Working alone in IT dept

Posted by CurveKey7852@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 183 comments

What do you think about working alone in an IT department and being responsible for all IT-related tasks in a mid-sized company with around 100 employees? I have 3 yoe and was wondering if it’s a good environment to progress.

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Mr-Hops@reddit

Also speaking from experience of about 20 years as the sole IT department. As other have mentioned, many Pros and Cons. Without the close relationship I have with our MSP, I probably would have burned out years ago. Yes, it is super nice to have someone to bounce ideas off of and for project assistance when it's over my head or just no time to work through them. Also agree with another comment where it was mentioned that unless you want to spend your time at night and over the weekends, you do fall behind as far as training and certificates are concerned. That's probably my major CON being in this position. I burn out all week from being the only IT guy, the last thing i wanted to do on my own time is more IT stuff. lol. However, yes, you learn a lot very quickly. I've built the network (100 users and two locations) pretty much myself, so I know the ins and outs of the entire thing. If there is an issue, i dont have to review someone else's work first to see if they made any changes, etc.

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MuchAdoAboutNothing5@reddit

Did this for 5 years. It's a great learning experience, you can own everything, pay will never be enough for a 24/7 on call as others have noted. My recommendations are: 1) Build everything for solidity, security, and integrations first. YOU have to do the 2am stuff, so I can only recommend protecting your sanity by preventing it as much as possible. 2) Build a relationship with ownership - if you're the only one doing it, and they aren't listening to you. Rebuild your communication style ASAP, you will need their buy-in and support for everything. And, the minute they stop listening; you start job-hunting. 3) Do your diligence for documentation and compliance. If you have legal bodies that your company may be audited by - don't slack on the internal stuff. Create a defensible position for yourself, write the email that notes your disagreement (politely) with the decision-makers. IT Managers are dime-a-dozen, the bad ones don't do anything, the worst ones cover up their mistakes. Good ones, imo, never really "work" for a company - they support the operations with sound decision making and setups.

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SUPER_CHINESE_HACKER@reddit

This seems to be r/sysadmin’s wet dream. You will do literally everything. There is no scope. If it has a plug, a screen, or a password, it’s yours. You will be in the middle of something important like restoring email, fixing DNS, or bringing phones back online when someone taps you on the shoulder because they “forgot how to turn the monitor on.” You will stop what you’re doing. You will fix it. You will go back to the outage. Then you will be asked why the outage took so long. At the same time, Slack is on fire. The phones are down. Someone pushed a bad update. A VP can’t print. A conference room “doesn’t work.” None of this is related. All of it is urgent. All of it is your fault. You will be blamed for problems caused by bad vendors, bad decisions, bad budgets, and bad users. You will be blamed for not preventing things you warned about. You will be blamed for fixing the wrong thing first. According to r slash sysadmin, this is normal. You are a cost center. You do not make money. You slow things down. You exist to be interrupted and blamed so everyone else can pretend their job is the business. Be a good cost center and blame yourself in two years when you are burned out and want to smash your head into a wall

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Clean-Afternoon-4982@reddit

Im not experienced in IT yet, but if you have a reliable enough mentor outside the organisation, good enough pay, and bases covered for future growth of the organisation (if they expand from 100 - 200, do they plan on only keeping you as the sole IT guy?) then it may be doable IMO

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frustratedsignup@reddit

From my own experience, that's a bit nuts. Who covers for you when you're sick? Is it really Ok in this company to have people unable to do their work while you're taking vacation? To me, this is a red flag. It tells me that this company is trying to get by with minimalist IT deployment and they don't care about your work/life balance. For reference, I work in a 100 employee organization and we have 5 full time IT employees. Three of us handle desktop and portable computing issues and two of us are dedicated to working on the server infrastructure.

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sudonem@reddit

Speaking from experience… Pro: - It’s good in than you’ll get your hands in everything. Con: - You are responsible for everything - There is no escalation path - You will be on-call 24/7 even if you try to go on vacation (no matter what the company says) - With only 3 years experience, you still have a LOT to learn and you’ve got no one to learn from (both what to do, and what not to do) tl;dr - it seems awesome at first but you’re likely to hit a wall and burn out very quickly. If this doesn’t pay ay least six figures I’d keep looking if you can.

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Phreeze83@reddit

i have 14 years of experience and would NEVER want to be the admin alone for over 20 people. 100 people with "the it guy" is complete madness. we are 500 and of which 60 it people lol

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old_school_tech@reddit

Wow that's huge numbers of IT. We are 3 for 1600.

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Phreeze83@reddit

either you are supermen or your IT is pretty basic with normal office users? no development of inhouse applications? dedicated secure lines to remote companies etc?

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old_school_tech@reddit

We do some in house development. Only a couple secure lines to remote companies. We know eachothers strengths and areas we could know more. We don't over complicate stuff, but we look after security.

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Fallingdamage@reddit

15 years in healthcare org as lone admin for 100 people. You can do it if you get good and keep your solutions simple / documented. That being said, much of what I do is automatic and well understood. Im standing on top of layers (years) of work and automations/vendors/policies/configurations. If someone came in and replaced me tomorrow they would have a psychotic break in a month. Not that anything I do is complicated. Its just learning the stack and knowing it inside and out. I have polished things so much that my support calls are very few and far between. I can now focus on bigger picture items while my environment runs and reports on itself. We passed our internal/external pentests and security risk analysis last year. - In part because I dont try to get fancy. I've kept it up to date and uncomplicated.

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Slight_Plate_6114@reddit

To build on that, I think it’s doable, but only if you’re really organized and ruthless about recurring work. Clean workflows, good docs, and automating the same tickets that keep coming back make a huge difference. In our case (retail), we use Friday to handle most Tier 1 support. It basically runs through the same troubleshooting steps we used to do manually and only escalates when that doesn’t work (which honestly isn’t that often). That alone has saved us a lot of time and helps us actually get through our planned work instead of constantly reacting to tickets.

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jaydizzleforshizzle@reddit

60 it people for 500 people?

