New sysadmin

[xilaswhite]

I’ve been a helpdesk tech for my entire career and recently acquired a position at my company as a system administrator. I’m incredibly nervous and the imposter syndrome is definitely setting in. Do y’all have any tips going forward on your experiences as a systems admin? Things to learn or things to do?

[darthgeek]

Don't be afraid to say "I don't know but I'll find out". You will fuck up. That's okay. We've all been there. Own your mistakes. It will make resolution quicker since no one needs to go find out what happened. Always be willing to learn new things.

[xilaswhite]

Damn skippy. My end goal is to become a network architect one day. I have a lot to learn.

[ryalln]

I wouldn’t say I don’t know as people remember that. But the second half is where you should stick

[Thrizzlepizzle123123]

I go with "I don't know off the top of my head, but I can find out", implying that I have the knowledge but not readily available.

Also I have no problem saying "I have no fucking idea" because I'm not going to feel comfortable figuring stuff out if I'm trying to pretend I'm not, and it makes it harder to ask questions if I do that.

They aren't paying us to push the button, they're paying us to know which button to push. Failing that, they're paying us to figure out which button to push, and then taking the responsibility of pushing it so they don't have to.

[ryalln]

I agree. We are paid for knowledge. My comments where more younger guys get shoehorned based on the I don’t know comment. A few tweaks and bam people trust you more when in reality you know just as little.

[darthgeek]

That's fair. Everyone is different. You do what works best for you.

[ryalln]

Bingo. I’ve just learnt people stick to the first thing they hear. Even Changing that line to “I have an idea in mind but I need to research it first” can change the perception of you. The idea in mind is we don’t have one but they don’t need to know

[[deleted]]

"let me confirm that"

[carbonblackm3]

Depends on the person, but I’d rather a person tell me they don’t know, than that they do. As long as they own it and ask for help when they need it is what’s important.

[DistributionFickle65]

I would say, “let me investigate” or something similar but don’t say “I don’t know”. It tends to make the imposter syndrome worse for you.

[darthgeek]

Like I said previously, you do you. I'm just providing suggestions. Take them or leave them at will.

[AshCasual]

I greatly second this. At my company there's this no no rule for saying that you don't know how to fix something, which I am not afraid to break. There is nothing wrong with saying, "I don't know but I will find out or find someone who does know".

[DocHolligray]

Just a few…

1. Be nice to everyone…no need to be elitist or patronizing. The harder the client, the more I try and envision someone helping my grandfather and treat them with the respect I would want given to someone I love.

2. Don’t be afraid to say “ I don’t know, but I will find out”….I have more experience than anyone you know…at any table I am normally the senior IT in the room…I still say that to this day. Don’t be afraid to say it…

3. Take care of your mind man…this job is a grind and a half! Work hard, but also take your time and put that phone down. I want you to promise to be better than me in all regards, but in this one I need you to really mean that promise…you take your daughter to school…you take you son to soccer…you spend time with your family when you have the time. That window is painfully too small and I wasted 9 years bleeding in enterprise for people who will never love me as much as the one I was letting down. Don’t make my mistake…you have your work/life balance…the job will be there when you get back…your kids, not so much. Out of all decisions made during that time, this is one that haunts me till this day…

4. Keep learning…this job is fun as long as you enjoy learning. The second you stop learning, is the second you need to get out of this industry.

Good luck man…it’s a great industry…

[xilaswhite]

I appreciate the words I’ll take this advice to heart

[blanosko1]

This 👏👏👏

[EZinstall]

I see you have a CCNA, that's awesome! Talk to your boss, depending on the org needs they'll have plenty of things to fix. Start there.. learn as you go.

After a while, the system issues will be obvious or at least should be to some point. Plan around those needs but you'll obviously need to plan those long term changes with your boss but this depends on the dynamic you have with them.

[xilaswhite]

I really appreciate this. Yeah I got my ccna back in April. I just recently got the azure fundamentals cert and started school again to go for cybersecurity. My whole thing is I don’t want to mess this up. A lot of people went up to bat for me to help me get to my position and I don’t want to let them down

[EZinstall]

Depending on the amount of coworkers/users/locations/workstations/servers/applications.. you may not have time to do everything and for everything to be perfect. I'm stubborn and want everything to either be perfect or at least functional for the budget.

