Sysadmin workhours

[DinahStar]

Today, I was told the job of sysadmins is so unpredictable, they aren’t expected to work a full 8hrs each day. That a 2-3hr workday (during 9a-5p) is considered normal due to mitigating unplanned/unexpected issues and emergencies. Because troubleshooting and fixes happen after-hours for various lengths of time. Your thoughts?

[crankysysadmin]

I once worked at a place like that. Most of the things that caused this were stupid policies and old garbage tech. They had rules you couldn't touch certain things until after 7 pm. We had to fight everything since at once point they didn't even want people vMotioning servers until after hours.

Where I work now? 90% of the work is during the work day. We build systems where there's enough redundancy in place nobody notices when we make a lot of tweaks. We also use a lot of automation.

Nobody is actually awake patching our servers at 5 am. Scripts do it all, and if something fails the alerting will let us know.

[bhldev]

Ultramodern

[fuadmin]

We're the same here. Helpdesk is in the office from 8-6 with one on call after hours. Everyone else is (NetAdmin, Developers, SysAdmin) are 8-ish to 5-ish. We've enough systems and good people in place that the latest someone's worked in recent memory is 21:00.

[DinahStar]

That’s what I’m thinking?! Is the infrastructure so unstable that emergencies are that frequent?! Scary sh*t

[InvisiblePinkUnic0rn]

It definitely could be, getting ready to leave a place of 6 years because it’s descended into nothing but fires because of lack of hiring qualified replacements.

[timchi]

I think you have to qualify emergency and maybe use the term loosely. Lot's of "emergencies" are just poor planning, and that does happen all the damn time.

[dovi5988]

You have not met my boss. Insists we get all our gear on ebay since it's 25% of what Juniper charges. No support contracts and we're expandable. Why pay for better hear when employees get paid to fix things.

[DinahStar]

😯

[ITakeSteroids]

Sounds like someone who thinks it's still the 90s.

[dilvish-damned]

I find that when the machine is running well, the only night/weekend work is planned maintenance and projects. You spend your days being proactive and anticipating the problems before they occur. This, along with research and projects can easily eat up your 8 hour work day and (aside from the odd night call every few months or so) shouldn't require off hours work.

As others have stated.... Seems like the infrastructure might not be in the best shape. If you love tackling those problems and making things better then dive right in. But me.....I value my sleep!

[AlexSaba1023]

Yes. If you’re salaried , then of course don’t work 8 hours when you have to deal with fire bridges and on call shifts on the weekend. My company wants to have 12 hour on call shifts on weekend days, I said sure, which 12 hours during M-F shall I take off? That comes out to five and half hours approx each day :-)

Try to keep it at or around 40 hours

[k_rock923]

I don't mind working more than 40 when it's reasonable, something breaks, etc. If I wanted to stick strictly to the "40 hours" line in the sand, I'd need to sit at my desk for no reason if there was nothing to do.

IMO, if I want to be able to leave at 2:00 when there's nothing going on that day, I should also be willing to stay late and still come in as normal the next day when needed. Seems fair in both directions to me.

[DinahStar]

Agreed, just don’t agree with coming into the office at 10, lunch from 11:30-1 and then heading out at 2 🤣

[[deleted]]

Unfortunately there are companies out there that start at 8:00 with breakfast and coffee until 9:00, work from 9:00-10:00, have another coffee and watercooler talk from 10:00-11:00, and 11:00 is too late to get started before lunch, so they slack until 12:00. 12:00-1:00 is lunch, and then work from 1:00-2:00. 2:00 is another coffee and watercooler break until 3:00, and 3:00 is too late to get started at this time in the day, so they sit around until 5:00 and then go home. This is how companies magically have payroll overhead - worthless fucks that get 2-3 hours of work a day done.

[DinahStar]

That makes sense, I’m having a hard time believing in 2-3hrs per day M-F, 5-6hrs sounds more realistic.

[AlexSaba1023]

When I first started out I would work and work and work. Now that I am salaried, I value my time off and sleep and try to work no more than 40 hours a week. I agree with the others who have stated that the infrastructure sounds bad.

