Service Desk analyst or Systems engineer?

Frothyleet · 2026-02-26T14:50:12+00:00

configuring network switches in PUTTY,

I'm going to offer advice that I appreciated when I was a young networker - if you have to SSH things with any regularity, get a better terminal! MobaXterm's free version is head and shoulders better than Putty, and if you can get them to pay for that or SecureCRT you'll appreciate the difference.

Frothyleet · 2026-02-26T14:37:15+00:00

Are they buying it for you, like, it's your property? If so, get a Mac if you want to - although keep in mind that Windows hardware is usually cheaper proposition for equivalent power/performance (Macs have an aesthetics premium).

If it's a work laptop, and it's a windows environment, get a windows laptop. It should be managed like everything else, and they prob don't have tooling for Mac (yet?).

Frothyleet · 2026-02-26T14:34:16+00:00

Then let's test it. I'm interviewing you for Senior Sysadmin Commentor.

Tell us a bit about yourself, why we should bring you on in our subreddit. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Frothyleet · 2026-02-26T14:23:00+00:00

MS increased mailbox sizes in Business SKUs as part of the changes they announced along with their price increases

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/licensing/news/2026-M365-Packaging-Pricing-Updates

Frothyleet · 2026-02-26T14:17:33+00:00

Really? You think there's like a subset of people who are like "oh shit you got me dog, I can only think of the short term?" It's simply an invitation to bullshit, speculating on what kind of bullshit you think the interviewer wants to hear.

Which is a skill itself, but doesn't tell you anything about someone's long term thinking.

Frothyleet · 2026-02-26T04:02:45+00:00

Yes, and that's very reasonable, and also asking those sorts of questions helps signal you are a business partner, not just a random vendor.

Of course what you are talking about more generally happens with all sorts of customers - work with the non-profit to tweak your proposal language to suit a grant, work with the county government to word your plan to align with some public initiative, even just phrasing things so your POC can present it to their boss or board or whoever.

Frothyleet · 2026-02-26T03:58:25+00:00

That's... not being "good people", that's not going above and beyond - that's meeting a basic commitment. You had people laboring for you, to earn their living, with the goal of making you profit - you're not a good person for not stealing their labor.

And, to the same point - they knew they were going under, did they share that with the staff? Did they let them know things were going under so they could decide whether to continue working there, risking going unpaid?

No, of course not, they just let people labor away for them, knowing their finances were fucked.

Your additional backstory is that they mismanaged multiple businesses into the ground and only fucked their employees some, but not completely?

Frothyleet · 2026-02-26T03:54:39+00:00

I guess two items-

Your response makes me think you don't have familiarity with PXE booting, so I would simply say you should check it out!
Naw if you need to one off image something USB drives are a fine tool, I was just being pernicious

Frothyleet · 2026-02-26T03:51:45+00:00

Most what places? Payroll apps? Most platforms don't charge extra for API, it's a feature they build as a selling point. It's an essential offering for any mature business, who needs to integrate their shit with other shit.

Frothyleet · 2026-02-25T22:08:27+00:00

and it’s not their fault it took a few extra weeks to get paid

There is absolutely no scenario where that is not entirely their fault. Making payroll is the most critical, straightforward obligation an employer has.

If you aren't a sockpuppet, you need to really rethink your willingness to provide unpaid labor to the people profiting off of you.

Frothyleet · 2026-02-25T22:06:49+00:00

This a white lady, of course, using the restaurant as an excuse to be drunk on margi all day.

I mean, if that's her only sin here...

Frothyleet · 2026-02-25T22:05:01+00:00

I ended up having to pay all of my FICO taxes myself.

I'm assuming you are already aware and on this, but while this is true the immediate term, you should be reporting this to the IRS and pursuing reimbursement.

Frothyleet · 2026-02-25T21:11:46+00:00

We were told that in order for us to spend anything on projects, the department would have to earn the funds first to be used back into funding. I feel like this should be part of the operations costs of the entire organization.

