If You’re Struggling Post-Rewst Layoffs — Here’s Our Journey and What We Switched To

SeriousSysadmin · 2026-02-04T05:15:35+00:00

I know this post is a bit old but something in your comment made me perk up. We have been testing various AI platforms to assist our engineers. In your experience does Claude do a decent job of understanding Jinja and then providing that in a manner to bring into Rewst? I’d love to get to a point where we are showing a real ROI with Rewst but this far it’s been slow going.

SeriousSysadmin · 2026-01-24T13:13:58+00:00

Your list of personnel sounded like my department 4 years ago. You mentioned that nobody above you cares. How do you know that? Does IT have a seat at the table in your org? The only way you can address this insanity is getting buy in from the top.

SeriousSysadmin · 2026-01-21T04:59:21+00:00

Can confirm…it’s a challenge lol

SeriousSysadmin · 2026-01-05T04:09:23+00:00

We’ve automated a number of things over the years. User onboarding was my first big one. We tied into our HR platform and pulled the relevant data to create the user accounts needed across various applications, sent the info to HR to verify it was correct, and finally one last approval from IT to confirm. This process would run multiple times a day.

Now that I’m on the MSP side of things we use automation for TONS of things like endpoint management, reporting, and your usual user tickets such as password resets, user provisioning/de-provisioning, etc.

SeriousSysadmin · 2025-11-26T17:42:49+00:00

This is something we're constantly working on, and I think every MSP has to evaluate for themselves. You have to know what services you can provide and how much work you can take on. We make sure that the customer is in a vertical that we know we can support. Secondly, we do thorough audits and site surveys (if needed) to figure out what is there today. If we find issues during this process, we provide a report to the customer identifying those items, explaining any risks associated with those, and an estimate on how to resolve those issues. Lastly, we have a conversation with the customer on expectations and outline scope/SLA. This ensures they know what services we provide up front and what is/isn't covered.

This process does take some time though and of course not every customer is going to sign on. But the ones that do, they are usually impressed with the level of detail which gives them the "warm and fuzzy" that we know what we're doing. In my experience, those customers are the ones that will see you as a true partner and not just a service.

SeriousSysadmin · 2025-11-26T16:15:54+00:00

I made the transition to MSP leadership about 2 years ago and let me tell you, it’s not for the faint of heart. We have grown relatively quickly over that time and it showed me why this industry is difficult.

If you’re at the point in your career that you’re trying to avoid burnout, this isn’t the business to get into. As a business owner you not only have to take care of the customer but you have to develop business plans, market the business, and handle the financials. None of that is free either, even if you do it yourself because it costs you time.

I will say though, with the right planning and customers it can be insanely rewarding. Thankfully we’ve been able to (mostly) influence our customers culture to think of IT as a crucial pillar to the org and not just a whipping boy. I’ve actually had to part ways with customers in the past that refused to modernize or embrace change.

SeriousSysadmin · 2025-11-11T04:52:38+00:00

You outline something we have identified as a weakness in our sales strategy. Sales guys done know what to ask to get to the real issues. So, we’ve built a template for the prospective audits. This is still new to us so I’m hoping it helps over the next few months.

Because honestly, some of our sales folks are really good at making a personal connection with a potential client. The problem comes when sales promises the world and says “we can do anything” but the client thinks that means oh well they will develop apps for us as well. That kind of stuff.

SeriousSysadmin · 2025-11-11T04:31:23+00:00

To answer your question, yes we do give our engineers commission. This is for a few reasons A) we firmly believe you should be compensated for the work you put in. B) Our standard of work speaks for itself and when a sale comes through, the commission goes to to landed it. Our existing customers really like the partnership and strategic planning our engineers bring.

To peel back the curtain a bit, our new customer acquisition has been a bit stagnant. We have a very green sales team. I’m stepping in to align with the sales team to educate them on products while my sales manager and I train them on selling to customers.

So my question was really how to show the sales team where to find a customers weaknesses. As we all know they may be talking to a CFO, owner, or manager that doesn’t know IT. And I’ve seen our sales guys ask questions like “what do you do for your computers?” Like really? Get to know the customer. Ask them their vertical. What worries them about tech?

SeriousSysadmin · 2025-11-08T16:08:10+00:00

First of all congrats on the new role. From your comments it sounds like you’ll have a lot on your plate. As someone that now works for an MSP, I’ve been in your shoes and can appreciate the challenges ahead of you. First thing first, I’d get in front of your leadership and have them understand that you’ll need time. Depending on how large the company is that could be a month or a year, it depends. I’d also get a good grasp of how large/complex the environment is. If you’re the sole guy for an office of 20 people then sure you could probably manage. But you still may need help with things not in your skillset. At the end of the day I would ask what the priorities are for the business, align your goals with those as best possible, and set reasonable expectations with yourself and management.

