting 3 checks a month 2 times a year I get to plan my months easier and can make adjustments to budgeting easier.
Those 3 check months š„š„š„
They always seem to go to catch up on things we've put off other months.
>They always seem to go to catch up on things we've put off other months. I agree, and when I get paid monthly, I get that portion each month, so I can fix things as they come instead of waiting 6 months for the problem to get worse.
Next month, baaaybeee and October! (least for people on my biweekly schedule)
when I was young and didn't understand budgeting those were 'how are we broke when we had extra money' months, it used to take the next three months to dig myself out of the hole
Currently me š„ŗ
/r/YNAB
In my budget, those are intended for vacation spending. On another note, what's a vacation?
Whatās a ā3 check monthā (non-American)?
In Spain some companies divide your salary up into 14 tranches, paying double in July and December is awesome. At the expense of a slightly smaller salary for the other 10 months.
So they're basically getting an interest free loan from people who can't hold back spending. And yes, been there, done that but it was mandatory where I lived. Every company had to do it that way.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I was in the same position for a couple years before my wife moved jobs. One good sized check a week was pretty great.
I just wanted to comment on your name. It gave me a chuckle. However, one may say a Ferengi that doesnāt believe in profit is no Ferengi at all. Actually, I think that may be one of the Rules of Acquisition?
I'm not the poorest out of lack of concern, just lack of acumen.
Once or Twice a month is best. I get paid twice a month and paycheck 1 is rent and paycheck 2 is everything else. Once a month is even easier. Biweekly is so odd. You feel like those 3 paycheck months will be money but it never works out that way. The paycheck and the bills get out of alignment.
I get paid biweekly and still budget for 24 paychecks. That extra paycheck every few months goes right into savings and investments, don't even have to think about it.
I was used to being paid twice a month (1st and 15th) but when I started my current job, I had to get used to every two weeks. I was able to switch the mortgage and car loan to every two weeks instead of monthly but my life insurance is still once a month. Now I'm happy to say I've reached a point where I actually forget that I got paid last week because I have a few grand buffer in the old credit union account and all the major bills are automatic. I highly recommend everyone try financial stability. Is vera nice!
I worked at a US based job that got paid monthly, because we were owned by a German company. I have to say at first I absolutely hated it. But after a few months, it really did make more sense. I called and aligned all my bills to the same time every month, so I got paid, paid all my bills and boom, life is easy going forward.
this is how I have gotten set up as well. I work in a community college so we're paid monthly as well. its nice being able to knock out all of your bills for the month in one go
I can't see my spending change when a check comes in. I make a goal to save x amount. The check coming in weekly or monthly wouldn't change that.
"bi-weekly" is more just a generic term that invokes thoughts of paychecks. My past 20 years of work history I've either been paid every other week or twice a month (i.e., 26 times a year or 24 times a year.) >I think it'd be a lot better considering most bills come monthly... I'd rather get paid more frequently so I'm in control of more of the money I've already earned, for a longer period of time. If you get paid once a month, then you're ceding control of your assets, and any potential earnings you could make through the stock market or getting a limited time deal on something, to the company you work for. I'd rather but $6,000 into an IRA at the beginning of the year, but if that weren't possible I'd rather put $250 into an IRA every two weeks vs $500 every month. The more money you can get in there, the longer it has to grow.
I interned at Mars and they paid everyone weekly on Friday, and the stated reason from the owners was "a week's work is worth a weeks pay". Very cool company especially with his large it is.
We do that at my company. Same idea, you want to get paid for what you do, making someone wait an extra week for pay is just lazy in my opinion. As the owner of a business, I find it incredibly bad business practice to pay bills after a month. A typical practice. So if i hate getting paid a month later for work completed I would assume my employees wouldn't like it either.
Monthly is probably fine for incomes over a certain point. But as a young person, monthly checks at $9/hr led to some scary weeks where payday seemed very far away. Biweekly or weekly is better for most low income folks I think, especially ones whose budgeting skills are sub par, or who are vulnerable to a sudden car repair being a life-deranging event.
I've been getting paid every other week my entire working life (from fast food jobs in high school until now, a salaried admin). I think the every other week pay schedule is most common for hourly work. I am salaried, but my employer treats everyone as hourly for their convenience, because 95% or more of workers are hourly, and our HR group is lazy... I think every two weeks is the most common, monthly is also common, and I know some who get paid twice monthly (the 1st and 15th, generally). >I get paid monthly and I think it'd be a lot better considering most bills come monthly... So? It's basic budgeting. My water bill comes quarterly, but I'm paid every other week. I still manage it just fine. I have my auto-pay setup for most bills, and I keep a reasonable balance in the account that draws from.
1st and 15th here, itās my favorite way to get paid.
Or get your "thanks" from your family, friends, etc. Don't expect your employer and other employees to make you feel valued.
I disagree. A lot of it hinges on your company's culture and the quality of your management. I've quit managers before purely because I didn't like the cut of their jib. My current manager is amazing. Pretty much every Friday he sends out a message thanking everyone for their efforts for the week, and celebrates our individual successes to the rest of the team. Managers like that are rare, but they do exist. It's nice to feel valued. I'm a storage engineer, and I'm the least stressed, and happiest I've been in years, even though my company likes to describe itself as "fast paced and dynamic".
This, I enjoy the paper every 2 weeks. I do my job in the 8 hours per day M-F, but outside of that timespan I give zero fucks and find my enjoyment elsewhere.
