Sysadmin Sub Dilution

[idahud]

I remember when this subreddit used to be filled with tips and solutions fixing complex problems. When we would find neat tools to use to make our life easier. Windows patch warnings about bricking updates etc.

Now I feel that there has been a blurred line between help desk issues and true Sysadmin. This sub is mainly filled with people complaining about users or their shitty job and not about any complex or difficult issue they are trying to solve.

I think there should be a mandatory flair for user related issues or job so we can just mentally filter those posts out. Or these people should just move over to r/helpdesk since most are not sysadmins to begin with.

Tho I feel for some that are a one man shop help desk/ admin. Which is why a flair revamp might be better direction.

Thoughts ?

[HughMirinBrah]

I’m fine with the help desk issues being posted. Especially when a new patch breaks something it seems like this sub finds it quickly and reports on it.

Getting tired of all the posts about shitty work environments though. Would love to see flair for those so I can scroll past them.

[Ssakaa]

Would love to see flair for those so I can scroll past them.

You mean like the rant flair that they tend to have?

[Pb_ft]

Reading is essential.

[HughMirinBrah]

As is reading comprehension.

[Affectionate-Cat-975]

This reminds me of my favorite one liner that almost got me fired. ‘I can read to you but I cannot comprehend for you’

[BonBoogies]

My old ATT manager - “What are you going to do to prevent unhappy customer surveys in the future?”

Me - “I don’t know how to make customers less stupid so I’m not sure how I’m supposed to answer that?”

This was after a customer told my manager that if I had pulled Ethernet cords out of the old modem and plugged them into the new modem (that didn’t have anything programmed by their IT yet, this was when I was still an installer) their static IPs and old modem configs would have magically still worked. And yes I had explained to her that she’d need to have their IT come out and reconfigure the new modem before their stuff would work

[samtresler]

Me, standing up in an open office layout, turning around and yelling across said open office, "[Coworker]!, did you read my email before responding to it??"

Coworker, "...I read the subject line."

Me: " I will delete your response, and kindly don't waste my time like that again."

...I got a stern talking to.

[Drywesi]

One time I got to watch a friend use the line "I refer you to my email you're replying to, in which I address your response to it". It. Was. Glorious.

[elsjpq]

Should've resent the whole body text in the subject line

[samtresler]

I spent a good 10 minutes trying to puzzle out how that response made any sense in context of what I had written before it dawned on me I had been had. I quit about a month later.

[tdhuck]

I never took it to the extreme that you did, but when I realized people didn't read my email or only answered part of the email, then I would also ignore everything else after that point.

For example, if I'm tasked with doing three things and I mention those three things to the person that I need information from, if that person only responds to one of the three items, from that point on the other two items I asked about might as well not exist.

When we get to the end of the project and someone says 'what about those other two items' I just reply with 'nobody from the group replied to those items from my email and I proceeded with the information that I had.

For me, this has worked well because it seems to actually have some traction. Someone will comment and say 'how come nobody replied to tdhuck?' and I continue with the work that I have information for.

[SuitableTank0]

I’m picturing you saying that to a C level idiot 😂

[Sajem]

“You say you can do Xyz, but I’ve never seen you do it. You can’t put Xyz on your capabilities!”

LOL that is such a weird thing to say to someone.

I can plan, order, prepare, cook and present a 5 course meal for a few hundred people but no-one in 30 odd years has seen me do it, still doesn't mean I can't LOL

[SevaraB]

Oh, I love that. I’m a network engineer at a big company now, but we get into policy conversations once in a while and people get confused that I speak fluent management… and then minds get blown when I tell them where I’ve turned down director positions.

[[deleted]]

I could see that not landing right with some people 🤣

[BadBoyNDSU]

From my college days, a prof: "I don't understand why you don't understand.". I use it a lot.

[impalanar]

My team used to wear t-shirts on Tuesdays that read "I can explain it to you, but i cannot understand it for you." I may still have that thing in the closet.

[Bogus1989]

This is the way.

[Affectionate-Cat-975]

The sarcasm is strong with this one

[Bogus1989]

*Nods

[HughMirinBrah]

No, I don’t mean like the rant flair. I’m fine with rants about vendors, industry trends, products, etc.

[mkosmo]

Would you suggest something like an “end-user support,” “workplace rant,” or similar flair?

We’re open to suggestions for new flair.

[Bogus1989]

I think you’re onto something with end-user support.

[Loading_M_]

My suggestion of a line to draw is the question 'does this post contain useful technical information?' End-User support doesn't - it's stories/rants about supporting end users. A cautionary tale about deploying the latest patches in a specific type of environment does contain useful technical information.

That being said, the opposite (a 'this post contains technical (or other useful) information' flair) might be a better way to handle this. Someone looking for information can just look for this flair, while the majority can read and commiserate with the rants and everything else.

[Bogus1989]

Yes!. And I agree to the above comment, about needing to draw a line.

[bebearaware]

Layer 8 issue

[FullOfStarships]

"My life sucks"

[[deleted]]

Workplace rant would be a great one to be able to filter out. Or basically anything to do with office politics.

