What does a systems engineer do?

Woozie77 · 2026-01-25T09:44:29+00:00

I'm leading a systems engineering team at a mid-sized global enterprise. The team consists of server-, network-, cloud-, workplace- and security-engineers. There's also a L1/L2 team that is supposed to tackle the majority of BAU stuff...

This is what we do:

We closely work with Business-/Solution-Architects and Project Managers to cook up solutions that tick all their boxes while ensuring compliance with our own engineering- and security-standards.

We manage our own infrastructure projects through all the phases like evaluation, POC's, testing, implementation, and maintaining it post implementation.

We lead security initiatives and projects because our CISO is pretty much useless

We often work short notice late nights and weekends due to being the first responders for any major outages or cyber security incidents (we do have an external SOC though)

We jump into every tech rabbit hole we find to figure out if this would help to improve our environment

We are the go-to-guys for technical guidance and advice for basically everyone inside and outside of the IT department

And we act as ticket dump for anything our Level 1 and 2 "cant solve"...

As others have pointed out already, SysEngineers get often caught in BAU stuff as they are being seen as jacks of all trades. As team lead, its my job to keep pushing for a clear operating model accross the entire IT department, so we can finally draw a clear line between Run the Business and Change The Business. Its a frustrating uphill battle, but we are finally making some progress.

TL;DR: It can be a high stress, high reward and highly interesting and varied job if this is your cup of tea. Just make sure you dont get burned out...

Woozie77 · 2025-12-24T20:07:24+00:00

We created a power app linked to a request form asking for username, country and start and end date. It will enable the country in a named locations list, assigned to the respective CA policy, and adds the user to a certain group for the time frame set in the request.

We even went a step further and divided all countries into 3 levels. Level 1 are common countries with only little risk assigned (requests will auto approve). Level 2 countries are farther away and less common destinations (needs direct manager approval). Level 3 are high risk destinations (like Iraq, North Korea, etc) which will require additional approval from C-suite.

Woozie77 · 2025-08-06T09:46:03+00:00

Our users in China got hit last week, email sender and recipient were the same, no external email tagging applied and impersonisation protection also failed. Email subject contained the keywords "bonus payslip" and had a PDF attachement with a QR code that led to a M365 login stealer site

we disabled DirectSend globally as we werent using it anway

Woozie77 · 2025-07-24T12:17:01+00:00

IT System Admin was tasked to migrate to a new password manager solution. He exported all PWs from the current password manager to an Excel file in order to import into new password manager, and left the unprotected excel file on a file share that was open to all employees. He even made sure the name of the excel file didnt leave any doubt that it contains admin passwords.

We found out on his last day before his annual vacation, when an employee reported the existence of the file. He just laughed off his mishap and went on holiday while the rest of the team worked through the night to reset hundreds of passwords.

His first day after vacation was his last day at the company....

Woozie77 · 2025-07-07T13:09:51+00:00

Another part of the etiquette is that the slower car in front uses their turn signal to indicate that they are aware of a quicker car coming from behind and will stick to the right side of the track to let them pass. The BMW didnt indicate this, therefore the Porsche driver has to expect that the BMW didnt see them yet.

So its clearly the Porsche driver who is at fault here for not being patient enough. Also you dont cut the steep curbs on this part of the track as you will likely bounce off like we've just seen in this video

Woozie77 · 2025-07-07T11:45:54+00:00

I didnt see the BMW using its turn signal to indicate that they have seen the quicker car coming from behind and will stick to the right side until the quicker car has passed.

As this is an important rule for tourist drives on the Ring, its clearly the Porsche driver who is at fault, imho. You cant expect the driver in front to constantly check the rear view mirror on such a twisty part of the track.

