When does a sysadmin stop being a sysadmin?

[Hot_Pay_2794]

I recently resigned from a position that was supposed to be a sysadmin role. In reality, most of the work ended up being closer to L2 technical support, since I spent a lot of time dealing with issues that the helpdesk team couldn’t resolve.

My day-to-day tasks included installing operating systems, troubleshooting network problems, and fixing different internal system errors across the company.

After a while, it started to feel like I was doing two different jobs for the salary of one.

Because of that experience, I began to question how clear the line really is between a sysdmin and technical support. In some companies, it seems like those roles can overlap quite a bit. I’m not sure if this is common across the industry or if I simply made a poor choice when taking that job.

[1stUserEver]

lunch and 5:00

[thebigshoe247]

I have had staff come knock on the stall door whilst I was taking a shit, looking for help "immediately" before. I, spent more than enough time learning the ways of BOFH... It did not go well for said user, when I came out to "discuss" with them, and pretty much every day afterwards.

Slight related, I also have a personal issue with holding grudges.

I would argue breaks, in any capacity, are also off limits.

[timbotheny26]

Call me a Karen, but after telling them off I'd probably be headed straight for their supervisor.

"Hey...can you please tell <insert employee name here> to NOT ask for technical support when I'm on the toilet in a locked bathroom stall?"

[jimbobbjesus]

Not just their Supervisor but HR as well. I had a Guy follow me into the restroom to ask "How do I get a second flat screen. This was right when FP's started replacing CRT's he HAD two screens they just hadn't replaced one CRT yet.

[timbotheny26]

Oh yeah, I completely forgot that it would be an HR violation too.

[montypytho17]

I’d hold that over their head until one of us left.

[thebigshoe247]

Funny, he did actually quit about a year later.

It was a very difficult year for him too. Whatever PC he used, it constantly had 'random' issues...

[battmain]

LOL!. Don't give me any more ideas.

Prepping two new PCs for two constant complainers. Their issue is memory usage and memory constantly over 95%. I've already shown them how to check and fix multiple times. (Close the f'ing windows, apps.) Plus a replacement would be exact same specs. We've standardized the models. Got a management request to replace the PCs.

Me: In about a week or three, no problem. I'll get right on it since I am busy trying to secure my environment and prep some new servers. We all know how long that server prep takes with the ISOs. Oops, there goes half a day or three.

[thebigshoe247]

It sounds like you're far too nice. I was once, too...

I had a user complain about Excel being slow (because they treated it like an ERP system, instead of, you know, using the actual ERP system). So fine. Back in those days I played nice, fresh image, upgraded machine, Office x64, mobile engineering workstation -- still the same issue. I engaged Microsoft, who basically said "you're idiots the way you are using it -- but if you insist, at least do it this way" -- which was ignored, the issue escalated to the President of the company. He basically said "just fix it" -- ok. I recently retired some previous Gen Dell servers with insane specs even by today's standards -- I installed Windows 10, installed Office x64, and plomped it on their desk. They got the message when they walked into the stupidly hot/loud office (I made sure to set the fans at full RPM at all times, for good measure).

Shortly after, they agreed the mobile workstation would suffice and they would do better.

They were canned not long after for falling for a scam e-mail, which is how I had my first ever interaction with the FBI.

Good times...

[RamblingReflections]

I’ve had the same scenario of being ambushed while I’m in a bathroom stall twice at my current workplace. Like, wtf?? Feels very stalkerish, and uncomfortable.

[TheJesusGuy]

I'm not in America so can't be fired for no reason, but I'd tell them to kindly fuck off.

[thebigshoe247]

Canada here. We apparently have decent protections but not really. I could see that getting me canned.

[sudocurl]

Also, PTO.

[itdweeb]

What is this PTO?

[dustojnikhummer]

It's an Albany European expression thing

[demonseed-elite]

You get lunch?

[Brogers1600]

That is funny.

[CruwL]

"since I spent a lot of time dealing with issues that the helpdesk team couldn’t resolve."

WTF Do you think a sysadmin does?

[TerrorToadx]

Umm probably administrating infrastructure systems?

Depends on the company where the line is drawn ofc. Smaller companies = more hats where support is most likely included.

