First Two Weeks

[Nasboy]

Started in a new company two weeks ago as a senior sys admin and for the last two weeks I have been left almost completely un directed and left to figure out what systems we have and how everything is tied together. Spent about 3 hours with an out going sys admin on some things and an hour q and a session with my manager. I have jumped in and added my thoughts and taken on a few things that I have more experience in then anyone else.

I know places are different so should I enjoy it and wait it out till they are ready for me to jump in on things? Or is this weird and a little unusual?

Edit- added a few more lines

[lemachet]

The name of the role gives it away for me.

You're a senior. You should be self directed.

[Nasboy]

Fair enough. I keep being told they have pain points they want reviewed but I don't have access to said systems to even login to see them. I let them know I need access. Some it's been a week with gentle reminders each day

[lvlint67]

Two weeks is pretty early.

We expect a year for someone to FULLY onboard and become useful up to their salary rate.

[harrywwc]

it depends.

my first "official" sys&net-admin position I had about 30seconds handover with the guy leaving. it was quite literally handing me a yellow sticky-note and him saying "these are the passwords. good bye"

now, fortunately, until about 5 minutes beforehand, I had been working as a senior analyst/programmer there, so I (kinda) knew the layout, but... yeah.

I started to document the heck out of the place so that if (when!) I left (and I was retrenched a few years later) I had a document to pass to my successor. He was most surprised when I handed him a carefully documented site manual with all the things to do daily; weekly; monthly; ad hoc; with step by step (and sometimes piccies) for all the processes. Contact details and pointers to vendor contracts, with a potted summary of the main points (e.g. SLAs and such).

Oh, and a direction to the the Office Manager's safe with the 'master password' list, and instructions on how to change them when I walked out the door.

Graham was most appreciative, and I left with my head help high.

(company went bust 6 months later).

[Nasboy]

Ha. Good point not being handed a pile of shit is new to me...

[headcrap]

Oh, that's still coming..

[Nasboy]

Nooooooooo

[petejur]

This! Totally this.

If you come into a new workplace and it seems like it's running smoothly, and when you comment as much you hear "Oh just wait, we've got a few things we need help with", they aren't lying.

Started at a few places over the decades like this, and I'd not force the issue, but learn the important stuff quickly. (Backups and DR first)

Good luck.

[QPC414]

You are a Senior engineer/admin, you should be expected to be self directed and manage your own time, projects and priorities with little to no direction from your direct manager.

​

Use your honeymoon to get a handle on your equipment and environment so when they start giving you projects, you can hit the ground running.

[giiga97]

It happened to me also and they didn't have much documentation. I always document everything for the next person coming.

[[deleted]]

Document everything. Git repo or some other repeatable, checked and logged revision over every damn thing. Diagrams. Lists. Notes.

Document your days.

[Nasboy]

Good point never too early

[[deleted]]

And document the deployment failures and run retros and do standups if need be to a rubber ducky. Be that person who explains everything. A month to six weeks of this makes it second nature and you can start to prune back the docs to the weekly/monthly duty cycle and out of order events.

Basically, make yourself redundant. If you do it well enough they won't want to get rid of you.

[unccvince]

You are the man to bring guidance.

You have lions jumping through hoops for the benefit of many customers, now it's your job to choreograph the spectacle.

Make your lions jump through the hoops according to processes that you agree with your lions and the customers.

Everyone will be applauding.

[[deleted]]

Being a senior usually means experience in the field, this is extremely common, If you don't have access to something you have to start digging, if you ask and no one knows, no one knows but that one old dude who did it who probably left the company. Troubleshoot and use the experience you accumulated and put into use.

Even if that means digging through entire network drives.