New IT admins can't find meaningful work in solo roles
25 posts across 5 communities in the last 60 days; 80% from r/sysadmin.
“This is a management issue, not an IT issue. It sounds like lazy management.”
“This is a joke right, you can't be on call 24/7/365 days. Burnout recipe.”
“So I got a new job m365 admin/it admin and I have no idea what to do as m365 admin. I get random tickets to update contact here, assign a group there, assign license here, off board that guy over there, some random issue, and other stuff. But besides this, what else do m365…”
Junior IT administrators report struggling to find substantive tasks in solo or small-team environments, often drowning in L1 support tickets while infrastructure remains unstable. Many feel undervalued and seek better opportunities.
SOURCES (48)
“Back at help desk after job searching for 2 years and bored outta my mind. Which jobs in this industry are actually fun? submitted by /u/yeezusKeroro [link] [comments]”
“Yeah it was Azure AD when I started with it, I was mostly being flippant about them adding 365 to the end of everything (and I really do promise you it isn't worth learning the names of these products they change so goddamn often its like the longest running joke with MS these days)”
“The pros: - less contact to people - less phone calls - more dangerous tasks - more complex tasks The cons: - more complex tasks - more dangerous tasks - more responsibiltiy - budget and reporting responsibilities”
“I’ve been working at this MSP for 7 years now. They refuse to hire anyone with any experience, all the new techs just ask ChatGPT about any issues and blindly trust it. The workload for those with experience is climbing higher and higher. I no longer have any personal time, can’t sleep due to the stress of juggling 3 people’s workloads. I tried to take a week vacation but it was filled with emergency calls and two weeks of cleaning up others messes directly after. I’ve been trying for months to”
“Yeah, it's just the world we live in now. Even at work management wants the easy click admin solution. It's already bit them in the ass multiple times and I get to be the asshole that says "I told you so!" With included email thread where I said this would happen X months ago lol. Rant aside, I just prefer CLI & use GUI when necessary, to each their own. Also, $100 16GB ddr4 SODIMM may coerce me into that position as well lol”
“How do other solo admins handle the endless stream of "quick CRM/phone system tweaks"? Curious how fellow solo sysadmins survive this, because I'm drowning. Management loves to drop drive-by requests for custom workflows in our CRM, weird IVR routing changes in the phone system, or random third-party integrations. They are always pitched as mission-critical, high-priority emergencies that bypass any logical intake. Because I'm technical and most of this stuff is techni”
“Please Edit your post to remove the Rant flair and replace it with Lucky . You've been pushed into a sysadmin role in charge of managing AD, Azure, vSphere, ERP, business processes, and a lot others, about 5-8 years sooner than most others in the field. Absolutely Do. Not. Quit. Even if the pay is shit, even if they treat you like shit. You hopscotched over Support Desk Hell. That leap so early in your career and the experience you gain will make up for any stress you catch now. They know yo”
I'm the only member of IT staff in the company. We're not a big business.
“So I got a new job m365 admin/it admin and I have no idea what to do as m365 admin. I get random tickets to update contact here, assign a group there, assign license here, off board that guy over there, some random issue, and other stuff. But besides this, what else do m365 admins do? Like what is your day to day activities and checks? Coming from generalist position it feels really weird as I have way less responsibilities ATM ( famous last words ). submitted by /u/AdditionNo741 [li”
“They hired a sysadmin at intern rates and will overwork you until you burn out. Start building your resume and GTFO.”
“Run op run get a job elsewhere this is not worth it. They using you as cheap labor. Been there and done that and was no fun.”
If this is referencing the feature where you can seperate specific instances (I'm completely forgetting the word, forgive me) it does work sometimes but not reliably. My last job my direct reports…
“Dude its simple now. You can claude configs all day. What I would do is build out your documentation. If the msp has any hopefully they share. Use a network scanner to get all machines ages if you dont get it. Get a remote viewing software to install on all those pcs. Now that you have access to everyone that takes care of the for now situation. Rest is what is your infrastructure? Ad Joined? Local pcs in suite? Whatever it is you need to secure the pcs, av, threatlocker or something. I run lean”
“I'd actually jump on that, but life circumstances are keeping me where I am. That, and I don't have the Azure, CrowdStrike, Mimecast, Cisco Meraki, SharePoint, Veeam, or VMware certs yet. Although I do know how to build, and monitor a network; and how to chroot into a broken system to fix a degraded RAID array manually, without asking AI for directions, had to do it in a live prod environment before. Best of luck with the search however.”