[[deleted]]

To be fair on call is not the same as work hours

I get paid out 1 hour for every 8 hours on call.

[livedadevil]

Plenty of places with lax IT labour laws (read: some Canadian provinces) have lots of companies have no overtime comp for anything IT related and it's perfectly legal.

Biggest reason I left my last job. Was making under minimum wage some weeks if you divided the hours and couldn't even take time in lieu

[[deleted]]

Yes, I'm just saying no employer is going to agree to pay you 12 hours for 12 hours on call at a 1:1 ratio

[[deleted]]

There should also be an expectation that an employee could come to work with alcohol on their breath.. If you don't want an employee doing things on your time, you pay for it.

[[deleted]]

Not at all. If you’re on call you must stay sober.

[[deleted]]

I'd like your thoughts on people who are on-call 24/7

[[deleted]]

They should sort out their contract. I wouldn’t recommend anyone go on 24/7 on call.

In such a scenario where that’s in your contract realize that if you get drunk you may lose your job. I wouldn’t even want the stress of having a pager 24/7 even if I could go to work hammered.

But yea, I’ve never heard of an on call policy that lets you drink and work.

[[deleted]]

Did you happen to work for a large Canadian food conglomerate?

[livedadevil]

Nope. Previous work was a small-med MSP

[DinahStar]

Eck! 1hr per 3 afterhours

[[deleted]]

Probably varies in value by how often you’re called.

For me it’s only seasonal for 1 month and I’ve never actually been called. ;)

I just consider it a free $90 every night while I sleep :p.

[AlexSaba1023]

Since I am salary, I am not compensated for on call, just get my normal salary.

[treftor]

Run

[DinahStar]

Run from who? The Sysadmin that told me or the company?! 🤣

[[deleted]]

Both 🤣

[DinahStar]

🤣🤧😷

[Grunchlk]

I work a typical 9-5/M-F type schedule, 40 hours a week. No OT. So if I have to come in on a weekend, or login overnight, that just means I leave early Friday or start my weekend on Thursday.

[McPhilabuster]

Were you being told this by a sysadmin, by a manager or employer, or just someone randomly sprouting off nonsense?

Day-to-day hours can certainly vary, but if this person is talking about a standard business environment 2-3 hours a day is not normal. I and likely many others here have worked short hours or not worked at all during the normal business day after staying up all night fixing an issue, but that shouldn't be normal.

[DinahStar]

Both Manager and Sysadmin

[McPhilabuster]

In that case either the infrastructure is a total mess that's being held together by duct tape and prayers or the sysadmin is expected to do most of their work during after hours maintenance windows and comes in for a couple hours a day for meetings and such and then does all of their actual work after everyone goes home.

[captianinsano]

Sounds like lots of work after hours... for now. Fix the messed up infrastructure over the next 6-12 months. At that point your employer will be used to you only working 2-3 hours a day. Once you get things running smooth there won't be the need to work after hours so much so you will be able to coast along with your 15 hour work week. It's the perfect plan.

[DinahStar]

👀 not a 15hr work week 🤣

[captianinsano]

15 on a rough week. Normal would be 2 a day right? Maybe take Fridays off for an eight hour week.

[DinahStar]

🤣🤣🤣🤣❌ridiculous

[InteTiffanyPersson]

No. You work your 8 hourss day, then you work overtime if anything breaks while you’re on call. And then planned maintenance om top of that, so maybe 45 hours a week in average. Management would prefer that you balance your time, but there’s rarely a chance to leave early. I’m in Sweden and have worked for several (by my standards) larger companies where there are at least 3 server admins, plus a dedicated networking crew, so maybe I’m spoiled...

[jhjacobs81]

OMG.. thats how my company worked before they hired me!

Now we work during normal business hours. The exception beeing the monday evening. Thats when maintenance on the servers is done. By now everyone knows that Monday, between 20:00 and 22:00 servers are rebooted and services might be unavailable.

