The new level of Tech coming into the IT field today, they don't have the basics down. Is anyone else seeing this issue?

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Most not all but most new IT hires don’t have that mentality.

I’ll never understand it. Work smart not hard has always been my motto. As mentioned many times in this thread nowadays everything just works and they’ll never know hours of fighting a silent installation to get exactly the results you desire.

They rather burn the soles of their shoes doing a task manually on 54 pcs then look for a better solution.

Again not all new hires but most have that mentality now

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canadian_viking@reddit

And they couldn't even be bothered to ask anybody? Geez, if that level of apathy ain't a red flag, I don't know what is.

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Future_End_4089@reddit (OP)

They spent 10 minutes looking for the switches and gave up. My advice to all the new hires we get is this.

And that is how you know you have a problem. If there is not incentives to improve and there is no desire then you are going to get poor results.

That was an extreme last resort option back when reimaging took half the day, but now its the goto for anything you can't figure out in under 10 minutes.

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

Maybe you should save the bad images and then offer a reward to who ever can fix it. Not something that takes priority but it could be a fun exercise when it is slow.

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Well, that’s more or less what I’m saying. Incoming techs don’t have the critical thinking skills OR the hands on skills. Ideally if you have the former from University I can trust you to self-teach the latter, but instead they need a lot of hand holding.

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hihcadore@reddit

Yes but the point I’m making, no university program is going to give you the hands on you need or has it ever.

It’s the internships that do.

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Original-Locksmith58@reddit

I think we are talking past each other. A lack of hands on skill is OK, as long as you have foundational knowledge and critical thinking skills to pick it up quickly. Typically Universities do teach those things, along with theory. I am finding that candidates possess neither foundational knowledge, critical thinking skills, or theoretical knowledge, regardless of their credentials. I can’t even put these people into an internship because they can’t log into their PC without help - they need constant attention.

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entropy512@reddit

"and the quality of University programs is declining as well"

This has been going on for some time. A girlfriend back in 2009 had just finished an EE undergrad degree. She was telling me how excited she was to be going to some workshop to learn how to solder.

jun00b@reddit

I think you might be on to something there. Things work better and are more stable these days too, so less frequently do you need broader knowledge to troubleshoot an issue.

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coolbeaNs92@reddit

I literally just had this in an interview.

One of our questions is...

What is a:

A record.
PTR record.
CNAME record.

Nobody has got it.

I'm having the exact same though of. "Are these questions unfair/too hard, or is this just not the right candidate".

We're offering pretty decent money and its a third line job.

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TaiGlobal@reddit

Ehh I came from a desktop engineering background and idk why i blanked on this question and I knew what a ptr record was too smh. I was able to answer questions about group policy, sccm/patching. I still got the job

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coolbeaNs92@reddit

Right but this is a position for an experienced third line Infrastructure role.

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I've seen a senior admin reject applicants because they felt threatened. I've also been on the receiving end of that.

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

The hiring process kind of broken these days. Employers can't find good candidates and good candidates make it past the automated systems.

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I'm betting that your salary scale just sucks and you can't attract talent. It's super easy to find skilled IT professionals now, but you can't offer crap pay.

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Ani-3@reddit

Setting up tools like autopilot or intune include a bunch of IT basics as well as some intermediate skills. I would not expect a helpdesk person to be able to set up something like that.

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TerryThomasForEver@reddit

I would say they are fair.

Whenever I prepared for an interview I'd always review the basics so that I could easily reel it off even if I hadn't done that for 2 years. I've always been asked those foundational questions and when getting the job found out that I was the only candidate that had answered them.

In my current role foundational level support comes up 1/year but I can actually work my way through those issues and don't end up looking like a twat.

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WaitingForReplies@reddit

I've been questioning if my questions and expectations were unfair.

I've commnented before on posts like these and I am inclined to agree. It seems to me at least that our newer hires do not have the drive to troubleshoot problems like I had when I first started. Every time someone comes to me I have to ask multiple questions to get an idea of what they have done so far and in many of those instances they've basically tried nothing, not researching online, not looking at older tickets. If they don't immediately know how to do it they tend to just give up and then try and escalate the ticket

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dr-steve@reddit

Remember that kid that was hired 35 or so years ago? Right out of school, good credentials, knew a solid set of tools? But didn't have in-depth knowledge of the company's particular environment, one of the several environments that were active at that time? How their education showed basic skills in a laboratory (/classroom) setting, how it showed the ability to learn and adapt to new situations?

And how the company took the kid and taught them about the real world? Mentored them in some new areas. light some fires about the excitement in things they hadn't seen before. Allowed them to feel the joy of getting their hands really dirty and seeing them expose nuggets pulled from the muck of reality?

Yes, I'm a senior IT person as well, 40+ years in the field. The two great joys now are, first, sharing war stories, and second, watching/helping young engineers use their skills to develop expanded analytic techniques and learn about technologies they haven't encountered.

A fun story: I was talking with an engineer who was commeneting that the readings/reports from a sensor/monitoring app weren't matching what he believed was going on. I replied, "Are you familiar with Magritte's painting 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe'?". A few days later, the engineer came back and told me, "I understand now."

Plutarch: "A mind is not so much a vessel to be filled than a fire to be kindled."

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Future_End_4089@reddit (OP)

Very nice post. Great perspective. Sometimes I forget.

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dr-steve@reddit

Thank you!

A bit of a riff on an old episode of MASH (a series I imagine we both remember).

Col. Potter was complaining that his new aide, Cpl. Klinger, was a complete incompetent, and he wished he had at least a fraction of the skill and efficiency of his previous aide (Cpl. O'Reilly). Then he was told the tale of how the previous Col. was given an aide who was just as incompetent, barely knew how to answer a phone or file alphabetically, etc. But the previous Col. worked with the aide, brought out his skills, and Col. Potter got the polished version (yes, O'Reilly). Stuck with me, impacted my view on the younger engineers I worked with and the students I had as a college professor.

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Future_End_4089@reddit (OP)

Your post hits home because I work at a college in IT. I try my best to teach the new techs in my department the easiest and quickest way to get things done. Sometimes I feel they aren’t interested in doing it the right way as opposed to just getting it done. I guess that’s the battle.

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Electrical_Focus_608@reddit

My place is the opposite. We are replacing old people because they refuse to learn anything and are stuck in the past.

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ThinkMarket7640@reddit

We have a double whammy with shit news graduates and old people who are angry when you try to teach them about git. There’s a tiny microcosm of competent people who keep the place running but holy fuck the cruft around is incredible.

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RichardJimmy48@reddit

This really hits home. The old guard throws some luddite-tier fit at the notion of infrastructure-as-code/automation/source control while simultaneously making (and of course forgetting to clean up) vmware snapshots despite the SAN having its own snapshots because that's "the way they've always done it". Meanwhile, the young blood will happily learn git and automation but does not have the attention span to wrap their head around what a subnet mask is or figure out how to write a SQL query that doesn't take 12 minutes to run. Anything more complex than deploying a WAR file to a tomcat server is a big ask for them to solve.

Agent_Jay@reddit

I 100% agree with that second paragraph. Just wanted to share how much it struck a chord in my soul haha

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

I've met some of those. They make bad workers and even worse managers. It is not 1995 anymore so stop doing things like it is. They also can be extremely arrogant which just makes it worse.

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Lando_uk@reddit

You need a bit of both for a successful team.

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heapsp@reddit

Am old person who refuses to learn something new... You just don't get it. You will one day, but not today.

It isn't that we aren't intellectually curious. Its that we've seen what hard work gets you and also have other things in life exhausting us.

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awit7317@reddit

This may come as a surprise, but you can teach troubleshooting. I know because I was taught it during my defence radio training. We ultimately learned how to find faults in modules, units, racks, systems, and then a multi floor representation of an air traffic control tower.

Does anyone have the 4+ weeks to dedicate to just the first module- not a chance.

Do I believe that it is an innate ability, yes. You need to be stubborn and curious.

In the same way that NFL teams chose not to have their freshly picked QBs sit for a year, industry basically gave up on apprenticeships and traineeships.

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Break2FixIT@reddit

Don't take this the wrong way because this isn't directed at your comment but troubleshooters to me are people who can look at something they have absolutely no knowledge on, come up with a method to test / view how the problem is operating and deduce where the problem is.

Now the deduction doesn't have to lead to an answer but at least come to questions as to why the problem is happening. In our field we do have Google, and something I tell all my techs below me is "all the information in the world is at your finger tips". You just need to start asking questions and start applying critical thinking on to what the answers are and start coming up with ideas as to how to test those answers in an non production means to see if it works.

Again, I am not saying the person has to have the answer but what I am looking for is the person to have questions and a "direction" to how to move forward with asking those questions.

I worked with the DOD and after my time there they had training down to where you didn't have to be troubleshooters to resolve the problem, since they had flowcharts of what to go to next and what to check. That isn't troubleshooting.

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thortgot@reddit

You absolutely can train mindset.

Some people have an innate grasp for troubleshooting cycles, others do not and require significant examples and experience before they engage with it.

I have taught both types of people and while one takes more work they both get to the same result in the end.

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nhaines@reddit

Meanwhile, TCP/IP was controversial because it just uses 4 layers and sort of proves that 7 was not really required in actual practice.

Not that it's not a good model for troubleshooting.

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Break2FixIT@reddit

If you have a BA and never heard of the OSI or the TCP/IP model, then there is a reason why troubleshooting is lacking.

Or could be in a bad location for tech jobs. When I shifted career paths for automotive to IT I thought that I may have to move for the position that would allow me to grow and make money. I did an assistant computer tech for 2 years making 8.95 and didn't get a raise due to the company doing a raise freeze for everyone. This was 2009 - 2011 and so I decided to do what I thought and took a job for a US contractor in a different country.

Resume building went 1000%

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ordiclic@reddit

You can train tech knowledge to a troubleshooter, but you can't train troubleshooting to a tech person..

Yes, a hundred time yes. I have several colleagues who don't have that knack for troubleshooting. I've never been able to get them to do simple troubleshooting outside of what they are supposed to know, for instance reading logs from the command line that they know how to use.

I only have a diploma for secondary education in a country where diplomas are important. Where I'm working, everyone else has an engineer degree. The reason I went from helpdesk jobs to an hybrid tier 3 support/software and system analyst is because I love Linux systems and, more importantly, I like troubleshooting.

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alphaxion@reddit

I think critical thinking is something you can learn, just as helplessness is also learned. The problem usually comes down to attitude more than anything.

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farkious@reddit

For real, do kids these days even know his to download the latest chipset drivers for their motherboard? lol.

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Ok-Car-2916@reddit

I mean...yes? All of them? No.

Was there ever a time that all of the kids knew how to update their BIOS or whatever? I don't think so. That used to mean you were straight up weird lol. If anything, social status for us chipset driver updaters has increased over the years.

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Ok-Hunt3000@reddit

One of our techs the other day

“Where is that driver for printer”

“In our chats, just search ‘ printer drivers’ up top”

“Ok” … “are these the right drivers” screenshot of a page of downloads

“Idk man ask the user what the number on the printer says, see if it’s in that ‘supported models’ list”

RussellG2000@reddit

That's what I'm saying. It used to be you had to get certified and study on your own time. My company has cert reimbursement if you pass and I go a step further by paying them to study if they want to. Problem is that doesn't even motivate them. But it's not a generational thing, it's work culture.

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la-wolfe@reddit

Where/what is your company? I wanna work for you.

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ExcitingTabletop@reddit

Plenty of them exist. I told my boss I want to make a google maps equivalent of our production floor. You click on a machine and get the stats. Just to keep fresh.

He didn't exactly complain and was fine so long as the hours weren't too much.

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Maro1947@reddit

I was talking about using Google to find the answers to stuff you had no training on. Slightly different

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Pup5432@reddit

My current manager outright tells you on the first day he doesn’t expect you to be competent on the job for the first year and it’s weirdly accurate. I had a tailored position that perfectly matched what I did at my prior job and it still took 9 months before I could be trusted.

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onlycommitminified@reddit

Tech is getting deeper. Roles aren’t asking for a solid understanding of the basics, they are asking for proficiency with tech and frameworks multiple abstractions overtop. Understand the basics of networking , but have no experience with cloud? No job for you. Good with js but don’t know ts or, god forbid, react? No job for you. “Kids these days” are the same kids as ever, the demands for entry are just getting too insane for a beginner to cover competently. The room to experiment and tease out that deeper understanding is gone.

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the only requirement is to have the right mentality

agreed one 100%, friend!

now, since I'll find myself hiring again pretty soon, can I ask you to please elaborate? how do you define this mentality, personally? and if you were hiring, how could you identify this in a candidate?

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narcissisadmin@reddit

I have a list of 20 phone questions covering a broad range of topics meant to spark conversation and find out where their strengths are. Things like "what's the difference between DHCP and DNS", "why is a domain better than a workgroup", "how is a router different from a switch", "how do you pronounce G-I-F", "can you describe what a GPO does", "how do differential backups compare to full backups or incremental backups", "what's happening if a device has an IP that starts with 169.254", etc.

It was depressing how many people with shining resumes, certs, and experience couldn't answer most of those very (or what I thought were very?) rudimentary questions that even the most junior of a sysadmin should know.

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jr-416@reddit

A desire to figure things out yourself. You don't forget lessons you learned the hard way, especially on a home lab.

The younger generation have an advantage that the older generation didn't. The ability to build crazy powerful computers with tons of storage and ram. You can set up virtual machines and virtual networks to make your own lab, all in one computer.

I upgraded one of my systems to a 16 core 5950x with 128GB ram.. the 386/486, pentium 3, systems I had in my home lab years ago are nothing by comparison.

Beware of asking questions that are too specific when it comes to enterprise hardware . For example, HP has some interesting printing technologies, such as print servers where you tap a card on a reader before the printer prints.(Helps keep private / confidential printouts private)

I wouldn't expect somebody new to IT to know the low level details and such technologies are outside the scope of a home lab.

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ImLookingatU@reddit

I look for people who can see the big picture. Sysadmin isn't just a tech that fixes someone's outlook and moves on. We designed, maintain and support an entire IT infrastructure. So if they can't see the big picture and only focus on the immediate problem they miss what actually needs to be solved.for example, if I need to constantly make exceptions then we need to revaluate the standards we are following and maybe make a new standard or modify the existing one. That way, we are not making exceptions, we are following one of the standards.

Standards are easy to track and update, exceptions are rarely documented and forgotten about until they pop up years later and no one knows WTF is going on cuz it doesn't follow any standard.

How I screen for the right mentality is by asking loaded questions. "I see here you worked with VMware clustering, what do you like and don't like about VMware's solution. also if you could change something what would it be and why"

This helps me understand their reasoning and thinking process. It also see if they think beyond the immediate task of creating a cluster or a VM.

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10kur@reddit

I used to ask for real life issues and see how they behave. If asking for support or MSP immediately, that would be a no-no in my book. The ones that actually strived to find a solution - even if wrong - were the ones considered, bonus point for asking for more details.

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tepitokura@reddit

I completely agree. You have to accept coaching and teaching from the experience sysadmin, have the right attitude and learn as much as you can.

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taker223@reddit

Are you aware that you are mentoring your (cheaper) replacement (at least in the eyes of management)? Some Indian folks would be quite pleased, they would jump boat as soon as they will get a new offer

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uptimefordays@reddit

Sysadmin is basically a trade. Whatever is in the book or classroom misses basically everything in the real world.

In small shops, maybe, but formal education--especially in fundamentals--is more critical than ever. Modern tech abstracts so much but when it doesn't work you need to actually know protocols, ports, negotiation and such.

The "it's just a trade" mentality is how you get people going "it's always DNS" or "it's the network" and not "oh our application is running out of ports, we need to look at the code or grab the dev team."

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Keleus@reddit

To be fair it usually is always DNS it just sometimes takes fancy diagnosing to get to thay answer.

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uptimefordays@reddit

To be fair it usually is always DNS it just sometimes takes fancy diagnosing to get to that answer.

uptimefordays@reddit

Still, that abstraction is built on underlying concepts folks should know.

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redworm@reddit

as long as that formal education is a certification course similar to a trade

no one should be getting a college degree to work in IT just like no one should be getting a college degree to be a mechanic

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uptimefordays@reddit

It depends on the complexity of the environment, but too many people brain dump certs or focus on vendor specific implementations, neither of which are ideal.

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DaHick@reddit

Just as a side note. I'm a plc guy. I support smallish networks that are all automation-related. That's the background.

At some point, anyone who isn't paid to navigate a desk and/or a phone is a trade. I feel like a tradesperson, and I have hundreds of apprentice or higher skills in those trades.

This is 100% backwards from everything I've seen. You can slowly teach better soft skills and a smart enough engineer will start to get it.

But no amount of "teaching technology" will get some people to even baseline understanding.

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DaDaedalus_CodeRed@reddit

Then we have worked in very different places with very different people.

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AwGe3zeRick@reddit

And a quick look through yours makes me think you probably don't actually have the kind of job you allude to (but don't actually specify) in your recent comments. Hmm, would be pretty fitting for you to be one of those people who half-assed their way through life and then anonymously tried to make their position seem better on social media.

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DaDaedalus_CodeRed@reddit

I’m not a sysadmin though I do some sysadmin work, I’m listed as “engineer” at a mid-sized MSP where I do some one-offs, some setup and instantiation and a LOT of troubleshooting things that go wrong and get past three layers of helpdesk.

That said, I also worked in restaurants for years, was briefly in headhunting, have been four kinds of criminal, and BRIEFLY was self-employed.

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shitting_frisbees@reddit

how? folks in other countries don't deserve a living?

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Those people are out there, but companies don't want to pay.

At least once every 6 months our CFO will say something along the lines of "I'm shocked that I don't see more people working late..." or something along those lines. That's easy for him to say because he has unlimited vacation and he makes over 500k per year. I'll stay late if you gave me unlimited vacation and 500k per year.

Not directing this towards you, but companies also need to pay properly.

That being said, yes, there are plenty of overpaid workers that don't do anything, but with the staff that I deal with, daily, I know their performance is based on pay.

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The-Jesus_Christ@reddit

Yep this is what I don't understand. OP has the perfect teaching moment here and chooses to instead bitch and moan about it on Reddit.

Says more about ol' mate grumps than it does about the newbies coming in.

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justofit@reddit

the older I get the more I feel this as a responsibility

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farkious@reddit

I don’t feel this is my responsibility at all. I don’t mind being a mentor, it can be rewarding but I draw the line at calling it a responsibility. I mean, it’s a job you know? We have stuff to do, bills to pay, life to live. We are cogs in a wheel. Unless your salary comes with some special incentive (implicit or explicit) to teach the younger hires, then do not consider it a responsibility. There are definitely some exceptions to this, like when a younger hire is part of an expansion of the team, to help you scale, but I can’t think of many other exceptions.

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justofit@reddit

I'm forced to spend so much time at work that I need to find some semblance of meaning where I can. mentoring isn't for the company i work for, it's for the person I mentee and for myself

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Bezos_Balls@reddit

Try to being a part of the solution not the problem. You’re looking at it the wrong way. Gatekeep an industry and praying it gets better isn’t going to work that’s how we lose all our jobs to India.

In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. I'll take a demonstrated natural curiosity and a desire to understand how things work over a GPA or a cert any day.

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uptimefordays@reddit

I'll take a demonstrated natural curiosity and a desire to understand how things work over a GPA or a cert any day.

Absolutely, but we also need folks who actually know how stuff works. I've worked with far too many people who have an understanding of say TCP/IP but don't actually know how packets work, how/when/why a header would be rewritten, or how CRCs perform integrity checks. They mostly understand what should happen or how it's supposed to work but not enough to actually pick things apart when they don't.

