Sysadmins Drowning in Constant Firefighting
13 posts across 2 communities in the last 60 days; 92% from r/sysadmin.
“people hate changes and having to make minimal effort That's why they're making you do it. Drop the operations admin stuff on someone else. [re: How do you cope with doing sys admin work while still having to take care of the company’s day to day operations?]”
“True, but as a sysadmin, you're either asking questions online or reading the responses to other people's questions quite often, so you can't really shit on the online discussions to job skills pipeline. [re: What does a IT support person need to learn to become a good system…”
“Yes, I have seen that. Either you just coast and live with it or you find a different job, those are basically your own two options (unless you're in charge of tech, in which case you wouldn't be asking how to navigate it, you'd just change it) Some people will say "Oh, you…”
Many sysadmins are overwhelmed by constant interruptions, reactive problem-solving ('firefighting'), and a backlog of recurring issues they lack time to address. This leads to burnout and frustration as they struggle to implement long-term solutions.
SOURCES (54)
“people hate changes and having to make minimal effort That's why they're making you do it. Drop the operations admin stuff on someone else. [re: How do you cope with doing sys admin work while still having to take care of the company’s day to…”
“Oh there's lots of problems with this. But it's not my call :/ [re: The sysadmin who argues against best practices]”
“If you dig yourself into a hole, put down the shovel [re: What does a IT support person need to learn to become a good system administrator]”
“True, but as a sysadmin, you're either asking questions online or reading the responses to other people's questions quite often, so you can't really shit on the online discussions to job skills pipeline. [re: What does a IT support person need to learn to become a good system administrator]”
“Practice. You need to experiment and get off the beaten path. The only way to get good at anything is have enough experience that you’ve seen the patterns enough to recognize them and do something about them. The most useless and dangerous sysadmin is one that has not seen things go to shit and had to figure a way out. Oh, and stop following tutorials. Deploy and RTFM.”
“hahahaha I love your style man! And yes, when shit goes south, the "get the fuck out of my office if you want me to fix this" comes out rather quickly. "I've learned that being cynical and being wrong are two very different things. The former is tolerated surprisingly well when the latter rarely happens." Unfortunately, that is not my case. Now, instead of saying it, fighting for it and eventually being insubordinate to keep shit running, I now write "it will crash a”
“Experienced IT staff don't grow on trees. They can revert to whatever staffing model they like it does not mean they are going to get the type of employee they want. And in the 3, 6, or 12 months before they get anyone who does the work then?”
“Yes, I have seen that. Either you just coast and live with it or you find a different job, those are basically your own two options (unless you're in charge of tech, in which case you wouldn't be asking how to navigate it, you'd just change it) Some people will say "Oh, you convince them otherwise" or "You convince the higher-ups that it's costing them money being slow" or whatever, but from what I've seen and experienced, no, you can't convince them.”
“Same but sometimes i just want to let it go, the rat race of changing things every year or so never getting to be what i consider an expert really on anything before its on to the next crazy security based change up, i have started to not care if i get fully competent at anything because i know it will be replaced sooner than later. 43 atm and just thinking do i need this stress until i retire? will i even be able to do this roll until then? seems to be getting phased out pretty quickly with clo”
“Hey all, have a stressful situation that may occur tomorrow. New Sys admin for a company of around 200 people, only onsite IT person. We have an external consultant that does most of the network administration and has been doing so for a few years. I have about 3 years of desktop support experience, more experience with endpoints but my networking knowledge is a bit of a gap. On my third week we did a switch refresh from Cisco to Aruba that was planned and paid for way before I started. Ended up”
“I'd say less turnover because it's very good to have long tenured employees, the issue is most places (just like where I'm turning into that bomb because I'm the last person there in IT who did that migration) is that staff leave but aren't properly replaced, so a department that used to have 60 people is down to 30, with just enough coverage for sick/vacations to be taken freely but not enough to have people cross train and be promoted into roles and take on that knowledge o”
“If you want to (try) to fix this, you will need to convince management that you are a better fit. One way to achieve that is to write a Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery plan that only has your name on it. You mention manufacturing, meaning downtime is lost production, RTO (Recovery Time Objective) is key here. Oh and taking backups home is a serious GDPR violation, even if they are encrypted. So the question is do you want to fight an uphill battle with backstabbing (you will need to orches”
“Not sure we are reading the same thing, nothing is workable in that current setup, if I walked into this place I would just start from scratch like it was a fresh business network design as it seems stuck at home computer mode. With good planning you could migrate everything with little disruption. Create all new GPO policies, or better yet Intune policies, then test and migrate one computer at a time. This should automate full out of box experience from configuration to app deployment without t”
“Some of the tier 1 firefighters use kerosene instead of water and will end up reassigning the call to someone else, who is already working on a 5 alarm incident... Maybe it's just OUR fire department that has these issues...”
