I feel I am not doing real job, dont know what to do

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GeneMoody-Action1@reddit

Why quit and study, use the free time to augment the career you have, if you skill out of your current position and skip right into another better one to your liking it's a win/win.

And consider the blessing, there are people in the world that likely work three times as hard for half or less of the pay! Perspective is everything, I would also suggest googling imposter syndrome, its real and very common in knowledge jobs, especially IT.

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TrueRedditMartyr@reddit

Tf do people make good money doing nothing? Where do I find these jobs? I barely make decent money doing a lot

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BasicallyFake@reddit

the higher up you get the less you do and the more you are responsible for......

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TrueRedditMartyr@reddit

That's the only negative, if shit goes sideways, you suddenly need to figure a lot out. If it turns out you've been doing nothing for 2 years, it will come to light, and you will be fired on the spot

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ghostly_shark@reddit

i worked my ass off for ten years, then job fell out of sky and my management has zero expectations and here i am

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UptimeNull@reddit

You’re either new or not asking for that project work. If you have an IT job currently …we are busy af.

This sounds like bait.

Tell us what you actually do day to day!

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giridhargp@reddit (OP)

I have job if there is any onboarding, that too people don't give approval till last day, so basically if someone is coming I have full work on they of arrival of new joinee , or if someone calls for any issue in my office, there are currently about 80 people , everything works fine, lol , so most of time no complaints,

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shelfside1234@reddit

Well there’s a start, improve the onboarding process; look at automating it

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JJaska@reddit

And then look at offboarding!

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ek00992@reddit

Underrated comment.

I had to off-board a disgruntled founder who was making threats to destroy all IP. He had full root access to everything, and the knowledge to get it done quickly.

Every system administrator should have documentation and playbooks enabling rapid off-boarding of anyone from an executive to an intern.

Guy had backdoors set up in quite a few different places, scripts quietly pinging every major system, and a serious bone to pick. Legal strongly recommended an off-boarding window of no more than 30-minutes.

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OhBuggery@reddit

Not as intense but when I joined a new company their off boarding process was "manually clock into and revoke Okta group/app access and make a ticket for each service. Then go into all the services that aren't behind Okta SSO and do the same, ad infinitum.

Was a fun process automating the entire process, getting HR involved, turning it into a single click process rather than hours of manual shit.

If you've got no work and you're bored, improve shit

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TheCyFi@reddit

Based on your duties and the size of your team, it sounds like you are more help desk than sysadmin.

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JJaska@reddit

Albeit if there isn't anyone else doing sysadmins job they are also the sysadmin.

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TheCyFi@reddit

Not if all they are doing is creating new accounts. Clearly, someone else is sysadmin.

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JJaska@reddit

I really hope so!

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giridhargp@reddit (OP)

Yes but high position and i changed job because of that, in my old company MNC there were 30 people, I got bored of doing nothing mostvif time and changed, here there is bit more work than previous but same, already am looking at another job within a month

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MathmoKiwi@reddit

Use your downtime to study for a few certs, like CCNA and AZ-104 or MD-102

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UptimeNull@reddit

You just copy and pasted. What do you DO? Why would someone hire you?

Enlighten us!

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giridhargp@reddit (OP)

At current role that's what I do, am also searching for new company within a month of joining, :/

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GurImpressive982@reddit

eh you just have a normal job. id be grateful. There are two types of places imo. Places where the queue never goes away, and places where they give you a managable work load.

Here is a way to think about it. You have a payroll person at your company. Do you think they actually do and are expected to do some "payroll" thing for full 40 hours a week? No, they will have downtime.

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False-Lawfulness-778@reddit

Two things, if you are idle most the time you don't need quit to study....

The other is, if you are idle most of the time you are doing something wrong. Cool, nothing is breaking but you should be improving and automating things. Adding new things the the environment. Working on your security, implementing things to approve business functions (hard to know what without your industry) but come on man, just do more don't accept the silence

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Orangusaurus69@reddit

Hi

2 years of sysadmin experience + few years of technical support speaking here:

Admin is not a developer - you can't expect to have 8h of hard, non-stopping work each day. Some days are busier, some days or even weeks are less busier. But there is a difference on if this is because everything is working great so there are no constant fires.. or is there lots of stuff to do that no one is just not doing?

1 - All sysadmins i know think they are not doing enough, even the most experienced and hardworking ones. It comes with the job, i guess. Do not stress about this too much or it will lead to burnout.