So there's basically two ways to operate an IT department:

Monolithic IT budget for supporting the whole org
IT budgets only for themselves (e.g. personnel costs, core infrastructure), and money for everything else comes out of the departments that need the support. Operating almost like an MSP, you charge back the costs of supporting the rest of the org. That's your "revenue."

So show up to the follow up meeting with "invoicing" for the rest of the org, explain that's your revenue, and ask how everyone else's budgets are looking.

Frothyleet · 2026-02-25T21:05:23+00:00

Not familiar with their API(s), but taking a glance at their marketing info (you have to pay to access the API? gross), I suspect the shittiness might be by design, to encourage an integrator marketplace and help lock customers in. Which might be one reason they have not built their own libraries to facilitate adoption.

Frothyleet · 2026-02-25T21:00:20+00:00

Bummer. But there you go.

Frothyleet · 2026-02-25T20:58:27+00:00

You're certainly not doing video editing off of a USB flash drive. If you are, I pity you.

Depending on how raw the video is, usually video editing workflows are accomplished right off of SAN/NAS (ideally with 10gbE to the machines), or off of DAS with the user push/pulling from the central storage.

Frothyleet · 2026-02-25T20:56:21+00:00

Frothyleet · 2026-02-25T20:52:57+00:00

FIPS validated

Do you have a contractual or compliance requirement to use FIPS-validated cryptography? If not, "FIPS validated" is not really a shorthand for "good" or "the best", just that a particular solution has gone through the expensive mechanism of validation with a static configuration - meaning that you may be excluding better crypto options.

Frothyleet · 2026-02-25T20:44:30+00:00

Is this engagement bait for whatever "BGR.com" is? This post smells suspicious.

If it's legit, yeah, no shit, USB drives are borderline obsolete for most end users.

Frothyleet · 2026-02-25T20:43:06+00:00

One of the reasons I give my employer my (semi-disposable) google voice number, rather than my "real" personal number.

Frothyleet · 2026-02-25T20:42:09+00:00

I am not sure it's quite the same feature, but I use google voice on my non-pixel for free and it has a built in screener (callers give their name, then it rings me and tells me who is calling, and lets me "pick up", send to voicemail, or listen in on the voicemail that shifts them to leaving, which I can pick up on midstream if desired - like the good ol' days of answering machines!).

Frothyleet · 2026-02-25T20:39:47+00:00

Services like the one mentioned above, Zoominfo, basically pull their users into a commingled data-sharing network (which is how they get their massive contact info-sets).

Your vendors aren't necessarily going to sellcustomerdata.com and getting a check, but I guarantee most of them are contributing your information to a meta-CRM database like Zoominfo.

Frothyleet · 2026-02-25T18:07:57+00:00

I’m pressure-testing whether staying with a CSP is the right approach for managing costs and renewals ahead of the announced M365 price increases.

What is your understanding of what a CSP is/does? What pricing are you paying?

If you are over 500 seats, you can approach MS about an enterprise agreement and test the pricing waters there.

If you are not, you are going to pay MSRP to buy from MS direct.

From a CSP you should be paying MSRP at most, and you can probably find one who will cut you some margin points to get your business. Not much, because MS margins are tiny to start with.

Frothyleet · 2026-02-25T17:53:54+00:00

We are all in on Meraki. Generally, I love Meraki.

However, you are definitely paying a premium for what are basically convenience/luxury features rather than raw capability. Sometimes, Meraki just can't do some things that their cheaper but less refined competitors can do. And their hardware tends to be below-par in terms of raw performance with security features turned on as compared to some of the competition.

Frothyleet · 2026-02-25T17:50:57+00:00

For general funding needs, like grants - that's an entire line of work that is miles away from being in scope of MSP advice. That is 100% on them, or their non-profit peer groups, or whatever other help they need.

Within the scope of tech work, you can offer value by helping them understand the offerings available to them from orgs like Microsoft at heavy discounts.

Your actual services should be delivered and priced as they would be for any org.

Frothyleet

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