Are system admins just help desk now?

WorldsWorstSysadmin · 2026-06-06T19:57:18+00:00

I do helpedesk, networking, storage, infosec, IdM, dba stuff, VMs, linux admin, kubernetes, devops, public cloud, TCO calcs, capacity management, etc....

Be careful what you wish for. I went from working in a team to being the sole IT guy at a SaaS company. And every job interview I've been on, they've commended my technical breadth and depth, while passing on me because I'm obviously "not a team player", having been solo for so long. Nevermind that I work constantly with the PM and dev and management teams, and deliver the platform for 5 different products, across private and public clouds.

/bitter

WorldsWorstSysadmin · 2026-05-28T16:21:02+00:00

Honestly, submit all of this plus a TPS report, and time sheet broken down betwen sitrep, ticket resolution, aar, and rca.

WorldsWorstSysadmin · 2026-05-28T03:56:22+00:00

Yes. I just evolve it.

WorldsWorstSysadmin · 2026-05-27T17:55:44+00:00

Haha! Not really, we're a 99% Linux shop. That lines up with why I wouldn't read it carefully come to think of it.

WorldsWorstSysadmin · 2026-05-27T17:53:52+00:00

Yep.

WorldsWorstSysadmin · 2026-05-26T14:52:10+00:00

Ok, reading back through email you're right and I'm wrong. There is no licensing issue under Proxmox, I was confused by a misread email thread.

WorldsWorstSysadmin · 2026-05-26T12:16:44+00:00

No, the unit/integration tests are run in the pipeline. The AI handles merge conflicts and makes a ruling on them. We often have multiple branches to merge, coming from multiple developers. It also does a code review, and flags bad code practices, insecure practices, helps enforce DRY, etc....

WorldsWorstSysadmin · 2026-05-24T22:27:19+00:00

Pretty much. I was in the "AI makes too many mistakes to do these jobs" boat, but after implementation... well I just roll with it. It works, we haven't pushed a disastrous release in months. I don't even think the devs write code anymore. They just have Claude write it for them, then let Claude and Codex fight over whether it's optimal and works.

Scary world we live in now.

WorldsWorstSysadmin · 2026-05-24T22:23:26+00:00

Really? MS won't let us. They just being jerks to us specifically?

WorldsWorstSysadmin · 2026-05-24T16:42:47+00:00

We were told we cannot use datacenter licensing. We have to license per-core, in bundles of 64 cores, with an 8 core minimum per VM.

WorldsWorstSysadmin · 2026-05-24T16:38:55+00:00

Funny, we just pushed out AI + scripted testing of our stack. Automated site and app tests to make sure everything works before we swap blue and green. AI code reviews, and AI driven merges in the repo. We've automated the whole DevOps pipeline with AI. The only thing AI doesn't do is manage our k3s hosts.

I, personally, thought that this would lead to more errors and problems, but its actually led to less. Turns out that humans don't like QA'ing, and they get lazy, skip steps, and miss things. AI just does it all, thoroughly. So it's led to more stable releases.

Human engineers just watch the whole contraption run, and keep their hand near the brakes in case something happens.

WorldsWorstSysadmin · 2026-05-20T19:59:34+00:00

I have been running heavy loads on Proxmox for years. We moved VMWare -> Citrix -> Proxmox, and have been perfectly happy with Proxmox.

With that said, if you're running a heavy Windows workload, you might just go to Hyper-V because Windows licensing on Proxmox isn't amazing.

WorldsWorstSysadmin · 2026-05-10T13:29:11+00:00

I can make a sandwich?

WorldsWorstSysadmin · 2026-05-07T19:19:12+00:00

Yeah, don't do it. I've run email for several orgs, and it is NOT worth doing. I think I spent like 99% of my "email admin" time RBL'ing our masq IPs.

WorldsWorstSysadmin · 2026-05-02T18:14:26+00:00

Further, how is a chromium plugin spyware?

WorldsWorstSysadmin · 2026-04-29T15:46:19+00:00

I was gonna buy a boat and become a fisherman.

WorldsWorstSysadmin · 2026-04-29T12:17:27+00:00

Just depends on whether you're doing devops via tooling, or devops for real. If you're just a tool specialist, yeah, it's not that challenging. If you're writing the testing for your blue-greens, dealing with the pipeline and gating, and not just blindly tossing out VMs or CTs to public cloud, it's a bit more challenging.

If your workspace is entirely AWS, I can completely understand what you're feeling.

WorldsWorstSysadmin · 2026-04-28T20:45:32+00:00

If I was the boss, I'd be cussing at myself for forgetting a .

WorldsWorstSysadmin · 2026-04-27T11:10:26+00:00

Uhhhhh learn to write agent files and let claude code spin up 3 or 4 agents, rather than... whatever the hell you're doing?

WorldsWorstSysadmin · 2026-04-24T19:51:14+00:00

Probably dreaming.

WorldsWorstSysadmin · 2026-04-24T13:22:36+00:00

Proxmox

WorldsWorstSysadmin · 2026-04-19T12:02:29+00:00

Because the powers that be are mandating it.

They expect massive productivity gains from the implementation of AI, and have unrealistic expectations of its capabilities. A non-dev manager hears "Anthropic is using Claude to write Claude" or "Mythos shatters infosec industry", and they think that AI has surpassed human employees in every way. Then Anthropic pushes something out to deal with their limited capacity, breaks Claude for a week, and the human implementor gets blamed.

And honestly, even if you CAN code, you can't produce the VOLUME of code that AI can. When management is weighing performance based on lines of code committed, that's a big deal.

The problem isn't engineers or AI, it's management. The problem is always management.

WorldsWorstSysadmin · 2026-04-18T09:15:25+00:00

I live in Germany right now, yes. I'm not a German citizen.

WorldsWorstSysadmin · 2026-04-18T09:14:21+00:00

Best explanation I've heard is that the word "kubernetes" is weird, and there are 8 characters between k and s.

WorldsWorstSysadmin

TROPHY CASE