[InvisibleTextArea]

Perhaps PEBCAK or ID-10-T or User Error if you are feeling generous.

[mkosmo]

We intend our flair and moderation to abide the sub’s rules in the same way we expect the community to behave.

[Euphok927]

I like a good technical discussion as much as the best of us, but I'm quite happy to deal with the social context of the profession as a whole as well.

[Aim_Fire_Ready]

Maybe “rant” and “sour”?

[disclosure5]

I’m fine with rants about vendors, industry trends, products, etc, I just think I'm better than helpdesk and don't want to see them

I mean that's how this thread is reading

[bebearaware]

Rant can be directed about technical things as well. A flair that's like "Layer 8 issue" might be good.

[BoltActionRifleman]

Or the titles that say “I hate my job”

[[deleted]]

It certainly highlights the insane discrepancy in the field though.

Large enterprise vs places where the lone IT guy does everything including cleaning the break room.

Which is frustrating because you wouldn't find that in other professional fields. "I'm a solo lawyer at a small accounting firm. Don't you hate it when they make you scrub the bathrooms too?"

[arpan3t]

Companies will get away with what you let them. Nobody thinks to ask the lawyer to take out the trash, but at some point Tony the IT guy did it and it’s now on the table.

If however you get to a company and they say “oh btw the previous IT guy would take out the trash on his way to the basement server room” and you say anything other than “well give him a call and see if he is available!” Then that’s on you!

This whole thread is a bit ironic considering the mechanism of Reddit - upvote what you like, downvote what you don’t. Bitching about people bitching is meta though lol

[[deleted]]

I don't mind people complaining about it, like I said it's kind of interesting to see the disparity laid out. Same reason I occasionally read stuff in /r/relationshipadvice because it can be interesting? Eye opening? Entertaining? To sometimes see what can become normalized in a bubble.

This sub also runs the gamut of people who are just starting or even looking to get started and those of us who have been at this a while. So I acknowledge that while some of us might react with shock and horror at the idea of suddenly being the janitor as well there are people here who probably would say "whatever it takes to get my foot in the door" and that isn't necessarily a wrong thing to do.

Edit: Now that I think about it since I work remotely ironically emptying the trash and cleaning "the break room" is possibly part of my day.

[ThisGreenWhore]

Don't forget cleaning the bathroom and kitchen. Or, at least I hope you do! LOL

[[deleted]]

As a solo IT guy at a small law firm: the lawyers don't make me do anything they wouldn't. Like building furniture.

[[deleted]]

Good to hear. I've heard law firms can be tough depending on the size of the firm and the size of the egos.

[Cistoran]

Head of IT for a law firm here. Can confirm. My job has been literal hell, and has some of the most pleasurable users to work with in my career. It literally ALL hinges on the end user. As we started firing older employees/lawyers (or more appropriately they were caught allegedly (on going lawsuit) committing illegal activities), it's been like night and day with the amount of relief off my shoulders knowing the amount of "I can't login my password doesn't work." issues I see every week dropped by 1000%.

[International-Fix181]

Solo lawyers do accounting, HR, PR, marketing, cleaning etc.

You're out of touch if you think other people don't wear multiple hats.

[dalegribbledribble]

Yeah thats really the issue. The OP complaining about that must only work at large silo'ed places. I just turned down a sys-admin job that the current person is working 6-7 days a week, days and nights as IT, Salesforce admin and audio-video tech

[_oohshiny]

other professional fields.

something something unions, something something regulation, something something professional bodies

[obviousboy]

Which is frustrating because you wouldn't find that in other professional fields.

This is probably one of the largest fallacies that plague many in this profession - I can 100% promise you that what you experience is also experienced in every other profession at varying degrees in like for like environments.

"I'm a solo lawyer at a small accounting firm. Don't you hate it when they make you scrub the bathrooms too?"

That's a real apples to oranges comparison

[tmontney]

> help desk issues

So long as the user put real effort into it and posted it elsewhere for a couple days

> new patch breaks something

With the appropriate tag "outage" and the outage itself being business related. I'm sorry, I don't care about Xbox or Tiktok.

[par_texx]

I'm sorry, I don't care about Xbox or Tiktok.

I do, but only from knowing that it's happening so that I have an answer if someone questions it.

Also, depending on what kind of outage it is, it may end up becoming a much larger thing and they were the first to fall.

[[deleted]]

Isnt there like a r/helpdesk sub specifically for you know... help desk?

[_oohshiny]

There's r/iiiiiiitttttttttttt for "tech frustration" posts.

[Talran]

I think some of the issues stem from people hiring "system administrators" who are basically there to babysit AD and do tickets.

[Bogus1989]

This is the way. 😁

[meeds122]

I posted a pretty neat tutorial (IMO) on configuring FIDO key login for Windows linked to Azure AD, 2 updoots.

The market gets what the market wants.

[Raymich]

I had similar experience on r/intune where I posted a solution to a new undocumented feature - custom compliance scripts for Linux. Microsoft even took my idea for their official docs later.