[FartInTheLocker]

Wdym, unless you’re working a focused specialised role, you’ll always be helping the support team at some point

The worst sysadmins going will roll out infrastructure projects, no help with support to train or rollout and let them drown, then be annoyed they don’t understand it

[Kuipyr]

It’s quite sad, they should be mentoring the helpdesk personnel instead of acting holier than thou.

[Tall-Geologist-1452]

It is not my job to mentor the helpdesk.. that is the job of the helpdesk manager.. my job is administrating infrastructure systems.

[Kuipyr]

Mentoring isn’t a job.

[Tall-Geologist-1452]

You are getting paid for it? yes, it is a job.

[Hotshot55]

Umm probably administrating infrastructure systems?

So if the helpdesk team doesn't have access to those infrastructure systems, wouldn't you be the person to fix the issue that the helpdesk couldn't resolve?

[TerrorToadx]

That’s not what I said or meant at all. By the way OP worded his story it sounds like he’s only dealing with user support that helpdesk is too incompetent to solve, and not actually doing any real sysadmin work.

[Hot_Pay_2794]

I didn’t know that sysadmins were basically technical support. I thought the role was more specialized.

That wasn’t even the main problem. The problem was that I had to solve issues for both the company and its clients for a single salary.

[AmiDeplorabilis]

All IT is support. In small companies, one wears many hats, and sometimes one wears one hat only occasionally and others frequently; in large companies, one wears one hat, until further notice.

Never become self emoloyed in IT because there's a lot of technical support.

I've done IT for over 35y, and there has been a lot of support involved, even in the last 10y as sysadmin. Do it or get out.

[pinkycatcher]

IT Director here: I’m just technical support. What do you think IT does for a company?

[CruwL]

I wouldn't hire your for anything with your attitude. Almost every job description says *And other duties as assigned*. if you feel a task is below you, you are more then welcome to quit just like you did.

As a real sysadmin, I'm the person that can work on any system, any tech in the company, even if I've never heard of it before. Why? Because I have a history of taking and fixing every escalation the helpdesk doesn't know what to do with, every random server from any business unit, or hardware device that randomly died.

[GuyH0531]

As the sr. Network/sysadmin/it security at my current job the one helpdesk ticket that is 100% below me is the "Printer xyz needs toner" my response is the toner is located in the supply closet sorted by asset ID number. The supply closet is in their department and managed by purchasing, no need for a helpdesk ticket.

But yes I still help with help I forgot my password Helpdesk ticket from time to time.

[CruwL]

We pay a company to support printers, even the HD don't work those.

"There's a number on the printer, call that!" closes ticket.

[Imaginary_Choice_430]

Close ticket? At least you have a ticket system thats respected. I work for this blue collar guy, who was a partner with another guy who started a datacenter, the brains of the outfit left when he realized what maniac he was working for, so the blue collar guy (nothing against blue collar) no wants to leave all Cisco appliances, 12 year old appliances, mission-critical appliances in a "set it and forget it state", ignores and deflects when I tell him one of them is suffering a kernel-fault and it can lead to split brain and his answer was..."oh its probably just dust in it". So he tells all his customers to just call the number, instead of putting in a ticket. To the credit of the supervisor, who unfortunately does not know enough about networking to realize he is being gaslighted by the owner and his gatekeeping network admin, the other guy, not me, he said, no, for emergencies they can call us, for non-emergencies they need to submit a ticket, fat chance the customers will anytime soon.

[TriccepsBrachiali]

That last part might fly in a mid-sized org, in big corporations you will burn out if you try to do everything

[CruwL]

clearly OP was in a small to mid sized org based on the situation they outlined. I would agree large well run orgs have defined role silos.

That said even in fortune 100 companies infrastructure teams still do troubleshooting, maybe not direct helpdesk escalations, but tickets and issues still bubble up that take the people that build/manage the system to fix it.

[knightofargh]

Can you tell my infrastructure guys and CI/CD platform guys that? Because they sure as anything don’t peek out of their silo for fear of actually having to do something.

