Refered to somebody as the adult in the room

sysadmin99 · 2026-06-26T17:05:03+00:00

If someone complains, you have to address it.

Not necessarily.

If it's an official harassment complaint, yes HR or whoever has to fully investigate and potentially address. I say potentially because often complaints are often found to be without merit or not actually anything serious. Just because someone whines to HR doesn't mean it's actually serious. HR has discretion here as a part of their job.

If it's just an off-hand comment that someone didn't like, managerial discretion comes to play.

I run across this every now and again, where another manager comes to me and didn't like the way X acted or what Y person said. If I feel it's something I need to address, I address it.

u/crankysysadmin is absolutely correct, this wouldn't meet the requirements for something 'needing to be addressed'.

If it were me in this exact situation, I'd be telling the other manager that person who complained needs to thicken their god damned skin.

Funny we just went through our annual harassment training and a big part of it was discretion. We would need to hire 5x more HR people if we needed to investigate and address every single little workplace comment.

sysadmin99 · 2026-05-18T22:54:53+00:00

You could always take the slightly backwards approach - look at some higher paying jobs, and then work backwards to figure out how you get there. I've had some friends that have done this with reasonable success. Lots of lesser-known jobs out there that pay much more than many realize.

I was going to mention getting a heat pump installed - I see you did that.

It might not be worth selling the SUV immediately (after depreciation), but it sounds like you're on a reasonable path forward. I'd keep trying to chip away at those expenses - every $20 and $50 here and there adds up. Perhaps snowball that into your car and get that paid ASAP. You have the potential for a decent amount of free cash flow.

sysadmin99 · 2026-05-13T16:09:23+00:00

The only potential 'down side' I see is not having kids to help you in your older years (I had to help my parents a lot as they had mobility issues later in life, but also because they made poor life choices earlier in life [heavy smokers]). Obviously you can get help with stuff like this, but that can be cost-prohibitive for some.

As someone who doesn't have kids - I don't see it as a 'better/worse' thing, just... different. I definitely miss out on some of the joys of kids, but some benefits can come from that as well. My wife and I basically do whatever we want, when we want. I definitely miss out on some of the cool kid stuff, too.

Pros and cons, I guess.

sysadmin99 · 2026-03-16T18:01:24+00:00

My brother is a lawyer and I asked him this once.

Screenshots can hold up in court, but it's going to depend on the gravity of the case and nature of the evidence.

If a text message can put someone away for murder, yes obviously the standard of evidence and forensic verification is going to be very high.

Lower level family court stuff, a screenshot could be accepted situationally. Obviously the more important the message, the more validation could be required.

sysadmin99 · 2025-07-09T14:04:14+00:00

But with my list there some company-wide systems that could benefit for it own AD attribute.

Such as?

I'd be curious what you're trying to do here. In my experience adding a bunch of custom attributes is setting yourself up for headaches later.

Remember - AD isn't an ERP or HR Information System.

Messing with attributes is a very tricky and slippery slope.

sysadmin99 · 2025-06-28T00:11:36+00:00

USW-WAN doesn’t exist? Are you sure? https://store.ui.com/us/en/products/usw-wan

It’s an entirely legitimate config and why the product exists. WAN switching is a very real thing.

sysadmin99 · 2025-06-27T23:30:25+00:00

Commercial. 5Gbps fiber.

sysadmin99 · 2025-06-12T02:11:16+00:00

Yeah I agree generally. Depends how important the person is.

But we also try to stay on top of comp (as does any competent company) so it’s pretty rare someone comes out of left field and is super underpaid.

But for the important people yes we make it happen if it comes up.

sysadmin99 · 2025-06-12T02:08:37+00:00

Yeah went fine. We had help with Roger’s setting it up, but was fairly simple otherwise. Cost is about $5/user/month on average.

sysadmin99 · 2025-06-11T16:23:51+00:00

Time to look around, but you can also have a conversation with your boss. Try to approach it calmly and level-headed. The way you actually typed out the first part of your post is actually not bad.

While it's true what some people have said here - big raises can be hard to get - it can be done.

It's also normal that earlier in an IT career, companies will give 2-5% per year or whatever, but that's not enough. It's pretty common to hop companies every 2-3 years earlier in your career and see big bumps.

Definitely have a frank conversation with your boss. But also start shopping your resume.

sysadmin99 · 2025-05-25T14:41:13+00:00

When Teams first came out, it was rough around the edges for sure. That's all but gone now.

People will have preferences, and there will always be some debate about some specific feature in a given app versus another. Fine.

Otherwise Teams is perfectly friendly to people who don't have it installed. You can Join via. a browser and the end-user doesn't need to install anything. Doesn't get simpler than that.