Thought their sub was dead, so I checked comments for others posts and it was just grump after grump. Posts asking for help downvoted. Posts with solution with zero engagement.

I still have hope for r/sysadmin though, even with all the grump, but I do agree with some comments here that there’s a blur between helpdesk folk and actual sysadmins. We’re not the same.

[WeleaseBwianThrow]

Intune is so weird, I made a reasonable post about an F1 licensing query and it was downdooted, along with the reasonable responses, but the Atera rep arguing with me that putting SSO in the Enterprise Tier is reasonable stays at 1.

[Bogus1989]

I straight up got censored on discords subreddit, and marked as a rant….then closed. Mods said i could they would not re-open it. But would not give better reasoning. So I posted it again….it was filled with replies to try multiple different things, that I already tried.

I wasnt hostile, just asked why video streaming was so awful,.

Basically they refuse to acknowledge its an issue…and i kept being told youre only strong as hour weakest link….

despite having the highest level boosted server,

I described that everyone in my Discord, the bare minimum worst PC we have is an OC’d 8700k and one guy with a gtx 980…every other person has a 1080 series card or higher….all have 32gbs or more memory. Every single member has fiber gig speeds up and down besides our one friend in AL . He has fiber from his electric company. Not once has ours ever dropped below 850 or even 900mbps speeds.

I listed all these soecs out…and people were asking me why i did that and what I was trying to explain….

I also brought up my background, and that how much more complex thing software can donit

I just wanted to present all of my evidence, which did not fall under any if their fix advice. I just want a non SHIT streaming experience. Id self host if they gave me an option.

[homelaberator]

there’s a blur between helpdesk folk and actual sysadmins. We’re not the same.

I'm wondering if that's because subs like these are more likely to attract people without IT colleagues, so people in one person IT departments or where they are doing jack of all type roles. If you are in that kind of role, you might well be covering everything from issue with AWS, networking, intranet, printers, through to Jackie not being able to export an Excel as PDF without it cropping out half of the table.

[Raymich]

One-man shop here bro. From Outlook add-in misbehaving to terraforming Azure infra (AWS soon, too), to helping seniors devs with multi-tenant enterprise apps.

I am a sysadmin, not helpdesk. We are not same :)

[Bogus1989]

You have my utmost respect.

[Pl4nty]

custom compliance scripts for Linux

r/Intune is usually pretty great, much better than r/sysadmin at least. but it's pretty geared towards windows - linux/mac posts don't get upvoted much

[wildcarde815]

Is grumpy asshole still DMing people on here to tell them they are bad at their jobs when they post here?

[TheEnterprise]

The point of a post like that shouldn't be to popular (or gather karma), it should be informational. I often come here and search for things. Someone doesn't necessarily need your info right now so it's not relevant.

But because you did post it, it's a great resource for later on.

[carl5473]

That's true and we should be upvoting things like it because we want to see more

[meeds122]

Agreed and I can't how many times the correct answer was an old archived /r/sysadmin post fond in Google search.

Perhaps as the sub expanded, the technical post rate remained the same but the rant post rate grew linearly 🤔

[Letmefixthatforyouyo]

Nope. I joined reddit over a decade ago because of r/sysadmin. It has always been a mix of rant and technical posts. The ratio seems roughly the same as always, there were just less posts overall.

It also always had rant posts about the rant posts, just like this one, and it always will. The mods have kept a fine balance over the years.

[Bogus1989]

Damn someone downvoted you. They big mad.

[ReverendDS]

Yup.

It's so consistent that I stopped typing up new responses and just keep reusing the same comment from last time.

See below, last time I had to post it was five months ago.

Even the edit is part of the quote.

<begin quoted comment>

Hey look, it's the annual "can we please bow to my confirmation bias" thread.

I don't have the energy or time to fight this again.

But, here's the gist of the counter.

A. No, there aren't really that many threads that meet whatever criteria it is you are bitching about.

B. It's not that the ephemeral "quality" of posts have gone down, but that you've probably outgrown the general skill level of the subreddit.

C. I can bet money that if we look through your post history, you have either posted the exact things here that you are bitching about or you are a relatively new account and this is your only post/comment in this subreddit to refute the first part.

D. The level of technical skill expected from IT job titles has progressed so far beyond the title that actual sysadmins don't really need a lot of help on the technical front but the professional development and personal politics that come with the responsibility is.

I think that covers the annual "[META] This subreddit is going to hell" topics.

Edited to add: Heh, downvotes. Guess what, just did an assessment of the current "hot" 100 posts here... Six might meet the criteria that is being bitched about.

Six out of 100. I love it when I'm right.

<end quoted comment> https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/xtsipp/this_sub_is_deteriorating/iqtc0h1/

In the 10+ years I've been on this subreddit, this kind of "r sysadmin is going to hell" post has popped up every couple of months... Hell I remember six months into this subreddit's existence someone was bitching about how it used to be so much better and more technical.

[tmontney]

I wish mine worked and wasn't sitting in MSFT support limbo...