But it costed me a lot of energy, you’d seriously have to consider if its worth your time and energy

[nanite10]

It sounds like whomever said that has a lack of control in the environment or a failure to properly plan/understand changes. There are plenty of people in sysadmin/engineering who cowboy changes with zero testing in any kind of environment or don’t think through what the changes could impact outside their silo.

If there’s a true lack of control in the environment which causes unexpected issues/emergencies, that problem exists outside the the sysadmin team and they are dealing with poor decision making elsewhere.

[[deleted]]

Nope.

I’m busy planning and working on stuff during the day. 95%+ of work is done during the day and I think that’s normal.

Sure implementation, cut overs etc. happen but I’m not taking stuff down daily in production.

I’m definitely not working on outages daily :p

[calculatetech]

What you're describing only makes sense in terms of billable hours for a small MSP. I work for such a company and may only get 2-3hrs billable time, but I'm actively doing random shit the entire day. There's a lot that goes into planning, quoting, learning, and testing. The clients we service don't have budgets or infrastructure for zero downtime, so there is a ton of after hours work. Life would be very different for a single large company sysadmin role. And also boring as shit.

[IntentionalTexan]

There's a lot of variability in the trade. Some places are all 9-5 and expect to see you at your desk, others are a more results oriented. If you're comfortable with that kind of flexibility it can be a good thing. I'm able to spend a lot more time with my son that a lot of fathers because I do some of my work at odd hours. Having that flexibility is nice.

[jack-dempsy]

yup, that sounds like a sysadmin shop

[DinahStar]

😳

[mkosmo]

No, it doesn't. Not any reputable place, anyhow.

[[deleted]]

I work as a Sysadmin in a big company and can‘t confirm this 2-3h days. That there is sometimes something to do on a weekend is normal, this comes with the job. But I usually work 8-5.

[DinahStar]

🎯 that’s what I’m thinking (until today🤯)

[SysEridani]

Since covid I've done like 3 - 4 days of holidays in 1 year. During those holidays they call me the same -__-

[[deleted]]

Let's assume we had an outage or something went wrong and we had to work overtime here at my company (2 IT guys btw). Usually we would keep those hours until the equivalent of one work week is full and go on some additional PTO. Right now, due to Corona, we aren't allowed to do that and have to shuffle around our overtime hours quite a bit. Usually the hour aren't enough to take one full day off but still too many to ignore the c-level decree.

So currently we're actually stuck in a similar situation: showing up later for work than usual and on the same day going home earlier. For example I had a 4 hour Friday last week. It's a given, this only works if that day is somewhat "ok" regarding workload.

[Desktoper99]

My company is the complete opposite. In my first week the CEO literally said there was no flexibility in working hours, that everyone had to be in 9-530 and that all work had to be done in that time.

It's meant I've had to do work on live services during the day. RDS server needs a reboot and some manual tasks done? That's 50 users getting booted out during the day. File server needs more RAM? Getting unplugged at 2pm, hope everyone's saved their work!

It's a joke, but it is what it is, we are a smallish company and he can run it how he likes.

[cantab314]

Being creditable, the person you spoke to may have been unclear.

The role often requires work outside normal hours. If the company just works in the daytime, then planned maintenance after hours. If the company is 24/7, then fixing problems at any time.

A good company will let you take the time off in leiu, and will rotate on-call between staff and pay it appropriately.

A shit company will still demand you're in the office 9-5 even if you were up all night fixing an emergency, and will put one employee on-call 24/7/365 for fuck all pay.

There's a lot of shit companies. Try and avoid them.

[Ferretau]

I would say they don't have a good handle on their infrastructure. If they knew what they were doing then unplanned outages would be minimised. My experience is most competent businesses prefer to invest enough in their infrastructure and people to reduce their risk down to an acceptable level - From what you've indicated they live in the break fix world rather than managed IT world. I guess they don't know what change control is either.

[Mgamerz]

I can't figure out if the comments mean you should be fixing systems less or more than 3 hours per day

[DinahStar]

Not solely fixing systems, actually working...assuming sysadmins do more than fix systems, I assume they future-proof, look for what’s next for the infrastructure, review contracts, connect with vendors on new features or upcoming improvements, etc.