“This. Learned on the job, school of hard knocks and all. Did the cert circuit as a younger admin, became irrelevant over time. Claw your way up, ask questions, do more, ask more questions, build something nobody needs, ask more questions, shoulder surf people who have been there 20 years, then keep going.”
“Maybe this isn't the ideal sub, but I believe there are lots of us here who've experienced this same thing...I hope. I've been the IT Manager in a department of one for 25 years and have bought lots of Microsoft licensing. I've also been running a small vSphere Essentials Plus setup on 2 hosts for many years and (thanks, Broadcom) just migrated all that to Proxmox (which works awesome by the way). I just updated my Windows Server licensing by buying 2x 16-core packs of Windows Se”
“The sysadmin at my job writes policy, coordinates pen testing, DR testing, preps for and manages multiple annual audits (a total nightmare), risk assessments, writes and presents reports to the board of directors…just to name a few. In my opinion one year of help desk is nowhere close to enough to prepare you for that.”
“Here's to everyone holding critical systems together, fighting alert fatigue, chasing mysterious issues, and keeping things running behind the scenes. Hope your tickets are few, monitoring stay quiet, and your users don't click anything suspicious today. submitted by /u/KavyaJune [link] [comments]”
“I’ve met quite a few sysadmins who used to be directors or managers. There’s a reason for that. Your responses in this subreddit are going to be heavily skewed, because management really isn’t for everyone. I like that I can direct the outcome of things and I really have a lot of sway and control over outcomes, but I’m not directly responsible for anyone other than myself and my family. I like my worth to be measured by my individual success rather than the sum of the output from the people I ma”
“I'd suggest a couple tactics: 1) Start applying/interviewing for new jobs - this isn't necessarily because you want to leave, but it gives you a fallback in case you can't get changes made. 2) Things like users not returning old devices is an HR/Legal concern, not a technology issue. Pass off the responsibility to them. 3) Write up a justification for users to have to submit tickets for every request. Cite evidence (made up or actual) that shows using the tickets results in a faster”
“Being a manager often also implies no technical skills, companies don't need more managers they need people that can run the systems.”
“I've been a sys admin and sys engineer twelve years. Principal in two orgs. I'm tired of it. I'm tired of people being scared to stick their neck out on a problem they don't immediately know an answer to. I left an org in 2022 because they kept assigning me everything after a merger because no one else would attempt it. I was building out a brand new citrix environment by myself with them dumping 95 hours over two weeks of projects on top. I'm tired of managing egos and being”
“I’ve been in IT 19 years (helpdesk-to-desktopsupport-to-sysadmin-to-architect) and I have reached burnout this year. Not even close to having enough to retire and I have a kid. If I die of a stroke or heart attack at least my family will get a decent life insurace payout. 🤷♂️”
“I recently discovered this sub and almost every person in here seems to be the most miserable person in the world... Genuinely curious because almost every thread in this sub is filled with comments about how much this job drains the life out of you. If you hate working as a Sysadmin, why did you pick this field of work and why are you choosing to stay in it? Were you not aware of how much it would displease you when you studied to become a Sysadmin? I want to become a Sysadmin as well, starting”
“I'm in kind of a weird position at work and I'm looking for advice from people who have made the jump from IT Support to Sysadmin. I'm 25, I've been working at a law firm for about a year as the only IT support person under the IT Director. The thing is...there's honestly very little day-to-day support work. We mostly manage SaaS products (Microsoft 365, NetDocuments, etc.), and because things are stable, I have a ton of downtime. The upside is my boss trusts me a lot. If I h”
“Nah. Not just you at all. I became a sysadmin because I really enjoyed tinkering with computers as a kid. Not just gaming like most younger people now. Setting up NT or Linux networks, over clocking my 33mhz cpu, building new computers…It was my hobby. Most of the younger people maybe in their 20’s, don’t seem to enjoy it the same way. They know they can make a decent salary and they don’t hate it but they aren’t passionate about it. There is also just a general malaise about life and the future”
“he's just a sr. sysadmin who's had this conversation countless times already and knows it's not worth the stress, the escalations and being seen as the "showstopper" :)”
“Find a new consultant, and if your boss refuses, brush up on the resume. Not saying Sophos is worth quitting over, but the situation that gets you there is.”