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nostalia-nse7@reddit

IT jobs requirements. Masters in Computer Science. … why?!! But they all want it.

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noitalever@reddit

Because anywhere else you want a masters in thethingyoudo.

I don't know if it's quite the same thing but I have a term I use.

"Paper Engineers"

Essentially, I've gotten to the point that if I see a resume and it has just a ton of certificates and usually word salad. It's a big red flag. But I'm just an Architect so I'm usually just brought in to do technical questions And sit on the interview panel , Usually the hiring manager is the one determining who we actually interview, And sometimes they get dazzled by these resumes thinking they found a unicorn. Not realizing if they actually know that many things. There's no way any of these things are more than an inch deep.

And I'll find out very quickly when I start asking them about some of the things that are on their resume and they can't even articulate basics and I'm pretty forgiving in terms of terminology and if I think you mostly get a concept, I won't hold you to the letter If I think you understand it conceptually.

At least the observation I make is the best engineers are the ones that have actually had experience and built things or at least were willing to humble themselves and do some entry level to get some experience before shooting for mid-level positions. I get it that nobody wants to do entry level, but after 20 years, I remain skeptical that you could actually be good at this job without having base level support experience.

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JeremiahWolfe@reddit

Don't blame the candidates for this.

I recently spent over a year looking for a new job. Nearly all job postings required a ridiculous list certifications and skills. If you don't have every technology by every vendor listed on your resume then they won't talk to you.

The problem is exacerbated by the sad fact that the initial phase of recruiting is done by AI.

I know plenty of skilled individuals with real experience who can't get a callback, meanwhile these guys with 17 CompTia certs and not a lick of actual experience can write their own check.

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Sad_Recommendation92@reddit

I don't think you're wrong in that regard. We've been trying to build a cloud operations team and it's been a frustrating experience. I'm convinced that modern IT recruiters are just very out of touch. Their idea of "strong candidate" is just whoever gamified the system the best. It's a bit damned if you do. Damned if you don't, you have to list all these keywords to get past the algorithm and whatever scoring metrics the recruiters are using. But if it actually gets in front of someone for technical review that understands what they're doing, they're extremely confused and they have no idea what the hell you're actually good at.

While the ideal resume for a recruiter is something that just ticks a bunch of boxes without regard for depth. My ideal resume I liken to a restaurant menu. I like to bring up the example of The cheesecake factory versus In-N-Out Burger.

If I look at the cheesecake factory menu I don't have a clue what they're actually good at. They just have literally everything and I don't know if any of this is actually going to be good.

If I look at the In-N-Out Burger menu it is painfully obvious what they excel at. Now a recruiter might say but they don't have pizza on their menu and that would be a disqualifier And my response would be what are you talking about? I never said anything about pizza. I told you I wanted a really good burger!

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Odd_Seaweed_5985@reddit

So then, where again, is the value in using recruiters?

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JeremiahWolfe@reddit

Free pizza. Obviously.

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InternationalSoft134@reddit

I have experience and knowledge, no papers.

I have found only ONE company that wants me, because the guy running it used to be the same: Learning from doing, instead of reading on how it's done in theory.

it pays the same tho, yet I've always been told that without any papers you might as well become a garbagemen (Which starts with a two week course, why two weeks? because they let you learn the job on the job :) )

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Maro1947@reddit

It was always this - paper MCSEs were legion

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Enigma-147@reddit

You do know where MCSE stands for, right?

Microsoft Certified Solitaire Expert...

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Recalcitrant-wino@reddit

I feel seen.

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subcritikal@reddit

I always thought of it as Minesweeper Certified; Solitaire Expert myself.

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TaliesinWI@reddit

Must Consult Someone Else

I started as a laptop repair tech for Digital, moved onto a 1st help desk for a bank, then 2nd line for a retail company, moved to a junior network engineer role at the same company, then a senior network engineer.

Moved companies to a Network Specialist and team leader of 5 other engineers.

Moved again to an MSP as a 3rd line Network Security engineer and then an internal move to a Network Security Consultant.

Started my IT career at 16, and 39 years later that’s where I am now.

No college or Uni, just GCSEs (UK high school for the US people).

Done my CCNA/CCNP in R&S and Voice, then NSE 4/5/7 with Fortinet.

Your level of analysis is how I got my job actually.

My certs and education is all mile deep but 6 inches wide lol.. Broad knowledge at surface level but handful of super deep avenues. But. Willing to learn always lol

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Riversntallbuildings@reddit

Agreed, moving from a “Microsoft shop” to a G-Suite shop reminded me that there is a big difference between structured and unstructured data.

I still want to try and “organize my files” and G-Suite constantly reminds me of the futility of that effort. “Just search” may as well be their slogan.

I wonder how good AI will get when searching becomes obsolete and useful information gets “created” on demand. O_o

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Plenty-Wonder6092@reddit

Nearly everyone I have hired with a comp sci degree has been sup par or worse in general IT. The unicorns seem to have nothing on paper and are just tinkerers as the OP has posted, now maybe that's because they never bothered to get any bits of paper since they were good enough to get paid regardless.

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remnants00@reddit

That's how I started... gaming and poking around inside the case, upgrading, etc turned into a 27-year career so far. My degree is in biology 🤣

My very first tech support call was for a 28.8 modem install on Windows 3.1. Oh, those were the days!

I know right. And I get it the idea that a person can set and stick to a long term goal means a lot.

But I think in our field it’s reallly hard to predict how someone will do until they actually do it

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rotoddlescorr@reddit

I guess that makes sense. A person with a CS degree who can't find a programming job probably doesn't really want to do IT in the first place.

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BaconMaster93@reddit

Yeah our last batch of interns this year all had comp sci majors and some didn't even know how to use file explorer. We have no real vetting for them since we just grab them from the college most of the long timers went to "Oh you know Mr. X? How's he doing? Welcome aboard!"

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ragnarokxg@reddit

I got my CS degree. My son is going for his CS degree. The one thing I have drilled into him is that he needs to push himself to learn a bit of everything tech related.

Because as I have said, as a Computer Science major I am a Jack of All Trades.

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PGleo86@reddit

I've been involved with the most recent round of hiring for our techs (helping our less-technical management determine level of tech skill in the first round of interviews, mainly) and my top candidates all were tinkerers first. Even with very little experience on the hiring side, I can absolutely see that there's at least a nugget of truth to this.

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Plenty-Wonder6092@reddit

100%

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Doowrednu@reddit

100% this - and the answer unfortunately is it’s cheaper, from a salary perspective….. I have saved companies literally millions of pounds - wish they would factor that into performance reviews

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MaNbEaRpIgSlAyA@reddit

I have saved companies literally millions of pounds

I find this so ironic. Nobody with a good technical background makes it past the AI and HR firewalls. I see this on both ends, be it headcount as well as applying for work.

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uptimefordays@reddit

Tbh I think systems administration has a marketing problem. There remains a need for systems people who understand, and can manage, distributed systems—but the titles have changed there’s baggage with operations, and years of infrastructure people who were “this or that system/platform admin” not a systems oriented engineer.

Today you have devops, SRE, cloud engineer, and myriad other titles that encompass systems administration in various ways but hiring managers, HR, and we ourselves get hung up on what should be relatively trivial differences.

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Ok-Car-2916@reddit

Yeah I think this is a real problem the way traditional systems work has sort of been split up into all these related but different job titles.

Realistically, anybody remotely competent can probably bounce between them (maybe not to the exact same seniority level, but bounce nonetheless). But it's definitely confusing as hell for hiring managers because it's confusing as hell to me and I'm the one applying for the jobs. Do I bother applying for the cloud engineer thing since I spent the last year doing mostly their preferred cloud vendor and integrating it with other stuff? I've got no clue. Different companies seem to have different ideas on how much they want you to be some kind of "certified architect" with a particular cloud, vs just good with low level computer stuff and with a variety of cloud experience.

Would be much simpler to just give everybody the same systems title and let the specifics be handled by what particular team you happen to be assigned to at that specific time.

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Ok-Car-2916@reddit

They are massively different jobs but there is definitely some tendency for overlap, much more than for most other degree programs.

I could go on an hour long rant about the issues with modern CS curriculums (see the MIT "missing semester of CS education" course which I think addresses some of the pet peeves I suspect many in this forum have noticed). But if they've got some clear teamwork skills and project work and aren't shy about the terminal etc etc...it's probably a better bet giving the CS grad a shot for your sysadmin esque thing than the person with a CompTIA cert.

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discosoc@reddit

Why are those job seekers applying to the wrong career fields though?

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abis444@reddit

Because in the new age of devops and are everything belongs to software engineer or software developer. The sysadmin have been pushed to the sidelines.

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narcissisadmin@reddit

This entire thread would be like accountants hiring pure mathematicians and then feigning shock that they don't know accountancy.

Nah, more like mathematicians hiring a bunch of accountants.

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fearless-fossa@reddit

Seeing your questions I'd rather ask myself why your company doesn't have someone from the IT team involved in at least the final talks before hiring.

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As an archaic IT Director almost ready to hang up my keyboard and head off to my lakeside cabin, the quality of job applicants is pitiful. The outright lies embellishing resumes should embarrass the applicants. I don’t even need to give skill tests, just a basic convo shows the resume is void. Takes me 3-4 months to fill my openings. But hey what do I know, just an old guy muttering in the dark here.

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Ed_Boi_Supreme@reddit

The only way to get past HR to get that entry level position is to embellish the heck out of a resume unfortunately. Looking at it from the other perspective, the recruiter/staffing agency would embarrass an applicant for NOT lying on your resume.

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uptimefordays@reddit

Unfortunately, applicant tracking systems reward embellishment. While this isn’t an endorsement, it’s important to recognize that widely used hiring systems inadvertently encourage dishonesty from job seekers!

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TU4AR@reddit

People think a comp sci degree means they are able to manage machines

ehxy@reddit

I mean it's why they have A+ so they know the basics because that's what I see it as

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Nightcinder@reddit

I just hired a CS major with a cybersec focus. I'm assuming she knows nothing and she's pretty open about her lack of knowledge.

One horrifying thing I see repeatedly in these threads is people hiring computer science undergrads thinking they were taught managing information systems.

Because that was the norm for decades -- and while CS grads may not know "IT", I've generally found their ability to learn to be above someone with an "IT" degree.

Of course, it depends on the school and the job.

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mochmeal2@reddit

Network admin ≠ sys admin ≠ cloud admin ≠ IA ≠ ISSO ≠ developer ≠ DB Engineer ≠ data analyst

Could go on but I keep seeing all of these bundled as "IT".

I really do not think that everyone needs to be an admin or know all the basics to get started. The field keeps getting bigger and it's not realistic. But I do see people pretty deep into their career with weird gaps on the fundamentals.

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ogn3rd@reddit

Yea man, im as old as you, and theres no doubt.

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ruyrybeyro@reddit

I was asked to travel with a Linux 'sysadmin' team we inherited from another department.

They’re an 'experienced' bunch, ages late 20s to early 50s, but they’re lacking in basics like debugging, kernel/application tracing, TCP/IP, IPv6, observability, regex, scripting, networking essentials, and can’t distinguish Linux from BSD or Sys V.

They insist scripting is programming, though they say they’re not programmers. The one most 'comfortable' with coding needed an introduction to functions in Python.

They’re nice people, but it’s both disheartening and confusing.

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e7c2@reddit

I had a young tech start for me, he was replacing a m.2 hard drive in a laptop in his first week. He declared that every drive in the bin of "pulled from working computer" parts was faulty. a dozen ssd drives, all faulty. Never questioned that maybe he could've been doing something wrong.

was probably a+ and MCSE certified

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Nobody_Asked_M3@reddit

I'm a younger guy in IT and I'm having the reverse issue you're seeing. Most of the older guys here don't know much compared to me and don't like all the new changes that pop up for us often. It's been frustrating to say the least.

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RScrewed@reddit

No newbies knows file systems, system configurations, networking, etc.

All have huge gaps in knowledge if they aren't tinkerers in their spare time.

All they know how to do is click on apps and close tabs.

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InternationalSoft134@reddit

I do.

For some context: I am currently following a course in IT after having done most of it without a degree.

Most of my colleague students haven't gotten the most basic things down, from stuff as simple as setting a Screensaver, to stuff like operating a command line.

You might say: "Yes but they are students", to which I say fair enough, however most of them are now in their final year.

The cause? simple.

I've spent more time working on exams I did in high-school, than do anything IT specific, they have told me to my face that a Cambridge certificate for English is insufficient and that I have to do their exams(I am not doing a university level course, but they rejected my university level certificate).

Some of our teachers teach through ChatGPT, saying the warning at the bottom is false(The warning that it's not 100% accurate).

They claim it's due to a shortage in applicants for teaching positions, but all of those exams are due to dutch legislation, which also bars most teachers in IT from setting up good courses.

The Netherlands is a rich ass country with a wealth of knowledge, but it's public school system has been torn asunder, if it's happening here I can see it happening across the richer places, something to do with the wellness of the economy and people(We are in a decline now, but have been doing really damn well for a long time in terms of world economy).

I'm just a random redditor tho, so apply a hefty dose of salt, and the knowledge it's just the personal experience of one of many.

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fourflatyres@reddit

My history is similar. I got my first PC running DOS and had zero help figuring out how to use it. I learned the CLI on my own, from nothing. Moved on, of course. Windows 3.11, Mac, linux, whatever. I spent the weekend rehabbing a WindowsME system someone gave to me. It works!

Eventually did IT work for a living and managed an ASP data center where I automated processes so well, it automated me out of the job.

Suffice to say, I have a lot of experience.

What I do not have is a degree. And the job openings these days all require one to even reach the interview list. But these companies end up hiring people who have the degree on paper buy have none of the experience and can't do what I have seen and done.

So I'm stuck doing an unrelated job while I sit on everything I know how to do.

There's another post I made about what happened when the Crowdstrike fail went down and how I had found the work around and provided it to my company IT team before they even got their crisis chairs warm. They looked at me like I was crazy. Not experienced.

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frustratedsignup@reddit

Same here. I find there's a lot of Linux enthusiasts that can't work without a GUI in front of them for every little administration task. Like if you needed to extend a volume in the logical volume manager, they have no idea how to do so without a graphical tool to do it for them. I recently had to convert a service over to systemd and I didn't find it terribly difficult once I understood how to write a unit file.

I started the same way you did - cp/m, dos, windows 3.x, Linux 0.x, etc. I even had a job where I spent a fair bit of time compiling open source software for Solaris systems.

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silvercel@reddit

I have found hiring for aptitude, curiosity, and creativity produced better IT candidates than CompSci courses.

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IKEtheIT@reddit

Kids don’t build their own machines anymore, they just buy prebuilt which I feel like makes them lack troubleshooting and understand of hardware

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q0vneob@reddit

From what I've seen they arent using PCs much at all, they grew up on smartphones.

We had two new-hire zoomers that didnt last long - one thought their workstation was broken because the monitors were off... another didn't know how to type and wanted to use a phone lol.

I remember seeing something about keyboard classes being phased out of HS, dunno if thats really true but it sure isnt helping if it is.

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RegistryRat@reddit

I used to work in education as a tech and the amount of kids that would come in unable to type astounded me. I graduated in 2020, and took computer classes when I was younger, but the schools did slowly phase all of that out. Kids these days are just expected to know because (well their iPads have a keyboard?)

Both of those were entry level tech support so idk if they had degrees, but they still made it through the interviews so who knows.

We must have taken the "can you use a computer" part as assumed, should probably go back to asking candidates their WPM haha.

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

I grew up with no budget and I still don't have a budget.

Thus, my machines are free or cheap. I self host and my servers are made of 5-8 year old hardware will miscellaneous components. When I tell people that they are shocked as the mainstream consensus is that computers need to be as new as possible and are disposable. It discourages people from wanting to self host stuff. I grew up making the best of what I had and it forced me to learn. (I had a garage sale netbook for most of my childhood) If you didn't have that experience and everything was handed to you it isn't surprising that kids don't care. Lots of young people would love to get a homelab but they don't have the skills to get one.

As a young buck in IT (mid twenties) who also loves automating processes with powershell, deployment tools, etc. - I can confirm you're not alone.

We've onboarded some tier-1 techs who can't troubleshoot their way out of a paper bag. One had no idea how VLANs worked, and always assumed any networking issue was a hardware failure on the NIC of the PC.

The other one is great at asking questions - but can't do the baseline troubleshooting on his own, and struggles to even run installations on his own.

We've also had some interns who were going for Cybersecurity, but we used them moreso for day-to-day tech work. They started out pretty rough (not being able to go through UNC paths, not knowing how to pull info using remote wmic commands, not utilizing PSEXEC or deployment tools), but given enough time, they start to ask how to do the shortcuts and catch on within a year.

All that to say, I think it boils down to a lack of experience in troubleshooting - so long as they're willing to learn, we're willing to teach, and our companies are willing to be patient with the process, we'll all get there eventually

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xorekin@reddit

Help them succeed. Mentor. Train.

I asked my prior IT department to plug in a UPS for a desktop computer - they plugged it in incorrectly and didn't plug in the monitor. I realized that the person has probably never used a desktop computer in their working career and is also too young to have used a command line- but they have a masters.

You have to know the command line if you wanted to play computer games in the 90's. They hit 32 bit graphics before most of the consoles.

Slightly different field but the saying goes, car owners in the 50's and 60's used to know how to adjust their valves. You'd be lucky if they know what a valve is.

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narcissisadmin@reddit

I would expect that someone applying for a sysadmin job would have AD experience, yes.

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Agent_Jay@reddit

I’ve had AD experience from uni. Maybe I just got lucky with my professors but maybe it was approached as a topic because the school existed on AD

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Skylis@reddit

Getting trade school style courses in a CS degree isn't luck, it's a sign of going to a poor school.

Salt-Appearance2666@reddit

I finished my study months before the whole Vmware drama. All we did about virtualisation was how to create a vm and boot it from iso. The only Linux piece we had were some nmap/ netcat commands in IT-sec lecture. My studies touched many topics like Web dev, agile software engineering, some python but it was mostly one 2 1/2 months lecture that just gave a broad overview. Tbh that was the reason I skipped most of my classes because it was just time waste. Unmotivated teachers talking about (mostly) theoretical topics or stuff they don't even know themselves is just sad. Atleast I got lucky with choosing my employer and I still made it to be a Linux admin in his first steps.

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CowardyLurker@reddit

What you have there is some of the hardest to obtain components of a wizard level skill set. Unfortunately it's difficult to recognize at a smaller scale.

Ideally you would have the opportunity to apply your algorithims and regex knowledge to be the one and only person in your organization that is capable of extracting useful and actionable information from the literal GiBs of server/system logs. You know, the information goldmine that everyone else ignores..

First, centrally collect all the various server logs, of say hundreds of servers. All of your infrastructure services, web access, applications, OS updates, etc. Now find some tools that help you chew through these logs (grep for starters). Find keywords, recognise patterns, correlate certain times of known problems with whatever the logs reported within that timeframe.

Gradually expand your toolset and you will find you have the ability to quickly parse through logs of multiple related systems, all at once! You'll suddenly have the ability to see patterns of activity that cannot be observed any other way. Patterns that can positively identify characteristics of problems that would be nearly impossible to solve otherwise.

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BearBlaq@reddit

This is literally me. It was the same course line up for me, but now that I actually have a job in the field, I’m learning about AD and Linux. Im intrigued and actively going out of my way to learn about it all though.

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goblin-socket@reddit

I had a guy who was fighting with configuring a router and could not understand how his subnet mask wasn’t being accepted.