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Phreeze83@reddit

60 for 440. this includes every IT position: dev, sysadmin, unix, windows, PC builders, replacers etc. We haven't outsourced any IT job

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jaydizzleforshizzle@reddit

That’s a crazy ratio to me, what’s your business market that the ratio is that high?

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Phreeze83@reddit

Finance, all i can give. it makes sense here. many inhouse developments etc.

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WWWVWVWVVWVVVVVVWWVX@reddit

I also work in finance and we have a similar amount of IT. We also do all in house development and BI.

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jaydizzleforshizzle@reddit

Fair enough, I can see that from the fintech angle. Lotta red tape and a lot of infrastructure.

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th3groveman@reddit

I'm in healthcare, but typically view devs and analysts as a separate 'IT-adjacent' team. We have 14 team members for 300 staff and 5 locations, which sounds insane but we host an EMR and 10 of those people work in the EMR side of things. Easier to say we have 3 sys/net admins and a desktop support person.

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Bogus1989@reddit

actually kinda cool, id rather do that then deal with what i do. i work in healthcare for like the biggest in the US. its maddening sometimes 🤣

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GenerateUsefulName@reddit

It really depends on the industry. I was alone with 150 people and it was doable apart from the vacation replacement. But we don't host stuff, our servers are strictly DC, Print etc. If it was just about maintaining the status quo I could still do it alone, but I want to improve our cybersecurity and see if we can get ISO certified eventually, so I am pushing a lot of new projects out.

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itishowitisanditbad@reddit

This nails several points. >you’ve got no one to learn from This is undersold for sure though. Can't learn/keep up with standards if your work is never challenged and you can quickly find yourself way behind the curve when you apply elsewhere. Its trial by fire but damn do people sink or swim and nothing between. Really depends on the industry and IT needs too, which can vary massive amounts. You really succinctly nailed it though.

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Darkone539@reddit

>You will be on-call 24/7 even if you try to go on vacation (no matter what the company says) 100% this. Unless you're the it guy with some msp behind you then you will be called and they complain if you don't answer.

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mcdithers@reddit

Not all companies operate 24/7. I've been solo IT for a manufacturing company (~100 users) for over 4 years, and I can count on one hand how many times I've been called after hours or over the weekend. Every once in a while I work on the weekend, but I get a day off during the week for every day I worked on the weekend.

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Y0nix@reddit

Been here, still am. Plan to get a good psychologist on speed dial. Good luck

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Drakoolya@reddit

I did a solo sysadmin stint once, though it would be a breeze coming from an MSP. I hated it. Everything was put together with duct tape. I hated it . I remember I had to do fix a PowerPoint for the Owner's son who was presenting to some clients. When I tell you that the thing was put together like some kindergarten kids drawing I am not kidding. That was the day I left ..oh and one the switches literally caught fire and it was righty where they stored the backup tapes .

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Fallingdamage@reddit

> You are responsible for everything - There is no escalation path Ive been a long IT admin in a small healthcare org of about 100 employees for 15 years. The quoted fact above has made me damn efficient over the years. Never do anything without learning and testing first and never do anything you dont want to support or have to answer for.

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BionicSecurityEngr@reddit

Well said. I’ve been that guy back when pagers were in style and there wasn’t any remote access. I’ve had a few vacations fucked up because of relatively stupid shit. However, given today’s technologies stack - I probably could’ve fixed most of it on my phone

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ArgonWilde@reddit

Personally, I really enjoyed being in this situation, but that was with 7 years experience. I learned an awful lot in a very short time, thanks to sink or swim. Yes, I did eventually burn out, but the experience gained was well worth it.

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rdcardex@reddit

I was in charge on a group that has 2 sister companies, with near to 120+ employees, grew up to 3 companies and 250+ employees on a 8 years span. After all that tomé I was replaced bye 4 IT staff to manage that OP, I was burnt but didn't noticed after that. Was a relief.

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ClassicTBCSucks93@reddit

Unless its paying north of 6+ figures, the majority of staff are field/warehouse that interact little if at all with technology, and their stack is mostly cloud/SaaS based with vendor support, go for it. If its not paying 6+ figures, and you're responsible for 100 needy office workers who cant print a PDF, cant load paper in the printer without bricking it, you're gonna find out a lot of ugly things about yourself that you didn't know about, and likely pick up some maladaptive coping mechanisms in short order. Places like this that are too cheap for an IT department and hire a Temu solo admin likely have a ton of technical debt, zero documentation, their tech stack is all old, misconfigured and years out of warranty or support aren't worth dealing with and you'll be burnt out in 6 months or less. Throw in an arcane CRM/ERP system and a couple half baked in house/on prem apps that everyone relies on that some IT admin created years or decades ago that constantly break to boot. You'll be treated like the help, zero buy in from leadership, and the type A personalities and squeaky wheels will constantly bog you down with ridiculous requests, and expect to have 24/7 access to you for white glove hand holding and will throw you under the bus otherwise. Expect 24/7 on call, working on PTO days, weekends, and constantly having a laptop and phone glued to you, even when you go take a shit because god forbid you didn't respond to Joyce in Accountings email that she sent 7 minutes ago.

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v-Dynamic@reddit

This can be a good env if you are a lone wolf type with at least a few more years of experience and had likely worked in MSP. But if you are a pack person and like collab, then you will find yourself overwhelmed and spread to thin. If you don’t have a system to tackling requests and projects, then you will find yourself running with your head cut off and get burnt out quick.

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NinjaNebulah@reddit

A double-edged sword that one. You'll learn tons but burn out fast without backup. The ticket flood alone will crush you with 100 users. Make sure they pay well and give you budget for tools that automate the repetitive stuff. Something like monday service can help manage the chaos, but honestly, push for at least one junior person to help with L1 tickets.

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TargetFree3831@reddit

$150k or walk. No exceptions.

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elder-programmer@reddit

I was that guy for over 10 years. Sometimes it was a cool breeze on the beach, and then other times your worst nightmare. When something goes wrong, the pressure can be unbearable, because you are IT, Pardon the pun. <Grin> Think, database is corrupted, or the mail server is down, and a hundred plus people are all yelling at you. And all you want to do is walk out the door. But, you can't, everybody is depending on YOU.