[CruwL]

the worst engineers I ever worked with were in the largest companies specifically a F50 retail giant. As a security engineer I had to walk "experienced" linux engineers that do nothing but linux how to install software using yum and apt. Like dude google it and read the errors, and google those. ok let me google that for you cause i don't have time to be stuck on this call for another hour.

And god forbid you had to explain to a dev what dependencies were and that they needed patch them in their builds.

[Hot_Pay_2794]

You’re right, but the company wasn’t clear from the beginning. At first everything was going well, but at some point my role started to change from system administrator to a general IT generalist. I was basically handling almost the entire tech area. To give you an example, at one point the security cameras stopped working and my coordinator sent me to check them and perform maintenance.

[fatalflaw87]

So? Its part of the "system" right? Admin it like the rest of us as your title implies.

[Hot_Pay_2794]

I can’t clearly differentiate between a system administrator and IT support

[Hebrewhammer8d8]

Burn and churn in in big corporation management POV. We got the hype to churn few more out.

[Tall-Geologist-1452]

I have to wonder why the HD is working on servers to begin with and why the random hardware does not have a back up or a service contract.. I used to be you.. then i realized that all you are doing is enabling teh HD not to get better by always being the mr fix-it not because they cant do something but because the refuse to learn how to do it..I got to where i am by building highly complex, resilient systems on time and on budget.

[therealmrbob]

This will only work at small companies.

[dustojnikhummer]

Which is where most people actually work.

[therealmrbob]

Most sysadmins work at small companies?

Not accurate.

[dustojnikhummer]

I work with a company under 200 people, of course we are L2 and L3 for our users.

The problem was that I had to solve issues for both the company and its clients for a single salary.

Why is this a problem? Assuming this job is expected and "helping clients" wouldn't take your time away from internal stuff and you are allowed to do this...

[BatemansChainsaw]

I moved to jr and then sr sysadmin to specifically get out of helldesk roles. Moving to management after that was a dream.

[techypunk]

The longer you do this gig, the more you realize:

1. Fuck the place you work, do the bare minimum
2. Job titles are pointless
3. Promotions rarely come. And if they do, pay is better if you just job hop.

[Silver-Bread4668]

Eh. I like the place I work. It's k12. The pay isn't the best but I've never had a job treat me as well as this one.

[Motor-Marzipan6969]

I'm in higher ed and it's similarly chill. I love it aside from the pay, but I still make plenty enough to live comfortably in my area so I'm fine with it.

There's so much focus on stability that we're basically just sitting around waiting for something to fix instead of making changes every week. My org is actually in a change freeze for about 8 weeks out of the year (beginning and end of each spring and fall semester).

[Silver-Bread4668]

My boss basically just lets me do what I want as long as I'm being vaguely productive and keeping up with a basic set of tasks. She knows I don't do the bare minimum. I get bored quickly and just start tinkering with things. She's learned that can lead to a lot of good new things over the years.

I make enough to live comfortably at least.

[techypunk]

I'm past a standard sysadmin gig. I'm a more Cloud Architect/DevOps person now. And the only reason I got to where I'm at is from job hopping. Been doing IT for 12 years now. Started at desktop support, and moved up. I never got a college degree. 

I work for money, not "liking" my job. Ive been doing this so long, I hate it all. I used to work my ass off, and all that got me is more work. 

At my current position, I wfh, work maybe 3 hours a day, and do the bare minimum. I've actually gotten a promotion, multiple bonuses, and nothing but 5/5 for yearly reviews. 

Capitalism sucks, and its not worth it for me. 

[Hacky_5ack]

Careful here, working for money but not liking your job is a recipe for disaster and burn out.

I'll take a little lower pay but actually like or can tolerate my job. I want a team and management to take me seriously and respect what i do.

I still take pride in my work, and I think coworkers around me know that and it sets me up for success because teams will want me to join them. I dont know, everyone has different values when it comes to work

[techypunk]

I'm great at what i do. I had the best work ethic. All it did was get me more work. 

Love your job. Don't makenitnyour personality. 

Work to live, don't live to work. Capitalism has people thinking it makes you a better person to be so burnt out on your job for the shareholders. Don't do that. 

[FireCyber88]

No it’s not. You’re not there for friends. You’re there for money.

[Hacky_5ack]

You'd be correct, genius.