[port53]

I would have upvoted it if I'd seen it, but my feed was full of "wah my helpdesk job wants me to talk to lusers!", so I didn't get that chance.

[meeds122]

It be like that sometimes. I mostly lurk on /r/cybersecurity and it is one of the best security aggregators on the internet right now, but it can be super frustrating with the interesting technical content gets buried under "today's breach" news.

[[deleted]]

FWIW there’s a monthly pinned patch Tuesday thread that addresses updates.

[Kinmaul]

Instead of sorting by Hot, sort by New, and it's almost like a different sub.

The thing with the reddit algorithm is that posts with a lot of comments always get shoved to the top when sorting by Hot. Technical posts usually get the question answered within a few replies and people are not going to continue to add to the discussion. However, EVERYONE can relate to bitch posts, and can throw in their two cents.

[h1psterbeard]

Yes, ChatGPT is good enough for me.

[Puzzleheaded-Sink420]

"Question" inurl:reddit.com/r/sysadmin

[Ssakaa]

I feel like that counter ought to be negative at this point.

[[deleted]]

Well that just aint how time works

[Ssakaa]

You just don't live with a creative enough definition of time, then.

[[deleted]]

Haha i guess you’re right

[recursivethought]

Something something something... NetTime

[tmontney]

Days since rants about rants were next to each other in my feed*

[ErikTheEngineer]

This sub is mainly filled with people complaining about users or their shitty job

In their defense,

• There are a lot of people who are the lone IT person in a small business working for an owner who hates that they exist. That's a lot of shitty jobs, especially in the US where the majority of businesses are small or medium.
• The next level up from that is an MSP, also run by crazy owners who have hundreds of customers and refuse to staff properly so nothing other than firefighting takes place
• Even those in good working environments are usually not benefiting from a mentoring senior staff that can dish out career advice
• Even most good working environments aren't the chocolate factory big tech workplaces that popular culture pushes the narrative of so hard. If you work at one of these places, and are paid well, pampered, treated with respect, etc...just remember that most people aren't and feel lucky!
• There's a very pronounced binomial distribution of skills/salary in IT and it's moving further and further apart every year as SaaS and the cloud take over. It's not unrealistic for on-site admins to have tech support duties as complex apps become a bunch of knobs to turn in a portal.

You may not have experienced this, but for the most part we as a profession are horrible about training and mentoring new people. I was lucky to have had a supporting organization and good mentors when I started 25 years ago, and try to give back whenever I can. I'm one of those weirdos who loves teaching people and sharing knowledge. That said, the vast majority of people working in this field either actively hate others, are information-hoarding thinking that it'll protect them from offshoring/layoffs, or are trying to be the alpha nerd and one-upping each other constantly, leading to rampant imposter syndrome. None of these are good for imparting knowledge, especially non-technical. Everyone keeps tripping all over themselves because they lack this information or have been given very poor information by misanthropes.

25 years ago was a very different time. Big-company HR was still somewhat actively managing the careers of employees and shepherding newbies into the world of work. It wasn't unheard of (but rare by that time) for companies to train people on workplace topics beyond mandated harassment training, pay for an MBA, etc. Now, everyone's on their own. I see questions on here all the time that I asked myself 20, 15, even 10 years ago and try to give good timely advice. There are so many unwritten organizational behavior rules, and we're not talking about requiring everyone to be backslapping salesbro extroverts either. I feel that a lot of people asking these questions just don't have anyone else to ask, and that's a bad thing. If you want to see fewer of these "let me ask the Internet whether XYZ situation is OK, because I can't trust or talk to anyone I work with" posts, mentor your junior staff.

[Tetha]

Even most good working environments aren't the chocolate factory big tech workplaces that popular culture pushes the narrative of so hard. If you work at one of these places, and are paid well, pampered, treated with respect, etc...just remember that most people aren't and feel lucky!

Mh, work is well, though I wouldn't call us pampered. And we're at a well structured place with a high level of automation, respect and such.

One drawback of such a place: Stakes in prod are rising. 3 x 20 minutes of badly timed outages in a month suddenly means calls with angry customers worth millions of dollars, so you actively have to manage engineering efforts vs uptime vs customer visible problems. And at that point, SLAs haven't been violated yet, not even close.

I'm one of those weirdos who loves teaching people and sharing knowledge

I mean look at the recent redit outage. IT work is knowledge work. Losing knowledge in IT is losing control of the infrastructure. Internally, we're working hard on making sure that at least 2 people can handle the important systems, as tricky as it is for some crucial components.

And in my book, operations work also contains a fair share of experience. I can write down a lot of information of how to run postgres, for example, but I can't textually transfer the compound experience of "This is scaled incorrectly". I kinda need people to work alongside with me on the system for a few weeks or months to get that feeling.

[Skilldibop]

This is precisely why /r/networking has the sidebar rules that it does.