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joverclock@reddit

If you truly are given control of everything you can make some serious changes and build your resume as you gain experience in all areas. You are also able to get things done quickly due to not having the insane amounts of red tape to go through. Word of advise. Dont slack on documentation. This will help you and your users who will know you are the only person in IT. If you treat them well and give them non jargon knowlledge base/troubleshooting documentation they will utilize it. Run it like a larger business though as much as you can. (EG:everyone gets teh same headsets with zero exceptions unless medical). Put everythign in the cloud and you wont have any worries of vacation being messed up as everythign can be fixed remotely(99.9%)

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HotPraline6328@reddit

I've often been the sole it guy and I loved the control but we could afford outside consultants which helped

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Jguan617@reddit

We have 400ish employee and 90+ in IT department.

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SPHUD_Richard@reddit

I’d say if you’re resilient and self motivated and have a keen interest in every aspect - why not. It won’t be easy but objectively what path is?

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TechMonkey605@reddit

Honestly prefer this, with an MSP behind it. That’s how I started, and now do the otherside. But depending if they have money behind, (and not just cobbling together) it’s a great way to get started and figure out where you want to pursue or advance.

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The_Lez@reddit

A lot of negative comments. I'm doing it right now. I think it's a ton of fun. Yes there are challenges, but the skills you'll learn and the resume you'll build for yourself will be great.

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Fun_Fondant_1034@reddit

Yep it's either you love it or hate it. I like being in control of everything. It took me years to rebuild everything from scratch slowly. This helped me understand everything in my systems and network. Then I moved to more advanced set ups, WPA2 Enterprise with AD and Entra synchronization, in house PBX, and rewriting old Microsoft access apps to PHP. I knew nothing but all of this made me become an expert. Not only that, but as a single staff department I'm able to move at lighting speed to get things done (lol as fast as I can) On the other hand I know people in the industry who don't like that and instead prefer a single expertise, and department hierarchy and moving slowly for everything. I can work like this but it makes my life hell, especially having to deal with higher ups who are less knowledgeable than you will make you go crazy real fast. Choose your poison.

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The_Lez@reddit

You said it well. I feel as if, sometimes the negative comments from posts like this come from a person's lack of either being able to handle the responsibility, or not wanting it due to some other factor. I'll be honest, most of them just sound kind of lazy. I saw it time and time again on a few of the other big teams I work with. People not wanting to do more than the bare minimum.

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Fallingdamage@reddit

Me too. Some people just cant hack it though.

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AfterEagle@reddit

Same here. almost 6 years in. I love my job, and it's always exciting. So many things to do at all times, I pretty much do whatever I want.

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y_ukoh@reddit

Same. Been on this gig for 10 years now, I love the variety and the hands-on approach. If you have a little bit of a network to fall back on you're good.

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Throwaway_IT95@reddit

My first job fresh out of college was the sole IT guy at a middle school and from experience, you'll be doing a little bit of everything. It's a good starting point but definitely don't stay for longer than a year; especially since you'll probably be underpaid too. Like others pointed out, you'll most likely be responsible for EVERYTHING that plugs into the wall - AV equipment, security cameras, printers/copiers, servers, wifi, among other things; shit probably even the microwave and coffee machine. You may get asked to move equipment and furniture around too. I feel like I got good experience from that environment but it definitely burned me out and even built up some resentment from constantly being asked to do everything with no help - but I was there for 3 years though

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andycwb1@reddit

You’ll get some top level experience, but with 100 people they should have 2-3 IT people.

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SpotlessCheetah@reddit

Not a chance in hell. Not even if they promised more staff down the line. IT is a 2 man job at minimum with everything that comes under the purview.

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Fritzo2162@reddit

There is no way 1 person can service 100 seats and keep everything secure and running. You better partner with an MSP.

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marklein@reddit

Bull. I've been running over 200 seats for 20+ years. That said, I have over 20 years of experience and OP does not, so that's a complication for him.

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Fritzo2162@reddit

What happens when you're sick or have to take a few days off?

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marklein@reddit

I have an MSP available for sick or vacation duty. That's their only job and they don't do anything else.

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Fritzo2162@reddit

![gif](giphy|qESBZRcLXrFUbE9r8Z) Hmm. Interesting.

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Fallingdamage@reddit

I do. We have about 94 employees. Firewall, Wireless, RADIUS, EntraID, Switching, Self-Hosted VoiP, Employee Training, Automation, Monitoring/Reporting, Backups, Desktop Support, Licensing, Security, Policies and Procedures, Surveillance, AI tooling, Access Control. Single me, 94 users, healthcare org. Had our security risk assessment and internal/external pentesting last year. Passed. The only breach we suffered in 15 years was from the MSP we had for backup support. We fired them.

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itishowitisanditbad@reddit

Its def possible but i'd say its dependent on users/work/industry. Some places would be hell, others would be a breeze. I don't think anyone could say definitively either way.

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Total_Job29@reddit

There is no ‘everything secure and running’ at any size

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Fritzo2162@reddit

There is. You just have to break things down, follow a formula, and respect guidelines. One person can't have expertise in all the fields needed, much less keep up on it all.

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Total_Job29@reddit

You are frankly kidding yourself. As a CISO whose worked across many company’s starting my career in a 4 person company all the way up to 40,000 people who can point to countless example of companies of any/every size having breaches and outages. Did you suffer down time with the cloudflare outages, AWS, Microsoft Azure outages earlier this year? Crowdstrike one of the best security companies in the world had an insider attack. It is simply a fallacy to say everything secure and everything running in practically any company of any size with how the world works today.

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Fritzo2162@reddit

Yip. Secure means "you're protected as possible", not "You are immune to everything that could possibly happen."

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heroik-red@reddit

Absolutely worst advise ever, MSPs over promise and underperform 99% of the time the same is true even for the “good ones”.

