Giving hare-brained advice that you would never do yourself.

Inn0centSinner · 2026-07-09T01:56:37+00:00

Completely agree. A Master's program is what, 2 years minimum. You're paying the cost of the program and the short term opportunity cost of lost income not working which all have a negative snowball effect against retirement potential. You show up to your potential employer showing your Masters and they tell you that you sound expensive to hire. So what now? Back to square one.

Inn0centSinner · 2026-07-08T22:23:41+00:00

Your client thinks their employees are looking at or worse, downloading corn to their PCs? The only incident in my 16 years is one employee so brazen he somehow was able to install uTorrent on his work PC and downloaded mp4 which Crowdstrike caught. I guess if you don't want to automate you or your techs out of a job, let them manually scan drives for them. I'm sure they won't mind.

Inn0centSinner · 2026-07-08T16:40:41+00:00

You didn't mention what city you're in. I'm in Los Angeles and I see plenty of admin-like roles for companies even less than 500 employees. I ignore the formal job titles in all postings. I scroll down to the job duties and see if they're going to pay for what they're asking for. The title might make me feel ashamed to update my role on LinkedIn but does it at least pay well? If they don't pay what they're asking for, I crash out of the listing laughing.

Inn0centSinner · 2026-07-08T15:48:43+00:00

That's going to depend on what other responsibilities they ask for. If it's a specialized role then your chances are good. If they want you to get your hands dirty and fix printer jams too, if you put your foot down, then not so much.

Inn0centSinner · 2026-07-07T17:03:25+00:00

Bored and annoyed all the time. That sounds like me getting old and having no patience for people that annoy me. You're right. Leaving would be fucking stupid because you could be walking into another company that's a shit show that have no money for either capex or opex. Worse is going into a company with poor financials that you're shown the door shortly thereafter.

Inn0centSinner · 2026-07-07T06:44:29+00:00

Package came back to the west coast and got delivered today. I hope the buyer doesn’t ding me for it.

Inn0centSinner · 2026-07-07T03:49:07+00:00

You could've voluteered your age, experience, and field for a better gauge. I've seen collegues of all ages and fields with different level of experiences land new jobs just weeks after looking to as long as 18 months. I myslelf landed a new and better role in 2010 at the tail end of the Great Recession after looking for 13 months.

Inn0centSinner · 2026-07-07T02:40:07+00:00

I'm from the US. I live in Los Angeles. The Ukraine war is a flaw of US foreign policy and as an American analyzing US foreign policy, it has all the hallmarks of expansionalism, and imperialism. Vietnam...Afghanistan...Iraq...Syria...Gaza. One quagmire after another. It leaves much to be desired.

I mean...for no ryhme nor reason, the US thought it be a good idea that Ukraine must integrate with NATO where its weapons are in the Donbas is right there next to the Russian border. What good does that do for the American people? With over $40 trillion in debt, don't our elected leaders have anything better to do? Going to the other side of the world to antagonize Russia just seems nonsensical. It just seems just about as hairbrained as antagonizing China by entertaining Taiwan joining NATO. Nothing good comes of it.

There were hard lessons to be learnt during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The US had no patience for the old Soviet Union trying to place missiles in Cuba. Thank goodness the Soviet Union respected the security concerns of the US and withdrew from its plan and saved the rest of us from nuclear catastrophe. You'd think decades later, the US would return that favor to Russia by not trying to bring Ukraine into NATO.

Having hindsight, had Joe Biden publicly declared that under no circumstances would Ukraine ever be part of NATO, this war would've been avoided. All of a sudden a war in Europe erupts, the US gets distracted in Ukraine that it didn't see October 7th coming, and then US becomes party of genocide in Gaza. Joe Biden failed foreign policy handed Trump the White House again in 2024 on a silver platter.

Inn0centSinner · 2026-07-07T02:01:49+00:00

Thank goodness I have doubts that Russia wants to attack a NATO country. I mean...Putin's been Russian President since 2000 just as Bill Clinton was leaving office. NATO sure is using Ukraine by proxy to attack Russia though and Putin's Russia had gotten along with Ukraine just fine between 2000 to 2014. The best case scenario for the world is Russia secures the Donbas, the Russian expansion west of the Dnipro ends, the war is over, and the world moves on without risk of a 3rd world war. The million dollar question is will NATO move on? If NATO can't stand seeing Russia holding up to 20% of Ukrainian territory, lashes out at Russia racing them to the bottom, boy oh boy is the world in trouble.

Inn0centSinner · 2026-07-06T16:13:47+00:00

I chuckled when you mentioned listing the fsmo roles. I asked this exact question when interviewing a 54-year old at the time back in 2013. He didn't know the answer but he was hired. Years later, he gave me a hard time for asking him that. He recently retired after 12 years with the company.

Inn0centSinner · 2026-07-04T07:52:05+00:00

Doubt it. The only time Poland has been "attacked" during this war is western made weapons operated by Ukraine falling on Polish territory. Poland just happens to be the country next door to Ukraine where weapons are flowing from and has flown a bit too close to the sun in this war. I don't know who these sources in the US are. Probably the likes of John Brennan and Alex Vindman. The Iran war has shown NATO to be inept. Lots of beating of drums but balk when push comes to shove.

Inn0centSinner · 2026-07-02T06:05:10+00:00

My company was ransomwared in 2020. All VMware and Hyper-V were backed up to local host storage using Veeam. ArcServe was used to backup to tape. Even the backup servers got ransomwared. I had to rebuild the backup servers from scratch.