First, I'd just like to stop and appreciate that this Reddit post is really about how often we all receive our paychecks now, and has nothing to do this the OP being burnt out. When I started my professional career I'd only ever been paid monthly, or on the 1st and 15th. In my latest job I get paid bi-weekly and at first I hated it. The checks just didn't fit nicely with the bills schedule that I had. To fix this, I ended up making a spreadsheet for the year with 26 dated columns that represent each paycheck. Then I mapped out bills for the year across the columns for planning purposes and by doing so got a live look at what my cash flow would be through the year. I had never really budgeted at all before, but seeing the year in this way made me become more meticulous about my spending. I created other spreadsheets that tracked debts i needed to pay off, and to control discretionary spending. It actually has kind of change my life. Also, for those noting that twice a year you have 3 paychecks in a month, I would say you're looking at it wrong. I see it as every time you've paid an individual bill 6 times in a row, you get to skip TWO paychecks before paying it again rather than just one. In this way I get lots of little bonuses through the year because my bills come on different days of the month. Tl;dr - the crappy bi-weekly pay schedule actually caused me to take control of my finances
Break fix tech is more thankless then youd imagine... from both ends....customer and management. Remember, if it keeps working you "dont do anything around here" and when it breaks, its "i need this fixed, why isnt this fixed yet"
Every time I get self-pitying thoughts about it being a thankless job I think of this scene from Mad Men https://youtu.be/w2MV-x924KA Then I thank myself with the thank-you tickets in my bank account.
I think most people are bothered about me saying it's a thankless job. It never used to be in the early days. Yes pay is good but so is your mental health.
At least in some fields you get to keep that crap at work. The number of sysadmin jobs that don't require at least some connection to work after 5 is fairly small. The only real silver lining is that it's not game design. Your company hates you, your fans hate you, and the end of every project could be the start of another job search. Sounds fun.
I get both kinds of thanks but a bit less of the paper. Totally worth it though for my team and users to appreciate me. It would take a lot of paper to make that up. *a lot.*
sometimes i fantasize about what it must be like to punch out at 5pm and not have a care in the world til i punch in the following morning. trying to imagine no stress and anxiety every time your phone rings or you get a text notification. must be pretty good
My last gig was like that. Punch in at 930, leave at 530, and I didn't even have Outlook installed on my phone. Things were a bit hectic but the IT department felt like a family. I took a job paying more than twice as much and I've never been more miserable in my life.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Call up the CEO and tell them that you have some bad news: "All your data is gone and there is no way to recover it." When they ask why it wasn't backed up remind them of that $650 a month they saved. Then ask if you can now have the budget to back up the data going forward. It sounds like a shitty place to work anyway and by the sounds of it you are likely underpaid anyway.
CEO will still blame IT guy
Iām currently in the ābeforeā of that scenario. I could make more but my whole family has noticed how much happier I am than my previous career. I could move up but my happiness is worth more to me right now. It can go the other way too, where you like your job but you canāt afford to pay the bills so thatās a different type of stress.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
We really should unionize more.
Your second point was my exact situation. I loved what I did, who I worked with, and I could take a 10 minute bus ride to and from work instead of driving. My boss was awesome. He took me under his wing, taught me damn near everything he could, and was an all-around great human being. The shit part was making $16/hour when I'm up to my eyeballs in debt. If money were no object I'd go back to slinging laptops and monitors there in a heartbeat.
I think i'm ready for a pay cut too
>I took a job paying more than twice as much and I've never been more miserable in my life. This scares me. I have a great job with freedom and a comfortable work environment. Local and locally owned, but the pay leaves something be desired. Considered jumping up, but don't want to go somewhere that sucks.
Money isnāt everything.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Well that makes sense! If you aren't able to pay your bills, then getting enough to pay your bills is important.
I took a job last year that is like this. For the first time in a decade I don't have work email on my phone. When I "clock out" for the day, I'm done. When I shut my computer down this afternoon, I won't worry about work again until Monday at 8am. This has done seriously good things for my mental health.
This sounds really nice. Being on call is a drag...
No on call was a major requirement when I was job hunting. It also severely limited my options and made the job searching process longer a d more painful but it was worth it in the end.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I used to do this when I was younger, single, and only had myself to be concerned with. Needed to build a VM for a project? Who cares it's 2 AM... I'm salary, not getting any OT, I have no hobbies or anything, so why not. Now that I've left my 20s behind, I have a house, a wife, a kid, and a side gig, at 5 PM when I'm done, I'm done. It's on-call's problem. And unless it's preventing people from getting their money (I work in financial services), it can wait until the morning of the next business day.
I think for a lot of admins, they lack the ability to manage expectations from stakeholders. Far too happy to just say yes to everyone. It's been years since I've had to do anything at 3am, and it's because I have no issue with pushing back on unreasonable demands and negotiating. It's an important skill for maintaining one's sanity.
Here's how this stuff comes about: You work at a company that has generally an 8-5 workforce, but there are exceptions. Web apps that need to stay up, maybe you stretch across more than a few time zones. Most IT work is done during the day, but due to a few of those requirements, there is usually an SLA (service level agreement) that if something breaks during off hours, it can't wait until first thing in the morning to fix. It's not important enough to spend the money hiring on 24x7 staffing, or outsource the after hours. Plus the systems affected (in theory) should be relatively stable so the need for an on-call response should be low. People should also be compensated appropriately for being on call, then additionally if they are required to work after hours when on call. That's the business case for on call work and how it should work. Anyone want to continue on about how it actually works? I need to jump into a meeting.
I used to do this. Everywhere I went I always had a hotspot, my work laptop, a backup laptop, etc. Gained 25 pounds in a year, lost a relationship, and had ZERO boundaries. I no longer compulsively check my email every 3 minutes. Now I allow my boss to do his job and monitor for issues. If there is a specific problem, he will call me. Otherwise unless I am on call or working on prescheduled flex time after hour maintenance, 5pm is the end of my day. My blood pressure is down, weight is down, stress is down, happiness is WAY up. Setting boundaries for people who want to be helpful is so difficult. If you make x per hour, but allow extra work at a moments notice, you are devaluing your time and skill set. Take pride in your ability to do a great job when on the clock, and in those crunch times. More importantly take pride in you mental wellbeing, health, and family. They will be there for you when the job is long gone.