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roll_for_initiative_@reddit

Small MSP owner here so I'm biased, but we say the same about lone sysadmins. One guy who's good at AD and like databases or a great network and exchange guy is just over promising and underperforming for a 100 user environment. People like to bitch about MSPs but i feel, personally, sysadmins are just mad we have a firm scope of work and won't be bullied into working for free like employees often are. But anyway, personal grumbling aside, there are plenty of MSPs that specialize in co-management and are a great option for OP. Those shops are NOT trying to take your job, they value your role, they're willing to share power/access with you and they know their job is to make you both look good. Even a 100 user place with 2 decent sysadmins usually isn't enough experience in wide enough areas to button things up and set/follow good standards.

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shaun2312@reddit

The main issue I see as someone that started the same situation, is bouncing ideas off of someone. Being able to chat IT to someone is invaluable. See if you can get an apprentice signed off, basic minimum wage. It will do your mind wonders long term

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Billtard@reddit

As someone who has worked alone for a long time in IT. I've found the AI chatbots have been a good friend. Yeah, I don't take their output as gospel. There has been a lot of time where it was nice to ask questions or bounce an idea off of something that could "help". Try to poke your own holes in the topic like you would in a conversation with a person.

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gafftapes20@reddit

I agree, I used AI chatbots all the time to bounce ideas, ask for alternatives, and sources. Usually it does a pretty good job in that space. I work with a team, but my role is specialized, so I don't have a lot of overlap in skills within my department.

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BassHeadGator@reddit

That’s funny, I ask for sources and it spits out URLs that go nowhere.

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itishowitisanditbad@reddit

I don't think i've ever had it do that to a URL. Powershell commands? absolutely. URL? Never seen it. Can you share any chat you had that happen in?

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Due_Peak_6428@reddit

ai chatbots are fucking amazing

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InvisibleTextArea@reddit

[Rubber Duck debugging](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging) is a thing. You don't always need another person. An inanimate object works reasonably well, as you will catch your own mistakes as you explain the solution out loud.

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timbotheny26@reddit

I've found AI to actually be really good for this. It's like a rubber duck that talks back to you but without the requirement of mental illness.

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itishowitisanditbad@reddit

Rubby Ducky AI is one of the first chatbots I actually put effort into making, dumping documentation into it and stuff. Genuinely useful for it if you kinda know what you're doing and know when its hallucinating.

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gixxer-kid@reddit

Was going to say this, unless you have decent vendor support and/or MSP support to back off to when times get tough, it could be quite difficult

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Fallingdamage@reddit

Ive been solo IT for 15 years. Out of fear of falling behind I stress every day about doing thing ive never tried to do before and setting up challenges all the time. Short term and long term goals. Just because everything is working is no excuse to not be working on a better way to do it or a smooth user experience for staff.

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itishowitisanditbad@reddit

Which is great but some people can't self-motivate/drive like that and will sink in the same role. I did solo IT to *start* my career and it was pretty brutal. With IT way more expanded now, I can only imagine its more painful.

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K2SOJR@reddit

Yes! Sometimes I just get stuck thinking about something in a specific way and a teammate will point out that there is an entirely different option that makes way more sense. Even to be able to vent about a specific issue you need someone that understands what you are talking about.

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Flabbergasted98@reddit

not only when you finish all your tasks, you get to redo all of his tasks as well. :P

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RedGloval@reddit

Wouldn't recommend, they'll tell him show the new Padawan everything, layoffs the Jedi, and let the Padawan do all the work for cheap

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shaun2312@reddit

If that's the company you work for, you need to move on

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thetokendistributer@reddit

Man.. its probably the one thing I yearn for, someone on par or more knowledgeable that myself would be so invaluable. Then maybe I wont dunning kruger myself.

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Friendly_Ad5044@reddit

Just as long g as you don’t Voight-Kampff yourself.

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landob@reddit

I don't know how many times in all my years of experience that I overthink something, end up talking to some jr tech with 6 months experience and they are like "hmm. that seems a bit much, what if you just xyz?" and im like ! yeah i was really overthinking that lol.

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Intrepid_Stock1383@reddit

I did just that for about 10 years. At first it was hot fire after hot fire. Primary goal in the beginning became to get the ear of the executive leadership. Eventually I was able to replace or upgrade problematic systems while spending less time troubleshooting them. By the end, it was the best network I’d worked on, and I’d made a lot of people’s lives easier. I think the real differentiator in these situations with be upper management- real change requires top down buy-in. Good luck!

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HumpHur@reddit

This is so important to me. I’m glad to be apart of a great IT group that does this.

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tenant-Tom_67@reddit

Good point. As the sole engineer at a tech company, I've started making custom GPTs for different aspects of the infrastructure to help me process.

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admiralpickard@reddit

Did it for 4 years… 24/7 chain of gyms … 20+ locations in 4 states. You are forced to learn a lot.. including budgeting and how to interact with management.

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Techatronix@reddit

Would be very stressful.

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Patient-Stuff-2155@reddit

I've been a one-man IT department for 4 years now, handling about 400 users, their devices, printers, smartboards, networks, you name it. It's super rewarding but it gets frustrating fast when they dump everything on me, even stuff way outside my job. One lady wanted me to fix her noisy coffee maker. People ask me to hunt down a missing remote instead of asking the other people sharing that space. I've learned so much so fast though, and the upsides totally beat the headaches. After a couple years, I got good at just saying "nope" to the dumb stuff, even if I could fix it in 2 minutes. Pro tip: Don't jump on non-urgent user error related problems right away. Let 'em sweat it out a bit, they might solve it themselves, happily tell you about it, and actually learn to troubleshoot before bugging you next time.

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pc_load_letter_in_SD@reddit

Sounds like a dream!

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Tall_Witness5418@reddit

In my case, I joined a healthcare based mid-sized company that had a bitter moment breaking away from a MSP. I was the only IT and I managed over 400 devices on my own and there wasn't a proper IT infrastructure. I'd say take this stressful first couple months as your opportunity to grow exponentially. Other people will say "run" but I say build the infrastructure to your liking, make it into your baby! Once you make the system your own, then you can fine tune it. Good Luck!