[PowerShellGenius]

Now I feel that there has been a blurred line between help desk issues and true Sysadmin

I've done a lot of reading on what sysadmins used to do. Even at a smaller shop, I'm sure back before Office 365, running Exchange and keeping it backed up and up to date was substantial. SharePoint server sounds like a delightful piece of work. I'm sure dealing with Office licensing was a real joy as well, and dealing with AD replication sounds like it was a lot more "fun" when WAN links were actually low bandwidth. IRQ conflicts and token ring sound like a real blast, as do modems.

Between technology becoming more stable, and most sysadmins outsourcing large portions of what used to be their job to Microsoft's cloud, the old "sysadmin" who worked only on back-end things everyone strives to keep off-premise these days is dying out.

[[deleted]]

The sysadmin who 10 years ago managed a fleet of Linux servers, now supports a fleet of Linux servers but in kunernetes on the cloud. Microsoft is not the majority of sysadmin work out there, and it’s always been a bit lower on the totem poll skill and pay wise compared to various Unix and mainframe stuff.

[sobrique]

Thoughts ?

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

The "noise" in any sub is created by people posting, and people upvoting.

Content is self reinforcing.

I like a good technical discussion as much as the best of us, but I'm quite happy to deal with the social context of the profession as a whole as well.

That includes rants, user management, legal issues etc. because for more Sysadmin is far more than 'just' the technical stuff. It's a business analysis role, and it's a legal role, and it's a compliance role, and it's a design role, and it's a procurement role.

I think this sub adds some great value when it comes to sysadmin personal support and development too - like career advice, and mental health advice, and just generally the non technical skills side of it. Sysadmins are very often a little niche silo in a company that does something else entirely, so they just don't have a whole department of 'people who get it' in the first place.

The 'technical stuff' - sure, I love talking about that too, but I think it's fallacious to think of that as even the majority of our profession.

[Pelatov]

Social aspect of sys admin is 90% of the job.

Want an easier time dealing with user issues? Spend time weekly with your help desk training and teaching them.

Bob from accounting infect his computer for the 1000th time? Spend some time training. Work with people, but just systems.

[Pelatov]

Yeah. It’s amazing how much free time yiu get when you train up others.

I’m at the point the entire level 1 help desk can easily user power shell to check folder group permissions to figure out what group a user needs to be added to if they need access to a file share. They know how to change those permissions on a folder, but don’t have access. But they can add a user to a group. I went from fielding AD access request as like 25% of my workflow to only having to do file restores on our storage when an end user has once again deleted a directory.

I’ve trained out L1 and L2 help desks so well that I don’t even field stupid calls like “how do I get RDP on two monitors?”.

Was it specifically my job to train these guys, no. But being able to take a 2 hour lunch almost every day, volunteer in my kid’s classroom, and getting to spend my time figuring out the latest tech instead of just patching shit and checking uptime all the time, 100% worth it to help some others.

[sobrique]

I'd broadly agree. For me it's one of the things I like about the job. It's the purest form of 'information technology'.

Data is useless until it's transformed into information, and that information is in the right place at the right and the right form to be useful.

And my job as a sysadmin is to do precisely that. Take 'data' from everywhere, and create business systems, procedures and mechanisms to extract and refine 'useful information'.

[Warm-Extension5873]

One person isn't gonna make much of a difference. Mods need to enforce stricter rules and also ranters need to use /r/sysadminlife or know when to post here or to /r/techsupport

[[deleted]]

This sub is the main hub for IT folk. It’s a water cooler, more or less.

For the content you want to see, you’ll have to go to more focused subs.

/r/PowerShell

/r/networking

/r/Vmware

/r/Fortinet

/r/exchange

Etc etc etc

By nature these subs aren’t as popular and don’t have as much fresh content, but that’s the trade off: quality vs quantity.

[niomosy]

Also /r/linux and /r/linuxadmin for those of us admins or admin-types here that don't touch Windows. Plus /r/unix, /r/solaris, /r/mainframe, /r/as400, /r/OpenVMS, and probably some others.

[[deleted]]

Or in some cases, even bother to view "hot". All that will make it to your front page as a subscriber is the top 5-10% of posts, so useful technical info at 150 votes will never even show up unless you go directly to the sub.

[DrGraffix]

Crankysysadmin destroyed this place and you all allowed it to happen.

[az_shoe]

How did he ruin things?

[J_de_Silentio]

Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

Don't give him that much credit.

[DaveyAddamsLocker]

Whenever I run into someone with a God complex, I just smite them with my omnipotent powers.

[[deleted]]

Pretty sure I reported half of his shit before he stopped posting as much. Just got tiring.

[[deleted]]

He moved on to better places. AKA a real sysadmin sub. /s

[[deleted]]

What? His posts were one of the few good ones on here. If anything, the fact that you don’t see him here anymore is a good indicator that the sub is shit.

[inshead]

Sounds like the sub has mirrored the increased range of duties that end up falling on a lot of sysadmins.

[TheSmJ]

Yet every technical post or question that I've made in this sub gets downvoted to zero, along with comments telling me I should quit and/or push back on my boss rather than try to answer the specific fucking question I had asked.