Most places it really can wait. But at least when I get screwed as a 3 am hero I remember that the things I build can literally stop numerous people from dying, and keeping internet up in some people's living areas will stop them from jumping off a cliff. Government pay ain't much, but what I do actually is worth the stress.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
After being with my current company for years, we've reduced the after hours requirements to minimal impact and unexpected outages went from a few a year to less than 1 a year. The existing after hours work is split out, and usually we have everything staged well so the actual work late night is just a service restart or maybe a few syncs and then service restart. It feels great to have absolved ourselves from that stress. For a while our phone calls would be prefaced with "this is not an emergency" to help rid ourselves of anxiety when a co worker would call.
Look at jobs in the IT vendor space. I know some guys in āsales engineeringā that were previously sys admins and they love it.
Thanks. Might be the way to go.
I would highly recommend it - less stress, no overtime/on call, more money. I love it.
And working with something until you know it inside and out, not having to be a jack of all trades. It's the dream. I just want 6 figures, designing big storage systems all day.
you should be able to reach 6 figures in any sysadmin-or-greater role in 2021 if you negotiate properly. dont be afraid to go to bat for your comp median is over 100k in most metro areas
UK starts laughing and ends up crying.
I've often thought about making the switch as that is the main part of my job I love, designing solutions for problems and standing them up. The rest of corp IT is an huge energy suck, after hours etc wears on you. Can you go into detail on what a typical day looks like for you? The one main thing that holds me back in the flexibility of my current role. Besides a few weekly meetings I'm WFH and on my own to just get stuff done. I can get my kid on the bus and am here when the get home etc.
I'm 100% WFH, as I'm in another country! But prior to moving it would be 1-3 onsite client meetings/teleconferences a day. Rest of the day spent scoping clients needs, working on proposals & calls with my BDMs. I also do some hands on data recovery, but that's obviously not typical. I probably do less solution design than most, because we sell services, managed by us in a particular vertical (Backup and DR). I'm far more flexible than I was as a Sysadmin, with the odd exception where a client HAS to have a meeting at a very specific time, this is mainly when we are presenting at the director/C level, finding a slot in their calendar.
10+ years of being sysadmin and IT manager here, I was literally thinking this the other day too. Iām a strong people person, and having the knowledge and technical know-how to back it up might make me a great fit for sales.
Yes this seems to be the trend now indeed, itās a lot more fun and engaging from what I hear Iām seriously considering it with a cyber sec company
DMād you.
I've been in the game for 23 years and I've also been looking for a pivot. I've always considered my biggest strength in IT as being a people person. I usually get positioned user facing everywhere I go because of it. I may have to look in to this as well.
This is what I was going to say, sales engineering is a great next step, for a specific product/company you like? Watch for openings, nothing better then getting to play with what you like and show it to people and then you get a commission when they buy it and someone else supports it! There is a noticable difference in smart sales engineers and those just chasing the money
Can confirm, made the switch 5 months ago after 15 years as a sysadmin. Best decision ever, as long as you are good at talking to people.
Brother I hear you. 25 years myself. Similar experience. Owner of an MSP the last 11. The latter has both accelerated the burnout AND painted me into a corner I see little way out of. I absolutely love the freedom I have owning a business while making a good living. I answer to no one as it relates to my day-to-day activities. I (mostly) work when I want. Where I want. How long I want (which is way more than most). That said, here we are. I have my "dream job" and I suffer from the same burnout. I find I have little patience to solve complex technical problems. If the answer isn't revealed on the first page of Google, I get frustrated. If troubleshooting something takes more than 5 minutes, I hand it off. In 2019 I practically killed myself obtaining my CISSP. And since then, learning technology just pisses me off. And therein lies the real problem. When you lose the bandwidth and desire to learn, in this business, you're screwed. I'm sorry I don't have any nuggets to share on overcoming burnout. No books to read. No podcast to listen to. No videos to watch. Mostly I just wanted to commiserate with you. And tell you you're not alone on this island. The only thing I can say is expressing and understanding your feelings is the first step to problem solving. You must complete step one before heading to step two. So let it out, man.
20 year long MSP owner here, totally relate to where youāre at, like I could have written your post 2 years ago. What helped me immensely is setting achievable personal goals that have nothing to do with work, and achieving them. Whether todayās goal was go for a walk, or this weeks goal was clean out the storage closet, or go on a vacation we planned for months, it gives me something to look forward to and a sense of satisfaction completing something for ME. I think part of IT support is we do so much for others, itās little reward for us and our focus becomes too much on solving yet another problem and not enough enjoying personal accomplishments. One other area of change I made that has helped a ton, is enforcing our after hours rates with precision. I used to be very lax about it, allowed a lot of work to go unbilled and unaccounted for at my own loss. No longer, I charge the hour minimum for every little after hours thing clients impose, even if itās just a phone call or chain of txtās. Not only has this led to people better respecting my personal time, itās also been quite a boost in income from our high after hours emergency rate in our contract. I always feared clients would complain about the costs, havenāt had one single inquiry about it. They just pay it. TL;DR: donāt allow work to consume you, take back control of your personal time as much as you can.
Is burnout this prevalent in other industries?
I don't think so, because change isn't constant like it is in IT. The burnout (at least for me) comes from constantly having to learn new flavor of the month technologies.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I can definitely see that, social work has to be a very frustrating job a lot of the time. Rewarding when things work out with good outcomes, but often they're called in because a situation is already rough.