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Mysterious_Syrup6639@reddit

With 100 employees, that’s a lot for one person. Burnout is a risk, and you won’t have anyone to bounce ideas off or mentor you. If priorities are unclear or management expects 24/7 availability, it can get stressful quickly. With 3 years of experience, it can be a good move if the company supports you (training budget, realistic expectations, maybe outside MSP help). If they expect you to magically handle everything alone with no backup, it might limit your growth instead of helping it.

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GoodEnoughThen@reddit

Solo Sys Admins can greatly benefkt from ChatGPT. Huge time saver when it vlcomes to problem solving, just verify the results and your work.

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hackinandcoffin@reddit

Partner with an MSP. Let them take care of server backups, M365 backups and patching. Let them own the phone system and network. You handle the rest to start with.

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icedutah@reddit

Its bad for the company. When you leave there is nobody else with the knowledge.

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3tek@reddit

20 years of experience. Solo IT for 170ish employee's. Get a good ticketing system. If you rely on Teams chats or Emails, stuff can get overlooked.

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PerfectBake420@reddit

I have done this for the last 7 years. Up to about 225 employees across 4 locations. All held down by me. I enjoy it but get stressed out more than I should.

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No_Promotion451@reddit

The ultimate path to burnout welcomes you

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Secret-Intern527@reddit

25 year network vet, you’re crazy lol. All the cons say all you need to know.

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Glittering_Power6257@reddit

A recent Sideprojects video about being Roman Emperor about summed it up. “Infinite Authority, Infinite Accountability.”

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JerryRiceOfOhio2@reddit

if you know what you're doing, and can implement your plans without interference, and you have a good budget that you can spend as you see fit, then yes. otherwise, no

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Ok-Double-7982@reddit

How are your vacations and sick days working out?

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No_Afternoon3495@reddit

That is my situation and I like it. A lot depends on how many apps you are supporting on prem.

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katzners@reddit

I'm currently managing around 120 employees alone but I also have 20 years of experience. Also I actually knew the system beforehand, as I supported the environment for at least 7 years as an external IT consultant, so I knew exactly what I'm getting into.

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Turbulent-Pea-8826@reddit

Doing all tech for 100 people? Maybe - depending on experience. The issue is who is doing the management stuff? Budgets, purchasing, meetings and talking to the other managers. If your doing all of the tech then who is that person running interference for you with the business stuff? Then there is the cybersecurity and change management stuff. Who is doing all of that? Also you?

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iamtechspence@reddit

Some people would consider this a gift!

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matroosoft@reddit

With MSP backup, yes certainly doable. Without, never.

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old_school_tech@reddit

I moved to a role as sole IT person with 120 users aas part of my career progression. It was good to have to do everying and solve every problem. It rounded out my skill set. But often clearing printer jams because someone got a bit rough with a printer. Everything means just that. Was a great company with great people, even the persistent printer jammers

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Fallingdamage@reddit

Having your head in every part of the stack also helps to build better solutions because you understand the whole thing, not just your part.

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1337Chef@reddit

Depends on what you are going to do. 3 yoe and doing EntraID/AD, VPN, Firewall, RADIUS, cert, dna, client support, switching/routing, etc.. man that is gonna be tough

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Fallingdamage@reddit

Im doing that and more for 100 employees. But I've built up the stack slowly over time.

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leftplayer@reddit

It can be done. I’m from a small country where there are very few businesses having more than 100 employees, so their IT “team” is a one man band doing everything. Do they do everything correctly and by the book? Hell no. Does it work? Mostly yes.

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Fallingdamage@reddit

Been at it for 15 years. Stared with 118 employees, we're about 95 now. Automation and keeping it simple. Dont do anything you dont want to maintain and support. You will progress as quickly as you want to or you can. Always keep challenging yourself and stay relevant.

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Nervous_Screen_8466@reddit

Small business. I’d recommend having more experience under a mentor.

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arlissed@reddit

I support fewer people, but have been a 1 man dept. at the same place for 18 years now! It certainly works for me

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UsedPerformance2441@reddit

Welcome to my world.

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agarr1@reddit

I'm looking after around 250 on my own day to day (we have a contractor I can bring in for bigger jobs if needed). It has its bad days but it really depends on the firm, if you get the resources you need its great.

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Impossible_IT@reddit

Is it a “department” if there’s only one employee?🤷🏻‍♂️

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King_Solomon_Doge@reddit

Uh I would recommend. You might burn out rather quick, unless everything is already mostly automated. It's a great opportunity to learn but too much pressure for one person. What if you will get sick, or need an emergency leave? What if there is a big problem that you don't know how to solve and have no one to ask? Been solo admin is great (I am right now) but for much less people (I'd say <30 is optimal)

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acniv@reddit

Let's see, technically, depends. QOL? You'll be harassed 24x7 unless this is some kind of super chill 9 to 5 Monday through Friday only business with next to zero internet presence and zero remote workers...unless the remote worker is you.

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Antoine-UY@reddit

What's your background, what are you good at, and what would you say are your biggest technical limitations? "3yoe" doesn't quite cut it, in and of itself, if you're to manage all IT-related questions for 100+ people.

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Humble-Plankton2217@reddit

Who covers when you have time off? You? I'm not taking calls on my time off.

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ArieHein@reddit

Not doable.

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981flacht6@reddit

No thanks

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TheWiseOldStan@reddit

Your post describes my exact situation, except when I started I had 0 YOE. Brought in an MSP to fill in gaps.

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Medium_Banana4074@reddit

Being the sole IT admin is always a problem because with everyone expecting for everything to run 24/7 you are basically never off-work. Never really on holiday and nobody will even pay you for it. Avoid.

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th3groveman@reddit

Does the org have any plan for coverage if you are out sick or on vacation? Or will you just be tethered to a laptop 24/7/365? I don’t know man, I don’t think I could ever take a sole admin role.

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Hans667@reddit

do you expect to go in a holiday? no chance being the only one :) got 25 users in a branch of the company, sometimes is easy sometimes i need at least one more person here, when i\`m in a holiday the hq takes over. in your case for sure i will not accept it, or just make sure the work hours are fixed 9-17 and no after work time, no after work calls, and so on ...