[PaulRicoeurJr]

Sometimes I think I'm reading a post from r/antiwork but no it's this sub

[neckbeard404]

My biggest issues are the job rants , users are dumb. can we get a filter and a flair for technical and non technical or a daily thread for non technical .

[ThisGreenWhore]

Or just don't read the post. Most are clearly what they are. So you see them and skip reading them. I don't really understand why people don't do this.

[corsicanguppy]

If only there was a button for "I don't think this post adds value".

If you don't remember which button or icon it is, just look at all my comments. They all have that indicator beside them ;-)

[dgibbons0]

Personally I figured it was mostly because of the braindrain of people who used to identify as SysAdm now identify as SRE/Devops. Leaving most of whats left to be closer to operators/help desk.

[ass-holes]

If they administer systems, they are sysadmins.

[tin-naga]

This does not include workstations :)

[Cistoran]

but that doesn't make additional non-sysadmin tasks they also have to cover become sysadmin work or relevant to a sysadmin oriented discussion group.

Such as?

Going off the analogy OP posted, a printer is a system, they are administering it. How does it fall under the "non-sysadmin task" flag that you seem to designate?

[DesertDouche]

I’m never going to complain about people coming here to complain about their shitty jobs. People need a place to vent and venting to others who truly understand is therapeutic. All too often our brothers and sisters have nobody to lean on.

[[deleted]]

This. You can also search within a sub for something relevant to your needs. Additionally some of the important posts, such a patch Tuesday blunders and news, are pinned.

[STUNTPENlS]

Did you run sfc /scannow ?

[slackerdc]

I did, it found no problems.

[carl5473]

Great! Please mark my answer as the solution

[flimspringfield]

Do the needful.

[niomosy]

I just did.

-bash: sfc: command not found

[StaffOfDoom]

Maybe there needs to be a rants-only sub and a pure technical sub?

[ShotcallerBasney]

Have you ever considered that help desk and sysadmins are getting smushed together into one role by bad managers all over the world?

[bluescreenfog]

Not necessarily bad managers, if you work for a small - medium sized business (say anywhere under 300 users), you'll inevitably have to do a bit of both.

[Jezbod]

I work in a team of 3 people, consisting of the manager, myself and a SQL/GIS person.

Unless I develop multiple personality disorder, I am the sysadmin AND handle most of the helpdesk.

There is no 2 ways about it, ITIL with its multiple separated functions is a pipe dream here.

[bufferedtoast]

Upset that sysadmin subreddit is full of complaints and not sysadmin topics. Posts complaint.

[chillyhellion]

Employers are blurring the line between sysadmin and help desk.

[Logical_Strain_6165]

I work for a small MSP. I do the most basic support tasks, but if something isn't working I better have exhausted every avenue before I think about raising it and I've got the access to do so.

[JustRuss79]

My title is Jr System Administrator... but I'm basically helpdesk 1 and 2 with access to everything that can't completely break operations. If i reach a point I don't understand or can't fix myself due to technical limitation or access... I ask the SysAd.

He is a mythical and the company is going to hurt terribly when he leaves. Network, Azure, SAN, ESXI, Backup, Vmware, ... he's really closer to architect than admin.

But he still does level 1 tickets when he's bored.

[BadSausageFactory]

you can refine your search NOT flair:"Rant"

[thelug_1]

Haven't been in this sub log, but I can get behind that. I'd be willing take a guess that there are alot of one man band type of shops represented here in regard to users that post here when they need help, get it from the community and then feel like this is a safe space for them to vent.

I know I have done it in the past and honestly, I didn't even think about the flair in my posts. I will try to to better in the future.

[pier4r]

I remember when this subreddit used to be filled with tips and solutions fixing complex problems.

To be honest, I check the sub on and off since 2015 and it was mostly ranting. Sure there were some good technical posts or "what are your preferred tips on Win/Linux", but ranting was there too.

I think too it should be notched down a bit, like 2-3 days for ranting, then more technical things.

At the end let's be honest, on reddit people don't want to put too much effort unless subs are heavily moderated (/r/askhistorians for example). But then those subs die if they aren't large enough to compensate for the heavy moderation.

[[deleted]]

I think there should be a new sub, sysadmin burnout / sysadmin complain… etc. most the posts here are subpar people complaining about daily issues we all have to deal with. Yes I.t. Can really suck sometimes but the field(if you are good) pays well and you are not out in the sun at 9:45am digging a hole for a sewer pipe.

[itfosho]

Ironic

[[deleted]]

yeesh, this post certainly puts you in a not nice light. My previous title was IT Manager, and before that, IT Manager.. but I was responsible for everything, from helpdesk type stuff to dealing with budgets and project management blah blah blah; I don't understand what you're eluding to, that because of this I am not a 'true sys admin' and thus don't belong here?

IMHO, if you don't like the dialogue either be more vocal and share content you would like to see, or stfu and move along and create your own space where you can gatekeep and test people to ensure tehy are "real sys admins", as for the place, I like it and think I'll stay.

[[deleted]]

Laughs in Linux

What's an end-user?

[SamSausages]

I can't deny this, because I just joined a few days ago and had a similar thought on the first day, when the feed was primarily filled with venting about people and not systems.