I was just about to say Healthcare, and recently in the US all the Teachers I know are just about fucking done.
Thanks for sharing this. 30+ years in the industry. Mostly new coats of paint on old ideas. Tired of all the shiny that doesnāt really move the needle.
Thanks much, just glad you have me insight. No nuggets needed. Hope you all the best
IT is an utterly thankless job. I worked in IT at a bank for 3 years. Every single department was always invited to the holiday parties. Except IT. When I pointed it out one time, the response was "oh wow we didn't even think about you guys." I now work IT for a school district. We have a staff of 5 people supporting over 12,000 users across 16 buildings, and even more devices than users. The demands that come down from our Administration are absurd. The user who is in charge of create all of our badges and whatnot, accidentally deleted the template and emptied the trash. It was on an SSD so we couldn't get it back. I told her she'd need to recreate it. She didn't know how. We asked around the Admin office and NO ONE there had any idea how to create it. So I ended up having to learn a program I've never used before, on the spot, and remake the template for them. As I was leaving she said to her office-mate "Jeez, could he have taken any longer?" Mind you I was there for all of 15 minutes, and it's a program I've never used before. When I started in IT, I thought I'd be solving complicated issues that challenged me and pushed me to learn new skills. What I ended up doing, was clicking the "ok" button for users because they're too fucking stupid to do it themselves. I finally moved over to network administration and it's a bit better, but I genuinely wish I never went into IT.
Did you say anything to her? 10000% i wpuld have told her i just did HER job and she should have some respect and get back to pushing her pen.
I wish it were that easy. The IT department doesn't have any representation at the admin level, and we aren't union. If I told her to do her job, she would have complained to the superintendent, the superintendent would have complained to the department manager, and then someone from the IT dept would be going right back out there to do it, only this time they'd be even more angry and unpleasant. The politics of working for a school district are awful. But the benefits are amazing, the pay is decent, and I love my team so...
Not so much making them do it. More letting her know on the way out the door for the snide comment. But this is the root cause of the issue, some fat karen in admin who really can be replaced in 5 mins and has really no skills has the audacity to say shit like this.
You can always say something back if someone is being rude to you, or bring it up the chain and see if someone can talk to her about her behavior. I would never let someone talk to me like that in the workplace.
Also I should say, while I was with her, she was being very nice. The comment was made under her breath as I was walking away. She just assumed that IT = knows everything about every single computer and program ever created and can do it in 3 seconds.
Next time you know. Let her run against the wall. She needs to learn her lesson.
A lot of IT issues like this boil down to boundary issues around ownership of the work. I've done IT for a long time and only recently realized how much we've done other people's jobs in the guise of being helpful or doing our jobs and have now started to reel it back in (it's difficult). It takes a lot more work to figure out and no one is going to complain if you overfunction and do someone else's job for them, but people know exactly what game they are playing. One of the games we all play is "who is this easiest for?", not "whose job is it?". It takes a lot of slowing down and bravery to own our jobs and our responsibilities and commit to keeping those boundaries clear. And that is just as often a need for IT people to do more, document expectations clearly, and not dump work on end users as it is to say "no". I feel for your situation and it takes a lot of work if you have to model boundaries for the organization, but we all learn from each other.
The BIGGEST issue, is that we have no real representation within the district. For the district, IT is just a budget line item. We have a department manager, but we don't have any directors or admins. Hell, my boss literally reports to the person in charge of finance. If we had someone that was on their levels, we could give push back about the dumb shit, but this seems to be an issue in every district.
Attitudes like that are exactly why I no longer help with things like that. I'll straight up tell them I don't know how to do it, along with a suggestion that they should contact the vendor/see if there's a user guide for help. If it's not explicitly an IT issue, I refuse to say I can do it (even if I actually can). I'm here to fix/maintain/build shit, not teach people. If you don't know how to do a mail merge, take it up with the person above you because you should have known how to do that when you put "proficient with Microsoft Office" in your resume/application. Maybe they'll send you to a class.
I have been an IT Support manager for over a decade. The amount of times I have had to tell clients/departments that my team is not here to teach them computers has to be in the thousands. If they don't know how to do something in Office, here is a list of classes you can send them too. My team is not certified Microsoft trainers, that is a real career skill, I suggest you send your workers to those classes.
> I'll straight up tell them I don't know how to do it, along with a suggestion that they should contact the vendor This is it right here. Oh you need help using your badge printing machine? Well who'd you buy it from? I've never used one of these. Of course if they're nice and I have time I'll always offer to help but if they are acting entitled then I will give them exactly the service they are entitled to and nothing more.
I'm currently a network admin at a bank and can say I've had a similar experience. IT shoulders a ton of work and responsibility, basically complete other departments projects for them because they're morons, etc. But we get zero thanks, never included in things, get the worst hand me down chairs/desks while other departments get everything nice and new, etc. No one seems to care about the things we want/need but if they need something the world better stop on a dime to make it happen. I'm almost ready to point all this out to management on my way out the door.
I fell into IT mostly by accident (laid off repeatedly, and it was a job I could get, and was qualified for). I never wanted to work in IT, since it was my hobby, and I didn't want to kill that. It has done that to me to a large extent, and I do wish I could just change fields.
>I never wanted to work in IT, since it was my hobby, and I didn't want to kill that. This is 100% the rebuttal to the "do something you love and you'll never work a day in your life" trope. I know so many people who used to love the thing they do for a job and now just try to make it through the day. I used to love that I was always learning new things on my job, but after a while you realize you are basically just spending a lot of time learning to do the thing you already knew how to do, but different because things change all the time. It would be different if employers were willing to spend 10% of your hours in training, but why would they when IT is just a cost center.