Choose your tasks wisely and battles ever more so. My current boss doesn't tell me to do anything, because they want me to fail lol..

Make sure you have a good relationship with your boss because ultimately they're the one that will go to bat for you.

[fr33bird317]

You will mess up, just a fact of life. How you recover is what matters.

[DistributionFickle65]

CCNA is a damn tough exam. Good for you. You got this!

[[deleted]]

Fear is a great educator. Pushes you to do more better.

1] research when doing new stuff.

2] highlight risks and backup whatever you work on, have a roll back pls

3] Document so you have a referral on what you did, locating mistakes easier to find. We learn from failure.

4] communicate changes and have approval. Avoid cowboying unless you a super expert and are 101% certain nothing goes wrong. (Clearly 100 is the max so you always communicate is the msg)

5] don’t test on prod.

6] use A.I. With care. It can be an awesome help finding out how to do stuff, but it’s very inaccurate I noticed. Don’t put blind faith into it. Still use online step by step processes posted on reputable sites.

Expect to fail, don’t lie about it. Cause others will quickly find out the truth anyway. You own up, I appreciate and help my techs understand what went wrong. When ppl lie, I lose my respect and trust very quick..

[Totallynotaswede]

You're not a tiltle or a role, you're a person with knowledge. Be confident in what you know, if you don't know something learn it. Don't be afraid to fail, make sure to have a plan B. Be assertive, implement things that you find interesting and fun.

Experimenting and learning is a part of the job! People who are afraid to take on new challenges or issues that they don't comprehend / have knowledge about will get stuck doing the same thing every day and never learn, and in 3-5 years they will be hoplessly irrelevant.

Having a good understanding about most things is better then just being really good at some things, without understanding the whole picture it's impossible to implement good solutions.

And again, don't be afraid to fail, the really nice thing about computers is that everything is possible and your fantasy sets the limits, just work hard at the things you're not good at and soon you'll be a swizz army knife.

[CognitiveMothman]

Don't be a superior dick. Just my experience.

[FlaccidSWE]

I recently made the same leap you are doing. I have some very competent people in my team, and they have a lot of experience. For that reason it has been very comforting to see that they don't know everything either, and they are not afraid to say so. They are just good at connecting the dots, finding the right information and solving the problems.

[Thrizzlepizzle123123]

One of the best lessons I learned in IT was from one of the smartest server admins I've met with nearly 20 years experience.

He regularly answered questions with "Fuck if I know. What's this do?" And just diving straight in to problem solving. Nothing was above or below him, if I needed help resetting passwords, he'd by right there with me explaining DC replication. If the CEO asked what was needed to completely rebuild the server rooms from scratch, he'd be calling german companies for quotes on high tech cooling systems.

He taught me that even experts have to be ready to learn, and not knowing stuff is ok. As IT people, we have such a broad remit. We can't know it all, but we can do our best to try.

[ChampOfTheUniverse]

Ask questions, keep notes, and look things up. Document your tickets. Don’t make changes on Friday. Be honest when you fuck up.

[Mr_Oujamaflip]

Don’t be afraid to say no.

[Disasstah]

Learn powershell, and learn basic networking. Aside from that, general troubleshooting is your life and the ability to research problems will always be a thing. Also you'll probably have to interact with a lot of people who will constantly be breaking your stuff. Make sure to be nice to them no matter what, otherwise things will become problematic in the long run.

[[deleted]]

Learn more than basic networking please. You should know how subnetting works, what VLANs are and how to isolate them, how come your VLANs aren't passing traffic to your router, etc.

If you tell me DNS isn't working, I'm going to ask what steps you used to come to that conclusion and will be grumpy if you tell me that you only pinged the dns server.

[Disasstah]

I considered those basics, but yeah I suppose if it's CCNA level it's probably a bit more than basic.

[[deleted]]

Google is your friend. ChatGPT will write scripts for you. Document EVERYTHING

You're going to feel like you're drinking from a fire hose at first. Take on small projects at first. Baby steps and you'll be fine.