I finally intervene and he explains that he wants a subnet that falls in between /23 and /24, to which I replied, “dude, how can you have half a bit?”

When he didn’t understand what I was saying, I had to then spend the next hour subnetting and CIDR notation. Sure, he went to school for CIS, but dude, so did I, just 25 years ago. But at least he now asks me how to set up the vlans.

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

They can write great python but they don't get what happens behind the scenes

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Andrew_Waltfeld@reddit

25 years ago, Programming degrees was forced to teach that stuff, now they don't. It's why I am always wary of anyone with a comp science degree in IT. Only a handful actually know IT stuff and you have to do so much more on the job training with them.

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goblin-socket@reddit

CS is just math now, which is fine. It is a very different type of math. And CS majors shouldn't be working in IT. That's CIS and Networking.

It is just a completely different field.

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Andrew_Waltfeld@reddit

Basically summed up. But that friend is HR because they honestly don't know any better and just assume Comp Sci is the same as IT.

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centpourcentuno@reddit

This is exactly why entry level jobs have disappeared

No one is rewarded with training incoming hires ..matter of fact they will probably quit once they get practical experience anyway

"... so then you open the keygen and..."

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Lylieth@reddit

they didn’t even have them touch AD once in four years.

Okay, but what was their degree in? TBH, I wouldn't assume a basic Computer Science degree would have. But, I would expect someone with an A+ Certification to have some experience.

I saw this same complaint when I was in college. Heard the same complaints when I was a teenager in HS. Dad told me he grew up with this complaint too. That those coming into the workforce were too inexperienced. I often wonder if that complaint is just happened in every generation, lol.

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

You need to focus your direction as you go though school. Don't come out with no experience and no direction. Find what you love and as you go though school focus on that thing. When you get out you might just have useful skills.

School can't spoon feed you

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shikkonin@reddit

new college grad they didn’t even have them touch AD once in four years.

Because you don't see Windows in CompSci environments. You see Linux and UNIX, no wonder they never touch AD.

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vikinick@reddit

I never touched LDAP in college either.

It's not a windows/Linux thing. Compsci isn't about teaching you about how to get a job in IT, it's about teaching you the math behind computing and teaching about programming languages, not necessarily teaching about computing and programming themselves

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

It really depends on what you want to do. These days there really isn't much of a general computer science degree. You focus in something specific like software development, data analytics or whatnot.

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shikkonin@reddit

Correct, is to get understanding. Real understanding.

From my time as a CS student, it was expected to go into software engineering of some kind. Getting a helpdesk job was like a “last resort” (which is just arrogance) because places used to take almost anyone with the right proof of education about “computers”.

They should know some parts of DNS or IP through just being in the space that long but it is far from a priority in many college curriculums

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boondoggie42@reddit

Yeah, it's just frustrating when it comes time to deploy their work into the world, and it doesn't work like it did in their sandbox, and they turn their head sideways when you ask leading network questions.

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Suspicious-Belt9311@reddit

And in my experience it does. I've seen some very sharp minds come through our co op program (basically work study, not sure how common outside of Canada). They pick up the stuff very fast.

Not sure what shitty program you went to, but at my college we learned both Windows and Linux.

Kruug@reddit

At the college I went to, Computer Science was programming and eventually went into OS design towards the 300/400 level courses.

If you wanted Windows training and domain work and the like, you went for Information Systems. There was some programming (mainly in .Net languages and PowerShell) and an introduction to database work (with OracleDB).

Might be that employers aren't looking for the right degrees these days.

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hardingd@reddit

I didn’t touch AD in my comp/sci courses. Had to learn that on the job.

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oq7ster@reddit

I took computer science at a cheap college. It was all windows, the only one that knew a bit of Linux was me, and only because I was poor, and couldn't afford a windows license for my 10 year old computer (and was curious to try Linux). It was a waste of time and money.

DerFlamongo@reddit

Oh absolutely, I was not disagreeing with you, just pointing out what I believe to be the root cause.

And yeah it can suck - I try to see the positive side, which is better job security for me I guess?

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Future_End_4089@reddit (OP)

I try to do the same as you but sometimes my patience is on its last legs. lol.

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Windows95GOAT@reddit

The average troubleshooting flowchart for the average end user these days is:

Install app > app no work > reinstall > either that worked or give up.

Even "just google it" is easier than ever with the likes of GPT or Copilot. For niche issues.

Companies like Apple and Google have fenced off their environments and Microsoft is quickly following them.

Also, not everyone is a natural. We had two interns, one i would hire on the spot and the other is like you described.

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Future_End_4089@reddit (OP)

We recently hired 2 temps they were amazing didn’t know a lot but were willing to learn and research things and try to figure stuff out and asked really intelligent questions. We could not hire them due to budgetary constraints but I have so much respect for them. I hope they go far and succeed.

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rem1473@reddit

I like to tell younger people: I had to figure out the correct autoexec.bat lines WITHOUT the benefit of using modern search engines! It’s my equivalent to “walking to school uphill both ways” story.

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Future_End_4089@reddit (OP)

I can’t believe that but I know it’s true

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mahsab@reddit

You're a dinosaur and our era is gone.

New people have neither desire or NEED to learn the basics. It is simply not required anymore. Most of "IT" now is just navigating the web UIs of third party vendors. All the core knowledge being is outsourced and even that is disappearing fast - even people supporting various technologies often don't really know how what they are doing is working.

hornethacker97@reddit

Bachelors, my mistake. Corrected it.

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briangraper@reddit

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BoredTechyGuy@reddit

As someone who has no certs and does well. Make connections with people. It's how you bypass that crap.

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narcissisadmin@reddit

My boss said "it's not rocket science", my mate said "it's not rocket surgery", and I said "it's not like talking to girls".

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shiggy__diggy@reddit

Same, I got a couple certs in college and let them all lapse, no employer ever asked for them given my experience.

Unable-Entrance3110@reddit

Haha, this sounds familiar. I have been hired out as the "XYZ" expert a few times. I once did an Exchange migration and I had only ever worked with Exchange a few times. I just did some basic research the night before and, luckily, nothing went wrong...

I did a Citrix rollout at a place after doing a crash course and gaining my CCEA within a month of showing up onsite for the rollout.

There was one time when I was brought in to install an SSL certificate when it was still a very new concept. I had no idea what I was doing but just followed the documentation and got it done.

I have done many router and firewall upgrades/migrations/installs where, upon entering the site I had no real knowledge of the network topology nor any real deep understanding of networking at the time.

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hornethacker97@reddit

The courses they’ve assigned us have yet to teach me a single thing. Plus, they’re not real training courses, they’re just teaching what to memorize to pass the exam. Worthless training without the certs.

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Electrical_Focus_608@reddit

F your excuses. Get off reddit and get back to studying.

I don't want to hear no cry me a river story. Tons of ppl have been in your shoes.

Companies like that can take advantage of ppl like you because you won't leave!

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erm_what_@reddit

Their excuse is that they have the skills but not the money to pay for the certs. How will studying help?

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Darkone539@reddit

I don't want to hear no cry me a river story. Tons of ppl have been in your shoes.

Not in IT but in a field where you would expect recent graduates to have a firm grasp on technology.

I think It’s a new generation thing. I think people that grew up or were in industry when computing was brand new had to learn a lot more given how non-intuitive a lot of the UIs and technology was.

These days a baby can use an iPhone showing how far the world has come in this space. However this comes at the expense of just general trouble shooting skills.

However there can be taught so just be as a good of a mentor as you can, you will know who is willing to learn and who isn’t.

Just my two cents

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Lost-Droids@reddit

Problem is a lot of people aren't fiddlers.. you want someone who spends their own time taking it apart, fiddling and seeing how everything works and breaking it and fixing it b3fore they even get to University (as that's going to t3ach them not a lot)

Those people are rare

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2drawnonward5@reddit

This right here. I'd go so far as to say I've never expected an education to teach sysadmin topics like AD or Exchange. Those skills always follow the fiddlers, tinkerers, hobbyists.

They don't even need to spend a ton of time on it. Anybody who follows curiosity when it strikes them is going to shine.

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the-good-hand@reddit

Best comment! The new wave of techs don’t seem to have natural passion and curiosity, so they struggle to learn the basics and approach certs as checkboxes not an opportunity to really learn.

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HotTakes4HotCakes@reddit

It's because most of them were given iPhones as their first real bit of technology, and their schools gave them locked down MacBooks or Chromebooks.

They were born into an ecosystem that never encouraged curiosity or tinkering, and outright prevents it in many ways. They were taught from a young age not to tinker or tweak, not to seek solutions, customize, or shape their experiences with technology to meet their needs.

They were taught to accept what's put in front of them, to always use the defaults, and never question whether it can be done differently, or what's even possible with a little freedom and curiosity.

It's going to get even worse with the next generation. Even Android and Windows are slowly locking down the space more and more. Any kid that may want to tinker basically can't anymore, unless they use linux. Not to the same degree we could.

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The problem is that Chromebooks are very secure. On Windows there were plenty of way to bypass restrictions and by doing so it built skill. Now Chromebooks give zero freedom and whats worse is that they teach kids that surveillance and censorship is ok. I remember when schools used to force block all ads but now they block Wikipedia instead. I think the heart of the problem is that there is to much of a push to "protect the children." Sure you probably shouldn't allow adult websites but the system is locked down so extreme that they can't do anything.

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

I hesitate on a lot of the certs as they seem more like memorizing textbook questions than anything. It depends on the cert but I rarely see them as building a complete understanding.

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

I think the fiddlers are not going to be drawn toward Windows server and thus they don't learn AD. Linux is where the hobbyists are at. They main reason I personally have a decent AD understanding is that I have been playing with Samba for a few years. With Active directory you stand it up once and then get bored. Samba is imperfect and still has bugs and missing functionality. I like to find issues with it and then report it upstream.

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okay but like in all fairness what you described isnt like, a tech issue, thats a general issue

im in my early 30s and like. what is the point of putting in the extra mile because no one at the top of the ladder cares lol

like yeah i get what youre saying, you are 100% valid, but we've kind of had showcased to us that you kind of get thrown out no matter how good or useful you become at work time and time again so you just stay selfish

on top of that most places actively discourage change. every job ive had so far, tech or not, you want to make change? it was hellish. and not even like "we should introduce these 5 new platforms", just like "we should try to be slightly more efficient" and then you're turned at the door for being too eager. it is really discouraging. not saying thats not the case for you - obviously, they have an opportunity - but at large it's a real issue

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Sorry for rambling, a lot of it is hard to put into words, but while there's definitely lazy younger people, a lot of us don't care because we get burned no matter the effort put in, so it's demoralizing to improve your knowledge after that when I can just doomscroll or boot up a game

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koralie133@reddit

Then to me it sounds like it would be better to try and get a job in the 'other stuff' you're willing to learn about or just something different (waaaaaay easier said than done I know, especially depending on what you're referencing).

Improving my knowledge has nothing to do with how someone else receives it. Maybe I figured it how to code a really cool script that helps automate a difficult process only to be told I can't use it because x, y, z. That's fine, I'll keep the script for some other use or job and be happy with the knowledge I gained figuring out it. Maybe there's a much better workflow for tickets that would help everyone and it gets denied for no good reason. That's fine, I tried and they didn't want to use it, but at least I tried.

I personally couldn't work somewhere that I have no passion for. Are there people in my job that didn't appreciate my help or that I've had to disappoint because something can't be done? Yes, that happens occasionally. Do people get mad at me sometimes and yell or call me names? Sometimes. Do other departments talk bad about us on calls even when we've bailed them out on this project and it's only working because we had to do their job? Again yes. And it's frustrating.

But even with a lot of that happening (even if it's constantly for a week or more) I still enjoy what I do because there are other things I'm doing at the same time that I'm learning from. There are always little tickets that can be done that give me a sense of accomplishment or I know that I've fixed a problem for a person even if they take it for granted.

I have been in a job that made me feel demoralized and not want to try. I got to the point that I didn't really want to work and started putting in minimum effort. And what bothered me the most was that I WASN'T trying. So i decided that place wasn't worth my time or mental health and started looking for another job.

Maybe this is just a case of generational mindsets being different but I can't really understand being okay with feeling like that.

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blueish55@reddit

i honestly debated writing a lot paragraph but honestly the whole thing just boils down to "really don't want to do much of anything but have fun after work" like yeah i could learn more about linux distros or programming or setting up a home network but i'll figure out what i need to figure out when i need to and boot up a game or read a book for my own leisure till that moment comes

i don't know how old you are, but people around my age do not feel listened to at their jobs in most cases, usually ignored in favor of older folks, stuff isn't really made to change, so no one, respectfully, gives a shit about being accomplished. we want our paycheck and then we want to fuck off home. sorry for being crude but that's the reality of it.

i do know some people that still have that tech mindset, but learning and change aren't really encouraged openly anymore in most spaces, so i've seen people around my age do the bare minimum or only learn things if work requires it then move on to whatever hobby or thing they enjoy in their free time. yeah it's selfish, yeah it's juvenile, but it is what it is.

it's very doom and gloom but why bother on bettering yourself under those conditions?

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koralie133@reddit

Thanks for explaining how you feel!

I think a big thing now is that people don't take time to try and understand how the other side looks at things so it was nice to hear the other side for a change.

I hope the market gets better at some point so you and people like you have the chance to have a job they can at least like a bit more instead of how it currently sounds.

(Btw early 30's here)

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narcissisadmin@reddit

What I learned during my years of having full reign over the previous generation of equipment was absolutely invaluable.

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-Disgruntled-Goat-@reddit

Curiosity

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

We exist but often get buried in the crowd. I grew up working on older electronics like tape recorders and then moved to computers toward the end of grade school. I had zero budget so worked with a lot of older garage sale hardware. Recently I discovered ebay and now I have a Proxmox cluster hosting a bunch of my services. I feel like I'm the only young guy who likes physical media. In a few decades I will be the only guy working who knows cassette tapes and VHS.

There are financial reasons for why it is locked away. For instance, Google wants you to use Google drive and Google photos. Also if you start tinkering you aren't seeing ads and you might end up discovering the insanity that Google service framework is. They want you to use the device and to not think about how it might be very bad for privacy and freedom.

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Ssakaa@reddit

but phones are inherently single-user for the most part, why the FUCK can't I see that my SD card is throwing I/O errors without rooting the damn phone?

(taking a bit of a Devil's advocate route here)... not exactly. Phones are multi-user, it's just the user in charge is the telco, not the person that thinks they own it, whether bought outright or financed et. al. It's their company device in practice like any MDM enrolled laptop is your company's device in practice. They treat it that way because there's a whole layer of the system, the radio hardware itself and the OS that runs it (separate from iOS or Android) that inherently trusts the mobile provider and their network more than it trusts you. They also treat it that way because just about every major country they operate in requires their radio operations be strictly controlled and certified to "not cause interference" et. al. So it is a multi-user device, and multi-OS! It's just not as "yours" as you think it is.

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TheDunadan29@reddit

Well and even I have to be reminded to check the logs sometimes. Whenever someone says, "did you check the logs?" I sort of groan and go, "oh yeah, I should have done that before asking." And it's not easy to read, it's a lot of technical outputs that most have little meaning unless you know what to look for. But even for me it's not always my automatic go to. But for some people logs are like ancient Egyptian and they have no idea where to look for them, how to read them, and have little patience to dig through. It really is a skill, and one you have to learn.

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

In all fairness some errors are incredibly intuitive. (what the hell does error 435234 mean? Can't it just say what went wrong?)

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Well, I still remember 486s with 8MB, WinNT4 Server, 256 colour 480p 60Hz 14"CRT and no physical mouse. This was in 1998 in University CS Laboratory. I learned a lot of keyboard shortcuts. Surprisingly, there are some new ones in comprehensive Windows versions

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Ani-3@reddit

I'd argue millennials are the true digital natives. Though we may not have started with much in terms of tech.

I'd also like to point out that not using the CLI seems to be the rule not the exception. Even dudes with 4x my tenure are afraid of it. The new guys not learning it are pretty par for the course.

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Tzctredd@reddit

We worked with CLIs because we had to, but Bessie they are a great advancement.

I kid you not, I'm ready to dictate to an AI engine what I want, go for lunch, and have it all ready for revision when I'm back. If that's the starting point of time people that's fine by me.

It's called progress.

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TheDunadan29@reddit

While I don't have any problem with that I'm theory, you still need to understand scripting so you can verify the AI got it correct. And the number is times AI guy it wrong, it ended up being faster doing it right myself.

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entropy512@reddit

Starting with DOS in the pre-Windows days probably is one of the reasons I was more comfortable with Linux commandline when I started fiddling with Slackware in the mid-late 1990s.

There's also a group of people who have never used a GOOD commandline (reliable tab completion for example) and think all commandlines are garbage as a result. Unlike years of no tab-complete or history in CMD, and PowerShell's utterly garbage-tastic tab completion of "Pick a random choice from the possibilities in no discernible order, then descend downwards into that directory instead of allowing another choice", vs "I can't complete this for you without further info, here are your choices."

At least as far as phones/tablets, there are fiddlers there, at least on the Android side - rooting, custom firmwares, custom kernels, etc. Yeah there are some horrible gloryhound kangers in that scene, but at least people are fiddling and HOPEFULLY many of them are learning.

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sykotic1189@reddit

This kind of thing is why I'm teaching my son how to use my PC as he gets older. He's a whiz when it comes to his tablet , so much so I have to go in and lock one down before giving it to him, but some day he's going to have to sit down and use a computer for work and I'll be damned if he doesn't have a concept of the basics at least.

You are spot on. I remember having an issue with my modem card and having to take like 10 trips to the library to download driver after driver until something finally worked. Same issues with random sound cards and monitors. Now you just plug shit in and it works.

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vrtigo1@reddit

That's why one of my interview questions has always been and will always be "Tell me how you use technology in your personal life" and/or "what personal projects have you worked on".

The rockstars in tech will give you some wild answers to this sort of question. The people graduating out of the degree mills expecting IT to make them rich just sort of sit there like deer in the headlights.

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Future_End_4089@reddit (OP)

These kind of people are usually the best.

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ByGollie@reddit

Smartphones are to blame

between 2000-2008 i was seriously worried about job security. All the younger ones coming up cut their teeth on windows PCs and laptops - maybe even some Linux and macOS, wrestling with installign software, pirating media and PC games etc. etc.

Since then - the rise of the smartphone (and to a lesser degree gaming consoles) has lead to a gradual IT dumbing down of the younger population.

They're consumers of technology, not tinkerers with technology

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

Honestly not much has changed. They key difference is that there are simply way more people using computers then there were previously. Before they only computer users were the ones who liked computers or had a business use. Now it is everyone and there dog and it is unreasonable to expect everyone to care.

Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

Don't tinker in the exact same thing you do as a job. Do something interesting to you personally even if it has no professional benefit. Chances are there is some random thing that you will learn that is applicable 5 years down the line.

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Write-Error@reddit

Imo I feel like the population of tinkerers has dwindled largely due to the popularity of iPads in younger generations. I work with a lot of University faculty and a few of the CS professors have considered building basic Windows operations into their Fundamentals curricula. Some of the incoming students apparently have trouble with the concept of folder structures/hierarchy.

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

It isn't just a few, it is the majority especially if they come from lower income families or from families with lots of children. They only know Chrome and nothing else. This isn't a CS/IT problem either. You get engineering, English and other majors who can't figure out basic computer things. They can do things like Matlab but when you ask them to import a file or submit there assignment they fall on there face.