2 - There is ALWAYS stuff to do - sysadmin's job is not only to put out fires but also to be as ready for future ones. Spend the idle time you have learning stuff. You can't possibly learn everything at once, find something pleasant to get the ball rolling. Suggestions - prepare for exams on whatever ecosystem you are mainly in.

3 - Take time to be lazy, but also find time to be proactive - update or create documentation, check and test backups, etc. Whatever your responsibility scope is. Don't always wait for tickets or tasks from your boss, try to find tasks yourself. If your scope does not allow you to make the changes, prepare documentation for it and present it to higher powers to confirm and approve.

4 - This may not help you much currently, but you are very lucky to have that job. Make the most of it. A lot of admin positions are basically admin+technical support specialist + network wizard + junior security engineer and sometimes even somethink like a voluntary therapist if you're working with users directly. So many responsibilites for one man's salary.. These guys never rest and they get called in after hours, on vacations, sickdays.

And the list can go on and on, it really depends on your scope and environment.

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giridhargp@reddit (OP)

I get it, thanks dude

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DeebsTundra@reddit

So learn Powershell. Learn Python. Learn Json and API. Learn Ansible or Puppet. Learn Linux. There's plenty to do involving scripting and languages in an admin position.

Sounds like you want to be spoon-fed work on a minute by minute basis rather than actually learn something to make you effective.

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giridhargp@reddit (OP)

May be you are correct, I'll start from today

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perth_girl-V@reddit

Document test plan always something to do

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giridhargp@reddit (OP)

Can you elaborate a bit?

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perth_girl-V@reddit

Have you tested backups redundancy fail overs

Is everything documented and 100% up-to-date

Whats your plan for the evolution of the system and future proofing ?

If you have all of this 100% up-to-date well if i was your boss i would go check everything you have done 100% and either be extremely pissed cause you lied or its a read only network

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giridhargp@reddit (OP)

I get it now, there is no one to question me here, even though there is no backup here they just run on raid, (i joined this month) I will check on that, documentation also i can look, but what is evolution of systems and future proofing , I know word meaning, what do guys do actually?

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JeffBiscuit67@reddit

No backup here....... Well I'm not sure I'd be struggling to find things to do.

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perth_girl-V@reddit

Yea getting a backup going would definitely be something to do lol 😆 😂 🤣

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giridhargp@reddit (OP)

Lol, i understand the importance, but if they don't agree for purchasing anything, what would I do? I will make an effort after this , but I can't much . People don't understand until it's not working

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BananaSacks@reddit

Ask your compliance team, or security department, or legal department if there is a risk register. No Backups is an extremely LARGE risk that is exactly what a Risk Register is for (on the IT side). It is also where any of your major audit finding will end up in (every department, not just IT). This is how the big bosses, the board, etc. Plan their budgets and approve spending to mitigate, or fix, unacceptable risks. This is also how you CYA (cover your ass) - when it goes wrong, and they lose business, customers, money, etc - you point at the Risk Register and the fact that you brought it to their attention. At that point, it does not matter if they did, or did not choose to spend money. It is documented. It is not their word against yours. There are no playing games.

If you have a lot of downtime, these are exactly the things you want to start learning (the business side of management, not just the hands-on IT knowledge).

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BananaSacks@reddit

Lol, I would honestly invite anyone - who is/has/will downvote this, to please explain how you figure that this is bad advice.

Genuinely curious how someone could find this bad advice for a Jr. Mgr who has no direct supervision/boss, and is looking to find purpose & excell in their role.

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AnythingEastern3964@reddit

You convince them. I’d say 50% at least of any IT job is explaining to business people the importance of x

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Chunkycarl@reddit

You need to speak board level. What is the cost to the business to be non operational per hour? How much do they loose in leads (if they sell a product)?

How much do they loose in production (if you have a prod environment) being down?

I ran a disaster recovery exercise with our board last year and it was an eye opener just how disruptive and costly being down was- I rarely get pushback on implementation of services like this, but it was nice to be able to justify, in cost, the damage of being down.

The biggest challenge I’ve found in my career (especially in companies where they do not have a dedicated technical lead at board level), is speaking in a way that translates to them. They do not care for the technicalities, but they care very much about profit loss.

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MathmoKiwi@reddit

That's why you need to be writing up a case for why a backup is needed.

Crunch the numbers, what's the risk of failure vs costs to the company?

It will quickly make financial sense for them!

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JeffBiscuit67@reddit

What you have to realise is if that group of systems is in any way your responsibility... Then, if it fails, and cannot be recovered, all of a sudden they will take a great interest in your job and what you have done.