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AfterEagle@reddit

I am a 1 person IT department here and I support almost 100 users. When I take a vacation, I cross my fingers nothing breaks. I also make it VERY CLEAR and schedule FAR IN ADVANCE any extended time off. This way there are no unexpected onboardings, no changes to infrastructure... There is also ONE trusted user here (our general manager) that I give the keys to castle and have process documents for the top 10 ticket types I have. He has been able to handle it in my absence.

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fata1w0und@reddit

Been there done that. Will never do it again.

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SnipeScooter@reddit

Similar case here. Less end-users with desktops, more network and server infrastructure. Comments are valid: \- You miss input and ideas from co-workers. When you don't have more experienced co-wokers around, your experience grows much slower. And no, AI is not your co-worker. You have to validate its input, not learn from it. It learns from you. \- Availability demands are high. Waking up to alerts from systems during the night, while pleasing non-patient end-users will burn you out. Especially when holidays equal being on stand-by. \- You get the infrastructure to yourself. This is a power move that'll make certain things progress much quicker. As long as you know what you're doing. I'm burned out. And the real reason I'm in it is for the money. 6 figures (before taxes) in Europe is huge. The EU is in serious trouble economically, things aren't going great. So find a good reason to stay in a similar situation. If you can't find it, ask yourself the right question.

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mrh01l4wood88@reddit

I've been in this situation before. In a way it's kinda cool being the single God over a domain without anyone stepping on your toes. But one, you have to be very technical in order to not fuck up badly. And more importantly, most small companies aren't willing to pay you what it's worth to do all the work that requires. If you're not already super technical then I would suggest finding a job with other people you can ask questions. And if you are I would say make sure they pay what it's worth.

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cincy15@reddit

Nope, nope, nope and double nope if they want you to report to a finance officer.

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Robert_VG@reddit

I do this. More employees but I have 20 odd years experience. You will literally get involved in everything. Printer setup to IT Policy. It’s fun, but at times quite draining!

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GroundedInformation@reddit

Been there. Done that. Working in a bar was 200x an upgrade on being an IT system admin. An upgrade of people too.

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deanmass@reddit

I worked in K12 IT for a decade and a half- I was solo most of it- imo- it really depends. I could bring my sons in as needed- My office was fairly private, so I could get them occupied and still work and because it was a school, no one batted an eye. If you don’t have flexibility OR the boss is the type that expects you to live the job, hard pass. Inverse? Good gig.

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Booshur@reddit

I'm doing it now. Honestly the work-load is light and they're paying me well. I have an IT friend who I meet with regularly to bounce ideas off of. And I chat with former coworkers. Basically, if you have a decent network of other IT people you can talk to you'll do ok. This style job is very dependent on the management team. If they don't trust you or they're terrible then it will be hell. If they're good it's honestly awesome.

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Vindalfur@reddit

What will happen if you're sick? or on vacation?

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Standard_Text480@reddit

1 person (coordinator) plus MSP unless you are the most insane no life workaholic. But also a jobs a job so…

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ImCaffeinated_Chris@reddit

It's incredibly stressful. You are pulled in so many directions and everything is your responsibility. There is a constant feeling of you missing something big. Even vacations have that cloud hanging over you that you're going to get an emergency call. There is little time to be proactive. I think being a single IT admin is brutal, and I did it for over half my 30+ year career. Once I got with a team the stress level dropped exponentially.

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Wolfram_And_Hart@reddit

Join a pier group or get used to talking to us.

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Easy-Pace6785@reddit

I work as an IT Manager for a small Canadian retail company with around 75–80 users. Being on call 24/7 really depends on the employer. In my case, I get to decide what’s actually an emergency that needs attention after hours or on days off, and what can wait until the next workday. Since I’m still fairly new to the field, this setup works well for me because I get to be involved in a bit of everything and learn a lot along the way, especially since I’m the only one handling IT. I do sometimes miss having someone to bounce ideas off or talk through IT-related stuff, but again, it depends on where you work. My office manager actually makes an effort to understand the basics, so when I talk to him about something, he at least knows what I’m referring to.

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Crenorz@reddit

If they have budget and allow you to constantly improve things yep. If you have no budget - things can get boring. IT costs $$$

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MTB_NWI@reddit

I’m in this boat with a co managed it (my old employer)

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lordcochise@reddit

that's been most of my experience, but at times can be tough if you get overwhelmed and you don't have outside support you can rely on. The nice thing usually is you can MSP the stuff you don't want to / can't deal with and handle in-house whatever is left, but that's not always possible. Also, it helps if you're at a company whose inhouse operations aren't 24/7 (e.g. retail, manufacturing, general offices) so you can easily build in downtime and not have to be on call; I definitely had a good # of colleagues post-college who made twice the $$ I did but they also had to work 80+ hour weeks, constantly on call / in meetings and at a permanent level of stress where substance abuse and burnout was all but guaranteed. Small companies don't have the budgets / promotional opportunities larger companies do, but there's often benefits that may not easily be measured in $$.

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Dragonborne2020@reddit

I covered the entire Office in Frisco for a Major corporation (800 employees) assigned remotely and local. I also covered Houston (150 employees) no on site support, remotely. Oklahoma City (50 employees) all solo for 12 years. It sucks, I ended up teaching monthly classes to masses on how to perform maintenance on your machine. More people would attend my monthly classes than attend any other meeting. We crashed the meeting software from time to time. But overall it sucked. Lots of late nights.

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Shiznoz222@reddit

It's not a one man job, that employer is trying to cut corners that can't be cut. You will regret it of you take that offer, just think about how quickly you will become inundated with more than you can keep up with. You need to at a minimum have network, helpdesk, cybersecurity and preferably a desktop support tech for a mid size org.

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flsingleguy@reddit

I did it all alone for 17 years for a 24x7x355 for a municipal government with numerous departments including police and fire. At 28 years I got one to help me. I will say what it did to me was extreme stress, contempt, auto-immune issues, an insane gastro-intestinal reflux and really a limited life. Strongly not recommended.

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dustojnikhummer@reddit

Salute to you for lasting 17 years

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jman1121@reddit

That's insane.