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christobevii3@reddit

This is a problem with 0-3 year employees in IT and Mechanical engineering. Only used phones or tablets so they dump everything in the default folder and just scroll to find it. Not knowing what servers are or what the event viewer is problematic. Expecting a script they can copy and paste to resolve anything.

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

I am a tinker by nature. The problem I have found is that that is a very abstract skill that is hard to convey. I can start talking about some random hobby stuff I was working on but if I don't have an absolutely perfect understanding of it all they just assume I am full of BS. To be far there is a lot of people who will just throw around terms but in my case I struggle to keep all the lingo straight. I can explain something I just never seen to use the right words the employers are looking for.

It doesn't help that 90% of my generation have little understanding of how things work because they do not do any side projects or reading. Not only do I have to prove myself I also have to prove that I'm not an idiot and that I have basic skills like showing up on time.

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Didn’t realise I was rare!

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Sengfeng@reddit

I’ve hit an impasse with my work’s management because they want someone to ‘just figure it out’ with no training, no documentation, no sandbox environment to mess around, try things, break them, fix them. Everything now has subscription licensing, so trying to set up a real home lab is getting harder and harder, and then there’s cloud…. No free lunch to those that originally dove into new tech when you could use it free for testing purposes.

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sir_mrej@reddit

There's way less things to fiddle with these days. I fiddled with the family desktop computer in the 80s/90s. Those dont exist anymore.

Once I had it fully disassembled, I found I could not put it back together and remember crying to my Nona that my brother was going to kill me.

Nona tried her best, but a Phillips screwdriver was not her friend. She was an absolute genius in the kitchen though. ;)

Fiddlers, as OP described it, are a different sort. I'd argue that most fiddlers are actually engineers at heart, perhaps without the training. When a machine is not working, instead of twisting our mustaches and tugging our suspends, we stick our head in the machine to see what the hell is going on.

What's it doing?
What's it not doing?
What's it supposed to do?
How do we get it to do what it's supposed to do?

Troubleshooting 101.

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gleep52@reddit

And I can’t seem to find anyone like me to nerd out with anymore. Even my own kids lose interest at some point during my geek times - meanwhile, I know how to break it, fix it, repair it, build it, and improve the design. 3D printers are an amazing addition to my improvement scheme. Sure do wish there was more of me around (the fun loving nerd part, not the irritable guy in me)

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If you're referring to the free tiers, it depends what "basics" you're referring to.

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ComputerShiba@reddit

sounds like excuses, every time i’ve heard one of my team members make excuses for why they don’t have a dev tenant or some hosting platform at home like WS/ProxMox/unraid, I always internally roll my eyes

if you’re interested, you’ll find a way to get what you want setup and running

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Future_End_4089@reddit (OP)

Correct. My dev tenant expired I have to look into getting it back.

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vermyx@reddit

You don't. You can buy old hardware like an optiplex 7060 and spap 32GB of RAm for ubder 250. Most schools participate in Azure for Students so you find a school that has an IT program (like a community college) and sign up with your school email. This will typically give you access to a Windows Education license along with a Windows Datacenter license and some other windows software.

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Kozalteewan@reddit

Back in a day, you could install virtual box on your 4gb ram laptop. Get 2 windows srv 2012 VMs with 1gb each, domain controller on windows srv 2008 with 512 mb and freeNAS with iSCSI targets, and voila 2 node cluster on 3gb of RAM :)

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GitMergeConflict@reddit

That's why I'm a linux guy, when I was 16, I had no money for nonsense licensing. I had barely enough to build my first PC. I know it was common to use cracks at that time but I found the practice really crappy, you cannot do it in a professional environment so you cannot use what you learn until you pay a limited and expensive license. Without any warranty that your company will pay for that license. Anyway everything was behind paywalls/private portals in the Microsoft world...

So I started with Linux, GNU manuals, linux from scratch, gentoo doc... The amount of free documentation available online was incredible. Thanks to all the anonymous foss contributors for my career.

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charleswj@reddit

You need zero licenses to build a lab

charleswj@reddit

Don't be discouraged. I was/am you. I'm the jack of all trades that gets bored specializing. I also struggled to explain why I didn't want to promote my way to "it manager" 🤮 but that was often because others can't fathom not aspiring to that. I agree it's more of a challenge in smaller orgs. I ended up at a large tech company supporting our customers, and we have defined IC/non-IC tracks and I can thankfully be the former forever without hitting a ceiling. But it's about building your brand, if you're good at "not knowing about x until you need to swoop in and ramp for an afternoon and suddenly explain to the so called experts how their product actually works", there are definitely roles for that. They often won't be called that or even intentionally be looking for that, but if you show that that's what you're good at, you should be extremely employable and valuable in any role.

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dogcmp6@reddit

People are scared to play around.

At any one time my desk has about 10 different side projects, all of which involve some level of fiddling around with either software or hardware...Usually its just busy work, or to expand my skills, but a good chunk of them have made off of my desk and to a broader team to implement, or on the rare ocassion I did a super good job, I have been green lit to run the implementation its self.

This is an industry where its far easier to keep up by tinkering, and actively working on projects to up skill, or even learn new ones. Sure, we use google, tech boards, and even reddit alot to help us find what we dont know, but knowing how to figure it out for your self is still an important skill in any industrty, but specfically in ours.

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gravityVT@reddit

That’s me in middle and high school. I volunteered to fix friends pcs too.

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soupdiver23@reddit

Yes, this is the secret sauce

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nashant@reddit

100%. This is why the interviews I run allow people full access to the Internet for scenario/problem parts. You can often tell a tinkerer by the search terms they construct and how they refine them.

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Ok-Car-2916@reddit

I'm not because, humble brag, I never got close to the service desk or whatever.

There is massive variability in the quality of new entrants into IT and programming and whatnot. You are going to wind up finding what you are targeting for the most part.

Very well qualified applicants (that more importantly, can actually put that knowledge into practice and provably so) are not applying to these typical entry level positions. That's never really been the case. People apply to the level of job that best balances their own confidence and skill level and the requirements of employers.

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fasti-au@reddit

Ai in OS solves it mate. We’re too old to tell them it’s wrong because when they said you need to learn to count we learnt.

You don’t need to know how to count. You need to know how to find the answer. That’s why tools are used. I don’t know how every tool works exactly but I know how to get from a -b.

In our world we needed to know about memhigh, virtualram l, RAID, DMA channels, interupts. Baud rates. Etc.

You really need that now for day to day IT?

I agree they don’t know how things work but I don’t think it’s much more than them getting a bit of experience and joining the dots.

Also more up the aspies and adhd people we able to think and exist making IT better.

Now we’re scared of working in these industries

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EZ-READER@reddit

I can't say for sure but this is MY opinion.

You have been in the industry for a long time and "grew" with the technology as it was introduced. For you learning these things was a slow burn (relatively speaking) over 35 years.

Now you have people entering the field that have to learn the accumulation of decades of technical advancement in a very short time. To use a euphemism they are "drinking from a fire hose". The problem is what is considered "basic" is a moving target and they have to learn exponentially more than you did when you started.

Take networking for example (the field I work in). It has changed so much in just 5 years. Early networking was certainly far less complex. If you knew 10 percent then of what you have to know now you would be considered a guru among peers and could name your salary. These days that "guru" knowledge would barely be considered entry level.

Can you honestly say you even had to know 10% of what someone entering the industry has to know today?

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ChampOfTheUniverse@reddit

Man I was listening to SiriusXM and there was an advertisement for some bs tech school and it has a testimony saying that IT was practically recession proof. They have no shame.

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lnp66@reddit

Also. They are incapable of thinking logically and troubleshooting

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teebee@reddit

I'm not quite as old but more than old enough. What I find kids coming out of school is they feel they're too good for entry level jobs. Fresh kid out of school. What do you mean I'm not going to get this architect position? Like the jobs I did when I was getting into IT I did phone support and help desk you offer those positions so they can build their skills. But no I went to school I want a senior level role even though I've never worked in a production environment in their life.

Do help desk or phone support for a couple years learn your craft show the old dinosaurs some news tricks. Get a Jr role work your way up. But no one wants to do that.

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Nossa30@reddit

Thats kind how i did things when I first started at 22. I'm 31 now. I have some college but technically no degree.

Started off answering phones out of helpdesk. Did that for 3+ years. So much shit I thought I knew, I didn't know shit about fuck. Even simple stuff like outlook, or excel I didn't really know how to use as well as I thought. After making $9 an hour for years, making $16 an hour felt like I was rich.

Some small business needed an "IT guy" and basically hired me on the spot after I fixed another employee's email infront of him. I moved away from that helpdesk role into a solo admin thing. Bit off way more than I could chew but I grew into it, and learned a lot from reddit and books. A lot of hard lessons I had to learn very quickly from being a simple helpdesk guy. Going from $16 > $25 an hour again felt like was a freaking king.

Now I'm a mid level admin making a salary now. Each role before helped propel me into what I am now. I'm not saying the path i travelled is what everyone should do but it worked.

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teebee@reddit

Yup every job built on the experience of the one before.

I wonder if they had the time to do that back then vs now where they want someone to "hit the ground running" on day 1.

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imreloadin@reddit

Sure bud, tell me more about how you walked to school uphill both ways as well while you're at it...

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xt0rt@reddit

He's absolutely right though. I've never received any training* in the 25 years of doing this job. I've been mentored here and there, but that was because someone took an interest in me and took it upon themselves to show me the ropes, or fill in the blanks in my knowledge.

*I will say that I did actually receive training in the form of being sent to learn our new helpdesk software for 3 days so that I could teach all of the new hires when we went live.

I appreciate the words of courage, thank you. I'm not averse to learning the classes and courses, but it's the hands-on experience that I lack, which is what OP is talking about. The "just do stuff" mentality doesn't apply to me because I fear I'll break the thing with any single button I press.

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RyuMaou@reddit

Well, that may be the secret. I've learned more from the things I've broken and had to then fix than anything else. And, I've broken some big systems, then gotten them back up and running again. These days, with snapshots and instant file restores and the like, I think I'm probably TOO fearless and I take TOO many chances, knowing that Shadow Copies and automatic backups of the last rev are there to save me.

Hang in there, though. No matter what anyone tells you, everyone breaks things and screws up while we learn to do it right.

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The downloads folder is a very complicated concept in there defense /s

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r0ndr4s@reddit

I work as an "on-site IT" and I'm studying to be a sysadmin.

Man.. on my place of work half of the people that have passed trough there dont understand the basics of anything, let alone IT. Its amazing how many fuck ups everyone makes or how many stupid questions you get from your own coworkers.

And when it comes to my fellow students, like half of them are +40 years old with 0 experience in IT of any kind. They just went into it because they think this is some kind of hobby or that they will instantly get paid super well.

Like I know I'm no expert in anything, its ok, I can learn, I can google,take notes,etc but some people dont even take a freakin screenshot and then ask you the same fuckin thing 15 times in 3 days and still dont know what they're doing.

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

Teaching DDR5 is silly as it will just be obsolete in a few years.

Sounds like a course designed to milk you

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Hypervisor22@reddit

I am a retired old IT guy I spent my career in mainframes, Unix, Linux, Windows, storage, networking- all as a sysadmin hands on guy and manager. 40 plus years.

You are 100% correct my friend. It happened gradually over the decades - new hires out of school or rookies don’t really know how the servers and systems work. They are super specialized in a certain skill set but have no idea how the system works as a whole. People here can make fun of me and say it is not true BUT as an admin I have seen it for decades. That is why despite the movement to automate and get rid of sysadmins it will eventually fail because inevitably when stuff breaks who do people come to to bail them out??

SYSADMINS THAT IS WHO !! ALWAYS !!

And that is why the desire to automate and get rid of sysadmins is folly, automation doesn’t always work and you need a real human to fix automation when it breaks. you would think young execs that read stuff online would know this BUT they don’t. To you execs who get rid of sysadmins when stuff breaks good luck

Contact me and I will fix your broken stuff for $1 million an incident and when your environment is totally down you will pay it.

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

You need to pass on your knowledge to someone who wants to learn. That kind of person is minority but when you find them pass on what you know and be a mentor. Right now there is a huge generational gap. If the opportunity arises train the person who can help fill it.

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Future_End_4089@reddit (OP)

I smiled when i read your post. Thank you.

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T1m60@reddit

OMG yes, this. It’s shocking.

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I didn’t go to school for IT and there was much less documentation and Internet resources back then. I think OP expects new hires with a degree to have a higher level of understanding?

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LaughterSaves@reddit

People forget Google came around well after the lot of us had already started figuring shit out.

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slashinhobo1@reddit

Most schools only go over the basics anyway, what most of the people are looking for is someone with experience getting out of school which isn't going to happen. If you hire someone with no experience expect them to know nothing other than the basics of a computer. From there expect that they are willing to learn from someone there.

Most of schooling is general education with about 30 units of actual course work. Its the same for every field.

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1randomzebra@reddit

There are programs that integrate internships into their programs to provide experience - back in the 90’s - northeastern in Boston used to do this - hired a bunch of people from there

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slashinhobo1@reddit

Back in the 90s IT was a growing field, now its beyond growing now. Heck with MSP and sending jobs overseas you wont find many startup jobs that don't require experience.

You have to compete for internships and there are a lot that wont even pay. Schools can require an internship to graduate, but they need to provide them because currently even in Silicon Valley they are very few. Back when I was in school about 15 years ago I managed to get an unpaid internship but a lot of the students couldn't find one. That removed it because it meant they couldn't graduate without it.

So its a choice between living paying rent and working at a non technical job or working an internship and not being able to afford rent, or the last choice work the internship, at nights work the non technical job, and then get minimal sleep to repeat the cycle. For a while I did option 3 which was not fun.

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kiragami@reddit

Exactly hire for personality train for skill

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Future_End_4089@reddit (OP)

No not really disproving my point. Yes we had to learn the basics, but the difference is WE WANTED TO LEARN THE BASICS. The new gen of IT and i am not saying all of them really don't want to know the basics to improve on how they accomplish a tasks.

Again this does not apply to everyone coming up but a lot of them.

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Phyltre@reddit

It's kind of the other way around. Right now you can get basically an infinite quantity of info about AD from the internet. In previous eras they had to literally figure it out because resources were few and far between and libraries weren't carrying current books (if at all) and neither were bookstores on average. So you were buying $50-100 books that might not really cover anything in a useful way. You could try mail-ordering books and other stuff but that gets even more expensive quick and the average resource quality was low, speaking as someone who bought lots of books that frankly sucked if you didn't already know what the book was telling you.

Now is totally and completely different. You can find anyone asking basically any question that has ever been asked about AD. You can find literally any book for free although that may not be legal. There are basically infinite hours of YouTube content about it. In the 2000s those (usually garbage) video CDs and DVDs that came with books? Those videos were probably $5 apiece. And again, they usually sucked.

It's true of other fields too. If you're learning Japanese or something the Internet was basically useless for you before video streaming. But now you can watch decades worth of Japanese content and Japanese language learning specific content completely and totally for free. Today, if someone doesn't know something (professionally speaking) that is almost certainly on them.

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H3rbert_K0rnfeld@reddit

I've also been in IT for 25 years.

I'm so glad it's not hackery wild west nonsense any more.

Ask Rolls Royce, Ferrari, Lamborghini how well they scale production. They hand-maxhine parts and hand assemble the vehicle. That causes each vehicle to have slight deviations from design. A customer buys the product, the product breaks, the product sits in the shop for years while parts are custom machined ... On order and by hand. This shitty customer service ensures the customer never comes back.

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plebbitier@reddit

The new guard gives 0 fucks about reliability or downtime. In their mind, downtime is inevitable, and not a big deal. This is a huge departure from the five 9's that used to be the standard of reliability.

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

I like how the cloud was suppose to fix it all but now the entire world comes to a halt when Teams has an issue

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Jazzlike_Tonight_982@reddit

Im an old guy too. I see this alot. But anything is better than shipping it off to india.

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

There you get young Indians with the same problems

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theaveragenerd@reddit

When I mentor the younger gen of IT at my job the first thing I tell them to do is watch the YouTube series PowerShell in a Month of Lunches.

Most of them with IT Degrees never touched PowerShell in school.

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

That is pretty bad...

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iamLisppy@reddit

Send them this, too: 1. Don't fear the shell

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legrenabeach@reddit

I and a friend learned "sysadmin" skills by ourselves, just for fun and personal improvement initially. My friend now has a managerial position after many years of successful sysadmin roles. I have a different job (teacher) but continue to learn and practice system administration on my homelab servers.

Neither of us learned virtually any of these skills in uni. I had rudimentary instruction on Linux command line I my CS course, only to allow me to support the projects we'd be running. My friend never learned a single sysadmin thing in his CS course, it was all about programming, algorithms and general low level stuff and theory.

Outside specialised private courses like LF, RH, CompTIA, etc, are there any college or uni courses specifically on system administration skills?

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

Admin skills are complex and require actual experience.

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Future_End_4089@reddit (OP)

Today's IT generation will never know the excitement of the Windows 95 release, it was an absolute game changer.

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It's about the strides of the progress. It's natural that in technology the earlier strides were much larger and more exciting, it's just how things go.

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Sounds like a typical MSP.

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TxDuctTape@reddit

Not just PC techs. Run across a lotta Network guys that can't/don't use cli. Some of those OSs are linux based. Handy AF to grep, scp, more, sed, etc.

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

I'm not sure how you can be a network guy and not know basic CLI.

Maybe they come from Microsoft environments or something

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Future_End_4089@reddit (OP)

command line is foreign to the new generation.

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reni-chan@reddit

You can teach people how to do stuff but you can't teach them to be interested.

I find hiring super difficult because most people seem not to be genuinely interested in computers, and lack basic troubleshooting skills. Something goes off the script and they escalate immediately or click random things expecting stuff to start working again, with no method or thought behind it.

It's frustrating, if I could draw you a flowchart how how to fix every possible problem under the sun I wouldn't be hiring because I would just automate it all.

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

Don't keep those people on staff. Also be extra mindful not to penalize mistakes. I've seen companies that encourage level one help desks to only follow the script and to escalate almost immediately.

Let the new techs crash and burn even if that has somewhat of a negative impact in the short term. If they screw up bad don't discipline them. Make them go and fix it even if that means not reimaging. Don't give them an easy button.

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Future_End_4089@reddit (OP)

This---> "You can teach people how to do stuff but you can't teach them to be interested"

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WriterCommercial6485@reddit

I made a post basically saying this and I got crucified for being a shitty mentor and not just baby birding the junior guys

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reni-chan@reddit

My theory is that people started to see IT as a good way to make a lot of money and now we suffer because of it. The truth is that to be a good IT person you need to be able to think in a very structured, logical manner and have patience to dig in and understand the root of how something works, and majority of the population simply cannot do it.

These people then somehow end up landing jobs where they are highly unproductive and most of the actual work ends up landing on the desks of the few that are capable of actually doing the job.

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chaosphere_mk@reddit

I'm 37 and have been doing IT for 17 years now.

Even when I was 5 years in, most IT people I ran into didn't have the basics down.

Not sure this is a time-based observation. I think it's just true most of the time.

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

To be far we are all human. However I've met some people who are embarrassing bad at there jobs. They often get others to do there own work and are copy pasters. These are the same people who cheat in academia.

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_Ope_MidwestAccent@reddit

I watched a newbie with a Bachelor’s in CIS have a hard time using explorer to find the c: drive. They just don’t have to use cases to challenge them into the areas we used to have to go. So much is just SaaS now that all they really have to know is what website to go to.

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

In all fairness the big tech companies hide the underlying filesystem so that you just use cloud storage without thinking about it.

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_Ope_MidwestAccent@reddit

Agreed and helps make the point. The reason and the resultant growing pains that forced the muscle memory to understand the OS architecture or VPN handshakes or more just isn’t there.