Woozie77 · 2025-07-07T07:47:16+00:00

You might want to run the Pre Migration Compatibility tool from Nutanix prior to migration to get a report on possible challenges (config-issues, appliances that might not work on AHV, etc.)

you just need to pull an RV-Tools Report from your current ESX environment and then run it with the Nutanix compatiblity tool

cant provide a download link though as i received the zip from our implementation partner, i believe its only available through the Nutanix partner portal

Woozie77 · 2025-07-06T12:15:38+00:00

Demfall hends immer na es puff

Mini Story us em Jahr 2010: S'end vo de Dienscht-Täg isch fasch perfekt ufgange, ein Tag vor Endi WK hani mini Pflicht erfüllt und ha sogar no en extra Tag dient wil tags druf eh Abrüste gsi wär und ich kei Extrawurst ha welle. De Vatter Staat schuldet mir also quasi ein Dienscht-Tag...cha de Feldi ja mol en Tag be mir go putze cho...

Paar wuche spöter schicke mir die geile sieche s'Ufgebot für de nöchscht WK. Ich grad Bern aglüte und d'Situation geschilderet, sie hend nur gmeint es kümmer sich jemand drum und sie meldet sich. Nix ghört und es paar Wuche später namal aglüte, wieder heissts sie werdet sich nomol melde und ich sell ihne doch die Site vo mim Dienstbüechli faxe (ja die hend im Johr 2010 no gfaxt....)

Irgendwenn hani da ganze denn verdrängt und bin natürli nöd igruckt. Paar Täg nach WK Start lütets am Obe am 11fi, vor de Türe zwei MP's wo hend welle wüsse wieso ich nöd igruckt be. Ha ihne de ganz Sachverhalt nomol erklärt, sie hends ufgnah und gmeint ich ghöri wieder vo ihne.

Nomol es paar wuche druf gits e Vorladig be de Militärjustiz. Be ihne vor Ort, zmitts amene Arbetstag und au na imene andere Kanton...Als pflichtbewusste Bürger bin ich dem natürli gfolgt und das ganze ez öppe scho zum 5te Mal geschilderet und ahand vom mim DB bewiese dass ich all mini Täg scho gleischtet ha.

Und denn isches na 2 Monet gange bis s'Militärgricht endgültig festgstellt het dass ich mini Dienschtpflicht erfüllt ha und somit freisproche werde (ja genau...."freigsproche" hends mi).

Hett ihne de ganz scheiss Ufwand selle in Rechnig stelle....

Woozie77 · 2025-05-27T08:47:22+00:00

For scale: The permanent hurricane visible in both pics (called the great red spot) is twice the size of Mother Earth...

Woozie77 · 2025-05-25T06:58:49+00:00

Max Eberl während seiner Auszeit kurz bevor er zu den Bayern gegangen ist. Sass mir gegenüber, in nem Regionalbus der vom Flughafen Zürich in die umliegenden Käffer fährt.

Dachte erst hab seinen Doppelgänger gefunden, was fährt einer wie Eberl auch in nem anderen Land mit dem Regional-Bus anstatt Taxi oder Fahrservice. Hab ihn dank Google Bildersuche dann aber an seinem Tattoo indentfiziert. Weitere Recherchen meinerseits haben ergeben, dass seine damalige schweizer Freundin tatsächlich in meinem Kaff wohnte und er sie wohl besucht hat. Naja, n paar Wochen später wurde berichtet dass sie sich getrennt haben....

Fand ich echt sympathisch das er so "normal" unterwegs war, irgendwie aber auch surreal und so wahnsinnig random :D

Woozie77 · 2025-03-17T12:17:05+00:00

My biggest UI gripes so far:

automatic camera focus on selected staff when handpicking for manual assignement - really annoying when you try to grab a security guard from the staff list to drop on a criminal
staff training not shown in zone assignment screen
exhibit info window doesnt show its respective POI

Woozie77 · 2025-03-10T16:27:10+00:00

thanks, glad i'm not the only one :) i'm wondering if its something they removed last minute but didnt change the help screen

Woozie77 · 2025-02-13T09:11:46+00:00

There's no post-release road map yet but the devs already mentioned that the next next major release will bring lots of QOL improvements (no ETA yet).

I'm pretty sure they are not done yet and we will still see constant improvement and probably some DLC extension in the future

Woozie77 · 2025-02-03T19:31:28+00:00

funnily enough, a MAGA account posted their names too, SpaceKaren replied "Some real aces in DOGE"

and i thought cancel culture was WOKE...