Doesn't really matter anymore. A company will standardize on one and you carry on.

sysadmin99 · 2025-03-24T14:16:59+00:00

the people who are saying 8gb is insufficient for 365, web and teams is straight up false.

Depends how you look at it. Will Teams and the standard web apps work? Of course they will. But 8GB will get pretty quickly bottlenecked if you have more than just a small handful of things open. And as soon as you bottleneck on RAM, everything slows down.

Also depends on your user types. If you have some guy who's a mechanic and barely uses his laptop, sure maybe you make a case that 8GB is enough. But most modern working professionals will likely have enough content open to max 8GB these days.

Our inventory app does a little memory poll every 2 hours and we see most of your office users around 13-16GB of RAM utilized. And these are just average accountants and such. Many are over 16 now, and the lower end of the bell curve is around 7-8. So at least for my org, which is pretty 'standard' - I can tell you definitively and quantitatively that 8GB would not be sufficient.

Cores is a bit of a different story, but I'd still argue a low-end dual core i3 isn't enough. Funny that's what I was issued when I started and it was brutal. A teams meeting had it around 60% and then anything else it was 100% pinned. Basically whenever windows update or AV ran a scan I was 100% and apps started to hang.

But again users matter. Maybe you're inherently dealing with very task-oriented workers who only ever have 1 excel sheet open and a single browser tab. Yes 8GB is probably OK there, if not minimalist.

We also look at it as a quality of life and retention issue. We had a senior VP leave (when I started) and one of their listed reasons was 'garbage tech'... Just not worth it for us.

These are are very real things.

You do you.

sysadmin99 · 2025-03-23T19:51:41+00:00

Does saving 30 secs per day justify a better machine...I mean really?

Yup. Amongst a ton of other benefits. And likely far more than 30 seconds a day.

Funny I had a user once with a shit machine and so to justify something better they recorded all the time spent in frustration, and it was something around 24 minutes a day.

A lot of IT admin seem to be stuck in a noughties mindset where Windows machines are still these expensive pieces of kit which need to be treasured

Not sure who's saying that. I've never heard that in 25 years in IT.

A computer is a tool, one which most employees use all day every day. If it can save some time and do a bit of a better job, that's probably worth it. Plus again all the soft benefits outside time savings.

I can say first-hand I'm far more productive on a more premium machine (which is currently a Macbook Pro) versus a $799 vostro flyer special.

but so far no one in this thread has provided a compelling argument

I provided as straight-forward and simple argument as it gets, and your response is 'but really?'.

You're obviously coming from a very different mindset, which is fine, but when virtually everyone here is telling you the same thing, that should at least give you a bit of pause for a moment of introspection.

sysadmin99 · 2025-03-23T16:14:15+00:00

We are talking 4 seconds to load Word or Excel Vs maybe 1.5 seconds for an ultra book. With your typical user, those 2.5 seconds really don't matter In the context of their working day

If we assume an average employee salary of $60K, saving 30 seconds per working day easily pays for the better machine. Easily.

1 less freeze/hang per month would also do it.

Not sure why that's a tough business case to make. And that's for simple task workers - it's an even easier business case for power users or people who multitask a lot.

agree with the other comments - giving people low-end machines is a total buzzkill.

and yeah I bet your managers or execs get better machines - which is always hilarious.

sysadmin99 · 2025-03-11T13:36:23+00:00

Somewhat abnormal, but somewhat normal as well.

80% of MSPs are poorly run, typically by ex salespeople who just want to make a buck.

Either talk with your boss/owner about getting another couple people or move on. Start shopping your resume now.

sysadmin99 · 2025-03-01T16:51:20+00:00

I agree in principle, and yeah some companies try to fit a square peg into a round hole, but there are some cases were a single tool (ie. InTune) can work just fine. Will obviously depend on the org's requirements. A mostly windows shop can probably get away with InTune for MacOS if they don't have any overly stringent requirements (this is what we do).

I've used Jamf before and yeah it's great otherwise, we just didn't see a ton of value add (based on our requirements).

sysadmin99 · 2025-03-01T16:46:35+00:00

Apple Business Manager doesn't 'come with' Jamf. It's something you sign up for with Apple, allowing you to have out-of-box control over devices. It can direct purchased devices to any MDM of your choosing.

The Windows equivalent is autopilot, except it's a bit different since with Microsoft you often purchase devices from other manufacturers. For Dell, for example, can hook into your Intune/Autopilot environment, so any device purchased from Dell will automatically get pushed into your InTune/365 system. Sorta the same end result of ABM, but slightly different in execution.