My early computer skills were driven by a need for speed! If I didn’t know how to transverse the file system in DOS, no Test Drive simulation on my uncle’s computer without him there :). To your point, the people entering the industry now have had “apps” at their fingertips.

BTW - I wasn’t really knocking or trying to be unfair to the newbie if it sounded like it— they were happily coached up after.

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brewman101@reddit

Sadly what I do see is people haven't been taken through the process of troubleshooting. Having been in the industry decades we do take for granted all the teaching we received e.g. stepping through the osi layers. Working through systematically.

There is a misconception that the fastest response is best. But fast is just fast. It's better to understand the root cause and prevent a reoccurrence.

SaaS also abstracts away many layers that old school system admins would be aware of.

I think the answer is providing space for engineers to ask questions, make mistakes and take their time.

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Future_End_4089@reddit (OP)

Troubleshooting skills are hard to find in the new gen of IT tech. A few have it but it's so RARE.

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hornethacker97@reddit

Basic logic quizzes should be a part of an interview for IT in my opinion. Logic is no longer taught in most schools, hence the decline of critical thinking abilities.

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Taurich@reddit

It certainly feels like most of schooling is just rote memory work now where you absorb information, and then barf it back out in very specific contexts.

They are getting a lot of "Who/What/When" and not a lot of "Why/How" in their educations.

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

Honestly the best way to learn is to work on useless stuff. Stop trying to extract value and get your young techs working on something that doesn't have a clear goal. The key is to get them to pickup knowledge and skills.

Getthe young techs to functional computer out of only broken junk or setup a HA Minecraft server out of some retired server hardware. Give little direction but make it fun.

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OkIndependence7978@reddit

I work in IT, and a admin of many system, I'm going to school to get a AS in computer science.
I can confirm that if you hire someone out of collage they have no idea how to manage a computer and no idea how to manage a domain, let alone spinning VM's up in azure of aws,

knucklegrumble@reddit

Also true. But to be fair, most of the new technology is purposefully built so that even if you wanted to fix it, you can't. I don't mean to shit on Apple but they are the pioneers of this trend...

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

That is not a shock considering that most young people are dopamine focused. There is no dopamine hit going over boring tech stuff.

You need people who are critical thinkers and have the desire to learn and fail. Find the people who will throw themselves to the wolfs and then learn from there mistake. It is also a massive bonus if they tinker for fun.

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zenfridge@reddit

Agreed. We've hired people who are very technical, meaning they know the esoterics of something like AIX. I've got a guy working for me that can run circles around me with awk, and remembers flags on AIX specific commands more than I do. But he's "tested" a fix by pushing to production first - before our internal test servers, let alone the customer's five non-prod environments. And he can't take that knowledge and wrap project management or even ticket management around it. So he's a weird mix of highly technical but I have to help him think about what his next non-technical steps might be in a technical overall process.

We've had plenty of people with the technical knowledge to pass interviews, to the point that we now ask critical thinking questions as part of the interviews. And that still doesn't always filter out the paper-cert experts.

I do feel like "the old guy" complaining about it, but I got a CS degree a long time ago. Didn't teach me much about IT per se (although plenty of unix and database and EE/architecture did, as a foundation). But did teach me to learn how things worked, how to build something from scratch, how to be interested in the details, how to troubleshoot by understanding how it was built because no google will help you, learning infrastructure from the wire wrapping up to the assembly code, etc. Those lessons, as they applied to technology, were far more important. I don't wire wrap or write assembly, but I do intrinsically understand how many things are built without having any prior experience with them.

3 years of general computer science

1 year of hoping to learn cyber with no related experience to speak of

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Antonio13286@reddit

Like some of the cybersecurity industry - no IT knowledge to back it up

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Dontkillmejay@reddit

Yeah I've seen this, I'm a cyber sec engineer, worked my way through first second and first line over 5 years or so. We're getting people with no background in IT trying to jump straight into CyberSec with no foundational knowledge because of these "Become a Cyber Security Expert in 60 days!" courses.

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

I know those people

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

Those are the worst honestly. They click the scan button and tell everyone they should use 2FA.

however, they don't know anything about what happens behind the scenes or business needs. Shoot for max security and protect against theoretical threats while leaving massive doors open.

You can't go into cyber without at least a few years of basic entry level IT.

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arttechadventure@reddit

As a desktop support tech who would love the opportunity to get my hands dirty by working with a complex, environment... It seems the only way to make it into that kind of role is to get certs and fake the interview until someone hires you despite your lack of real world experience.

Gotta start somewhere.

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Comfortable_Gap1656@reddit

"These damn kids have no experience"

I've only been in the industry 15 years, so can't look that far back, but I feel like the amount of people required to do the job in mid sized businesses is much wider. Like 15 years ago, you could run a 1000 people business with a couple sysadmins, a couple coders, and a small help desk. There was nothing the tech team couldn't do.

Back when I was a kid tinkering with my parents computer (late 90's) just playing games required a decent level of computer skill.

With modern kids, whether its PC or even more so consoles, their exposure to computers is as a functional appliance. Everything "just works" so you aren't building any foundational troubleshooting skills until you enter the work force.

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hardcore-engineer@reddit

Not many people started tinkering when they were young. You can't expect all applicants to be hobbyists as a kid. Some discover they like electronics or IT late in life, some doesn't have the resources or background or influence that would have nudge them to IT when they were kids. Everyone has their own environment where they grew up in. It's just that, at one in our lives, we discovered we have a knack for computers.

I don't disagree with you, but I feel these kind of posts are just gatekeeping. Also, you can't expect anything from CS grads fresh out of school. They literally don't have any production experiences.

Actually I have been doing CCNA training recently. I'm getting the feeling that the CCNA is getting less valuable for a number of reasons - virtualization, cloud, and other networking vendor solutions.

The CCNA shouldn't even be an cert a person works on with zero practical experience but you see it all the time in the CCNA subreddit. It's pretty easy these days to follow Jeremy's IT for a month or three and buy a brain dump and then pass.

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nycola@reddit

Because 20 years ago the people who were "In IT" were the autistic/audhd who found technology as a passion or hyperfixation.

"what has that got to do with the price of tea in china?"

Most of these people don't have degrees, many of the older ones don't even have certs, yet they're probably some of the best (now greybeards) you know. Why? Because their learning style doesn't happen in school. It happens at home, at work, on a Saturday for a problem they finally solved at 3am.

The hyperfixation allowing them to not drop an issue until it is solved combined with the thirst to understand "why", and belive it or not, but the ability to find relevant data and use it to troubleshoot and solve issues is not as "commonplace" as many believe.

These are the ones who tell you to check the sound driver for a video crash because "a similar thing happened with my system last year and I run an AMD GPU with the same vendor sound card, sound driver upgrade solved the video bluescreen for me", and it works. That person had already invested the time in solving the issue, they are able to pattern match the issues to provide a work solution for an issue with similar patterns.

Succeeding in IT takes a certain type of brain. I will die on this hill...

So what happened? Well, IT became cool somehow, the promises of elite jobs like "cyber security expert", in my experience, have invited some of the most un-technically saavy IT people I've encountered. STEM pushs are great, but not when they end up offering programs to people who should have been art students but were talked into IT just because they got a scholarship, or a grant, or "would make more money". With no passion for what you do, you'll never succeed, but more importantly, happiness with work will be even more hard to achieve.

What's worse, is these people are more likely to end up as your manager - they may lack the IT skills needed to succeed in the field, but they often have the soft skills needed to be promoted out of a technical role and into a people-facing one which can make life miserable for everyone involved. (I've had some shit awful managers promise some shit awful things to people because they had no idea what they were actually promising).

But you also have to understand, it is, in many ways "more difficult" for them. Back in 1995, PCs weren't made with OEM parts. I had an IBM p75 with bad ram in 1994, they send me an entirely new PC. That one had good ram but a bad ram slot, so they sent me an entirely new PC. I had three full A-Z IBM PC's on my floor as I made a chop shop and combined the new larger drive, and working memory, to build the best system I could and send the others back as "does not work". Today, they'd have an HP tech do that for you. I was 14 at the time.

It is also harder to learn, more moving parts, more specialties to be had. I like to draw this as s similarity for people if you play games, it is helpful.

Imagine that when you got into IT, the world was also getting Pokemon Red/Blue. Or that when you got into IT, League of Legends just launched with its OG 32 champs.

It was a limited scope, easy to learn, 101 Pokemon, 32 champions.

Now imagine getting into those games now. 1025 Pokemon, 169 champions.

But you're expected to know all of that - if you've been in the field for 25, 30 years, you've watched the additions slowly, you know the history, the applicability. New kids are thrown into learning 1025 pokemon and 169 new champions all while they're still adding more.

It's a lot to learn, we were luckier than they were in many ways.

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Darkmetam0rph0s1s@reddit

Harder to learn is too, also higher expectation from the job market.

20 years ago, Network Engineer, Desktop Engineer, Programmer. Was all separate roles. Now you are expected to know all of them. Plus all three major cloud technologies.

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JankyTime1@reddit

STEM programs are pushing normies into a field that used to be nearly exclusively nerds and autists.

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Fwiler@reddit

No troubleshooting skills because they've never torn apart and put something back together again. They have no idea the flow of data or how individual components work.

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ncc74656m@reddit

I don't necessarily think that's the case.

I think what's really happened is that we've been flooded in the market with people who don't know the basics but got the degree because they were promised good money and good career opportunities. Of course, I've been kept in lower level positions by some of those very types of people because they all made manager by default of credentials, so there's obviously something to it.

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whopooted2toot@reddit

I was truly shocked when two different recent grad candidates couldn't even explain or understand basic level subnetting, or how to count binary, or grasp how any of it goes together. Basic CCNA stuff.

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Self_conscious_gh0st@reddit

The amount of first round interviews I've had to do the past few months that are solely focused on security certs and have zero ability to communicate general networking basics is almost to triple digits.

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Glassweaver@reddit

Yes and no. It depends on the company. If the company believes that everyone should have a 4-year degree, this is what you're going to get. If the company understands the value of experience, vocational education, technical colleges, and associates degrees, you stand a better chance at getting better candidates.

All that said, there's a certain aspect of learned helplessness as well. You could have multiple degrees and a vocational background, but one of the last questions on the first interview that I always ask is a troubleshooting scenario designed so that there's no winning. At some point, I will force the scenario into a situation where the person needs to ask for help. If their first inclination is to ask their teammates, they're not getting a second interview. "Google it" is the answer I'm looking for.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for asking teammates, but if that's the first thing someone goes to, that level of helplessness is not going to mesh very well with the rest of the team.

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MeMeowers@reddit

Had a woman get hired where I worked for a entry level help desk role and she didn’t know how to uninstall a program. That’s just one example but yeah I see this constantly.

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wootybooty@reddit

This… I’m in my mid-30’s, dropped out of college after my first semester but never stopped learning what interested me. This created two assets in my IT career, the ability to understand foundations of many issues and to fight harder than people with a degree.

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Fair-Soil-6267@reddit

Hey as someone leaving the IT field for teaching Higher Ed I am trying. I only teach associate level but I am trying to teach the basics and scenarios that they would be working as entry level.

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how-unfortunate@reddit

Lowly tech here.

If I have access, what is a short list of things I should seek to automate?

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The_Career_Oracle@reddit

And people think we old farts need to worry about having a job… nah not even close. Keep the kids glued to the screens and validating their existence to each other and keep making bank!!

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RequirementBusiness8@reddit

People have the expectations of their ground floor being where many of us labored for years to get to. Managers hiring because they look good on paper, fail to realize how much value experience has over degrees and certs. We have practical knowledge you don’t get from a college degree.

Probably one of the reasons I’ve done well in IT. Even before slugging my way up from the bottom, I paid attention to the old timers. Listened to their knowledge and experience, and leveraged it. A lot of kids don’t do that. I’m not a kid anymore.

The other bit though, even more horrifying, is the number of people who have gone into tech just for the money and not for the love or enjoyment of tech. It doesn’t have to be a pre-requisite, but you can tell them apart from a mile away.

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DisMuhUserName@reddit

Same age, same journey. I think the difference is that people tend to compartmentalize their skill set now. We grew up in a "if you want it done, figure it out yourself or buy the book" environment, which tends to take you in many directions and teach you a lot of skills. As an aside, I have thousands of dollars of obsolete computer books if you're interested. :)

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teknowledgist@reddit

I’m pretty much you.

Comp sci != IT

This needs to be shouted from the rooftops. There is no degree that teaches IT, and that is why I’ve told everyone who will listen that IT should be a trade with a union and apprenticeships like electricians, plumbers, stone masons, metal workers, etc.. A professional organization would also help with the most egregious deficiency of the career: a code of ethics like for lawyers, doctors and engineers. Break the code (and get caught, and you lose your IT license and ability to practice.

As for finding good troubleshooters, look for physics or philosophy majors and consider math and chemistry. They all (theoretically) learn how to break problems down and get at the key issue.

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Test-User-One@reddit

There are many colleges and universities that offer IT degrees. FAANGS like Microsoft and Amazon have partnered with a number of educational institutions to teach those base skills.

https://www.belhaven.edu/news/2024/04/belhaven-university-joins-aws-academy.html

One example of many. A number of institutions also support/run NOCs for small businesses staffed by college students. It gives the students practical experience and gives the businesses some protection/support they normally couldn't afford.

I agree that CS degrees teach programming, not IT. Which is why IT degrees exist.

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Appoxo@reddit

In Germany it is (like all other jobs) an apprenticeship

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biggdugg@reddit

100% agree. I've tried a couple times over the years to get some traction with local apprenticeship and trade organizations, but it's been like yelling into a void

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Tzctredd@reddit

To be honest this is the most self congratulatory old fart fest I have read here for a while.

The kids are perfectly fine, you saying they know nothing is deluded, it reminds me of old people I worked with when I started chastising me because I wasn't conversant with some technology that was on the way out, I didn't waste my time with that and never looked back.

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Less-Procedure-4104@reddit

It really doesn't matter about their age. I have seen new young folks come in and fail and new ones come in and succeed. The thing that is they same for all the successful ones they cared and were interested in learning. Nobody can know everything but some folks can deal without knowing and learning via fire others can't take the pressure. I have seen the smartest folks just not be able to deal with customers and dum dums technically have the best customer interaction. In the end I was the dum dum but I could manage customers and get the problem resolved. Just to many changes to quickly, to be able to keep up or really care to keep up.

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pycior@reddit

"Ok now send me your ssh pub key, here is the ovpn file, let me know once you've tunneled into the stg env"
/big-eyes-silent-scream-i-write-nextjs-lol

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vizax@reddit

This may be an unpopular opinion, but gonna throw it out, because it bothers me. I'll also say now that there are exceptions, but this is a very general statement regarding the USA.

With today's current education system you have two main 'features'. 1) the "no kid left behind" ideal and 2) standardized testing.

Not leaving kids behind is a good thing, except I think they have gone about it all wrong. They end up teaching to the lowest common denominator for getting everyone to pass the class (which provides more funding for the school, if not the teachers). This causes two problems: 1) the kids who get it are now bored and have no drive to do more than the minimum. And, 2) the kids who struggled are just getting passed along to the next class or grade without them having really learned anything. All of this leads to a generation of kids who struggled or kids who were bored.

Standardized testing can be, ideally, a potentially good thing to use to track the progress of students. However, schools are only teaching things that will be on the test. Better test scores increase funding and since the teaching system now revolves around the test, if you can take the test then you can pass the grade.

This is the generation we are seeing, people who are taught a minimum amount to be passed along to the next grade/class/etc. and were taught just enough to satisfy some test.

NOTE: I focused mainly on what I see as issues and not said anything about my thoughts on fixes. I dont think there's enough room in a reddit comment for me to go that far and I've probably ranted enough.

Lastly, I'd like to say this: I've spent many an hour discussing and teaching my own young children things that schools never touch on that are important in life. As a parent, it is my job also to teach my child, so I try to compensate as best as I can for what I deem lacking from the schools.

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Test-User-One@reddit

I'm not sure where you're going with this. My son is in college right now. He's learning powershell and bash scripting. Literally all of it is done from the command line, since both powershell and bash are shells.

What specifically are the folks you're seeing not knowing?

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DarkSkyViking@reddit

Ahh, I’m 55 and definitely don’t feel old.

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ZoteTheMitey@reddit

About to find out lol.

Am training a new IT site lead at one of our DC's this week

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Well it's a yes/no to this. Also "grew" up using that stuff. Hell in the 3.11-98 days i was forever making .bat files just to get the dam thing working like it was supposed to. Novell 3.1 LOL try not working in dos to get it to do anything. Today's OS's are way better than anything they have put out. I remember calling windows 95-98 plug and pray, because you prayed plug and play f**k'n worked. Only thing that i do notice is, if it doesn't work they are a bit too quick to throw in the towel and not do troubleshooting. I can respect if they come to me and say, hey this is messed up i tried this, this and this but it still doesn't work, can you help or what's up? It's way better then hearing it's not working can you fix it for me? I always tell them, well your the IT guy what do you think is wrong? to that. I mean hell with google today it's way easier than it was 20-30 yrs ago.

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Moontoya@reddit

to quote a well known lyric "same as it ever was, same as it ever was"

M C S E

Minesweeper Certified Solitaire Expert

CCNA

Cant Comprend network access

CNE

Completely new engineer

MCP

My computers problem

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Ok-Lengthiness9490@reddit

I about spit out my coffee with ‘editing Autoexec.bat files’. Did you ever remark out the Win command to see how much the newbie really knew? Ah-good times.

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19610taw3@reddit

What's interesting - going through interviews throughout 2022 and (mainly) 2023 ... I heard this a lot.

I'm in a relatively small talent pool region, so everyone kinda knows everyone and most people apply for the same jobs. What I gathered from interviews is the people in their 20s and early 30s have the education and credentials and can "do it by the book", so to speak ... but they don't have experience or troubleshooting.

It's a small area. A lot of the younger people have the same exact education/degree I have and are more qualified due to having CCNA, Security+ , etc but they just don't seem to be able to troubleshoot or understand what role we play in the business.

From what I was hearing, I was the youngest of people who have these extra skills. I am late 30s.

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Yep - I always ask a couple of multi-layered troubleshooting questions when I interview and in the past year or 2 I feel like maybe 2 have been able to give me halfway satisfactory answers.

Like c'mon - you need to be able to do more than throw up your hands and ask someone else when presented with an issue.

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DoTheThingNow@reddit

I had another thought on this as well...

I think part of the problem with the newest graduates is that for the majority of their schooling they used Chromebooks and iPads - no Windows. I've seen people clicking around Windows as if it was the first time they'd ever seen the interface.

Another thing is that there was that huge push over the last 10 years or so to pump out CODERS (and more recently "Security Specialists") - but nowhere have I seen a real curriculum for any infrastructure-type education. Little to no education on servers, basic networking, DNS (omg this one always pisses me off when I interview - I ask general DNS questions and I get blank stares 98% of the time), basic PC hardware, etc...

Future_End_4089@reddit (OP)

I agree with everything you said very good insight often overlooked.

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CornBredThuggin@reddit

All of those skills can be taught. Be a mentor and show them the way. If they don't want to learn, that's on them.

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Additional_Apple5837@reddit

You're not alone, although we are slowly being fazed out by those young'uns.

I remember not being able to name anything with more than 8 characters.

I remember having to force MSCDEX.EXE in order to use a CD ROM.

I remember having to tweak my autoexec.bat in order to free up enough conventional memory in order to run some games.

In fact, this was even before Windows had any boot knowledge... It was just an executable that ran from DOS.