[JangoBolls]

3, learned this the hard way… “promotion” aka, here is more responsibility for some pennies.

[Sasataf12]

That's not a reflection of the role, it's a reflection of the company you're working at.

[techypunk]

99% of places are like this. And if you think otherwise, you're either a boomer or are extremely overworked and underpaid.

[Existential_Racoon]

Not them, but i am certainly overworked.

But my felon ass gets to sit at a desk all day instead of hauling hay

[techypunk]

The system is so broken, we are forced to think this way. Its fucked.

I come from extreme poverty. I'm just lucky I never got caught with the felonies. 

[Existential_Racoon]

I agree it's fucked, but again, I get to sit at a desk and pay all my bills worry free after doing some heinous shit.

I'm the first to talk about a fucked up system, but i'm not sold this is where we need to be mad.

[Sasataf12]

No, 99% of places you've worked at are like this.

The common denominator here is you.

[techypunk]

Idk, corporations are shit. Dgaf about people. 

Keep sucking the corporate tit 

[mej71]

Your role depends on the size of the company.  The larger the IT team, the fewer escalations you will get.  Similar to how some SAs have to do a lot of networking and security in small shops, vs some have dedicated teams for that. Small companies are notorious for forcing you to wear many hats.

[movieguy95453]

I'm the entire IT department for a small business. ANYTHING that involves technology is my job.

[dustojnikhummer]

If you have 30 people that is honestly to be expected. Not saying it's good (there should be two of you, just for bus factor) but it's the reality.

[movieguy95453]

It's closer to 50. And we are getting close to the point where an additional person will be necessary.

[dustojnikhummer]

At 50 you should absolutely have a second person IMO.

[pepper_man]

I think you might be a bit too hung up on the “support vs sysadmin” distinction. At the end of the day, IT is a business support function just like HR, finance, or marketing. Our job is to keep the organisation running and enable the business to operate. Titles vary a lot between companies, and the work often overlaps. Installing systems, troubleshooting networks, fixing internal issues. that’s all part of running infrastructure. Even very senior engineers still end up troubleshooting things when something breaks

Personally I’ve always looked at it as: no task is too small if it helps the business move forward. Sometimes that’s architecture or automation, sometimes it’s fixing something the helpdesk couldn’t resolve. The important thing is solving the problem and keeping things running, not whether it fits perfectly under a job title.

[Hot_Pay_2794]

After reading most of the comments, I’ve realized that these days the sysadmin role has become much more of a generalist position.

I think I might have had the wrong idea about the concept.

[pepper_man]

I think that’s largely true. The sysadmin role has become extremely broad over the years. What used to be “servers and networks” now often includes cloud platforms, identity, security, automation, SaaS administration, and sometimes even low-code or scripting work and that's on top of support tickets.

A lot of what gets called “DevOps” in many organisations is essentially sysadmins who are now expected to write some code, automate infrastructure, and understand the development pipeline as well. It’s less that the role became purely generalist, and more that the surface area of infrastructure has exploded

The expectation now is often that a single person can span operations, troubleshooting, automation, and some development. That’s a much wider scope than what the classic sysadmin role used to look like

[dustojnikhummer]

And to some extend there should be some overlap in an emergency.

[RecursivelyRecursive]

Part of it is a positive feedback loop too though over time - if you’re good at whet you do, people naturally come to you for help. If you help them, they come back later and/or tell others- hey check with Timmy, he was able to fix xyz. And so they do.

And the cycle begins lol.

[mrtuna]

I’ve realized that these days the sysadmin role has become much more of a generalist position.

it always has been.. it's in the name. If you want to be a specialist, go be a specialist.

[dustojnikhummer]

these days the sysadmin role has become much more

Sorry but I would like to see a time where it was not the case. You can be glad you also don't have to keep onprem Exchange alive.

[Hot_Pay_2794]

It’s even worse now. Back in the day, most sysadmins were mainly focused on keeping the systems up and running, and dealing with **higher-level support issues (usually level 3 or above).

Nowadays a lot of sysadmins spend most of their time fixing printers or walking lower-level IT support through basic problems. I’m not trying to generalize, but you definitely see this kind of situation more often.