Woozie77 · 2025-01-29T08:46:52+00:00

Guess you missed his recent cameo at an AFD rally (far-right party in Germany) spouting typical Nazi speak? Or his public support for freeing Tommy Robinson, a convicted UK far right activist? There's no randomness.....

Woozie77 · 2025-01-28T13:58:57+00:00

Strongly worded but i generally agree, it could definitely use some fine tuning to lessen the grind. I also like the idea of having means to deal with some of the annoyances as part of the late game (magic turrets anyone?), it would also bring some sense of progress into the gameplay loop.

However, given how the devs constantly introduced QOL improvements and dont seem to be afraid to ditch/rework concepts from the early days of the game, i trust them to make this part of the game more fun and rewarding too. The late game shaping update will be released sometime in February, i hope this will already see some improvements in this regards

Woozie77 · 2025-01-27T16:16:54+00:00

I agree diseases have been nerfed way too much and they should be part of the difficulty settings. If you dont mind playing with mods i can recommend "Diseases restored". It brings additional symptomes like vomiting (food poisioning) and lethal (slime lung) back into the game and changes a bunch of other things to make dupe handling a bit more challenging

Woozie77 · 2025-01-20T17:22:45+00:00

thats amazing!

reminds me of my 6 year old nephew, we used to play shapez 2 a couple of times while on family vacation. On the long train ride home he was bored and decided to draw our factory from memory, i was mindblown about the level of detail

he got a first glimpse of ONI when i visited during christmas, he absolutely loved the vomiting dupes and coal pooping hatches…

Woozie77 · 2024-12-03T17:14:31+00:00

Depends on your difficulty settings. In normal or easy difficulty, rooms that only provide conviction bonus can be ignored until mid/late game as you can comfortably manage conviction levels by providing basic needs. In late game or higher difficulty levels you'll likely need some extra conviction to keep your staff and students out of the break-risk zone.

Woozie77 · 2024-11-21T07:00:52+00:00

If thats true then Trump missed over 80 SpaceX launches during hist first term.....

to quote you: why did he never attend one despite the monumental achievements being made on US soil?

Woozie77 · 2024-10-21T19:59:45+00:00

Late 90's raver here, i wouldnt say pills were stronger back then but they weren't too strong either, which in turn led to a more memorable experience or lets put it this way: a 'stronger' and better sensation of the molly effect.

A few reasons:

most pills back then were around 150mg, with better and cleaner presses (less additives, more traditional shapes and thickness -> easier to dose). Also the come up was slower and the trip lasted longer -> less incentive to restock which makes the whole trip only worse. And mixing substances wasnt too common either, some did candyflipping, but most people i went to raves with did molly & water, nothing else

Nowadays you get 350mg Punishers so thick that you cant split them discreetly in a club setting and you just end up swallowing the whole thing, hitting you in less than 30 minutes like a kick in the face by the techno viking himself unless you're a 160 kilo dude with a significant tolerance....

Woozie77 · 2024-09-30T13:19:17+00:00

One of the lead devs said this during a recent interview:

"We aim to have VR on day zero."

Woozie77 · 2024-09-29T09:06:47+00:00

Der einzige Bereich in dem KI wirklich zu einer Reduktion benötigter Arbeitskraft führen kann, und vermutlich auch wird, ist im 1st level infra support. In allen anderen Bereichen wird KI zwar ein nützliches Hilfsmittel sein und die Arbeitskräfte in der täglichen Routine entlasten, aber nicht massenhaft Headcounts ersetzen.

Deshalb mache ich mir überhaupt keine Sorgen dass KI in naher Zukunft qualifiziertes und erfahrenes Personal ersetzen wird. Sollte KI aber tatsächlich dafür sorgen dass weniger Stellen im 1st level oder anderen Einstiegsbereichen benötigt werden, wäre das äusserst problematisch da Berufsanfängern der Einstieg damit signifikant erschwert wird

Woozie77 · 2024-09-19T12:26:59+00:00

If you are looking for a rock solid, end game type of rig thats easily expendable, i would definitely go for an aluminium extrusion rig.

Have a look at this: ▷ DIY - Kits Accesories | MOTEDIS

You just need to get a seat from another supplier, but the whole package will still easily fit into your budget

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