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bassmastashadez@reddit

I’m in that situation right now and I’m desperate to get out of it.

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MidgardDragon@reddit

It depends on how much patience, support, and understanding you have from your higher-ups and end users, honestly. This could be a fantastic situation, especially if the department was already set up and self sufficient and you are just taking over, and everyone understands that one person can only do so much. If you're walking into a shit show department that was never fully realized and your end users and management are total assholes, it will be the worst job of your life.

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applecorc@reddit

It really depends on if your manager/administration will listen and back you when you say something needs to change or you need to buy/upgrade something.

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SCANNYGITTS@reddit

I’ve been working as a Sys admin for the last 19 years by myself in a similar environment. I asked for help years ago. I work exactly 40 hours per week and don’t do a lick extra. They don’t want to hire help? Ok no prob. I’ll do exactly what is required of me. Don’t ask me for anything more. No committees, no volunteer tasks to help the other departments etc. One day I’ll get help… You can make it work if you want it to. Forums, Reddit, Experts Exchange, and even ChatGPT can help you with input when needed. It may not be right, but most people aren’t right so it’s not that much of a difference. Just fact check before you implement.

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Unable-Entrance3110@reddit

I managed \~150 as one person. It's totally doable. I don't think about work outside of work. As with everything else in life, it's about managing expectations. It also helps to be passionate about what you do and identifying problems before they become show stoppers. Document everything for your own sake, it really helps to organize your thoughts and surface weaknesses to focus on.

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IDontWantToArgueOK@reddit

This is me currently and I love it, it's all about the environment. My boss knows that he doesn't really understand my department so I get a lot of freedom in my initiatives, is happy to pay for continued learning, and isnt cheap when my solutions have a cost. I don't get many trouble tickets because everyone has mdm managed macs so I spend most of my time in my projects. I have more experience than you but this is also how I started out, as a sole contributer. The difference then was the boss was cheap, so I spent a lot more time putting out fires. It's a great way to learn and a good path to becoming a generalist and then a consultant.

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Likely_a_bot@reddit

Say goodbye to work/life balance. Say hello to burnout. If you're young and need the experience, do it for two or three years max and then jump ship. If not, it may kill you.

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Scoobywagon@reddit

It probably is not a good environment to progress in the sense that you work in that one environment and so that's what you know. That's not to say it isn't a good place to be. It may very well be. But you're not going to find a lot of career advancement there and probably not a lot of skills advancement.

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Anri_Tobaru@reddit

The real question isn’t can one person do it, it’s who covers you? If the answer is you, it’s not an IT job, it’s a lifestyle subscription

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SevaraB@reddit

3 years isn’t really long enough to be exposed to all the nooks and crannies of modern formal IT. I don’t doubt you can rebuild a PC in your sleep, but endpoints are really only about 25% of the picture in structured IT, and hardware isn’t even all of it, since you have to manage data and network security policies on those endpoints, too. A mentor or a professional organization would be good, but there aren’t too many “clubs” for sysadmins across companies beyond meeting up at vendor conferences (which is what keeps a lot of us hanging around this sub). If you’ve got a local community college/tech school that offers IT curriculum, those instructors often do the work in addition to teaching; if you haven’t been through those classes, the course is usually not much more than the cost of a cert test and gets you the info even if you aren’t planning on taking the test for the cert (which takes some of the pressure off, since you’re not just hurtling towards a pass/fail test that won’t give you usable pointers on where you need to improve).

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WiseSubstance783@reddit

Not a great spot to be

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boli99@reddit

It's doable if you have boundaries. They will think that you're on call 24/7. You must make it clear that you are not on call **at all**. i.e. You have a seperate work-phone, and that phone gets turned *OFF* out of hours however that said - if you can get yourself a gopher (intern) - life would be much easier.

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doglar_666@reddit

I wouldn't personally take it, given the number of end users involved. There would be no time to do proper deep work and most days would be firefighting and end user nonsense/politics. Unless the pay is great, the tech stack modern, the IT budget big AND you don't have social life, I would not recommend considering it.

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Backlash5@reddit

If we talk progress then it depends on how you like to learn. Having other IT people around is really helpful for getting their insight and experience, especially if they're more senior\\experienced than you. If you like being independent and are self-driven then I don't think getting solid experience and progressing your skills would be a problem. Do you ever plan going on a holiday tho? I know a guy who used to be a 1-man army for 2 years in a similar size company and taking some time off was a nightmare. They finally hired me to help him and he was able to take some actual time off lol.

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366df@reddit

It lowkey sucks. And depending on the work hours, it can be impossible without an msp helping you out since you can't always be on call.

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Obvious-Water569@reddit

I'll take this one. I'm an IT Manager for a company with about 150 staff and I do it all on my own. I'm in my 40s and I've gone just about as senior as I want to in my career. I'm not falling over myself trying to get my next promotion so this role is ideal for me. I know and understand the entire stack we have here and stay relatively up-to-date with emerging tech. What I will say to you is if you're looking to quickly build skills and knowledge, this isn't the best kind of place to do it. The IT budget will be small and innovation will be slow. The best place to rapidly gain experience in a massive range of things is to work at an MSP. The work is hard and the pay is bad, but you can upskill like an absolute mad man.

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Total_Job29@reddit

My experience was the exact opposite. Granted we were a software SaaS fir so there was a direct link between infra and revenue so innovation was sky high and I gained experience with everything. Completely rebuilt the company from the ground up tech wise. Building deploying servers/ AD/storage arrays/ firewalls/ hyper-v/ cloud infra on Azure/AWS, SQL+ DBA the whole shebang. I then was hiring and interviewed people from MSP who were stuck in a ‘roll’ so I deal with password resets account permissions etc. I think there are a lot of specifics that can make 1 path better for that person at that point in time. Does the company have good opportunities or not being the major one.

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harbengerprime@reddit

Had one of those positions about 10 years ago, I was able to learn so much in the 3 years I worked there

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CrimsonFlash911@reddit

I took a position quite similar to this 6 years into my career and it was great for my growth. I also got a lot of gray hair. The good news is that if you can really cut it ‘normal’ company responsibilities will pale in comparison.