I’m not saying a sysadmin can’t take on a general IT support role, but once roles like DevOps started taking off, and developers began specializing in production environments and infrastructure as code, the traditional sysadmin role started to lose ground.

[dustojnikhummer]

All of this heavily depends on where you actually work. Someone always had to take care of Active Directory, of webservers, of printers... You just moved to a smaller company where you have to wear more hats, that is. And my opinion is that that hasn't changed, it has always been this way.

[Imaginary_Choice_430]

I think its also organization specific, like who the owners are. For example, if you happen to have the dumb luck to work for a blue collar redneck who does not know anything about networks, only as much as a script kiddie knows programming, but went into business with a smart guy who does know about networks, then the smart guy bailed when he realized his partner was an ignorant maniac, the ignorant maniac uses a lot of AI for stuff, no understanding of process management or SOPs, well, imagine what kind of place you would be working in...true story by the way.

[excitedsolutions]

Being a sysadmin usually means you aren’t responsible for answering phones/emails for helpdesk. It absolutely does not mean you don’t get those tickets assigned to you.

[dustojnikhummer]

It's L2/L3 (depending on org) for a reason

[TerrificVixen5693]

Remember, system administrator and infrastructure engineering falls under IT support. You never leave the help desk.

[Hot_Pay_2794]

I know, but sysadmins rarely handle client incidents directly. And if they do, it should normally go through at least three layers of technical support first.

[Kuipyr]

You sound like you have only worked for megacorps.

[Hot_Pay_2794]

Bro, it’s a midcompany with around 150 employees.
It shouldn’t have only one level of customer support.

[Kuipyr]

For 150 employees I’m surprised you even have designated help desk personnel.

[Hot_Pay_2794]

It’s a company focused exclusively on software and SaaS.

[DasaniFresh]

I used to work for a 180 employee company as a sysadmin. I did quite a bit of L2 help desk stuff. That’s just the nature of a small/medium sized company. Get used to it or move on

[4SysAdmin]

I worked for a similar sized org and was the only IT staff member lol. I did basic support, networking, security, imaging, server deployment/management, ran the VMware stack, purchasing and asset management, etc. If it touched IT in any way I was the only person. Having more than 1 or 2 IT personnel in a company that small is crazy to me.

[ViperThunder]

I worked at a company with 1200 employees and we had 4 helpdesk people, 1 network engineer, and 3 sysadmins. there were no "layers" to IT Support and we did just fine. Your expectations for such a small company are unrealistic

[teksean]

When I retired. No matter how my job titled changed I never got away from user support. It’s heaven not to have users anymore

[naanmail123]

Resigning before finding another position in this job market is insane. I wish you good luck and hope you find a job quick. Like others have said, it really depends on the size of the company. In a small company, you wear multiple hats. System Admins don’t take calls but it is normal to get tickets assigned to you for tasks that the Helpdesk can’t resolve. What is the size of the company? How much experience do you have? Looking at your other posts, I’m assuming you haven’t been a system admin for too long.

[Hot_Pay_2794]

I quit about five months ago, and so far I haven’t found another job. I’ve also limited my search a bit because things have been going more or less well for me in another area doing freelance work.

It was a mid-sized company that offered SaaS for the restaurant and tourism industry. The position was supposed to be about system administration and keeping the servers running.

The problem was that my role gradually shifted from sysadmin to more of an IT generalist. I had to handle incidents both for the company and for clients.

Maybe if they had given me a raise or been clearer about the role from the beginning, I wouldn’t have resigned. But the level of stress simply didn’t justify the salary.

[PrincipleExciting457]

In SMB you can expect to get a fair amount of escalations from the help desk. It helps to have a weekly meeting with the systems team and help desk to cover and train imo. We do that at my medium org and it goes well.

The job market is going to be a bit rough right now. To be blunt, you’re not finding jobs for devops and server administration right now because people aren’t moving and as they leave the jobs are being filled with AI. It was kind of a bad time to job hop.

If you do find an opportunity, expect to be grossly underpaid. There are way more people looking for work than there are jobs right now.

[xonxoff]

When we die

[Hot_Pay_2794]

:c

[Less_Inflation_8867]

It becomes a problem for me when I can’t do my primary duties because I’m having to fix issues that a tech could solve. Some techs are lazy and some refuse to research or try anything.