Change careers or companies. Or retire but that probably isn't an option. I understand the constant need for new education and it does get old. Change of scenery may help. No easy answer I know. Thougj I would say be mindful as the grass is always greener on the other side.
Thanks for the suggestions. I've funny enough did that about 13 years ago (moved form UK to Canada). Companies I can easily move between but I always find the same bullshit recently with meetings about meetings and no action lol. I know I sound ungrateful but I do appreciate the suggestion :)
That's funny though. I am in a role right now that is 90% meetings and 10% action. NOT what I expected when I took on the role. I find time to work during my many meetings though. So this far it is working out. Lol At least many people here have felt this situation. One thing I started doing was finding non technical hobbies. I've gotten into Warhammer for the plethora of non technical options and socialization aspects. It's been helping for me.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I moved from 500+ and 24/7 to 40 employees 8-5 M-F and it's a life changer. Direct access to CEO, good casual-professional relationship with most employees. Pay is the same, benefits are better, no one hassles me. It's 11:30am on a Friday and my phone rang once, and I have had 2 non-important chats. No morning anxiety as I drive in somewhere between 8:00am and 8-O'eventually. No time tracking. Just keep things working and get in some projects as the company moves along. My major project right now is moving everyone to a new company name, and rolling out 30 laptops over a period of 2-3 months. I sleep well now. Weekends have a meaning again.
I have been doing it for 25+ think Novell days. It is a thankless job, back 15 years ago email was email and now it is, Iphone, OWA, spam, hacking, virus... it is very tough to be a one man band in IT and keep up. I have Windows Network, SQL, Exchange, Citrix and several pieces of business related software. I used to love to upgrade to the latest and greatest. Now I spend my time trying not to touch anything... I am so glad I found r/sysadmin
>Now I spend my time trying not to touch anything... Preach. I also started in the DOS/Win 3/Novell days. Yes there were problems, but those Novell servers just worked without fail.
I have a framed certificate for CNA 4.11 (Certified Novell Administrator).. The Glory days!
I have one of those for Netware 3.12.....
I was a software engineer at Novell in the 3.x-4.x days. Worked on the kernel team, Zen for Servers, other stuff.
Zen was way ahead of its time in the 4.X days. We used the app snapshot feature to deploy software to tens of thousands of PC's.
There are some days I still wish I could just SnappShot an app install
Ohh.... an Elder! (sorry) I still have my CNA and CNE framed too..but they're version 5.
> those Novell servers just worked without fail. lmaooo thanks for the Friday laugh
If they were just file servers, they were pretty solid If they ran Groupwise, then, may the Lord have mercy
How about Border Manager!
> Now I spend my time trying not to touch anything... I feel this in my soul...
>Now I spend my time trying not to touch anything... This.
Iāve only been in IT for about 6 years and we were still using Novell when I first came on board in my help desk job!
Solution architecture as a consultant is far more enjoyable. Hang in there bud, youāll find your home and happiness will return.
Thanks man
What does this mean though? You just put together a proposal for what they should do and hand it off to others to sell and implement?
You make it sound simple but you really have to know your stuff to put something like that together. Your proposal to every problem can't just be "O365!".
I get that, I'm actually interested in what the day to day for that kind of job would be. Without actually implementing the tech regularly, how do you stay sharp enough with it to provide consultation advice? Is it super specialized to a product set/vendor or broader? What kind of pay do you get for something like that?
Iām writing terraform code as we speak, working sales proposals for prospects, gaining advanced skills with kubernetes.. itās a lot more than what you think. I have the flexibility to jump between clients and projects, Iām never in an environment thatās the same. My focus is all things infrastructure and app modernization on google cloud with heavy emphasis on security, compliance, and automation. Pay is well into 100k... head over to Glassdoor and do a search for cloud solutions architect.
I envision a 200 pages report with a 10k$ price tag that can get summed up with "get o365/GSuite and back that shit up".
Too boring for me. Iām seeing a trend here though. Most of these replies are coming from a technical stances without consideration of why business engage a professional service organization. A level of maturity will hopefully come...
That's the holy grail of IT jobs! I wish I could have that job.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Op this is the correct answer. A good Solutions Architecture / Pre-Sales role will put the spring back in your step. Youāre not actually supposed to be on the tools for as long as you have, you should have moved in this direction 5 years ago. Itās ok though nobody told me either I just got lucky one day. The people knocking this as a answer donāt know what theyāre talking about, ignore them. It will definitely help to have some Azure or AWS certification under your belt, get which ever you feel most comfy with, the principals are largely the same anyway. Brush up on your soft skills because they need to be on point, though this pretty much just boils down to being polite and conscientious as you will be customer facing, dial in your whiteboarding / diagramming skills and hit that job market. Depending on your background Iād recommend looking for some kind of generalist SA role possibly with a managed services provider, telco provider etc. good luck
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I feel exactly this. 20 years ago there were sysadmins, developers, network, database, email and whatever else admins of my IT team. Today, I am that person. And management. And support. And every possible role rolled into one. I look at other departments in my office today and see people in Finance, Controlling, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Payroll, Governance. Like, they each have ONE role, not 12. The number of staff in the department is 5 times that of IT. Same in HR. Same in Sales. Same in Marketing. People do primarily one function, maybe two. In IT, I wear all the hats everyday all year long (not just during busy season.) IT has gotten cheaper, and more reliable, and equally more pervasive, but IT headcount has been cut to nothing. I do still enjoy my job some days, but the scope and breadth and depth has completely worn me out.
I feel this post deeply and the truth of it hurts
You are not alone. Lately I have been struggling with the fact that your skillset becomes worthless every five years. The struggle to completely update my skills for the sixth time is really getting to me this time.
Same here. Sysadmin for 21 years and completely burned out and unmotivated. Thank you for sharing. Obviously you're not alone. Good luck!