I'm not sure I'd be able to sleep until I had a real look at everything, documented as previously suggested, and implement resilience where needed. There is absolutely no excuse for no backups.

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OmNomCakes@reddit

Your job is to come up with options and price points and make them understand what they need and why.

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perth_girl-V@reddit

Thats when you do the testing of fail over

Its shows them

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czenst@reddit

gif

ideal gif for everything OP wrote in this thread.

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ThaGoodGuy@reddit

Jesus I wish I had your job, got an opening?

No backup is questionable, have you or the team actually went through a raid failure?

Evo of systems, got anything coming in? leaving? Anything new needs training, anything leaving needs a plan for end of life.

You have SSO? MFA? How are the tickets? Make your rounds introducing yourselves? Half the job is getting close with your reports and staying ahead of any bombshells.

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losekiloaskme@reddit

I get that feeling. I had a slow period at work once and it made me feel guilty just sitting there, like I wasn’t earning it. But a lot of jobs are just like that, bursts of work and then nothing.

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MaTOntes@reddit

Is disaster recovery sufficient? Redundancy? Support contracts? Fail over? Backups? Off-site Etc etc.

How are cyber security measures? System hardening? Patching? Pentesting? Vlans? Firewall rules? Permissions?

On boarding / off boarding procedures?

WiFi config?

Automation?

Documentation?

Future planning?

You literally have an infinite list of possibilities in front of you.

If you don't have enough experience to plan this out yourself, give an AI a big detailed overview of your environment, policies, procedures and get it to give you some ideas. Strap in, you have an infinite to-do list in front of you.

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Recent_Perspective53@reddit

No such thing as bored in the admin position. Improve backups, clean up AD, export switch config, pick up a non (ccna, network+, etc). If there's nothing to do is because you're waiting to be told what to do. I've been at my new company for a month, it took me 3 weeks to fix the backup schedules and plans.

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ITViking@reddit

You’re waiting to get assigned tickets? Take initiative and build, improve and automate your environment. There’s always things to improve

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Capta-nomen-usoris@reddit

What are you supposed to do?

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UptimeNull@reddit

Maybe dif into network plus cert? That will get you familiar with networking and perhaps you take the ccna after.

Networking never goes away. It’s all networking in the cloud. Security is just securing networks in one way or another.

Get into networking. It’s hard. But it’s the back bone of everything.

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giridhargp@reddit (OP)

I have done ccna in 2016-17, problem is i cant make a change now and start from beginning, i didn't change job back in 2016-17 was same reason, the place where i was working said there is gonna be network related jobs, but nothing happened, I have good understanding of network,firewall , but don't have enough knowledge to get into full network job

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JJaska@reddit

So how is the network security doing in your current company? Have you implemented NAC and ZTP? How does your network look like regards horizontal separation?

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giridhargp@reddit (OP)

It's not it company, they running firewall with license expired few years ago, I told them on they day I joined, they didn't care much, , i didn't know NAC and ZTP, I'll look into it, Thanks

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gsmitheidw1@reddit

Sounds like your company is going to get ransomwared soon. No backups and unsupported firewall. You'll need a new job when this one goes out of business permanently based on the current collision course.

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UptimeNull@reddit

Right! Is it flat? Seems like it. Can we vlan it for segmentation purposes?

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maziarczykk@reddit

Assistant IT manager or Assistant to the IT manager?

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CryptosianTraveler@reddit

Not to be overly simplistic, but you might want to take a look at ITIL certification. But not just to get the certification. Studying for it will answer a whole lot of questions about what to do going forward. It may also help justify any related expenses. Welcome to ITIL

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Escanut@reddit

What's your day to day like?

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MathmoKiwi@reddit

Find projects to work on to improve things

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Fit_Metal_468@reddit

Patching, upgrades, automation. You find things to do. Make yourself valuable

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iamoldbutididit@reddit

Get involved. Show initiative. Be willing to learn something new.

An 80 employee company tends to run on Excel and ad-hoc processes. Learn what those processes are and offer to look into streamlining or automating them.

Make sure no one has admin rights to install programs. Do patch management. Document everything. When was the last time you restored from backup? Do you have DLP in place? What is your Microsoft Security Score? Do you have a Risk Register, a BCP, and a DRP?

To grow your career you should be earning at least one cert a year. When you have 5 - 10 active certs, earning the CPE's for them will keep your skills fresh and relevant.

If you're really that bored, hire a third party to do an IT security audit. That is guaranteed to give you enough work for a year.

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