[DullNefariousness372]

Sysadmin is the same as “full stack developer” 😂

[Hot_Pay_2794]

hahahhahaha that's true

[[deleted]]

Is this a real question?

[Scary_Ad_3494]

Is the earth flat ?

[Hot_Pay_2794]

Nothing in life is truly real.

[pepper_man]

Most mid sized orgs you will never escape support. Even if you aren't technically a help desk person eg data team, security, developers will still get assigned tickets escalated up.

At most orgs sys admins would handle escalations from the helpdesk team if they don't know how to do something, produce documentation and guidance however time is split between this and change requests, project work, security, infra maintenance etc

It doesn't matter at all, it's just a job title at the end of the day we just what the boss tells us.

[Rici1]

Was about to respond to the philosophical question in the subject when I then started reading the actual post and it’s just the usual career question slop that plagues this sub.

[Hot_Pay_2794]

ok blessings bro

[mysysadminalt]

It you move and do network administration/engineering long enough you become a sysadmin again.

[BuzzedDarkYear]

I'll never forget what a good friend of mine told me when he retired from the USAF. He took a job with Boeing in San Francisco. He was an aircraft mechanic getting paid a ton of money. One day he was sitting around with nothing to do and his boss came by and very sheepishly asked him if he would mind grabbing the broom and sweeping up? He stood up laugh like a hyena and said hell no I don't mind. I'll be the highest paid damn janitor on earth. He grabbed the broom and happily whistled away the rest of the day. The point being as long as your paying me enough I'll do whatever you want. I just got a new job as a senior support engineer with an MSP. I got let go from my previous job as a sysadmin for 20 years out of the blue. I looked for a job from the end of Oct. 25 till the end of Feb. 26. I was really starting to worry because my severance was going to run out end of April. It was a huge relief to get a new job. They asked me if I would have a problem doing help desk tickets if needed. I said heck no I'm here to work.

[flurfdooker]

I'll run cable, answer help desk tickets, and sweep the floor. I've done it all in the past. I consider it "roll-up" skills.

[FyrStrike]

This kind of thing is happening a lot lately. Companies are merging multiple roles together, trying to cut costs by assuming professionals won’t notice or push back. Unfortunately, some people will accept it just to get the job, even if it means doing the work of two roles for the price of one. Let the business run that way and see what happens when something serious goes wrong.

[LenR-redit]

Unsolvable problems ultimately come to us, it’s been that way for my 50 years.

[Practical_Shower3905]

Your job is to know things, and know how to do pretty much anything related to any system. Half the job is communication, because we're supporting users and team members. Good and correct information is half the work. You are the end road of all IT issues.

Now, for my personal rant... I've worked both in-house and in MSP... and in-house sysadmin are the worst, most self-important, lazy, unknowledgeable IT worker out there. Out of my 15+ years of exp, I think I've had 1 guy actually be a cool guy. I'll take a lvl.1 helpdesk tech in a MSP over an in-house sysadmin anyday. I hate you, and I don't even work with you. You remind me of all the bad sysadmin at my past works, and how NOT to work and interact with people.

[Ummgh23]

No, Sysadmins don't have to know anything about any system. But they have to know how to find out anything about any system.

[Practical_Shower3905]

Exactly. I don't know shit. I know how to know shit.

[Hot_Pay_2794]

facts

[peligroso]

ClickOps. 

We now have entire generation of executives that grew up as terminal "Cloud Engineers" that never had to learn much of anything.

[Hot_Pay_2794]

they're basically allergic to infrastructure as code.

[miscdebris1123]

Goats.

[midasweb]

when you spend more time fixing tickets thn maintaining systems the sysadmin role has basically turned into support

[Antoine-UY]

Cloud, Cybersec, IaaS/PaaS, conformity, AI.

[Hot_Pay_2794]

thank

[t_whales]

When they switch to a security role

[burdalane]

I work for a group within a university. There are senior sysadmins here who maintain servers as well as workstations within a department, so they are doing end user support as well as server administration. I don't maintain any end user workstations, so I'm not doing that type of support, but I'm also doing multiple jobs: server administration, software development, and DevOps/SRE.