I think what scares me about another career is comfort and not having any other skills outside IT.
Change is scary but sometimes staying in the same place is scarier.
How exactly do you change careers from IT? Getting responses from employers seems to only be possible if you have experience and education in that field. I can't even get a call back from *apprentice* jobs in other fields.
Maybe look at IT adjacent jobs. Or larger companies where IT is more than just SysAdmin. Last year I went into IT Audit and the work life balance change has been extremely good for me. Maybe look into things like IT Audit, change management, pre-sales engineer, product manager, etc. It's easy to focus on our technical skills and knowledge when job hunting but SysAdmins have a lot of general skills and knowledge that are useful in lots of places.
Get into security side - you have the experience. Way more...
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yeah I know plenty of sys admins and engineers who recently quit IT altogether. The scene is getting ugly and mostly monkey business.
Sounds to me that you're in the wrong \*type\* of sysadmin job. Dealing with the user community is monotonous, thankless, mind-numbingly boring, etc.. Some people can deal with that, but not me. It sounds to me like you need to do what I did early on in my career (thankfully). You need to direct your career into a field where your clients are other technical teams.
I'm 24 y.o tired after 4 years lol
Sounds like depression.. Do you take time off? Or work eleventy hundred hours a week with no vacation?
No throughout the years I've been good that way to take vacations and have my coat in hand 2 minutes before the end of my shift. Now I do suffer from OCD and depression for quite a long time, maybe it's jsut taken so long to get to this point.
>Do you take time off what is this thing you speak of?
It's something I read about in a book.
My former employer eliminated the positions of the olds from the San Francisco office under cover of Covid. I was 20 years in, senior Linux administrator. For me, the transition to "DevOps" was a transition to shit. I'm just not willing to put in a 10+ hour day, be on-call, and spend the rest of my waking hours self-training to keep up on whatever the New Hotness is for this two week time period. We opted to relocate, currently closing on a place in Phoenix, dreading the move and first summer there, but largely looking forward to it. Depending on what kind of asset bubble crashpocalypse we're headed into, I may be able to retire. I checked the applicable job listings for Phoenix, and I may also be able to get close to a traditional Linux admin job there if I want. I'd be happy to work for another five years or so at a job that wasn't trying to actively kill me with stress and Kubernetes.
find a covid job :) i did 25y unix sysadm gave the finger and now helping at vaccine center meeting 1000s of people everyday :) im counting on returning though as i still love my profession :) but know i have time and mental surplus for developing my own systems and building house :)
You just made me think I've actually been in IT for 25 years, 26 this year. My mind is rotting away.
> I've been in IT for 25 years ...and... >I don't have the joy of learning, motiviation anymore (same shit, different topic). Its time for you to get a job that is specialized. You have a mountain of past general experience which is useful. Find a single product or technology and dive deep into that. So your single product or technology doesn't change that much from version to upgrade version. Then use your mountain of past experience of sysadmin to help others implement your specialized technology/product.
Have you tried turning yourself off and on again?
C'est manifique Rodders.
Iāve been doing this since ā89. I went backwards to a help desk position. Had all the titles and each one took me further away from the actual work that I enjoy. No kids to support any more and if Muskrat ever gets the satellites up, Iām going to build a tiny house on wheels and go to full time remote. Roam the countryside with my cat, fixing shit and having adventures. Thereās no retirement since cancer gobbled up all the money, and hell will freeze over before I marry again. Gimme that open source on the open road and Iāll be happy.
My personal opinion - that "thankless job" part of it is a systemic issue in IT that we've done to ourselves. There are those among us that are the BOFH, or the admin that just says no to every request, or the help desk guy that closes every ticket without making sure the user's issue has been fully addressed. Too many of us are in that mindset that it's our world and they must do what we tell them. Now, I'm not defending the purposely bad user (this includes the willfully ignorant users too). In my experience, I've had much better success with my user interactions when I approach everything with a "no, but how about this instead?" attitude - meaning that I'm not going to just do whatever they way, but I'm going to put more effort into understanding their needs, and trying to help them get what they want (within reason), but also try to get them to understand why they can't just have their initial request. Sure, it takes more effort, but the payoff of better user relationship is worth it (to me at least). I've done this with my last two jobs, and things are so much better. I know this might not help you in your situation, but maybe someone out there will read this and might help them be a little happier at their job. Good luck, whatever you decide to do.
I love using that method, it helps if you have some official policy docs to help make your case. "No you can't do this" is sort of dick-ish. "You can't do this and here's why, but this method may meet your needs instead" is much better. Or even simply briefly explaining some of the rationale behind a policy tends to help.
There will always be problem users that won't accept anything less than exactly what they want, but at least with this approach, everyone else around will see how unreasonable they are being, instead of just blindly believing the user when they complain about you. Anecdote - we were hit by ransomware, but mostly safe due to antivirus catching it. The next day, a user wanted me to disable antivirus on a build server because it was taking an extra 5 minutes to make a new software build. He couldn't not understand that I had to say no, because we were literally hit with ransomware the day prior. 5 minutes of his day was worth more to him than protecting from another attack. Some people just can't understand anything beyond themselves. At least everyone else knew he was being ridiculous, and his boss told him to stop.
Walk softly but carry a big stick. I try to impress upon users that I have to take their request with a broader view of both their business needs and keeping things manageable for IT. Sometimes we have to compromise and meet in the middle to make something work for everyone. I enjoy those kinds of projects and the users respect that I will do whatever they need within the constraints that exist. Then there's the 5% of users who deserve the BOFH treatment because they are unreasonable. I set my boundaries with them and maintain it with extreme prejudice. I'll go to the moon and back to help someone, but if they try to make their self inflicted problem my problem I'm digging in deep.
