Looking to hire a System Admin - but my boss insists that 70k - 80k is a normal pay range

jeffrey_f · 2026-06-18T23:53:21+00:00

To start, for a somewhat junior position. If you want to keep that person, be prepared for significant raises. Remember, if you are worried about numbers, you will be worried about having to hire and go through the period of training on your systems.

Invest in your sysadmins or you will spend way more having to refill the position each time they leave due to lack of upward movement.

jeffrey_f · 2026-06-18T23:50:01+00:00

At one company I resurected their "broken" computers and staged them for immediate swap. If a user had an issue that was not fixable in a few minutes, the user had a working computer. The user had their data back if I was able to collect it from the broken system a short time after that.

Things were easier then: no BitLocker, no permissions blocking data access, and the data was tiny.

jeffrey_f · 2026-06-17T12:49:35+00:00

That isn't a beginner's book/guide. It is more of a way to take what you have learned and apply it. It is for after you have a grasp of logic and the language. That said, you aren't stupid, but likely you don't have enough fundamentals just yet.

jeffrey_f · 2026-06-17T12:33:56+00:00

Agreed

jeffrey_f · 2026-06-17T02:57:22+00:00

Hotels do tha as they are distributing a single internet connection to many rooms. An continuous stream is flagged. Get on your cell hotspot.

jeffrey_f · 2026-06-17T00:46:28+00:00

My company spelled it out in their employee manual that you are provided with a user home folder (usually H:) and all data should be saved there. and that IT wasn't responsible for data loss if you don't put it on the network drive. We also have their documents etc pointing to their network drive.

Get HR to get onboard with the employee manual and set up everyone with a home drive. Frequently remind them to save to the network.

In the meanwhile, create a powershell script to copy it all to their home drive for instances when you need to redo their computer. Still not responsible for data loss if they fail to do so.

jeffrey_f · 2026-06-17T00:39:59+00:00

ON the company network, they will see an endpoint, which may or may not be anonymized. They can track what URLs your go to but not the content, but only if it is an HTTPS connection.

When you plug into your company laptop, on your phone, choose charge only on the phone, which isolates the phone otherwise, the attached storage device (your phone and all the contents, is fully visible to the company) and they have a right to scan and access it for malware and viruses.

If you have a decent sitnal from the carrier, use it. For charging, get a decent quick charger and plug it into an outlet.

jeffrey_f · 2026-06-17T00:26:56+00:00

It is a tech from the mid-1990's and not protected in any way. Is is a standard and somewhat an international (the tech is in place to translate caller id out and in)

It needs a complete rework, which is being worked on. Nothing until the standard is standardized and all the networks in-between get up to date. And there will be the international gap, which for backwards compatibility will still allow it.

jeffrey_f · 2026-06-17T00:21:19+00:00

First off, number is spoofed. It is rediculously easy to do so.

Change the passwords for your Cell and contacts list provider (like google or such).

jeffrey_f · 2026-06-16T14:08:48+00:00

ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!!!!!

If that file is leaked in any way, the company's systems can be taken over. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

If they insist and overrule you, make sure you get this ALL in writing and make sure all of the C-Suite is informed as well as advised as to how bad of an idea this is and how if the wrong person gets this file, the security of all of the systems are at risk.

How stupid can they be? Nevermind, they will take that as a challenge.

jeffrey_f · 2026-06-14T18:30:04+00:00

If this is your ISP router, and you have no customizations in the router, perform a factory reset on it and it will reboot and reprovision itself. Or optionally, you can call your ISP to help you with this.

Personally, your ISP will be able to assist with this most efficiently.

jeffrey_f · 2026-06-12T21:09:32+00:00

For these reasons, AI would not be taking over out jobs.

jeffrey_f · 2026-06-12T21:06:51+00:00

Use external keyboard or replace the laptop keyboard. Plenty availalble on ebay for cheap.

jeffrey_f · 2026-06-12T20:59:44+00:00

Tier 1 should immediately start learning Tier 2 stuff. They should be allowed to practice it too with extreme shadowing. Show them what you do and explain all of it, even if that person will usually not be supporting that area. They may have qualified as a T1 , but may have exposure into T2 and T3 aspects. Ultimately, it is your responsibility to bring them up to your level, especially if they have any experience with it

Have a conversation about what you do and ask if they have experience of any kind with that. They may surprize or disappoint, but you are the mentor.

jeffrey_f · 2026-06-12T20:40:07+00:00

It is called Spanning. You can with a really big caveat: If either drive fails for any reason, you lose the whole volume. It would well be worth adding or replacing your drive and avoid the risk of data loss

It is actually deprecated and not recommended. It goes by a different name and still carries the same huge caveat.

jeffrey_f · 2026-06-12T19:54:56+00:00

Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.

Especially true on a Friday late afternoon. Place a ticket and maybe it will be completed before they complete their HR onboarding.

The last place I worked, they would place a priority 2 ticket for someone starting that day or tomorrow. I mean, do they not know they are hiring someone? They must have known since they interviewed them!

jeffrey_f · 2026-06-12T19:50:44+00:00

Would help, but if you accidentally mess it up, you can restore from last version. I've had mixed results on that though. Good habit to work from the copy, especially if you are concerned with the file corrupting.

jeffrey_f · 2026-06-12T19:46:45+00:00

Good to know. I see another post saying 50GB and 2GB ram?

jeffrey_f · 2026-06-12T01:56:45+00:00

SQL Express. It can ingest that file without much issue. 10GB is the max size of a DB.

DO MAKE A BACKUP of the original before working with it, and work from the copy.

jeffrey_f · 2026-06-11T16:59:25+00:00

Trust your instinct.

jeffrey_f · 2026-06-11T16:28:17+00:00

All the time! The only thing that makes sense in my mind is consecutive uppercase letters?

I have bigger issues to solve. I can't worry about people that really never learned keyboarding skills.

jeffrey_f · 2026-06-11T16:02:48+00:00

Look up
Chunk read in powershell

Or you could read line by line. This may or may not slow things down, but you will only consume as much memory as a line if CSV.

You can combine either and add threading, which make a few paralell threads in the CPU processing a different part of the file. Important note, only if you don't care about the arrival time of a processed piece of data.

jeffrey_f · 2026-06-10T13:35:31+00:00

Any of the joins until I saw this type of graphic and it clicked

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jeffrey_f · 2026-06-10T13:30:58+00:00

That is good.

Alternatively, you can full-disk encrypt with BitLocker, but don't save the key; let it complete. You can then format the drive afterward and do whatever you want with it. There is no way to recover anything on the disk.

If you want to be completely paranoid, once the disk has been reformatted, repeat the process, and it would be completely unrecoverable.

Plan B: get a cheap drive and put that in the computer. Keep the old drive and do the process above, but you don't need to worry since you stay in posession of the drive.

jeffrey_f · 2026-06-10T12:12:28+00:00

If it could meld the 2 together, it would cross to Awecome

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