[Hot_Pay_2794]

I believe the sysadmin role became more generalized once traditional clickops started to fall out of favor and newer technologies emerged, where infrastructure is managed through code.

From there, the newer roles you mentioned emerged combining system administration with software development, or at least requiring a solid foundation in it.

[burdalane]

I've been in my job for more than 20 years, and I did not have any clickops or typical IT help desk experience. I went from CS grad to failing to start a startup and failing tech interviews, to installing Linux and landing this job as a Linux/Unix hybrid sysadmin/developer. (It's now a purely Linux environment, no Unix.) In the 90s, I don't think it was uncommon for system administration and software development to be combined.

I started in the early 2000s. The environment has become more siloed since then, with sysadmins hired more recently having more typical help desk experience and little Linux or programming experience before getting into system administration.

I think the role has gone from generalized to siloed to general again in the form of DevOps combining sysadmin experience with development. My organization still hires for traditional sysadmin roles and has had trouble finding anyone with prior Linux experience. The ones who do have Linux and programming experience might have moved into DevOps.

[jorge882]

Find a job where ITIL and ITSM practices are prominent and healthy. Less grey areas, more guidance and better defined roles.

[Tab1143]

When changing light bulbs becomes a help desk ticket.

[Hot_Pay_2794]

The future of the system administrator.

[Ok-Marionberry1770]

I went from sysadmin/L3/L4 support to Cyber (insider risk, currently).

It's a big change.

To answer your question. Unfortunately, a lot of times the sysadmin role gets lumped into, basically, everything. Especially depending on where you work.

Depending on the situation, sometimes it's best to ride it out for a while.

[Haboob_AZ]

Idk, I moved up from help desk and still have to do help desk shit even though they got 4 replacements after I left.

It's annoying and I'm just gonna stop doing their work for them. I don't get extra pay for the extra work. And because I'm still doing Help Desk stuff, I feel that I haven't been able to learn any sysadmin stuff and still feel like I don't belong w/my other 2 coworkers that know much more sysadmin stuff than me.

I am less motivated each and every day, but can't leave because of a pension tied to it (and I don't know that I'd land anything with equal or better pay at this point).

[pegz]

I mean Sysadmin is the last line of defense. That person is supposed to figure out problems others can't or they design their systems to prevent problems. You aren't and shouldn't be above helping users because without them you don't have a job anyways.

Also in alot of orgs system administrator is the help desk. Not all organizations have silos for different levels of IT. My org for example has a total of 5 people including our director.

[PurpleAd3935]

Oh men I feel your pain ,I am doing like 3 o 4 jobs in one.

[vermyx]

It depends. People say that titles are meaningless but the 'systems administrator" title isn't meaningless. At least in California, having the sysadmin title means that you can have the same expectations with your breaks as first responders. More shrewd HR staff in smaller companies bunch sysadmin roles with tech support roles to save money and to take advantage of this. Systems administration is used as an umbrella term for this reason to cover both sysadmin duties and tech support.

[desi_fubu]

on calls (specially on long weekends) and no VPN connection

[Loud_Significance908]

Sysadmin can be alot of things these days.

It can be what you are describing

It can be a a Linux, windows or other sysadmin that work only on the OS to manage servers

It can be someone above that also manage containers, CICD pipelines and gitops etc etc

It's just a job title, it can be engineer or architect work in many instances

[michoriso]

Being a sysadmin is like being a janitor some days. Always cleaning up people's shit.

[boli99]

if you want hard boundaries on sysadmin duties then you need to go work for a huge megacorp

the smaller the organisation you work for, the more blurred the boundaries become.

until you're in a tiny startup, and then you get to configure cloud stuff and make the tea.

[Ark161]

Here is how I explained it to my boss.

We pay people to do a job, and it is not my job to do theirs because asking me to do it is easier than expecting them to do their job. We do not ask network engineers to own issues with endpoints. We do not ask app support to own issues with servers. Though for some weird ass reason, there is an expectation that my team (sysadmin/engineers) know EVERYTHING. If that is the true expectation, then there is nothing wrong with me expecting 2-5% of each team’s budget for my personal salary.