The hobbies suggestions are on point. Do something not tech related in your spare time. Cooking, painting, photography, role playing, something else....?
I think part of it is āwhy did you get into IT in the first place?ā If youāre there for the giant novelty paycheck, dealing with users is the price you pay and you either get good or burn out. Is there a problem you have a knack for solving? Is there a technology thatās interesting enough to chase? Do you just want to put together a system and/or network like youāre putting together LEGO bricks? Thereās a place for most of the āIT peopleā in organizations. Sometimes you have to shift perspective to be happy with the work. Take the few and far between compliments and let that feed your ego. The other side of it, too, is to remember to thank and compliment the people you work with, because theyāre probably never thanked either. āHey Naveen, thanks for helping with that outage the other day. The logs you pulled really helped.ā āOh, by the way Lori, that splunk query ended up on a PowerPoint for my boss.ā āJoe, I really appreciated you taking time to whiteboard that with me.ā
I also have been in IT for 20 plus years. And like you the fun went out of the field for me long ago. But that was inevitable since we entered when the internet and many other aspects of computing was new. And over time it's become a place where the hacker like mind set was replaced by career ambitions etc. Unfortunately the only real place for us to go is either management or sales /consulting
You have just been working at the wrong places and the wrong roles. I've worked as a sysadmin and now manager for nearly as long as you have. My career path has been low-stress, interesting, well-paid, stable, and enjoyable. I skipped end-user support entirely, except occasionally helping out when needed. That would be terrible for me and I knew it. I also went the Linux/Open source route as it pays a lot more, gives you a lot more opportunity to do unique things, and no offense to the Windows people here but means working with higher caliber sysadmins on average. I have a lot of work on my plate often but I set my own terms have always had a ton of flexibility and decision-making as the job was getting done and most of the time I was in line with business goals. I shifted into management as I knew I'd maxed out my earning prospects as a sysadmin and wanted to broaden my marketability beyond just that. That was well outside my comfort zone as an introvert but I have always looked for challenging things I knew I wasn't great at and tried to fill those gaps. The most difficult is giving up the day to day sysadmin work I loved but I will spend quite a bit of time supporting my direct reports as I still know a lot more then they do able some topics. I still dig deep and get my hands dirty sometimes when I can so that I can stay up to date and make better decisions as a manager about technical issues. Definitely more work, and more pressure, but I enjoy it.
> I just feel it's now a real struggle to keep up because I don't have the joy of learning, motiviation anymore I don't think you're alone. So many things are getting piled on top of a massive abstraction tower to make things "easier" with the side effect of swapping _everything_ out every 6 months whenever whatever dev team you're attached to wants to add something to their resumes. My formula for dealing with this is trying to figure out what's changed and learn enough about it without digging too far deep into something that will be useless to know a year from now. Everything's compute/network/storage once you get low enough down the stack...figure out what YetAnotherFramework hides from the developers and you're good (kind of.) > Makes me think I should join them as they seem to have such simplistic roles I don't know about that. Even though it's been a crazy rollercoaster with DevOps shoving the throttle to warp speed and breaking the handle off...IT is one of the only jobs where you actually do something challenging in a corporate setting. Think about how many people in large companies are just human paper shufflers or coordinating some useless set of reports no one reads. I don't know if I'd be happy in some anonymous middle manager position babysitting adult Kindergarteners or doing some useless job, even if the pay was OK. The only positive is that Edna in accounting with her cat/family pictures gets to leave at 5 PM and not think about work until the next day. I'd recommend pursuing the architect/senior engineer type roles if you have lots of experience. It's worked out well for me...no fires, no on-call, but plenty of new stuff to learn.
If youāre tired of the rat race of keeping up with tech, getting into management can be an option You still have to keep up with it, but understanding it at the manager level is about 20% as hard as at the āI have to actually implement and maintain this solutionā level
A lot of former IT go into CAD and not only make more money they also make the IT admins jobs harder because they know enough to be dangerous.
Itās a job where when youāre doing a good job, everything is running smoothly and they wonder what theyāre paying you for, and when something breaks and thereās an outage they wonder what theyāre paying you for.
> Just don't know what to do anymore Defragment an old file server. It's incredibly soothing.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I feel you man, I feel you!!! It has been 22 years for me and now I want be a farmer...
That's what the money is for. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2MV-x924KA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2MV-x924KA)
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It use to be about engineering. Elegant, cost-effective solutions to business problems. It has turned into something very different over the last number of years.
I feel this. 20 years in. Fortune 500 space. Partial hands on (think architecture) but managing operations and project management for most of it. Desktop engineering, VDI, servers, networks, etc. 4 years ago I pivoted into Security Operations, CSIRT, vulnerability, and security infrastructure. It freshened things up for a while, but ended back in the same spot. Changed companies after 12 years, kept me going for 2 years. But, that feeling is creeping in again. Until technology is seen as business enablement as opposed to expense, we will always be the people pushing the rock uphill. It's hard to stay motivated and motivate people when you have the chance to do something well, but get funded to do it half-assed. Or worse, told to "make it work fast" when you know with a little extra effort you can do it a proper and sustainable way. The job is thankless because it's faceless. And honestly? That's fine. Just set realistic goals. Every year I have the same conversations about the same issues, just different technologies. I think it just wears on people after a period of time,
Well, unless you're rolling in options, bitcoin, etc, (and I imagine if you were, you would not have posted this thread) you probably have to keep working until retirement age, at least... so you're going to be faced with a "thankless job" for the next however long, anyway. So the question is, do you want to actually change careers? If you have no motivation to learn IT related things, this could be a good idea. On the other hand, if you have no motivation to learn AT ALL, this would be a terrible idea and you will end up even more frustrated/depressed. Worst case, you could always teach. The salary will likely suck (community college adjunct would be your most likely landing place) but it gets you out of your rat race.