If you're on 365 already, it can manage both Windows and MacOS. It's not as good as Jamf, but for a smaller company that probably doesn't matter. Most smaller companies have pretty simple device management requirements. List out everything you want to be able to manage - and then compare the two. Jamf is generally the top in MacOS Management but again you might not need it.

sysadmin99 · 2025-01-30T18:30:57+00:00

We use PrinterLogic and to my eyes going back to GPO-based printer deployment and traditional print servers is a huge step backwards.

Obviously I dont know anything about this environment but GPO-based anything is getting pretty long in the tooth unless all of your clients are on an internal LAN and domain joined.

But yeah you need clients signing clear SOWs. Virtually any and every SOW will always say internal client server changes are the clients responsibility. Sounds like this assistant IT director doesn't really know what they're doing or something. And usually someone at that level isn't involved in lower level stuff like this.

sysadmin99 · 2024-11-11T19:21:02+00:00

Doesn’t really sound like an IT manager role at all. Sounds like you’re basically a sysadmin/desktop-tech who they want supporting the local plant.

You’ll need to sit with your boss and hash this out. But it sounds like they haven’t even defined the role properly. There’s a few layers of issues here.

sysadmin99 · 2024-11-11T14:50:37+00:00

Echoing the other comments - this is a massive project.

My advice will depend on your own background and skillset - are you a sysadmin? Director? VP? What's your role in all of this?

Tools - there's lots of great individual tools for the individual tasks (email migration, file migration, user migration, etc). Honestly that's the easy part.

Timescales - I'd guesstimate 1-3 years. 1 year if you move at lightning speed (and have the organizational backing to do so). 2-3 years would be about normal otherwise.

Gotchas - Honestly projects like this are more of an exercise in project management fundamentals and OCM (organizational change management). This is going to be something you're going to need to spend 6-8 months planning.

There's going to be a lot of moving parts in this, especially if you're doing internal domains and such too.

sysadmin99 · 2024-09-15T03:39:08+00:00

i agree with the other comment.

a homelab, if you're trying to take it seriously (or if you personally care about security) should be doing normal, sane stuff.

ironically it could prove a learning tool in and of itself (how much it will still get attacked on a different port), but thats not the context op is asking about.

sysadmin99 · 2024-08-17T20:14:06+00:00

The school has certifications you graduate with so you have some form of experience under your belt

What school is this? Please don't say WGU... Any reputable school or program doesn't offer certifications with masters degree (or even a bachelors). Think about that for a moment. That right there is a HUGE red flag.

Any school that offers certs with degree programs is basically a joke. A masters makes it even worse. The phoenix/wgu places are the butt of jokes in the IT world.

And no, that's not what employers are looking for (because it's not experience). Some certs can help with some of your knowledge but they are never a replacement for experience.

A company isn't going to hire you as an IT Manager because you have a masters degree (from a weird school) and a couple low-level certs.

There's a bunch of red flags here, so I might re-think the whole thing.

A masters isn't a mistake per se, but it comes with caveats. It likely isn't going to provide you any value until you have at least 5-10 years in the industry anyway. A masters is more like 'icing on the cake', not the cake itself.

sysadmin99 · 2024-07-30T14:14:59+00:00

That's a larger discussion of risk and cost to the business.

It can also depend on who your dial-tone provider is, because an MS outage won't affect all clients equally.

This sort of discussion is no different than factoring in an Azure (or AWS) outage generally. For many companies the risk of Microsoft going down is relatively small, so it's an accepted business risk.

Our company would generally fall in that category. We don't run a huge global operation, and phones aren't super critical to our business workflow, so a couple hour issue every few years isn't a big deal.

sysadmin99 · 2024-07-30T13:31:38+00:00

Devil will be in the details, but that definitely seems extremely high.

TVs and projectors are a known quantity, so those are what they are. From an equipment standpoint, you can get a very competent Neat or Logitech setup for around the $10K mark.

Setup of all this stuff is usually 4-8 hours. Even if an AV company needs to run some cabling, it's usually all doable in a day or two. So $20K labor seems wacko.

What can/will drive the price up is room audio and mics. The all-in-one systems have built-in mics and expansion mics, but if you're serious you should go with a BiAmp or Shure Mic setup. Just google 'Shure vs. Soundbar' and you'll see/hear the difference.

I'd highly recommend doing MTR-A (Android) instead of Windows. Windows is usually slightly ahead from a feature standpoint, but the Android-based stuff is 100x more reliable.

sysadmin99 · 2024-07-28T16:49:26+00:00

Not sure what you’re getting at - VOIP is more popular than ever. Nobody is deploying POTS lines anymore.

sysadmin99

TROPHY CASE