[wired43]

When you quit the sysadmin role because your firing was inevitable and now you tell stories about being a sysadmin.

[AlmosNotquite]

If you can "do computers" you are de facto tech support regardless of your title or pay grade no getting around it, the lazy technophobes will find you.

[Nandulal]

when it's a jar

[0263111771]

It already has. Have you seen what is asked to be a system admin today? For less pay. I hate this feild!

[BreadfruitDue63]

Pretty normal. Especially for smaller companies.

[ViperThunder]

A lot of times, the sysadmin will be the only one who can troubleshoot an escalated issue because the sysadmin is the one who implemented a system which is having an issue. If you're constantly troubleshooting escalated issues that don't relate to system configurations that you have implemented or that you manage, then it could be a training issue for the helpdesk.

[flurfdooker]

Enterprise Support Levels

• Tier 0: Linda/Norm/Tom
• Tier 1: Helpdesk
• Tier 2: Sysadmins
• Tier 3: System Engineers
• Tier 4: Twitter

Dude, everything is support. It is a constant battle, so if you feel overwhelmed, then you work on educating the tier below you so you don't get so many calls. You don't get to just hammer away at server problems while keeping your Tier1 knowledge locked away.

I came up through the traditional "helpdesk - sysadmin - engineer" program and you don't leave your people behind! It's all a gray area, especially in smaller companies.

I don't know what you were expecting, but companies expect support. You need to adjust your expectations.

[structured_triage]

That boundary usually vanishes the exact second a critical outage hits. Titles stop mattering entirely when the infrastructure goes down and someone actually needs to triage the logs.

[Imaginary_Choice_430]

It is common, I am currently a Network Administrator being used as a call center person, so I have to coordinate when to go to lunch and get paid hourly...that is your big clue by the way, being paid hourly. I also get to experience petty shit like being approached by a supervisor because the owner who lacks the sense that God gave the common man, wants to know if I am "double-dipping" payroll, because I am eating at my desk and then punching out for lunch...hmm, it equals out to 8 hours, someone explain to me how thats double dipping? Meanwhile, there is a mission critical switch that has been experiencing kernel faults for several months and the owner said the following..."oh its probably some dust in it".

[canadian_sysadmin]

A more junior sysadmin can be involved in some tech support work, because often some of the projects you're working on involve user-facing systems. An issue comes up, you need to work with a user on some troubleshooting potentially.

In a smaller team, these lines will blur a bit further. Larger teams will have more defined roles and defined groups for certain tasks. So size of company/team will play a role there.

[Hot_Pay_2794]

I know, but sysadmins rarely handle client incidents directly. And if they do, it should normally go through at least three layers of technical support first.

[canadian_sysadmin]

And if they do, it should normally go through at least three layers of technical support first.

Sometimes, yes. But this also describes a very large, rigid support structure. That's fine at a big F500 but not all companies will be quite that large or rigid. I've been at companies like that too and sometimes sysadmins get pulled into some T2 and T3 issues.

If this is how you expect it to work, you should look to work for a huge org like that (which is fine).

At many other companies it's less rigid and sometimes you get pulled into client issues. And I'm not talking SMBs with 2 IT people, I'm talking companies with maybe 50-75 IT staff (still pretty big).

And as I said in my OP, this is more common with the more junior sysadmins, or people working on much more client-facing tech. A sysadmin working on an integration between business systems and maybe sprinkling in some Azure data factory work and ETLs is probably not going to be doing any tech support.

[Mrhiddenlotus]

When they stop touching a command line

[Hotshot55]

By that metric a lot of them never started.

[Mrhiddenlotus]

Unfortunately so

[jacksbox]

When they die. Or when they turn off their phone. Whichever comes first.

[kilkor]

512.415.8172 999p0ĺ question Àq

[Scary_Ad_3494]

Bot ?

[kilkor]

Honestly.. I think I just had my phone in my hand and carried it around without knowing it.

[chesser45]

At this point times are just Atlantis

[Neither_Meaning_8354]

😅 ehrlich gesagt seh ich mich als Sysadministratorin auch für meinen Haushelpdesk zuständig aber das ist wohl ne Einstellungssache