I agree though. I know a lot of people who code incredibly intricate programs and have them compiled - Done... They have no idea on the fundamentals though. I've seen a coder who used to write custom API's for people, and he spent 3 days trying to get support because a windows driver was corrupt and kept stopping his mouse from working.

When I think of how far we've come in such a short space of time, it makes me wonder just how different the landscape will be in another 10 years...

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Pickle-this1@reddit

I took over daily IT ops from another engineer at my current employer, there was some long standing issues I resolved in like 5 minutes, not because of skill, but because I looked at the error messages, and it told me exactly what it was.

Another one is engineers who try to fix something, and because the first google result doesn't fix it, they escalate, If your genuinely stuck, fine, come ask me, but don't just escalate, I would much rather fix the issue with you, we both learn and then we both become better engineers, don't just escalate because you cant be arsed spending an hour or so researching (if its even that).

My biggest gripe with new sysadmins (or some older ones), is their lack of reading, the amount of times when I was a TL I had to tell engineers, what does the errors / event logs say?

Well done, you can configure some fancy new system, but can you fix it when it breaks? or can you fix our existing infrastructure? 8/10 times engineers I've dealt with its big no, concerning....

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Behind_da_Rabbit@reddit

Not just IT, it's everywhere.

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Rapidly_Decaying@reddit

I had a Computer Science Masters degree graduate apply for an entry level tech job. In their proficient skills section they listed "Shopify" and "Microsoft Office".

Those were the two most technical things listed. Things my 76 year old, non-technical, parents are comfortable using.

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plumber_craic@reddit

The knowledge gaps make sense - I understand that the current gen has no need to get over 600 KB of conventional ram....

And I certainly had trouble transitioning into microservice serverless app architecture.

You grew into it and learned it on the way. Todays IT requires only part of what old guys learned over 20+ years but its expected to know.

From where to know what parts to know? Nobody knows.

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LaughterSaves@reddit

I, like you started in Windows and DOS. And then made the big leap (when I reinvented my career in 2008) to Linux and haven't looked back. So I don't know a whole lot about Windows development these days, other than in DevSecOps, it's not a recommended path unless you work for a bank or larger corporation perhaps. I do use some Azure, that said and can Powershell.

I agree that in general, the lack of resourcefulness and curiosity is missing from the newer blood. They have different expectations and they, for the most part, got a CS degree from somewhere. I don't know what those degrees impart for I have one in English (never lost my love of writing either). I think folks our age just learned by hacking things and reading what docs were around and by being curious. We were hungry because we could see all the possibilities ahead of us and most of the OG innovators were still around.

Now, it's late stage capitalism, people go into tech for the money and because of uncertain futures and the markets go through more peaks and valleys than this old girl (also 56) knows how to plan for. So I hope the younger crop at least enjoys what they are doing. At least in our younger years, we did just because it was about discovery.

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ARandomGuy_OnTheWeb@reddit

I'm one of those "new wave" techs though I think I have a bit of that old tech soul since I was a hobbyist teaching myself Windows Server and Linux since I was in high school.

Today, I have a homelab but some of my colleagues (who are of similar age to me) sometimes poke fun at the idea that I host servers at home.

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alexwh68@reddit

Same age as you, been doing this as long as you, see the same things, new guys don’t understand the basics, basics being basic networking troubleshooting e.g. ping / tracert / traceroute / ipconfig / ifconfig

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AlphaHotelBravo@reddit

Me too, about to retire after 26 years. Part of the problem is that home/personal IT kit usually does just plug and play now; they've never had to work out why something won't do what it's supposed to.

Another issue is that they've never had to fault-find for anything else either; the days of working out why your car won't start are long gone and they've little idea of how to methodically work through the potential problems.

A favourite interview question we use is "client says their email isn't working and they haven't changed anything, so what would you do?". The most frequent answer is "I'd check the settings". If we rejected them because of that we wouldn't have any candidates left so we find ourselves prompting them as to why that's not appropriate, and looking out to see how quickly the penny drops with the smarter guys and gals.

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alexwh68@reddit

I was explaining DHCP to my 16 year old son a while back, explaining how on the one hand its a great tool given I come from the days before it was implemented and know how quickly you can get dup IP addresses on the network, and the potential issues it creates in a mixed network of static IP addresses and DHCP clients.

The car analogy is a good one, my granddad was excellent with cars, had the hood up most weekends, spark plug timing thingies (don’t know their real name 😂) were in use quite often.

Cars are more like computers these days, fault finding is often plug it into a computer and look at the events.

You cannot beat real world experience.

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jwb206@reddit

New "seniors" can't find a part number!

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Peva-pi@reddit

I had a conversation once with an HR person in which I mentioned a networking issue that I was working on to which they asked if Programming was involved in fixing it.. I can do some programming but what god needed with a starship or networking needed with programming I will never know. Its not just you, its a top down issue.

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Darkwoof@reddit

Not alone.

I'm a lecturer for an institute of higher learning's software development course. Students often come in not knowing the very basics of desktop computing. In modern days people often quip about how today's generations are "IT savvy", but they are really just talking about being able to handle, at the surface level, the mobile devices they are using.

When it comes to things like performing tasks on their non-mobile computing devices, it's a whole different story.

Part of my personal mission is figuring out exactly how to get them vested into becoming more than just consumers of media consumption devices, and really learn to handle the tools many now readily have, but easily take for granted.

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MikeCmu17@reddit

Hello Reddit stranger. I've been on a similar personal mission since first using a computer in the early 2000's. Your comment really resonates with me.

The capabilities of a computer, then and now, blow my mind every single day. At the same time, I see fewer and fewer people sharing the same interest as new hires turnover at my place of employment.

Showing others the power of computers is why I got into this profession. The fact that we can send emails is wild!!! Nobody cares like I do though lol.

When did this change happen? I got my first IT job in 2017 and still saw grads along side me who shared this passion.

Does is upset you when you see behavior trend in that direction, just surface level understanding?

Any tips or tricks you've found to help spark some interest?

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Avean@reddit

Seeing the exact same thing. They have never used command line before or powershell. Then some suddenly stuns me saying they have had Python in school. Then when i ask them they fire up ChatGPT and copy paste.............

Have zero idea how these people survive when they finally get a full time job.

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Square-Routine9655@reddit

You have 35 years of IT experience and you're surprised that 35 years later the starting tools in their belt look different than the ones you had then?

Or that they don't have much skill as you

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aWilly-@reddit

From my experience from getting a degree in Cybersecurity, is that the curriculum taught was very THEORY based & not so much hands on. Trying to remember it now, there weren’t too many classes that focused on Windows basics like folder permissions or even Active Directory basics. We have a kid who graduated from school not too long ago & has no idea on how inherited permissions on folder structures work.

It’s not you, it’s the schools. Schools love pushing this idea of getting a degree in Cybersecurity will get you to 200k+ & have students pushing through classes without UNDERSTANDING the core concepts of security & network basics for both Windows & Linux.

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Geminii27@reddit

They didn't grow up with tech in the same way. They grew up with tech which was 90% marketing, pre-packaged, garden-walled, locked-down, experiment-discouraging, thought-discouraging interfaces.

Today's most common consumer pieces of technology aren't the equivalent of '50/60s cars which nearly everyone knew how to work on a little, they're the equivalent of public buses. Don't think about how they work, don't try to alter or change anything, don't try to take a bus to anywhere which doesn't already have a pre-approved bus stop. If you buy an old bus yourself to experiment with, there's a huge cost difference and learning curve between knowing how to catch a bus as a passenger and knowing how to drive, repair, maintain, and even customize an actual bus.

Not to mention that far more systems these days are locked down and fettered not by actual technological limitation, but because the manufacturers have specifically taken steps to disallow certain things, whether that be via licensing, EEE, corporate-owned cloud platforms, or even deliberately incompatible hardware (and designs which interfere with repairs/exploration).

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D4nkM3m3r420@reddit

Wizards be like "the disciple cant even cast fireball"

I’ve seen hires fresh out of prestigious comp sci programs who have never logged into their home router or installed an operating system.

Like do you care at all about the field you are entering?

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SailorSam100@reddit

Disagreed as a <30 year old in IT with 6 years, I’ve worked with many people age 50+ who are constantly yapping about DOS and Netscape yet they still ask for me for help and are awful with customers.

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Safahri@reddit

16-20 year olds coming into the field these days grew up on ipads and smartphones.

I interviewed a large number of candidates for an apprenticeship position, and I think we had maybe 1 or 2 candidates under 20 who has used a computer outside of school and can tell you where the windows update button was.

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viperjay@reddit

I so miss Zenworks snapshots, Novell and Ghost for the win.

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voluspa90@reddit

Agree with this, I only started my IT journey in 2016 but started as grunt at an MSP looking after 100 odd customers from 2003 servers up to 2016 and the variety of the workplace enabled me to upskill and get a good base. (For reference I am now a "hey this is broken and noone else can fix it can you please help us as we know youll be able to" guy {Level 3 cloud admin/whats left on prem Server Admin/DBA/help me we are screwed if we don't fix it}

The amount of people I see come in at a base level (Service Desk L1) and have 0 research capabilities. Half my fixes come from Google and yet the first question I ask is have you done some research and the answer is I have but there wasn't a Knowledge Base article for it is astounding.

Dont get me wrong I have over 1k knowledge base articles posted on our internal repository but man I cant know everything. I always tell these guys I dont often just know the answer never be afraid to say "I dont know ill have to google it" half the skill of being a higher up support level these days is "google-fu".

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phunky_1@reddit

I deal with this shit all the time.

I guess it is good job security but I am in the same boat where junior staff assume I know everything.

Hold on a second, let me Google that for you.

Here's the documentation, how about you take the effort to read and figure it out yourself?

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voluspa90@reddit

Yeah not even just junior staff, and then when you find something about how to fix the issue and send them a link its like can you do it? Or better you send them a link and say please write the Change for this..... the next day before Change Authority meeting they go can you review this for me and it doesn't even make sense, like did you even read what I sent you?

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DeerEnvironmental544@reddit

Nope same boat bud get rid of em try again or put ur teaching hat on

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SokkaHaikuBot@reddit

^Sokka-Haiku ^by ^DeerEnvironmental544:

Nope same boat bud get

Rid of em try again or

Put ur teaching hat on

^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.

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Sengfeng@reddit

All the time. And more so, management thinks this is somehow ok.

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super-hot-burna@reddit

This has been going on for as long as there has been a tenured human workforce.

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djinone@reddit

Being a young person entering tech, I find this true of myself if anything. Modern computing is just so accessible and obfuscated that it's hard to learn low level skills by osmosis. Outside of the professional sphere they're just not necessary, I've never had to learn HTML to edit my Myspace homepage etc, etc. The more I learn about how much I don't know about computers, even as someone who is interested in IT and has taken several technology and computer science classes, the more I realize I don't know. It's daunting. Also, in the modern IT space there's a huge over-emphasis on whatever the latest tool or program is, so I think people who focus on solid fundamentals over linkedin buzzword jargon often don't get hired in the first place.

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digitaltransmutation@reddit

Nik_Tesla@reddit

I'm only 35 and seeing the same thing. I've been trying to teach the help desk in weekly lessons, and some of it it sticking, most stuff though, they're still asking me to do it for them after repeated lessons about the same stuff.

I think the issue is multipart.

Computers and mobile devices these days function well enough that regular tweaking and fixing isn't required. In the same way that I've pretty much always had a functioning car, therefore I have no experience fixing it, that is how computers are for the new generations. If it doesn't work, don't fix it, just get a new one.
If they do have some IT experience, too many companies don't bother letting help desk fix anything, they just have them re-image the computer or replace it altogether, and call it a day. They never get a chance to do the entry level troubleshooting, so they just don't develop those same skills. I think similarly for automating help desk processes. I'm guilty of this too, I have a new user setup script, and at this point they don't know how to manually setup a user's accounts and permissions if that script doesn't work.

I got a demo from Atera, an RMM and ticketing platform with some AI features built in, and basically, it's hooked into an LLM that will read a incoming tickets and suggest what to do. It both impressed me and depressed me thinking about how there's going to be a massive shortage of capable help desk techs that can become sysadmins.

Because of our fear of them screwing up, we give them less access/permission than we had when we were starting out. We don't give them a chance to try and screw it up. I don't judge a sysadmin by their biggest success, I judge them based on how they handle their biggest screw up. How are they supposed to screw up with permissions to barely anything? Maybe we need to trust them with a little bit more.

However, it's not all dark days ahead. I coach a high school robotics team that competes with the FIRST organization. It's basically fast paced, project based, competitive troubleshooting. I would trade my entire help desk (and devs) for a single sophomore on the team. They are incredibly capable and exactly the kind of people you want to hire. They don't always put it on their resume, but if you put in the job posting that FIRST experience is a plus and then ask about it in interviews, you will get better candidates.

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MakingSausage@reddit

Nice post, I think you nailed it. Companies don’t want you to spend time fixing it they want you to re-image, preferably using an automated system or send them a functioning laptop/desktop. Fixing computers has become a niche occupation that large companies don’t want to pay for so a simple problem that we could diagnose and fix fairly quickly gets a re-image and the user might lose files (should be using onedrive!) or settings (helpdesk doesn’t even try to save them) so IT looks efficient but the poor user loses a day or more of productivity. Oh yeah… I got eye rolls in a IT meeting for saying user. I’m supposed to call them clients or customers, my bad.

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IVRYN@reddit

I've seen senior level to junior level exhibiting the same uselessness. I wouldn't expect much from juniors but seniors with "10 years of experience" come on bro......

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MakingSausage@reddit

Yeah totally agree. I’m even older but came up the same way, learning by doing and being mentored by older IT folks. I’m retired now but the last company I worked for the 2nd their folks couldn’t write a batch script. Once I showed them how their lives could be so much easier I got them learning how. These days IA can write a functional PS script as long as you tell it the right things to do but even so, there’s a whole bunch of stuff they don’t know. I saw too many of them that didn't even look at windows event logs.

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3dBobbyLEX@reddit

I think many of us old timers grew up with a computer in our hands of some form or fashion. We are IT geeks.

Many of the people working in the field now are just regular folks who happen to know how to work with computers. They clock in, clock out and don’t necessarily live and breathe for it. Nothing wrong with that per se but it doesn’t turn out as many of the hard-core nerds (I.T. Professionals I mean to say) .

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Phorc3@reddit

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HITACHIMAGICWANDS@reddit

I think everyone else touched on the last one complex devices in their lives, people not being troubleshooters, and some book worn who decided to “work in computers” with no reason other than their nan said it was a good idea after they restarted their iPhone.

Another possibility, is that the field is significantly more complex than when you started. For example, when you started 35 years ago, had anyone even used NAT yet? 35 years ago this field was significantly less complicated, another instance of being born too late on our end.

I honestly think a lot of kids these days just don’t fiddle with shit, and that’s what a lot of the issue is. Our schools don’t teach critical thinking like they should, unfortunately.

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Subnetwork@reddit

This is what happens when you go the non traditional route and take some expedited degree program or boot camp.

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ragnarokxg@reddit

New guys are more than likely learning on the job. Give them a break. This is coming from someone with over 20 years in the field.

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As someone who is new to IT and is in university currently for CompSci and is trying to break into the world of IT and wanting to be a security engineer one day I want to know from the senior IT professionals what it is to be working on or things to focus on so that I don’t become the non educated noobie in the workplace. In terms of automation as mentioned in the post my question is, is that done through the task scheduler with batch scripts?

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phillymjs@reddit

It's our own fault, really. When most of us middle-agers were coming up, you had no choice but to learn the stuff inside and out if you wanted to use it effectively.

But now we've dumbed everything down, abstracted everything away, and most of today's kids can't even navigate a damned file system. When you try to build idiot proof systems, idiots, uh, find a way.

And like others said, a lot of these newbies are just chasing paychecks, where we older generations were tinkerers who got into IT for the love of the game.

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heliox@reddit

Yes. There’s a pattern in freshman CS courses where incoming students don’t understand how to organize or locate files in a file system. This makes creating directory trees for source code impossible.

In interviews, most candidates have few actual technical skills, but instead have only used GUI tools that professional services configured. I expect it to all collapse around the time I retire.

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Advanced_Machine5550@reddit

Yup. They also don't have basic troubleshooting skills.

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MyWeedsYoWeed@reddit

Agreed. They’d rather ask questions in Teams chat versus spending even just 5m trying to figure it out. Then when you tell them where to begin looking I can almost feel the deer-in-headlight stare in the subsequent silence.

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Advanced_Machine5550@reddit

My favorite is when we get notes in cases from the help desk that just say, escalated to engineers. Didn't try anything, and if they did, they didn't document it. Smh.

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MyWeedsYoWeed@reddit

Hahaha oh don’t get me started on ticket notes! …which is really a problem stemming from the help desk lead/supervisor having equally shitty ticket notes and non-existent documentation.

Disastrous-Cow7354@reddit

I remember a movie where society still could use the tech because they knew what button to hit, but no one knew how this thing work. I guess, this is where we are heading.

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jackoftradesnh@reddit

Im 40 in IT but started tinkering young (dos 5, windows 3.1 and a dialup modem). Followed a similar path. See similar things.

For me I’ve turned on survival mode. I do things in a way that benefit me but could also benefit others if they so desired, or asked, or stumbled into it, or I got hit by a buss. Even so… I doubt it will be used

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Sorry to break it to you but this is classic old person behaviour. Every older generation forever has thought the younger generation are hopeless and seem to forget we all start a little wet around the ears. But I do think times have changed as well. I learnt to use a computer at a command line. There is little need for that in day to day computer usage now. You basically have to be an admin to ever do it. This is obviously going to lead to some skill deficiencies.

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SevenFootLuchador@reddit

I'm a few years younger than you with a similar background. There's times I'd rather ask for half the salary a new hire would get and work an extra 20 hours a week. The skill set of some recent new hires is unbelievable bad. I don't fault the employee though. I blame the hiring managers.

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Future_End_4089@reddit (OP)

This is true. People don’t understand the no level low level skill set of new hires. I understand everyone starts somewhere I get it we were all there once, I truly do but to have zero command line knowledge and I’m talking zero. I will never understand.

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wraithscrono@reddit

I'm give my answer as a professor. I teach tech classes and all but maybe 5 of this year's crop has been going for their degrees in cyber security. For those classes they take basic os, windows or Linux and other light classes. The rest is theory based on what cyber looks like but minimal practical. They also take a single network class either cisco 140 or net+. From this group none have found any leads in my state because the businesses have caught on after two years of pushing degrees before experience.. I also found out most of the Z group has never taken tech classes in high school either

(At work typing on phone for any weird sentence structure and such.)

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Future_End_4089@reddit (OP)

this doesn't bod well for the next gen of IT

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wraithscrono@reddit

Yeah I've convinced about half to take all the cisco classes for ccna and such. I'll do what small part i can for my own career group.

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Epicfro@reddit

I think you're both over critical and correct. General skillset, common sense, and troubleshooting skills seem to be on the decline but we all had to start somewhere.

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badaboom888@reddit

its because lots of the low level stuff has now been hidden behind different tools and interfaces so they arnt deep diving to troubleshoot issues.

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OmicronNine@reddit

Two things going on, in my experience:

A lot fewer techs are coming in to IT because they grew up as computer nerds/enthusiasts, and this has long ago stopped being a specialized niche. IT is now an established and very common field like any other that most people expect to be able to pick as a career in college or get trained on at a trade school or whatever without necessarily already knowing all about computers or even being particularly personally interested.
Even among enthusiasts, computers just ask a hell of a lot less of you these days, and there's a lot more abstraction in the interfaces. I remember having to know how to run programs in DOS and set the IRQ of my sound card to be able to play computer games back in the day, but you just don't need that kind of understanding about how the computer works to get things working well enough any more. Hell, these days it can be silly how far the OS goes to hide stuff like the file system behind layers of hand-holding.