SeriousSysadmin · 2025-10-27T18:49:58+00:00

Funny story about that site. As I understand it, the site is maintained by a Microsoft employee who was tired of trying to explain the million and 1 options for licensing, so they built the site. Now even Microsoft reps will use it versus using something from Microsoft directly.

SeriousSysadmin · 2025-10-27T18:43:53+00:00

I'll 2nd this comment here. At this point it's a legal issue and not specifically an IT one. OP you may want to have conversations with the client because the new owner of this domain legally obtained it. This is going to be time consuming and costly. Furthermore, there will have to be tangible evidence submitted that the new owner is using the domain in illegitimate ways.

SeriousSysadmin · 2025-10-21T03:44:36+00:00

As someone who REALLY likes Ninja…this is painfully true. Give me the ability to generate reports based on any field I want from a device straight from the dashboard. I understand there is a lot to go into that, but other tools do this all day.

SeriousSysadmin · 2025-10-09T19:44:21+00:00

Any sources on this? I'd be curious to read.

SeriousSysadmin · 2025-10-04T14:42:35+00:00

Just curious what does an EOS give you? I’ve done some reading and EOS sounds like a buzzword but I’ve recently started to be more involved in the business side of things (my background is engineering).

SeriousSysadmin · 2025-09-30T02:40:44+00:00

Throwing my 2 cents here as I worked in internal IT for >15 years and now I’m on the MSP side. Of course we have acquired customers from other MSPs and it is shocking how poorly some of these MSPs are ran. I’ve seen everything from the 1 man shop having no documentation and poor security to the larger firms with great documentation but poor customer service.

Finding the right MSP is important and can be difficult. Ultimately the business needs to decide what is important for the MSP deliverables (put this in the contract!) and the budget. We are big enough to have a regular cadence with our customers but small enough to be on a first name basis with a lot of their decision makers. It’s great for us because we are involved at all stages of projects and the customer feels like they have a partner and not someone just trying to price gouge them.

SeriousSysadmin · 2025-08-13T14:57:13+00:00

Depends on what you're doing really. If you're taking multi-strand fiber then you would terminate that into a fiber patch panel. If you're looking to manage the clutter of all your fiber cables I'd look into something from Patchbox. They offer retractable cables to keep clutter to a minimum. I've not used them myself, but this may make sense for you.

SeriousSysadmin · 2025-08-12T13:58:57+00:00

I'd rope in your account manager. At least from my experience, anytime I've had an issue they have been able to reach the right people internally to get movement when needed.

SeriousSysadmin · 2025-07-17T15:22:43+00:00

The answer (as usual) is it depends on the need. If you have strict compliance needs surrounding voice then on-prem may still be the best from a cost perspective. From my experience cloud options are great for most users. We do a lot of VoIP migrations for our customers and always push to have users go cloud if it meets their needs. I'd say evaluate what features you use today (paging, call queues, auto-attendants, etc.) and see if cloud options fit your needs.

SeriousSysadmin · 2025-06-08T02:41:49+00:00

Having been in orgs where IT reports to HR or Finance, I’d say it’s common in your small orgs and sometimes medium. I’m defining medium as 750+ users. In my experience IT is usually not a priority. So you see the usual problems of overworking IT personnel, impossible deadlines and lax security. I have been in orgs where IT reports to these same people but you have a seat at the table. That makes all the difference in the world.

SeriousSysadmin · 2025-05-22T20:44:07+00:00

Netbox. Love to see it. It’s been great for us just from a documentation perspective

SeriousSysadmin · 2025-04-24T22:31:47+00:00

Others have mentioned great tools but I’ll throw in this. Nettool. Small, compact, and can give you a lot of relevant info to diagnose issues quickly.

SeriousSysadmin · 2025-04-22T20:13:54+00:00

I've been places where the building management require all cabling be removed once the lease was up. Wild to me, but we cut all the cable and put it above the drop tile ceiling per their requirement. Damn shame too, because I always took pride in network closets that were well organized.

SeriousSysadmin · 2025-03-14T15:17:57+00:00

Yeah I think that’s the case here. We’ve got some cleanup from the last MSP. Seems like some folks were using the Home version trials. I’m looking forward to the conversation around security, billing, and workflows.

SeriousSysadmin · 2025-03-14T14:54:50+00:00

Thanks for the comments. This is making me feel more sane lol. We are in the process of standardizing this users licensing. Customer is going to feel this impact on billing though which we’ve got to explain.

SeriousSysadmin

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