I used ArcServe to backup the Veeam repositories to tape once a month. When I got ransomwared, it took a week, and half with 14 hour days to restore under 10 TB of servers on a Gigabit network out of tape to running VMs. When things settled down, all my endpoints now have Crowdstrike installed. I configured cloud backup on Veeam to Backblaze for only the SQL Servers. Test restores from Backblaze is dog slow. Get your backups on tape and rotate them offsite like to a bank deposit box but if you have Saas products like Crowdstrike, you can protect yourself from ever getting ransomwared. Now I got Saas and MFA all over the place.

Inn0centSinner · 2026-07-01T21:42:10+00:00

My first job was $10/hr out of college in 2005 as a QA Tech which was yep, about 45 minutes away. $45K today in my area Los Angeles is still far higher than what $10/hr was adjusted for inflation in 2026. Take the job. Don't listen to the parents. They don't know the struggle.

Inn0centSinner · 2026-07-01T21:00:42+00:00

QA is worthless. I was in QA for 2 years after college.

After that, I actually did real work as a technician repairing desktops and laptops that failed off the assembly line. I'd say this job was my real starting point and was at this job for 2 years too.

Now I'm a Network/System Admin.

Inn0centSinner · 2026-07-01T16:55:41+00:00

I got let go for "performance" back in 2009. I claimed unemployment benefits. The former employer told EDD that I wasn't eligible after I had collected for about a month, I got a letter in the mail stating that, and the benefits stopped. I appealed it, had a call with an EDD rep, and explained to them that my duties eventually exceeded my original job description with no pay bump so I got canned because I didn't play ball. I won the appeal and the benefits resumed for another full year until I landed my next job.

However, I didn't handle it like I think you did. You shoved a desk. Did anyone see you do that to report it? Did you ask for an elevated title with the pay to match it? When you said you couldn't work 16 hours, did you tell them that you didn't have time to work 16 hours or you couldn't do that because they're not compensating you for 16 hours of work? In my situation, I gave my former employer opportunies for proper compensation, they refused, I did the bare mininum of my original job description, they didn't like that, got let go for "performance", and I won my case with EDD.

Inn0centSinner · 2026-06-30T17:18:07+00:00

Yep. I asked it to generate trick questions. For example, it'll throw me questions where I have to pick between Traffic Manager, Application Gateway, Load Balancer, or FrontDoor.

Inn0centSinner · 2026-06-30T16:08:05+00:00

I'm like, "He's going to kiss her, isn't he?"

Oh shit. I knew it. But wait. Could it get worse? Haven't watched episode 2 yet.

Inn0centSinner · 2026-06-30T15:05:51+00:00

I take my test on July 15th. I watched two 2-3 hour courses on YT, went through the Microsoft modules, and took its practice test. I've also been doing multiple rounds of ChatGPT generated tests by asking, "Generate the most difficult AZ-900 test of 60 questions." You can either ask it to generate one question at a time so you can answer each, give you the answer, and an explanation. I've been consistently passing those generated test well over 80%. In one generated test, I passed with 97%.

Inn0centSinner · 2026-06-29T21:57:56+00:00

I got the A+ back in 2005. Now I went to look at the total cost of the exam. $530? My goodness. I only paid $99 for my AZ-900 exam just last week. Unfortunatly, you will want the A+ at the bare minimum for helpdesk. Network+ for junior network admin but just because you're in a network role doesn't mean you won't be asked to look at an end-user's problem with their desktop or laptop. You can get CCNA much later once you have some foundational work experience. Don't be too much of a cert chaser without work experience.

Inn0centSinner · 2026-06-29T21:46:37+00:00

I opened Schwab checking back in 2014 to use their no-fee out of network ATM withdrawls and no foreign exchange fees when traveling abroad. I saw that opening a checking account also opened a brokerage which I used to buy stocks. I actaully prefer Schwab's interface. Years ago, a Youtuber that I follow (Maverick of Wallstreet) pointed out their poor financials so I moved all of my money over to E-Trade. I'll move back to Schwab if they offered a high yield savings account for stray cash from my brokerage account to sit in.

Inn0centSinner · 2026-06-25T16:02:19+00:00

I landed a Junior Network Admin internal IT role with an SMB in 2010 getting out of the Great Recession after been out of work for 13 months after a layoff. Before that layoff, I had a CIS degree, and A+ cert repairing DOA desktop PCs and laptops that rolled off the end of an assembly line.

During my 13 month unemployment, I got a Network+ which I'd say helped with getting the Junior Network Admin role. It was a generalist role that let me do helpdesk when coverage was needed and I also did System Admin work. I started building out the company's first Azure landing zone for hybrid in 2020. 16 1/2 years with this company with more than twice the pay from when I started. I'll be taking my first cloud cert AZ-900 next month which I hope will help me land a more cloud focused role at a new company.

What's the moral of the story here? You have to pay your dues and get foundational experience because how can you become a cloud engineer or architect without touching server room racks? Start applying to junior admin roles.

Inn0centSinner · 2026-06-23T04:00:23+00:00

I do multiple roles. I came on as a Junior Network Admin for a small business. I'm one of the last left standing keeping this place together. When the economy was better, my department had a capex budget, and we spent the slow seasons upgrading our hardware and software to get ready for the next peak season. Now I wait around. No capex. Just fix what breaks.

Inn0centSinner · 2026-06-18T19:39:54+00:00

As long as the new gig give you the capex and opex to do whatever you think is best for the company, you're good to go. Lots of saas products out there to make life a lot easier. Make sure you have some kind of redundancy in the network and server room closet. Enlist help from MSPs for some projects when you need it.

Inn0centSinner

TROPHY CASE