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IllogicalShart@reddit

This is why I always advocate for traineeship/apprenticeship programs. I joined my org as an apprentice, and started with the most basic shit imaginable: password resets, basic AD administration, 365 licensing, and basic scripting with Powershell. After a year learning the basics and getting a good grounding in customer service and first line troubleshooting, I started taking on GPOs, more advanced scripting and automation, patch management, MDT management etc. After graduating from the apprenticeship, and another year of learning from my colleagues, I was offered a 'higher apprenticeship', which is equivalent to an associates degree, in networking. I started that as a Jr netadmin, soaked up a load of knowledge on infrastructure planning and installs, troubleshooting, and getting my CCNA and firewall certifications through face-to-face lessons and interactive labs. Now I manage over 55 sites across the country. It was the best decision I ever made, because I've learned so much from so many great senior colleagues over the years.

I recommended a guy I sort of knew based on how often he talked about his gaming PC. He got caught remoting into his home computer so he could game at work. Work ethic is more important than entry level knowdge.

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YouCanDoItHot@reddit

You're not one of the new guys he's talking about. Most new techs lack even basic troubleshooting skills and the drive to learn.

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Future_End_4089@reddit (OP)

If you never lose this attitude of "I always want to learn" and make things better you'll go far and be an asset

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one_fifty_six@reddit

First of all there is a difference between people who really have a passion for this field and those who are 8-5 and just collect a paycheck. Learning to identify those people helps me.

Second I had this same conversation a week ago with my coworker. I took my CompTia A+ 10 years ago and took it very seriously. I got my AA in network administration at a trade school. Kids these days have a BS in computer science and need to be shown how to manually install a driver.

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RallyX26@reddit

We grew up at a particular peak of computing. We were the last generation to have to understand how a computer works in order to use it. We grew up where the upwards trend in computer capability crossed the descending line in user interface complexity.

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BlunderBussNational@reddit

Same. A few years behind, but same. Started on win 3.1 as an undergrad. I have a millennial "network engineer" who is asking me about an FTP server to update the phone system. Dude, it's on your windows desktop. Just...launch it.

I do lose patience with him on basic shit. It's on me to be the Senior (graybeard) and choose to teach rather than castigate.

Funny you mention just re-image. That is a huge issue instead of troubleshooting they opt to re-image and in the process learn nothing.

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Acrobatic_Fortune334@reddit

Couple of things I have noticed as an infra engineer who supervisors the service center

People don't grow up using computers it's all tablets and phones
Younger people just don't care there not excited about technology
The ones that do use pcs are gamers and there knowledge extends to install software and maybe building a pc once or twice

They tend to also not have as good problem solving or troubleshooting ability

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Jug5y@reddit

The culture for jobseekers right now is just get in the door, then find your feet.

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DeputyDumbDumb@reddit

As a youngish IT guy what I see is companies hiring people based off degrees rather than experience. I was hired off experience and they're super happy with my work, had they gone with someone with a college degree instead of practical experience, I think they would have got the results that you're talking about.

I also think this next generation of people are just really going to drop supply for people good at I.t. they're good at their cell phone and that's it. So many people don't even use computers anymore or have a desktop computer at home. Hey it makes the demand higher, I like it.

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APoopCramp@reddit

I’m a relatively young guy who recently has entered the IT field, and it seems to actually be the opposite for me. When I started with my current employer, I thought all the old guys were clueless about basic IT. Even the way they type is infuriating - they just peck away at the keyboard.

These are guys that have been doing this work for 25+ years and I’m having to explain things to them.

admin_gunk@reddit

You said it yourself, you watched things transition from the basics to the complex systems they are today.

Younger people, including myself, are getting whiplashed in to HCI stacks, containerization, SDN's, etc.. it's like learning how a car works using a v12 block.

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Icy-Ice2362@reddit

As a third line, there are second and first line staff who are ON PAPER, faaar more qualified than I am to do my job... and you know what happens when my job becomes available and I say to somebody who is first line...

"Wanna sign up for my role."

"FUCK NO!"

In the last 6 years of working third line, I have learned 5 coding languages, got into the DEEP BLACK ART of SQL, to the point of injecting my own Assemblies to extend SQL features... de-corrupting data without getting the server to do it.

Heck I have my own labs on my home laptop that I use to poke the engine with a stick to see how it twitches in the logs.

It's just that deep knowledge that is rarely needed but makes that little bit of a difference that can really make things move.

I watch my 1st line colleagues rack up cert after cert, whilst seeing folks who are equally cert'd being told by my seniors that "They are overqualified". There's this Goldie-locks zone, in IT, that NOBODY wants to talk about.

The CERTS are almost less than worthless, the talent is the key, If you can bring value without being the sort who wants to negotiate their pay, you're going to get hired. Whereas, if you come off as somebody who would "Get Bored" in the role... they will just not hire you.

There are two kinds of people in an interview. Talkers and Doers... doers get hired, talkers don't.

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Chaseshaw@reddit

if you copied and pasted this...

it's be a "bash script" :P

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BryanP1968@reddit

Greetings slightly younger me. No, seriously, other than I already turned 56 just over a month ago, this could be me.

It’s a mix. I deal with people like you describe. I also work with some very young people who do have the basics down and jump in and kick ass every day.

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nut-sack@reddit

Nah, it'll be fine, they'll outsource it all to india /s

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TheRealLambardi@reddit

For what it’s worth we know focus our IT admins on rebuild and redeploy, ask app owners to build app processes that match the redeploy & restore in a moments notice.

The skills of tinker in the OS are lessening and the skills around devops are increasing. Yeah we need them to learn cli but it’s more terraform the fleet , python against api’s, intune management less batch, bash , reg updates.

What job description are you talking about because I know of these things but don't know how to use most of them, not would I know when these things would actually be useful for me in my day to day job.

For reference, I am the sole level 2 tech for a Charter School system with 6 campuses + 1 office. I have been hard working in IT since 2021 but technically started back in 2013 so I have seen pre 365 environments as an entry level tech. I have worked (under a contract company) for Disney, Disney Animation, Warner Bros, SAG Aftra, Beyond Meat, Rexford, Entertainment partners, and finally my current K-12 school. Disney, SAG and the school are the only ones I got to touch AD/Jamf. Disney was to only do 1 thing and 1 thing only. Only at the school would any of the things you talk about be remotely usable, and have only seen them used at the school.

Now I understand that this is because of my contracted work environment. I am not expected/given the rights to use stuff like AD so I won't use most of the things you listed. But unless these things are taught in school, I don't think most work environments are teaching these tools to lower techs, so it makes sense none of them use them.

I am not required to, nor would they help me do my current job, so why would I know them unless I am a hardcore fiddler or have a Linux daily driver at home, which is more than likely a fiddler anyways.

So you're looking for self taught, school taught or taking a worker you like and spending 6 months to train in house. Based on other commenters school taught seems like a crap shoot you have to solve in the interview. But basically my TLDR is the current work environment for corporate IT is not set up properly for average techs to use these tools, so they won't know them, and it will only get worse. In my opinion anyways.

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critical_d@reddit

I hear ya man. I try to hire people that are naturally curious and are willing and able to learn new stuff quickly.

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d00ber@reddit

Honestly, I've always heard this argument my entire career (20+ years). I think the thing is, when I started you kind of picked a discipline which was DBA, networking, programmer, windows or linux. Now days, it's expected that you know everything + virtualization/containerization and every flavor of cloud under the sun as well as how to integrate every API. I think the new expectations leave us having less people that specialize in one thing. The one exception I've seen is for security people finding a way to remain a separate department and having extremely silo'd knowledge.

I could be extremely offside with my opinion. What do I know?

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You have two different types of people in IT. There are those who have a natural passion for the field that started when young and them tinkering with everything and those who need a quick job so sign onto things like mycomputercareer and get a cert to get their foot in the door so they can afford to eat and pay some bills. Many of the younger "kids" (I'm also in my late 50's) went the latter route and couldn't open the command prompt without a Youtube video. Us older folks that have worked in IT for decades had to make our bones by doing all the work and making mistakes along the way. In terms of Formal training, I'm an Electrical Engineer. I burned out on that fairly quickly and found IT to have a broader scope to learn new things. From there I went and got all the certs for PC support and keep refusing promotions to management so I can stay hands on. I do keep my eye on the young bucks and try to guide them if they have their hearts in the career field. if they don't, I watch them fail and wash out.

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mazedk1@reddit

Imho.. the bigger issue is the narrow minded approach to issues “nope.. my windows works fine so it’s not my problem, ask the other guys! Who they are? Well I don’t know, I dont care, but sure isn’t my issue - now move along”

The lack of general basic troubleshooting skills and broader understanding of how something works is blowing my mind.. and then lack of basic google skills.. lord have mercy on our future

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a_bored_lad@reddit

Very interesting view point, I'm early in my tech career (5 years) and I've only picked up a few CMD tricks and bash scripts.

From my perspective, it's become a skill that has lost its value with the lead of AI, but even before that companies provide this service in most software packages. Automations and linking other systems are as easy as browsing through menus and creating configurations.

A lot of others I knew in a similar positions are now entirely shifting to skills that get them roles, eg. Network engineer, cloud engineer or even infrastructure. A lot of the tools on these role are dependant of simple common sense as the tools (the good ones at least) standardise simple use.

I do like to learn more skills and is why I'm developing my Debian knowledge but most people can get by with the tech mindset (what's Google say?) haha

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Sasataf12@reddit

new hires in IT don't have the basic skills

IT is broad. So it depends what "IT" qualification your new hire holds.

For example, as a CS grad I knew how to code, but had no idea about Windows administration because we weren't taught that. I hadn't touched a server until I started my first job.

You hire entry level staff with the expectation they won't know everything, including what you call "the basics". Maybe ask what the do know before writing them off.

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Halen_@reddit

The market was smaller back in the day, so it could be majorly populated by people super passionate and obsessive about the subject matter. Once we scale to a certain size though, you run out of those types of people and then you start getting those who learned the subject to "get a good job" and they leave it all at work when they go home and only see the need to do what it takes to not lose the job and only grow as much as they're instructed to.

Want you build an on prem Active Directory controller? Microsoft said dont and use Entra ID and manage everything through Azure instead. Let the cloud do all the heavy lifting.

SCCM....its days are numbered, it will be dropped for Intune at some point. Again taking the control for us to be managed in the cloud.

All the big tech companies are now pushing AI and automation. So there goes the idea of manually doing stuff, just to see how it works.

So new hires wont have the legacy IT skills because its no longer needed. Cloud, AI, subscription models, unable to open devices and see what's inside or repair if the break. All of these are being pushed by the big tech companies.

Its not entirely new hires fault.

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PoOLITICSS@reddit

I'm in my mid 20s and am helpdesk lead / senior helpdesk. Disagree, on tech skills... I'm implementing things our MSP has been actively interested in implementing but unable for some time, company wide changes and recent promotion so think I'm doing just fine!

There's fast learners, slow learners, those in IT because "IT is good money" (obviously an untrue statement lol!) and those in IT because it's a genuine passion and if they didn't have the job they'd be doing the same at home... Other than tw my colleagues are very skilled. Some younger, some older. No one is an ace at everything each has a specialty.

Where I'd be inclined to agree fully is soft skills, customer interaction and such. My generation definitely lacks that, we have been eternally online and it shows. If you'd like to feel old, I am Gen Z. Lol! 😂

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eNomineZerum@reddit

What do you expect? Lots of folks entering the workforce aren't using Windows for everything. They have IOS and Android, apps for everything. Sometimes they can't even get into a file system or CLI on their device.

In schools they teach on Chromebooks, which isn't much better as the kids still aren't learning Windows and likely aren't learning file structures and other CLI topics.

You then have folks buying Macs which, while you can certainly get delve into CLI and tinker with them, they are still designed to "just work" so the user is less likely to need to Google and run random commands.

30 years in IT, manager at an MSP. Would like to exit on a high note but right now not sure I can.

I have a wet behind the ears, right out of college Tier 1 who is pretty moto but easily gets in over his head. He takes the first Google result as gospel, or goes down a rabbit hole so far that it takes a Tier 2 and me to get him back on track. Good kid and he's spring loaded into the "attack" position (good) but sometimes he gets an idea in his head about how something is and skips troubleshooting steps and then runs into a wall (bad). Worse, he gives clients semi-accurate info that I have to walk back ("no, I'm sorry Jason told you that, but in reality it violates the laws of physics and Microsoft's licensing terms...").

Mentoring is ongoing here, and he's receptive to it and puts 75+% into play, so that's good.

Other Tier 1 has been in IT awhile, but in peripheral support for a big company and then a pseudo-MSP "Ma & Pa Kettle" shop before us. He's smart, can troubleshoot ok, but sometimes jumps the shark and gives in before the dead end. His education is at a non-secular school where I sometimes think religious ed won out over any real hard science or tech training (or sometimes English & grammar, based on his ticket notes!).

He's a quick learner, sometimes has to be shown a concept 2-3 times, and if he'd just do a little KB / documentation searching before raising the white flag it might be better.

"Did you research this in ticket notes or the KB?" [BLANK LOOK] "How about we start there?"

Mentoring is a little slower there because he thinks he's more on the ball than he is.

The bigger problem is that we (the royal "we") rely too much on Google Fu and not enough on actual training in technologies. Even my Tier 2 guys resist taking on training in lieu of just Googling enough to get by for "this one thing."

Bzzzt.

Great, now you know 5 of 15 steps, or 3 or 4 of the 10 config options.

How about you actually accomplish the training plan I've worked with you on and you agreed was both doable and would help your career?

"I do better learning on my own." "No, you don't. You want 1/2" of knowledge gleaned from Google in a 2ft deep well of info. "

[Some hard quarterly review conversations on the horizon. And they know it.]

I think the larger issue is something I read the other day: something about how IT today is just so much more broad than it was 20 years ago. One or two guys can't have a finger on most of it, but are expected to be massive generalists.

When I started we had workstation guys, server guys, network guys, storage guys, mainframe guys, app developers, systems programmers, midrange developers, DBAs, security analysts, etc. Now folks are expected to roll several of those knowledge sets into one. Along comes a myriad of apps, SaaS and HaaS solutions, shit that catches the MSP owners eye at a conference as "the next great thing we need to implement tomorrow, hurry!", along with rapidly changing technologies... What the hell? I just got DNS Filter or Avenan figured out and now we're doing something different?

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kobewiththeflow@reddit

My imposter syndrome just intensified.

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TheDarthSnarf@reddit

As long as they can learn, I have no trouble spending time teaching them. I'd rather have a entry-level person that can learn than mid-career person who's stuck at using GUI tools only and not a willing to evolve.

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itguy9013@reddit

My issue is that most of the greenhorns we're bringing in just don't know how to troubleshoot a problem. They just ask my team if they encounter a problem they've never seen before, even before engaging members of their own team.

We have a saying we frequently send back when one of them asks a question "What has your research told you?" Most times they haven't done any.

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Mackswift@reddit

Trying not to go completely off the rails, but here goes.

I'm not impressed with the current state of what's being brought into Help Desk lately (about the last 6-7 years).

For starters, there's very little affinity for IT and tech. They get lost very easily troubleshooting issues and don't embrace the challenge of digging deeper, figuring it out, and learning a new trick or two. They reboot, they create a new Outlook profile, don't want to try to figure it out and next thing I see is an Outlook issue in my engineering queue. Oh, Outlook means email, that means Exchange, and thus must be an admin config issue that only an engineer can figure out.

There's no roll up the sleeves and figure it the fuck out. None. Oh, the user is having a VPN issue. That must mean it's something that only a network engineer can handle. They have no problem with being the "send it to someone else" desk. And my favorite is that even when they are shown a Powershell trick to make their lives easier. Or showing them what they are doing wrong, they don't bother to learn themselves something new and they still continue the same mistake making habits. And my favorite is when they do discover they need to learn something new, they expect engineers and architects to spoon feed them the knowledge. No, this is stuff I busted my ass to learn and spent alot of money getting the degree and certs. You can read a book and do the labs. (they really take offense to being told that).

Lastly, and I have no clue where this came from, but there are places and people who are treating the IT Help Desk as the Walmart greeter. They're hiring older people (late 50s) into a role that requires actual skill and not something they've been exposed to or do as a hobby.

knightmese@reddit

That's why our job interviews for sysadmins contain more questions that determine how the candidate thinks rather than specific knowledge they know. We look for the logical thinkers. Some of our questions have nothing to do with IT and are just weird real-world scenarios they could happen upon. One of our best hires had little experience, but his logical thinking was outstanding. Now he's one of our best and most seasoned sysadmins.

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Bright_Arm8782@reddit

There are several things going on.

Computers are easy now, unlike when we old grognards had to go in and do things like changing hardware jumpers and IRQ's, most things will just work which is the ideal we should be striving towards but doesn't allow people to cut their teeth solving problems.
Various education systems seem to grind the inquisitiveness out of people with everything focussed on the exams, learn it, pass it, forget it, move on. Critical thinking and problem solving don't seem to enter in to it much.
Technology has changed. I've not touched AD for years now, it's been all entra and AWS iam, which again pretty much works and does what it is supposed to.
Entry level jobs where people get taken with no experience but maybe some IT education don't seem to exist anymore which is a shame because they really help turn the theoretical in to the actual understanding.

If I were recruiting a junior now I'd take someone who reads widely and likes detective stories, a lot of the problem solving we do resembles the deductions that Sherlock Holmes performs and many of his adages apply, never theorising in the absence of evidence and being able to think backwards about things are the two that seem most relevant.

So, the world does not create the people that we need, our solution can only be to create them ourselves, find someone with a spark of initiative and reason and nurture it, guiding and encouraging where possible.

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krodders@reddit

Hey, I'm older than you, and I was feeling pretty much like you. I've got new vigor recently for some reason, and I realise that I've got a lot to offer a company that is interested in standards, processes, and automation.

I've got one last great push in me, maybe two.

My automation design has always been great, but my powershell skills not so much. With chatgpt's powershell plus my coaching, I feel that I'm at the top of my automation game.

Your skills are important and vital.

Hehe, I told someone recently that their issue was likely DNS, and use a HOSTS file entry as a temp fix while they tracked down the issue.

Maybe you should hire people that actually meet the requirements of the position.

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carrottspc@reddit

No, fellow grey beard, you are not wrong. Many of those skills are not taught these days and/or just not learned. Many fng’s are so wrapped into an ‘app’ culture and are dependent on someone/something else to provide an answer, there’s no motivation to be self sufficient and have knowledge to be able to actually problem solve.

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SSJ_5@reddit

You knew everything when you first started in It?

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Before then, people got into the field because they enjoyed tinkering with stuff and learning out of a strong sense of curiosity. We had home computers, wrecked them constantly, fixed them, learned how to not wreck them, and were pleasantly surprised that people would pay us for what we had previously been doing for free. There was a "hacker spirit" and sense of cool optimism which pervaded technology.

That still exists but it's been overrun by people who just want the paycheck and don't actually have the curiosity.

My first computer came with the BASIC programming language built into ROM and was obviously accessible. You turned it on and a BASIC prompt appeared. That made it very easy to get into programming and learning about how things worked. They sold magazines everywhere with BASIC program listings you could type in. Then I started learning machine and assembly language which was accessible via the POKE command in BASIC or via the built in ROM monitor.