“Like I've said in another post, I like new new in my Sysadmin position and I am wondering about what I can be doing to tend to my flock submitted by /u/TotallyNotACorpAcct [link] [comments]”
“So I'm new to the whole It Tech Support / Sysadmin role. I have been those in my past but as a part of my regular job. This is the first gig that is solely Tech Support / Sysadmin. so I have a few questions... like downtime. I don't want to jinx it and have an onslaught issues but man, the downtime. What the hell do you guys do with all this downtime? submitted by /u/TotallyNotACorpAcct [link] [comments]”
“Thats not true :) There are scenarios for ADDS in Azure, and also the use of Entra Domain Services.”
“This here OP. And like someone else said, you're just walking into being your own escalation pathway. The title you're chasing is an illusion.”
“Yes, titles are generally bullshit in IT I have found, and this is 110% a case in point. OP you are signing yourself up for what looks to be a nightmare being a one-man show.”
“Holy wow.. I came to Reddit to make a very similar complaint… although, I am no longer a sysadmin and have been in Release Engineering, Devops and SRE for the past 25 years after having worked as a sysadmin for 10 years before that. These release related jobs are half infrastructure support and half release work. I used to enjoy my work until my manager was let go a year ago. And then, I’ve been dotted line ‘sort of’ reporting to the director of QA and he admitted right away that he barely under”
“I was the very first employee at a brand new MSP back in 2012. Had an associates degree and 2 years experience doing support for a couple of websites when I was hired. It was just me and my boss working out of a client office where he was the CTO before he started this company. Now we have about 1500 endpoints across about 45 companies with 10 employees. The only time we lose clients is if they are bought out by a private equity firm with in house IT. By all metrics, the company is doing well. I”
“Corollary: There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over.”
“"Everybody has a testing environment. Some even have a separate production environment!"”
“That’s the thing. I know all the root issues and how to fix them. I just can’t because I’m so busy cleaning out fires”
“Ride it out and practice boundaries. It's up to you if you want to jump through hoops or react immediately when calls come in. Implement a ticket system and set expectations that things go into a queue and aren't solved immediately upon being raised. Trust me, I've been in the same situation for about 15 years: it's up to you if you want to let the job continue to stress and burn you out: or take a more laid back approach. It's hard to do this for those of us that like to try”
“more or less the same history and situation. But, based on rough calculations, much older than you. I've been doing "IT Stuff" for 30+ years and while I currently have the title of "IT Manager" I'm really the Sys Admin, Top Tier helpdesk, and general "he knows everything so it's his problem" guy. Horribly burned out. But my 401k says "tough shit"”
“Maybe there is a reason it's so busy? Might be worth looking into it, if you can figure out and fix the root cause it could make things much easier for you.”
“People always want what they don't have. Would you 3 tears ago want where you are today? I suspect it likely. You can either understand it's a human thing and move forward or not. Btw, are you hiring? I could use a pay bump”
“Delegate, fix the recurring issues with architecture, start making those changes you say need changed.”
“I've been dealing with a ton of burnout and basically at my breaking point, the other two engineers on my team are pretty much in the same situation. Our security queue is just endless. We literally can't get any work done because of the security queue, and it's not like the security queue is our ONLY job, we have to do an infrastructure migration and keep up with other tasks on top of it but it's IMPOSSIBLE with the queue, and we can't fall behind on it either so we're b”