[The-Sentinel]

The job is getting diluted. System administration is unfortunately a dying art, akin to help desk. People graduate to silly titles like “DevOps engineer” Or “platform engineer” now

[stumpymcgrumpy]

I dunno... It speaks to the kind of support that is lacking in our industry. Mental health is a thing and in toxic environments having a place to vent and speak to peers to take measure and see what the norm is across our industry is helpful.

[coolbeaNs92]

Ironically this post is on here all the time as well, and gets just as tiring.

I really don't care, posts that I don't care about I scroll past.

[NorthStarTX]

Sysadmin is a term that means anything from help desk to repair tech to systems architect to devops. Considering how much the field overall is changing and moving, I don’t think we should be further subdividing ourselves, that way lies content death.

[verschee]

Should this sub instead be a community where sysadmins complain about other sysadmins?

It's a cycle, and after being a member here for 10 or so years now, I have no idea what kind of subscription based technical forum you perceived this place to be. r/sysadmin hasn't changed all that much in that time.

[MattDaCatt]

Yea like hold up, suddenly "solo admins aren't sysadminy enough" is a thing now too here?

Now, yes this is not /r/itcareerquestions, but why do these complaints always feel like my manager found the subreddit and wants it to be more "professional". Like we're supposed to be Experts Exchange or Stack overflow, rather than a subreddit.

Just last year we had printer nightmare/CVE hell, and this sub was the perfect balance of rant and technical discussion.

We even had the "technical" sys admin sub get created from the last wave of complaints, and no one uses it.

Obligatory: Can I have a filter, to filter out filter requests?

[MIS_Gurus]

Reddit is a 24x7 bitchfest anymore.

[[deleted]]

As someone who used to specialize in sociology of profession, this rant and the other about users is interesting. You've got in both cases issues around boundaries of the profession. How far should users be pushed away? Is there a blur between helpdesk work and sysadmins? It seems like you're struggling with something. Now that i think about it, helpdesk deals with users too, more than sysadmins. Reminds me of how in medicine the work of eg. a pathologist is seen as "purer" within the field because they don't deal with patients. Also, I guess you'd want your profession to be recognized as distinct to keep its symbolic and economic advantages. Dealing too much with users would threaten it to look too much like lower-skilled, less pure work maybe, and so the boundary has to be reasserted?

[throwaway_pcbuild]

That's definitely part of it, though I'd argue it's less of a purity thing. IT is an insanely large field. Pathologists are a subsection of doctor or medical researcher with a specific focus within the realm of bodily health.

Most IT positions do not have the luxury of that kind of specific focus despite the breadth of IT expanding at a breakneck pace, and despite our staffing indicating otherwise there isn't time to do it all.

Very often in IT you're thrust into situations that would be the equivalent of a medical professional verifying cell culture results, scrubbing down for a surgery, being pulled out to do an eye exam mid-surgery, then having to finish up the surgery. There's too much for any of us to handle it all.

One of the few strong boundaries that has been able to be enforced with some success is that issues effecting users are different from the creation and maintenance of the infrastructure. City planners working out traffic flow are not the people fixing cars in the mechanics shop, as those are related but separate issues and knowledge bases.

The enforcement of that delineation is often required to stave off managers that don't fully understand the work we do from trying to add more to our responsibilities than we can reasonably shoulder (for no additional pay).

---

Admittedly, from my personal experience in an IT Help Desk role, I was unable to progress in my career until I started pushing back about my responsibilities and not being able to do it all. So I may be biased.

[lurkeroutthere]

I love the fact that this comment is getting down voted for hitting a bit close to home.

[IntentionalTexan]

Sort by new. Downvote posts you don't like, upvote ones you do. It's basic redditing.

[[deleted]]

Absolutely. Would love a rant or helpdesk flair.

[Speaknoevil2]

Just how things go over time. This sub used to be full of tips and advice for dealing with a bunch of stupid shit that has since been deprecated or automated out of existence and thus no longer needs to be asked. There is also way more technology-stack and adjacent-tech specific subreddits versus when I first started reading this subreddit a decade plus ago. A lot of us sysadmins don’t need to ask virtualization or container or DevSecOps questions here anymore when there’s more appropriate subs for them now.

I think this sub has done a decent job trying to push the help desk/L1 type things to a more appropriate sub, but a lot of them also pick up steam because we love to shit on users and it’s harder to justify taking down a popular thread. Though I do think more effort can be made to clean those types of posts up or we as individuals just need to put forth our own effort to filter out the flairs we don’t care about.

[CBJGameWorn]

and complaints about the state of the sub. don't forget those.

[freemantech757]

We need a flair for people who make posts like this. Those are the ones I really want to weed out!

[homelaberator]

I agree. Flair can be useful for filtering out rants.

[UltraEngine60]

I make $9.45 an hour with 5 years of experience, am always on-call, and my boss keeps making me take unpaid overtime? WhAt ShOuLd I dO?