When I got my first Windows machine it didn't come with jack shit to help one learn about computers. That really sucked. I got stuck learning relatively little for a couple of years after so much previous learning. Then I found Linux. It came with multiple programming languages far more powerful than BASIC and tons of apps. My learning once again exploded and never really stopped to this day.

The Year of the Linux Desktop was 1995 for me. I never looked back and Linux and related technologies have been my whole career ever since. Windows 3.1 was the last windows I ever used on a regular basis.

I've programmed in a bunch of languages, done some microcontroller hardware diddling, done a ton of system admin, admin'd databases, firewalls, mail/dns/file servers, set up switches with VLANs, virtualized with Xen/KVM/proxmox, built a private cloud, been building stuff in AWS since 2007, containerized all the things, pretty much everything in IT which isn't Windows.

About halfway through my career thus far I pivoted to security roles around all of the above technologies. Now I run my own cybersecurity consulting company. I collected a few certs over the years including CISSP. Last week I passed my CMMC-CCP exam and starting Monday I have my CCA class and a week or two after that I'll take my CCA exam. Soon I'll be helping to ensure that DoD contractors are living up to their contractual obligations to protect our nation's sensitive information from the usual suspects, particularly as it relates to the technologies I specialize in as described previously.

All of the above I learned on my own because it was fun. Each step of the way I found that someone would pay me for the new skills. Aside from the recent DoD mandated training I never had any formal education or classes or anything in any of the above. I have no degree. It's all from my own trial and error, Google fu, and doing my best to ask good questions in the relevant IRC channels.

My story, common among folks my age, seems to be quite rare these days. As others have pointed out, most people coming up these days are consumers of technology, not builders. Everything they need is still there, just as it was for me.

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chaosphere_mk@reddit

Yes! This makes total sense. I agree with this wholesale.

You are 20yrs my senior. I have found that there is a pocket of people who understand technology; kind of like cars. As we grew up with them from old ass Pentiums, we had to hunt. We had to do our research, dive deep into the logs whenever something started acting up. We got into the thick of it. Now, everything is plug-n-play. Our society seems to have forgotten how to use their tools to figure things out. It is really saddening and is why I have to write at the dumb dumb level and include pictures in documentation. Once I get that, I can trust the levels below me to do the thing. However, if something deviates from that, they get very confused; very fast. It is INCREDIBLY annoying. When the c-suites and the new hires dont know how to use excel, I get kind of sad about that.

That is kind of why I went to my boss and made a 6 week pass/fail sheet broken down week by week for entry level SAs. I expect the SA to know, or at least have a basic grasp of the technologies after a period of time. I am not demanding they know how to configure SANs, esx hosts, or how to setup hyper-converged infrastructure. I am talking basic things like, How to set temporal access for an AD account/group, how to make a GPO, how to take a snapshot in vCenter, how to make sure shadow volume is enabled on a file share server, what is a subnet, how to structure build books, where to look for information. I am VERY upfront that there is no dumb questions except the one that is asked three times. I believe in letting people fail in a controlled environment so they learn the lessons. I make them hunt for answers on google. I make them have basic skilled in CLI systems. Automation and scripting is a tough one but I think that really just comes with time. They will reach a point in their career where they get tired of doing something over and over again, and then the lightbulb will turn on.

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supercamlabs@reddit

Yes, Grandpa the grasshoppers are not ready and don't have the 30 years of wealth of experience at their disposal like you do.

They unfortunately have been led astray by the enemy known as "cyber security" that leaves them unprepared unfortunately for the rigors of day to day IT.

Automation is far more complicated now instead of SCCM and text files, now it's all the fancy toyz such as: ansible / CI/CD / docker / kubernetes / azure run books.

Lastly it's all cyclical and builds off each other, it's hard to get them to automate when they don't know PowerShell, it's also hard to get them to understand the idea of test, validate, then deploy, on top of that they probably don't know what ADUC is, or that account delegations and service accounts. Let's not even get into infrastructure.

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bv728@reddit

I honestly think that the general outsourcing push has hurt the professional a lot. There just aren't a lot of entry level positions where a new person can expect to pick up all the stuff nobody teaches you in college. Sure, people can pick some of this up on their own, but I honestly credit so many folks around me - including my own! - career to being able to start as a junior who isn't expected to know much and pick up knowledge as they run. These days everyone wants to outsource the Junior stuff and only hire Seniors, and you wind up with a lot of folks who just have never been in a position to be mentored and brought up to speed.

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Right_Ad_6032@reddit

That's why they're in entry level jobs.

let alone command line and have no idea how or what to automate.

As a rule of thumb someone should be able to perform the task they are automating.

For PowerShell, I recommend Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches (Not 4th edition), and for automation in general I recommend Automate The Boring Stuff with Python.

It's a bit of a meme but I also recommend steering people towards boot.dev for general IT competencies. Especially if they're moving into IT with no background in programming.

The Coursera Google IT certs- IT Support Professional and Cybersecurity Professional, respectively- are also strongly recommended for entry level IT people because unlike CompTIA, you actually learn. Still very much a what-you-get-out-scales-to-what-you-put-in kind of thing but there's none of that 'study to pass the test, not to learn the material' syndrome you see in CompTIA exams.

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icedcougar@reddit

Help teach them, show them where to find resources and quality documentation

Too much gate keeping in IT and we suffer for it

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Cosmic_Surgery@reddit

With 25 years in the field, I'm a greybeard who knows DNS inside and out. I use dig daily, while the newer generation relies on web-based tools that barely scratch the surface. I roll my eyes, but then I remember starting my first job, when the greybeards back then chuckled at me for using a mouse-driven UI instead of the superior CLI. I guess some things never change; every generation has its own tools—and its own greybeards.

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bindermichi@reddit

Usually I‘d say you either move up or live in fear of being laid off above 52, but You‘re already past that point. So, I guess you‘re safe for now.

But the first part still applies. Use you experience to guide and mentor others and work yourself into a lead role for the team.

Most importantly, recognize that needed skills for the job have changed over the last 30 years. I‘ve been hiring more and more people with software development skill than system engineering skills in recent years.

Most of today‘s tasks revolve about efficient and large scale automation which involved a lot of programming and simple shell scripts will not be sufficient. The engineering part of it only has to be defined and tested and requires very specific and highly trained specialists.

Someone has to either train those or select outside consultants for these tasks. And let‘s just hope it‘s not management or HR.

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JazzlikeSurround6612@reddit

Yep. And I see this not just in IT but really in all fields with the younger generations. I'm in my mid 40's and it's shocking to me now a days how helpless people at are that they can't even follow basic well written step by step instructions. It really seems critical thinking skills are being removed...

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brokenmcnugget@reddit

new hires need training. but, i am also fully aware of upper management not knowing anything other than pushing paper.

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No_Strawberry_5685@reddit

When I was new I was all Linux

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The_RaptorCannon@reddit

No alone, there are lot of new people in IT that hunt for certifications but seem to lack fundamentals. I have read a lot of I want to be X but then lack the experience to but those certifications to use.

I think it's really the over all granularity of what you can focus on and they lose the big picture of how everything works together. You can go down a really fine tuned application stack and you don't really know how what you don't know. Also why I jump positions every 2 to 5 years. Cauterize my skill set and move out of my comfort zone.

When I hit my 50s though I'm probably gonna tone it down and look for something non technical...there's a lot to learn and it's a young man's game.

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penone_nyc@reddit

there's a lot to learn and it's a young man's game.

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Peters933@reddit

My theory is all the pc repair shops are closed where people cut their teeth, makes it pretty hard to step into a corporate environment when you’ve never fiddled

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SikhGamer@reddit

I find new hires in IT don't have the basic skills in Windows, let alone command line and have no idea how or what to automate.

I think you are letting your experience colour your POVs. If I meet you on day one of the career, did you know anything?

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Outrageous-Insect703@reddit

I have a fantastic helpdesk / sys admin that started on my team a bit more then two years ago he’s early to mid 30’s great at new technology such as cloud, office 365, Saas and troubleshooting. But when it comes to physical networks such as cabling, troubleshooting, etc. he’s got less knowledge there. To me it seems like the newer tech admin‘s learn less about physical networking/servers/rack/pipe because most of it is in the cloud so needing to know about on premise stuff has drastically been reduced as it’s in the cloud managed by a vendor.

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Alternative-Print646@reddit

Interesting take that I really never considered before. I'm actually in the process of hiring a junior and it has been very disappointing to this point but I may look things over with a new pair of glasses now , thankyou for the insight.

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I'm happy to teach them, the bar to entry is slow low because the demand is high.

As long as they have the right aptitude to learn.

What bugs me is teaching the kids the basics and the leave in 3 months to chase money straight away.

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Mach5vsMach5@reddit

I'm in the exact same boat as you but only work with Windows and I'm 58. I'm always trying to learn something to stay relevant and be needed unlike other older IT guys i have worked with.

Some of the new techs don't know half the stuff I knew when I was learning.

Today? It's been that way for a decade now.

First few months are spent teaching them to forget the garbage they learned, then next few teaching the basics.

Takes six months to get someone to stop making more work than they're fixing.

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reilogix@reddit

Norton (Symantec?) Ghost was a GAME-CHANGER for me back in the day. It was love at first sight. I probably have a CD or (gasp!) 3.5" floppy of Ghost in the garage someplace...

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MaximumGrip@reddit

I built a disk in the old days that would boot the machine, map a shared network drive and ghost the image over to the network share. I was rather proud of that achievement at the time. Just another thing nobody cares about these days. lol

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Delta31_Heavy@reddit

I’m in my 50’s and started in IT as a CNA in 96. Youre journey seems close to mine but I’m on the cybersecurity side now. At the bank I work for, the young bucks are doing well. Very knowledgeable out of the gate but lack experience of course. I get pulled into things as a set of eyes more often than not just because I’ve been there. But honestly I’ve got high praise for today’s IT peeps.

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GoatWithinTheBoat@reddit

There's no issue here.

It's entry level for a reason. They're here to learn and better themselves with the company and team.

Use your experience to help pass along the knowledge you've accumulated. Be better than an admin that would complain and see the bright side of watching younger students grow under your care and helping them want to be in the space.

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BrainWaveCC@reddit

but I find new hires in IT don't have the basic skills in Windows, let alone command line and have no idea how or what to automate.

This is not entirely a new thing. I found this to be true (on average) over 2 decades ago. What's worse today is that there seems to be less desire to correct a lack of knowledge. Also, as time goes by, the ever increasing access we have to more knowledge makes the deficiencies seem more appalling.

Your only real options are to help mentor them, or just ignore it.

I love it when I come across a new mentee...

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Ah this post again.

They didn’t grow up on Windows NinetyShit Internet Exploder Edition having to figure out whether the MP3 they’re downloading from Limewire will cripple the family computer.

You’ve got to either teach them or move on. It’s only going to get worse.

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IamBabcock@reddit

IT is a very large industry and there are 2 types of IT employees. People that got a degree because IT is a viable career path but otherwise have no real interest in tech beyond being a job, and ones that are tech savvy and got an IT degree because it's their hobby that they can make money doing their hobby.

Both types have the potential to be good or bad employees. Having a good work ethic and desire to be good at the job doesn't require coming into the job with experience. It may take them a little longer to get up to speed, but someone who wants to do a good job will get there even if they don't have the experience. Likewise, a person with 10 years of experience may stagnate doing the bare minimum of they don't care enough.

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The_Original_Miser@reddit

I've been saying this for awhile.

Just because your toddler can use a tablet does not mean they'll be coming for my job.

"You have to know why things work on a Starship."

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baw3000@reddit

I blame a lot of it on the outsouring/offshoring of helpdesks and tech support. My first job out of school was the helpdesk at a local ISP, worked my way up there for 5-6 years. That job exposed me to just about everything. And now a lot of the low level IT jobs just don't exist in the States anymore. Most of us that have been around awhile had to start at the bottom, learn stuff, and work our way up.

I also blame the current state of HR. The only way most people get an interview now is loading up your resume with buzzwords and certs to make it past HR filters. The sysadmin that learned his trade organically isn't getting past HR most of the time, and the people that know how to game the system get through.

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RetroRiboflavin@reddit

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Aggravating-Sock1098@reddit

Somewhat recognizable. You were there at the cradle. You saw the ICT child grow up and you were a participant in every facet of his upbringing.

Learning by doing.

Your task now is to share your memories of this process with the new generation so that they have a basis for the future.

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Future_End_4089@reddit (OP)

I'm trying believe me

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furious_cowbell@reddit

I know I am old and crabby but I find new hires in IT don't have the basic skills in Windows, let alone command line and have no idea how or what to automate

When we grew up, we had to learn how to use a computer to play some games. That's not to say that playing Command and Conquer turned us into super nerds, but it did help lay the foundation.

People today on Windows or Mac computers don't have to learn shit. Sure, they might do some certs or a degree, but that core skill of just fucking about with your computer has been removed from their experience. This experience is not replicated or inserted into any educational stream that happens before it gets to you and will never happen as it's too far removed from curriculum requirements.

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bendem@reddit

This post shows how you've grown, but also how you've regressed. It's been 10 years since I started and I keep hearing the same statement.

Entry level people aren't worse then before, your expectations are greater, your own knowledge grew, your opinions evolved, you learnt. You didn't know jack when you started yourself, don't look and what entry level recruits know, they just started, of course they don't know anything. Look at what they can learn and how you can teach them. Remember that the amount of things you know now has been learned over years, maybe decades. Cut them some slack, I'm sure your instructors would say as much about you then, than what you're thinking about them right now.

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ReverendDS@reddit

I'm at 26 years 7 months right now. I've got a helpdesk 2 guy with a CCNA that doesn't know what ARP is or how to run an NSLOOKUP.

I'm also interviewing for a junior sysadmin position and the number of people with 8-10 years experience that have never scripted anything in Powershell is astounding.

I don't know if it's a failure of their schooling or a failure of their interest, but when they can't talk about a project that they're proud of and in detail about it... it's hard. I'm /trying/ to give you money, please just don't make it a waste of my time.

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Future_End_4089@reddit (OP)

i hear that

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theoreoman@reddit

Your the old man who grew up with a different tech stack, the available tools and tech had expanded incredibly over the last 35 years. Shit in the early 90's DDoS attacks didn't even exist yet, Cyber security didn't really exist, HTTP didn't even exist. There are just way too many things to be aware of now and you can become a specialist in very narrow domains.

when a new person starts out they're spread so thin that it's impossible to come in as a Jr and know anything immediately useful.

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Muddymireface@reddit

But I do still want to say there's a knowledge gap in many of the younger up-and-comers.

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VolansLP@reddit

I’m curious about the benefits of subnetting compared to VLANs. I know they operate at different layers of the OSI model—VLANs are layer 2, while subnets are layer 3. However, I haven’t faced a situation that necessitated subnetting, though I’ve primarily worked on sites with fewer than 100 people.

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FatHogRapper@reddit

It sounds like it was a hobby for you. It's a hobby for me as much as my career. I don't see a lot of new techs hired that it's a hobby for them. They don't seem to seek out new tech or want to learn anything on their own. I've always thought it was fun. But that's probably why I've been in the field so long and have advanced in my career

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m5online@reddit

University IT here. I hire students as assistants. Alot are non IT majors, jus t sharp kids, so I dont emphasies IT training per se, just task specific stuff. When I do hire an Information Systems major, I spend extra time with them to teach them the basics. Most of them have very little real IT experience. Teach them, mentor them, sometimes they get it, sometimes they dont, not your problem.

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GeneMoody-Action1@reddit

50 here and I feel ya.

I have made a few admins in my days, and I have seen a few that got into tech only because a career counselor told them it would be a 6 figure income. I spent a LOT of years in tech before I got to a 6 figure income!

We dinosaurs have a skill set that is hard to gain in a modern world, because it is somewhat like language, you can read books and take tests all day long in a second language, but you will not learn it as fast as living with native speakers where you have to use it to communicate.

We had to fix a lot to get it to work, modern computers for all their issues do more a minute than the ones we cut our teeth on did in a day. And all that function is hidden under layers and layers of UI trending toward K.I.S.S. with each evolution. They do require a lot of maintenance, but even that occurs at a very high level nowadays. I feel confident from the hardware to the software I can fix just out anything that goes wrong with your computer, but with computing horsepower being what it is, it seldom makes sense to not just reload it if troubleshooting and repair is expected to take over 30 minutes. Add to that we had to learn it because we could not google/reddit/stack exchange it.

But just so you know this is not just a tech problem, the NAAL (National Assessment of Adult Literacy) puts the average adult at a 7-8 grade reading level, with 50% not able to read well enough to follow written instructions. 15% not literate enough to complete a job application. Ask any teacher, what they feel about the education system, not their desire to teach. (Because bless the teachers, its a thankless and under paid job).

So this is a very real problem, it just tends to manifest itself more in fields with a higher requisite skill and comprehension level.

One of the most shocking and sad things that ever happened raising my three children was having a conversation where I pulled the old man "What do they teach you kids nowadays?" to which my youngest replied they do not teach us anything other than how to pass the next test. And my others agreed that the majority of their school days were going over test preparation, so the school could keep its scores and therefore funding.

My best techs have started with little education at helpdesk and worked their way to Sr. Sysadmin, they are quick and know how to get to the root of an issue. The Education Bro's™ get so sidetracked in attempting to apply their education or implement some new something that they miss the simple obvious solution.

Yes I am upset at a CCNA holder spending 20+ hours monkeying around with a wifi problem attempting to manually set adv. radio settings, then a jr. tech simply setting all the AP's back to pull configs from the controller and everything is fixed.

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StormyIN@reddit

Long live Ghost - By far the best deployment tool ever used in an enterprise environment!

I also have been an IT infrastructure engineer for over 35 years. My issue with this generation, is that they were raised in an entitled world, and work ethic just doesn't exist. If they don't know an answer, they just throw in the towel and call it quits! What happened to the "well, figure it out" mentality?

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Future_End_4089@reddit (OP)

over the past 30 plus years I have spent weekends, in my earlier years on the job figuring stuff out for work, not because I had to I could have done it manually but because I wanted to see if there was a better way of doing something and in the process I learned SO much.

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SirLoremIpsum@reddit

Am I alone here, as an OLD guy in IT?

I don't think you're alone.

But I don't think your attitude is a new one.

You answered your own question in your first paragraph with the environment you grew up in.

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superdang9000@reddit

Agree with a lot of the other comments here and I'll just add that many I've dealt with rely solely on documentation but have no understanding of WHY they're doing the outlined instructions.

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I always tell interns to be sure to have an interest in IT, and not just do it as a job. You should tinker around and setup VMs and fully configure the domain, GPOs, and play around with it. Just doing that alone is super helpful. Having the passion to tinker and lab test things at home is key. One thing I look for is if the person has a desktop if they have always just had a laptop their whole life and never played around with old computers or SOCs, there is some interest lacking there if you ask me.

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LokeCanada@reddit

Pretty similar experience here. Burned me on certificates decades ago.

Had University graduates going into the workforce. They would graduate with every cert they could find, even though half of them they shouldn’t have till they had several years in workforce. All of them saying how things should be done and most hadn’t touched a server. Thank god most of them end up on help desk. Go to a prestigious, expensive University and get to spend years telling people “have you turned it off and on”.

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whatsforsupa@reddit

Fresh faces need to get a foot in the door too, but I’ve had plenty of poor experience with people young and old.

holester1969@reddit

55 and about the same time spent in IT. I see exactly what you are talking about. When I started, you just had to figure things out which built up the basics. Now the techs I hire need to shown the basics. Things were a lot more wild west when we started.

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TheGraycat@reddit

It’s a story as old as time unfortunately