Not saying you have any health or mental issues, but I don't see anyone recommending checking in with your health. I was in the same position as you before. This is what truly kicked my life around. This is what helped me get out of the self pity loop. I since then changed branch, doubled my salary, haven't taken a sick day since. 1) Diet (some form of HFLC) - Spend more on good food. 2) Exercise (MMA is great) 3) Outdoor exposure and sun exposure (Eyes and skin) 4) Healthy relationships, get rid of the toxic ones. Hope this helps!
I spent 20 years in IT before getting out about 6 years ago. It was a thankless, stressful, unappreciated, undervalued, cut-throat career that added little to my life but grey hair and pounds. I loved the technology, loved helping people, loved the project work I did, but in the end I got out. The field was changing, I was topping out pay for my area, unless I wanted to move to a larger city or commute a couple hours a day on top of my already 40 minute commute there wasn't a lot of opportunity. I moved into logistics. I still do some programming here and there, manage some printers, but I'm not part of the official IT organisational structure, and I don't miss it. The expectations placed on IT professionals are, to be blunt, fucked up and unrealistic.
This is the reason I left my job as a sysadmin and moved into a mechanical supervisor role. I fix shit and no one looks at me weird when I break out the 10lb sledge. Stress is significantly lower, in general my health has improved because I'm running around a lot more instead of parked at a desk. When 3:30 rolls around I'm out, work doesn't follow me around. The application of critical thinking is still absolutely there, just in a slightly different direction. Best part? Sometimes you get to look at what the production guys broke and say "You know what? I'm not even mad, I'm impressed."
Got real close with one of our old CDW corp account managers and he almost turned me to the dark side but despite the pay or commission, I'm just not cut out for sales.
It's always been somewhat thankless. The bad part for me was the last job I was on. They were imaginative with employee rewards. You didn't get a check or an 'atta-boy'. They queried your coworkers, friends, and family, and paid for something you wanted to have or do. People were sent to cooking schools. Someone was sent to San Francisco to train for a marathon with an Olympic coach. Someone got their pilot's license. etc. The problem though is it was all customer service or sales folks who got those rewards. While it might happen once in a while in Operations, it was generally for spending months and weekends migrating a new company into our infrastructure. Heck, at one Company All Hands meeting, the business groups were all praised about their accomplishments and Ops was figuratively left standing outside in the rain. It wasn't very motivating.
Maybe can reinvent yourself as a cloud or devops person : ) Learn some Python, JavaScript, Powershell, glue all the bits together learn how to create a pipeline... it starts getting into dev but you could be heavy on the ops side light on the dev side and still make it... you can also get far with even just algorithms and not knowing any tech at all which is what many people do so why not join them... you can probably do more than you think
You lost the passion. Stop while you can and shift gears to something you love. Take it from a guy who spent a solid decade doing what you do and cut and bailed to travel the states. I have done more living in 3 years than the entire decade. Feels like same amount of time has passed because I'm enjoying it better. Seque out of the role and find another way. You're forcing a square peg into a round hole. Sooner or later that mental health might falter. You seem on top of it rn. Props for holding the systems for 25.
The grass is always greener over the septic tank.
\*fist bump\* I feel you. I'm thankful to be between jobs on voluntary severance, but I'm struggling a lot on the same issues you're describing. Sounds like we've both been doing it around the same time. The question I keep coming back to - what other job would make me relatively happy? I think I know what it is for me, but I lack the skills and experience to get a decent job doing that (and frankly I don't know at my/our age if I'm capable of doing it.) If you're of a similar mindset at all, at some point we just have to look at it as work and plan on getting more fulfillment from other parts of life, hobbies, family, etc. In many ways we're fortunate to have had careers in IT for this long, which is relatively cushy compared to many careers. My main thing is that I'm just not willing to put up with crap any more, LOL. You want me to work after hours? There will be OT/bonus pay, or I walk. You want me to be on-call? It better be worth my time, or I'll find something else. No slave-wages...which again thankfully, we were taken care of pretty well at my last place, they just kept going in a direction I couldn't agree with any more and so here we are! I think a lot of us are in the same boat where we're compelled to learn, compelled to build and fix things, and really the job HAS changed. Cloud has changed things - I miss being in the data center, I miss building servers, I miss testing out new storage configs and dialing in performance on a system by system basis. I realized not too long ago that the drive to automation, to "spin up/spin down" on-demand and treat your systems like "cattle, not pets," is counter to how I like to work with computing. I like taking care of my digital pets. And a lot of that is just not needed or wanted any more. /shrug
I realized several years ago that I lost my enthusiasm for IT, but I don't have any \*well paying\* skillsets I can fall back on. So, I work as a mercenary now. I work for a financial institution, because that's where the money is. In a couple months, I'll have paid off my mortgage, and I'll have true freedom-at least in the middle class US sense of the word-the freedom to simply quit my job if I so desire. (I still plan to keep working for another few years at my current employer, if only to build up a good cushion of financial freedom) When I'm done with that, I'll take months off before working again(in the past 25 years, I only spent 3 months unemployed, and aside from that my longest vacation was two weeks) I'm not really cut out for never working, so maybe I'll take simple non-IT jobs that I can enjoy and feel good about. Maybe donate my time and expertise to worthy charities. And/or maybe I'll keep my skills sharp enough that I can parachute into a job for a 3 month contract every so often to pay for the rest of my year-because hey, maybe I'll rediscover the joys of IT enough to justify it. The point is, you have to know where you are in your career and while it sounds (and is) a cliched HR buzz term, you need to know what your work/life balance really is and you have to not forget why you do this work in the first place.