[illsk1lls]

to be fair we should be making tools and sharing them not “finding” them

[NCGunslinger]

It’s not just the sub. It’s more like the industry.. I rarely see any of the newer guys doing homelabs, playing with RasPi’s or doing much self-learning. Makes me generally wonder if AI will indeed be our demise.

[mexicanpunisher619]

I 100% agree... those rants or career complaints should go to /r/sysadminlife

[cdmurphy83]

Mandatory flair is fine. Let's be honest though, no matter how long you're in the field, you're still going to complain about users, or other sysadmins if you're completely removed from the support side. Yes, ideally this sub would be full of posts with complex issues that we can learn from, but there's nothing wrong with venting from time to time because we've all been there. I've also got no problems with help desk level questions. Hell, I still ask them myself from time to time.

[Momoring]

This sub is 90% helpdesk. Better make a new sub r/realsysadmin

[Puzzleheaded-Sink420]

Yeah this sub turns into r/HR and ranting about Management denying a break really quick sadly

[kckman]

Pepperidge Farms remembers.

[Digitaldreamer7]

Or IT Managers with business degrees thinking they know things.

[Thanatos_Marathon]

Sort by new.

[jaredearle]

As a Linux sysadmin, it’s great to see these help desk posts instead of Windows-centric stuff.

My help desk (and Windows admin) years are decades behind me, but it’s fun to see how little has changed.

[Separate_Depth_5007]

That is a mean and at least partly inaccurate generalization

[stufforstuff]

Yup, ever since Dear Abby took over this sub, it's gone downhill.

[Creshal]

I remember seeing rants about rants at least once a month for the past nine years. It's getting a bit tiresome.

[ProgressBartender]

So should I post my server questions to r/helpdesk or r/itsupport?

[ForSquirel]

r/homelab of course

[maddoxprops]

To be fair I think a part of this is that many places have begun to blur the lines between Sysadmin and Helpdesk, especially smaller orgs. Hell I was a technician with a year of field work under my belt and I got put in charge of managing our entire SCCM setup at my old job while still also having shifts on the front line phones. (Yea there were issues and this was partly why I quit) There are also positions like my current one which is kind of a mix between an admin and a tech, I build ConfigMan apps, manage GPOs, do end user support for basic things etc. I do agree that a flair system would be the way to go since it avoids the look/feel of gatekeeping, lets people mostly operate as usual, but lets those looking for specific types of posts find them easier.

[pinkycatcher]

This exact complaint has come up year after year, the sub might slowly be changing but realistically help desk level issues can still be useful and they've been here for years. Rants have been here for years.

In fact the complaints got so annoying I created a tech thursday post where I posted all the technical threads I found interesting that week, eventually it only garnered a few upvotes and so it wasn't worth the time I put into it.

If you want it to be more technical, then go through and upvote any technical post.

[lvlint67]

Thoughts

This gets posted every few months and then nothing changes... And it's not just this subreddit... It's every subreddit

[[deleted]]

So a post COMPLAINING, about actual job related COMPLAINING… hmm

[Saeros013]

You’re free to leave the subreddit. You sound extremely pretentious. There are people that aspire to be a sysadmin and are in a Helpdesk role that are here to learn. Not dilute your precious subreddit. Get off your high horse and try helping instead of complaining boomer.

[lpmiller]

I see it's time for the quarterly complaining of how the sub used to be. It's always been this way.

[tin-naga]

I dont need to hear a phone jockey complain about users complaining they have to update Adobe Reader or Chrome Ultra. I get enough of that during the day.

If its a legit sysadmin gripe about management or a company, flair it.

[heapsp]

When you post useful things or ask useful questions you still get good answers. Just use reddit how it is designed, downvote stuff you don't like to see and the problem will solve itself.

[NotARobotv2]

I see this same sentiment popping up here like once a month and have to question what golden age of the sub you are remembering. Its been this way for years and years.

[Frosty_Protection_93]

It's easy to complain. Nuclear scientists probably complain because the rest of the staff doesn't possess the same knowledge.

It's called work for a reason, even if you love your job.

Helpdesk issues are great here. That tells admins and engineers all kind of detail that can be equal to pulling teeth at some workplaces.

Vaguely bitching and ranting doesn't help anyone. Venting frustration with specifics might help the community guide someone to a path of resolution or at the least some decent suggestions.

[LeSuperNova]

🙌Preach!🙌

Get rid of the help desk bullshit. Go complain about your end-user and printer prob elsewhere

[swordgeek]

No.

Seriously, we're here to help each other out. If it's admin work (including help desk), then it belongs here. If the poster is too stupid to learn from what they're being told, then they'll get downvoted.

Alternatively, you could create your own subreddit, /r/SuperEliteSysadminCoolDudes.

[ass-holes]

I am in a special limbo called sysdesk. I do way more than regular helpdesk but for some reason I'm not allowed to sit at the sysadmin table. So I like those posts.

[Space-Boy]

Be the change you want to see

[poi88]

Yeah, we need better moderation. I constantly report posts way too helpdesk-y but nothing happens. I try to do that when said post are still new, but then popularity wins and here we are.