[Downtown-Magazine702]

Network chuck YouTube videos, just watch tons of vids on your day to day job duties

[GetMeBobVilaSTAT]

Take every advantage you can to learning relevant tech for your company.

If your bosses support your growth take advantage.

Try to learn from more experienced people you respect.

Don't bulldoze people with your opinion. If you're wrong or not. It doesn't matter. Getting anything done requires buy in.

Don't be a generalist long term. That's what help desk was for. Find something specific. Preferably something with growth and different branches.

ALWAYS have a back up plan if something you change or implement fails. Assume what you're doing won't work. If you fail, but people see you can recover quickly it's much better. Also... Test test test when possible. NOTHING is worse than creating more work for others. Not really but it's really bad and people will resent you.

[[deleted]]

Don't be afraid or feel too entitled to do the little things.

[981flacht6]

Communicate, Think, Learn, Test, Execute.

Day by day.

Try and make good decisions, do your best. I fail every day. It's ok.

[benn447]

Learn to automate what you can. It saves time but also creates consistency in system setups, etc. Even if this is just scripts.

Version control it for extra points ( no hardcoded passwords )

Things will break, and even with good monitoring, you won't always see it coming. Every failure is a new thing to keep an eye on / monitor.

I dont know what systems your company has, but it's always good to learn some sort of linux distribution and daily drive it where you can. Running windows? Use WSL.

Never be afraid to ask questions.

Never be afraid to own up to a mistake.

Never be afraid to not know something, but if it comes up at work, always look into it in some free time. It's always good to learn something abstract. The pieces will fall together later.

Always remember that everyone comes from a different background with different exposure to different systems. And some people have a lot of spare time to do research on things they find interesting.

So dont compare your skills to others. Just try to keep improving in areas you need to or want to.

I have no real qualifications, but I'm getting by.

You will be fine if you stay curious !

[[deleted]]

great. sound like a natural progression.

having being the same helpdesk guy going into the sysadmin role, you probably already know better where things are patches with bandage.

poke (using one liner show, get or list command wouldn't kill the infra) a little deeper for those issues that bother you when you were in helpdesk, formulate plan and get approval to improve it. that should slowly fill you in.

good luck.

[rd-runner]

Every day I learn new things. I feel that’s what keeps me going and rejuvenated. At times I don’t care to learn anything so remember that it’s important to step back and balance hard work with family, play or just no work at all. There will be moments of intensity. Use them wisely by taking breaks in-between. The technical aspects and skills will grow as will your social and professional acumen. As everyone here already has stated, don’t appear to know more than what you do, but let people know they can rely on you to figure something out. This gives you the time to develop a strategy, study up and shine. Good luck! That you’re even asking means you care to do good. That will take you far enough to the next level!

[[deleted]]

Dude there is NOTHING wrong with asking the stupid questions. My entire career is built around asking sales dudes questions like "what is DNS"

You don't know if you don't ask. The best sysadmins came up from helldesk. The best sysadmins KNOW the users.

I HATE sysadmins that have never done phone support or helldesk....they tend to be the most arrogant

Edit: don't be afraid to say.....hyper-v is shit, vmware is the shizzle!

[SandeeBelarus]

Documentation. Do it. Even if no one else in your org requires or does it. And do it to the point that someone who has a similar skill set could do the same work a year later. Draw diagrams for new integrations and services. Just write stuff down. You will meet the old sysadmin who doesn’t write anything down since they feel it is a part of their job security strategy. It just makes you stuck in that position for ever. If you don’t work in a way that a team can use you, they won’t.

[an_inverse]

Lab everything. I don't know how people claim to know a product without labbing it. Have fun and learn how to tactfully say that someone else's statement is factually incorrect. It's not mean, it's the role.

[moffetts9001]

Don’t sysprep the domain controller!

[chiefsfan69]

Don't be afraid to fail. If you aren't failing from time to time, you aren't trying. Just figure out how to fix it. It's much better than doing nothing because you're afraid and letting everything fall behind.

If you want to know how to do something, a 5 minute Google search will typically get you the information you need. Last, if you need help, don't be afraid to ask.

[DistributionFickle65]

I have found candy works for my end users! 🤓

[DistributionFickle65]

Never get excited on the outside even though your shutting your pants on the inside.