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ChallengeQuiet1921@reddit

It's awful. You should only stay if there is no alternative. I've been in this situation for over two years, and my situation is even worse. I work for a soccer club with about 200 employees, simultaneously filling three positions (the club itself, the company that provides infrastructure and stadiums, and the academy company that trains young people). I am forced to work with a constant lack of funding and ambitions that are three steps ahead of the company's capabilities, and my opinion is not particularly taken into account. I work virtually without days off, even at matches my presence is required, and I can't stand stupid games with balls. Ball to the left, ball to the right... I don't give a shit where the ball is, and I put up with it instead of my personal time. What's more, the head office literally burned down in a fire eight months ago, and I had to completely rebuild the local networks on my own from the literal ashes, when the smell of smoke was still there and hadn't started to dissipate. Every time I quote the price of a project they want to implement, they easily cut 80% of the budget and then complain that the quality is not high. I could talk for another hour about why this is a terrible idea. In certain short periods, it may seem fine, but as soon as something happens, you're trapped, you have no one to replace you, and everything is on your shoulders. In my club, they pester me not only about IT but literally about all the problems they don't understand. They even called me when the air conditioner broke down and when the scoreboard at the stadium short-circuited. Just run away while you can, don't fall for the illusions that may exist at the moment.

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Total_Job29@reddit

I did this with 0 years experience. It’s one of those jobs where you get 3 years experience per year because you are handling everything. So if you are up for a challenge I would say go for it. This started my career and I’m now on $450k and I don’t think I would be where I am without that initial opportunity. Yes it kicked my arse. Yes I broke a lot of things. It was stressful but I would 100% do it again if my life switched back 15 years.

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MidninBR@reddit

I’m on the same boat, for 5 years now. Try to get consultant money into your budget., you don’t know it all. Pentest, it gives you a direction on where you missed lately. Focus on the staff, how to support and help them being more productive. Automate all the tasks you can. Get in touch with a MSP, to cover for your vacation. It can be a good thing that you can run the department the way you like, the hard part for me is having no one to talk about projects, failures and successes.

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DueDisplay2185@reddit

Try going from 100 to 500 in 4 years and still being the solo IT guy. You have it good compared to some

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SaucyKnave95@reddit

I had effectively 1 full year of experience before landing my current job that I've had for 24 years. IT Manager at an agricultural manufacturer in the Midwest USA. Around 100 employees, but only about 60 are dedicated computer users. The rest sporadically use technology throughout the shop floor, but the use is ever increasing. I'm the entire IT department and it's never been a problem. My first major task when I started was to ensure remote access so I could be plugged in 24/7. I love being able to have my fingers in ALL the tech ALL the time. I've also acquired more responsibilities on the shop floor, too, being tangentially connected to some of the more technical machinery, such as our 4 laser tables, the entire machine shop, and the various initiatives within the Parts department and their little section of the main warehouse. We're considered a small company, but at $30M gross revenue, we're not doing too bad. I envision retiring from this job when the company dissolves, decades in the future.

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Familiar-Seat-1690@reddit

I’ve done it at a ratio of 1:140. learn from my mistake. It was doable day to day but negiocate expectations around vacation coverage up front as well as off hours expectations. external contractor for vacations and 3-4 hour response time would likely be fair.

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jimicus@reddit

It’s a really bad idea. You will only learn how a proper IT department should run by working in one. As a one man show, you’ll be a massive red flag to any employer with more than a couple of IT staff.

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dowlingm@reddit

Who handles after hours support, sick days and vacations? If that’s you, uh oh. If you have an MSP backstopping you, it’s still pretty suboptimal. Sometimes you need a second pair of hands if nothing else, and as someone else said the ability to talk through issues. Who do you report to?

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maddler@reddit

Just no, you need (at least) couple people dealing with that. There's a LOT top be done with a 100 users. Unless you don't want to work 24/7/365. Doesn't really matter how many years of experience you've got. You will need to manage servers, user accounts, networking, printers, random "my printer is not working", and everything else that a 100 users' brains could come up with. Plus high priority requests from CEO or whatever. No, thanks.

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eclipse75@reddit

they better pay well and understand I'm going to constantly be behind.

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Hobbit_Hardcase@reddit

A lot of it is going to depend on how much support (and budget!) you get from management. Supporting that many users as a OMB is possible, but it's a lot of work when you are trying to do the Infra as well. If you have a good relationship with your management that can mean that you don't get as much bullshit from users because they see that you get taken seriously. Ticket everything, document everything. Agree SLAs and make sure that there is some kind of cover for when you aren't there. Don't let them turn you into 24/7/365 support unless they are paying you for that.

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TrippTrappTrinn@reddit

I started mycareermany years ago with 50 users. When I moved to a bigger team, the thing I was most happy with was that I did not have to be involved in everything, and that if I was not present, somebody else was there to deal with it.

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Kathryn_Cadbury@reddit

I wouldn't recommend it long term, and it's a single point of failure for a start. Most of IT is dealing in redundancy etc so not having a backup for you or someone to sense check and run ideas past isn't a great place to be. Getting someone else in (another you or an apprentice etc) should be high on the list of requests. Depending on the place you do have the capacity to learn a lot, but you will be spread very thin if they have you doing everything and you run the risk of becoming a jack of all trades and a master of none. At the very least ensure that they pay for you to go through a bunch of learning and development stuff and plenty of courses and certifications (but don't let that be a replacement for pay rises etc).

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S4LTYSgt@reddit

Sounds like you need to make it a 0 person IT department.

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ryalln@reddit

It’s all in context, helpdesk help no you can’t learn. For me a solo “manager” it’s fine because I’ve automated the shitty helpdesk tasks and maybe see them once a week. I do contract and long term planning. My issues are fighting a business who is cheap and fight for decent new gear.

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IronyNotFound_777@reddit

We call that one-man/woman band... or orchestra. When I joined my team as a sysadmin there was only one man serving and supporting around 50 endpoints/ local servers/ software and hardware. I never heard a complain from him, btw...

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