Newbie solo sysadmin looking for advice
Posted by Ironclad_Soldier@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 15 comments
I am terrified as it is overall my first job and afraid to be bottleneck to the company. I feel overwhelmed by things but at the same time they seem easy to handle, so i need advice on what to do and what i absolutely cannot do
By solo i mean the only IT guy that can solve network or somewhat complicated IT problems. Second best at IT support is my supervisor, she can deal with some problems but will not soon enough as it is not her responsibilty
By newbie i mean straight from the college, 4 years total for sysadmin degree. Zero experience
Office is small \~50 users. We're basically a call center selling partner's products with an actual voip system outsourced to Bitrix provider and partner's infrastructure
So my #1 responsibility is to maintain network and user's machines as well as resolving software failures. #2 responsibility is to make network scalable as it has no means of centralised management
Two weeks in and i have to automate WAN failover with a following IPsec site-to-site tunnel failover for our voip to work on WAN switch, fix rare VPS hosted mailcow saved mails disappearance and Bitrix mail client often fails to send while built-in SOGo have no issues
It seems manageable, only thing I feel doomed for some reason. It's probably from lack of knowledge, there's no confidence if you don't know enough about it, even though get a backup and try any fixes knowing you can recreate
My plan is to firefight while learning and documenting everything about this network, get a backup or a way to recreate everything that runs inside it. Only after make changes or make from scratch
Company for several years was hiring rookie sysadmins, every year one will resign and previous man was here only for 5 months before resignation. Some documentation is there but it's not flagged obsolete nor relevant
What did i miss? Any advice? How do i time my work hours?
Ohmystory@reddit
Document everything …
Backup, backup, backup of data and stuff ….
Weevulb@reddit
This sounds a bit more like a network admin + helpdesk role than a real system admin. I'm turning into a greybeard far more likely than I'd prefer but this is more networking.... and I guess if you're the only one well you're the head admin. :)
Taking over a neglected network is a job and could literally take you months if not a year+ to untangle. That's ok. If leadership doesn't think so, time to bail. Could be a lot of forgotten legacy equipment that's crucial to business... And years after that you're going to be finding weird things and stupid edge cases.
I'll give you my advice. You have to figure out how hungry you are. My current employer took a chance on me with little to no experience and I spent ~3 years in hell trying to not feel like the village idiot. Now I've been there for over 10 years and I'm the village expert. I don't know anything about your leadership. If they're pushing you hard and it's overwhelming, leave. If they understand and are willing to give you space to grow it might be worth going through some hard times and come out with skills and experience you can only get when everything's on fire.
Every IT person I've ever met that acts like they know everything was a moron. You never will. First starts are always tough for me. Big deep breath. Understand what you're doing and why you're doing it before you do it. Embrace your first big screw up because if you don't screw up you're not working. If you use AI, use it to help YOU understand, not for it to do it for you. Good luck! I think a majority of us probably started at the bottom.
Siritosan@reddit
Get yourself a ticketing system, document issues and your hours. Fake it until you make it.
DBilly_69@reddit
Can’t recommend documentation enough. I keep a note of just about every fix that I do, it’s amazing how often you can remember “I fixed something just like this 3 months ago” but not remember how.
Silent_Title5109@reddit
What did you miss?
"Company for several years was hiring rookie sysadmins, every year one will resign and previous man was here only for 5 months before resignation. Some documentation is there but it's not flagged obsolete nor relevant"
You missed THAT. They want something cheap that barely works. They'll chew you up and will never pay what you're worth. Your predecessors were noobs and everything is obviously held with duct tape and prayers. Youvery much inherited a hot mess.
Try and beat the 5 month resignation record. Look elsewhere: you likely will never improve operations here because they don't care, and will burn out trying to.
shubhaprabhatam@reddit
Relax. No one knows what they're doing. You can only do what you can do. And it will take as long as it takes. This is the time to build up your circle with people you can learn from.
User__234@reddit
\^\^ This, as long as you’re getting paid fairly, then you’re going to get experience. Build a network of people and keep putting in work OP!
Ay0_King@reddit
Realest words ever, no one knows what they are doing.
Trust_8067@reddit
Everyone knows you're an idiot that knows nothing, everyone straight out of college is. If you're the bottleneck, they've either accepted that, or they're incompetent and put themselves in that situation.
In no way are they expecting anything out of you that you can't provide. Just do your job, ask questions before you do something if you're not sure, and try to learn as much as possible. This is probably one of the best scenarios someone straight out of college can be put in. It's 100x better than being in helpdesk, and I'm down selling it.
In terms of documentation. Document for your life to be easier, not theirs. It sounds like shitty advice, and when you have more experience, it is. However, this company sounds like a churnover factory with good experience opportunities, so protect yourself and your career first. Fuck them, it's their fault they're running lean and can't properly staff.
OneSeaworthiness7768@reddit
If they hired you knowing you have zero experience, then their expectations are low (and if their expectations are higher, they’re delusional and/or very very cheap.) So I wouldn’t stress too much.
Candid_Mousse_5140@reddit
Document everything and before you make any changes make sure you have working backups.
Weekly-Math@reddit
Did the previous hires give any clues as to why they resigned?
Ironclad_Soldier@reddit (OP)
Last guy just was lazy and barely attended work. He was working on personal projects, for some reason parts of his gamedev project are mixed in with documentation. For mentioned reasons he was told to resign. Though right before resignation he did some enchancements and fixes, giving me much cleaner spot
Guy before him burned out (?)from his own failures like wiping wrong mailboxes. Or i was told so. I guess he was doing all the heavy lifting as spinning up mailcow on a VPS was his doing
For others no info
guy1195@reddit
Just don't care about the outcomes..
The company obviously doesn't as they keep rehiring for the same role and everyone keeps leaving, and they likely aren't offering a big enough wage to get someone with lots of experience, they're paying peanuts and getting monkeys (apologies to yourself..)
Treat it as a learning experience, and if you end up taking shit offline and things go wrong and they start moaning, you can simply say "Yeah I'm a jnr with no one else to back me up or ask for advice, I have no idea what I'm doing but I'm trying my best to figure it out!" haha.
What's the worst that can happen!
30yearCurse@reddit
Can you think? your good. Are you calm when all are losing their heads.. your good.
Some one is going to call you up and ask Teams is not in my calendar.. you will google the answer and go help them,
A server may act erratically... you may see it has not been booted in 25 days, and give it a shot.
You will be fine.
Investigate your network with what permissions you have, IP schemes, servers, what do the servers do.. file shares.
Start getting your head around it..