“Does this position also clean toilets and take out the trash? That's like three different types of jobs. Sharepoint admin? I would rather stab myself in the eye than work on Sharepoint. Not a compensation issue, not taking that at any pay level.”
“I think you'd struggle to find someone "qualified" in all of those areas. You've got items here I'd argue are a networking specific person's responsibilities. Or a security person. And then you're saying its a one person shop. For all of it? SysAdmins generally do have a wide net we cast but its impossible to know everything. Yeah good luck there!”
Learn what you can and put everything in your resume while you push for a better title from HR. Then bail for a real company
“Work on most important issues, as sys admin that should be security and patched. Unless the projects have priorities and a short time line they. Can wait as does the emails. If you have someone else in your team hand them some of the smaller projects”
“If you need side quests: Pick a department and ask to see their documentation. It will either not exist or be from 2017. Check MFA, patching, offboarding, and backup restores. Clean the accountant’s disk cache. It’ll be full again next week, so this is a renewable task. Volunteer to organize the office party. This will somehow take longer than the AD migration.”
“Surely you meant they have one logical server but backed by at least one failover?”
“My boss told me that my role is going to be replaced by a graduate straight out of Uni This right here? This tells you everything you need to know about your boss. The correct response to someone putting in their notice is to tell them you're sad to see them go. You say this even if you're very happy to see them go, because you're talking about someone's employment and you don't treat that lightly. In one statement he showed you exactly the kind of person he is, and exactly h”
dayum, thats scary. i'd be going for junior to mid roles.
“I did 8+ years at an MSP, I’ll never go back, I’ve been an internal IT since then.”
“I'm sure I'm not the oldest here, but when I started working in IT, AD hadn't even been released yet. So, yeah, "a long time ago" definitely fits.”
“You can always learn something new about it. Same goes for just about anything in the system admin field.”
https://giphy.com/gifs/JTzPN5kkobFv7X0zPJ Hello fellow AD learners
Time to start a 4 week Learn to Active Directory IT bootcamp
“God do I count as that now? I go home to my farm at the end of the day... I haven't even had my midlife crisis!”
“It’s not boring work, it’s tedious. You won’t be “bored” in the classic sense of the word at an MSP. Maybe dreading doing another routine or repetitive task.”
“So I finally landed a help desk role after so long, ive been here for 2 months in a casino environment however I find myself extremely bored. I know this is a perfect opportunity to figure out what I want to advance into however I am having a very difficult time figuring out how to go about realizing what I would potentially like to do. In my day to day besides the basic troubleshooting and triaging tickets and password resets there isn't really anything that pops out like I would be interes”
Sounds like you should check with end user support or help desk.
“2.8 Years Experience What should someone with ~3 years of Windows Admin experience be strong in? Knowing that putting .8 is weird and incorrect for the time you then listed out. AND that 2.8 years experience isn't enough to question yourself on why you haven't moved up. Its because you're a baby in IT timeline of things. You're going wrong by expecting to just be handed more. Also stop bolding weird shit. If you're doing that in your job people just think you're weird whi”
“the best part is how he thinks 23k is reasonable but also expects someone with azure experience. those two things don't go together at all”
“We offload as much infrastructure like this to 3rd parties as we can. Splashtop is nothing in the grand scheme of our budget.”
“Look into setting up patch management and a SIEM solution (like elastic) to gather log and security data. This will allow you to react faster to threats and detect them. Some honeypot & canary tokens are a good choice too. AD has some cool things for that.”
“Surprised solo IT and bored are in the same post. Honestly shocked your not drowning in L1 bullshit to the point you have no time for anything else while the infrastructure is actively burning to the ground, management constantly up your ass like a muppet, and you haven’t had a single “day off” that didn’t involve cancelling all plans, working part or most of the day, or having to come in to save the fucktards from themselves”