My first salaried job was also my first proper IT job and I was a “junior technician” … the only other member of IT staff was my supervisor who had been a secretary that got a 1 week sysadmin course and knew very little.
The server room was a complete rat’s nest and I resolved to sort it out. It was all going very well until I tripped over the loose SCSI 3 cable between the AIX server and it’s raid array. While it was in use.
It took me 2 days to restore everything from tape. My supervisor was completely useless.
A few months later I was “made redundant”, leaving behind me everything working perfectly and a super tidy server room. I got calls from the company asking for help for the following 6 months, which I politely declined.
Man fuck those guys. Not a sysadmin myself, but from what I hear the position is criminally underappreciated. Why is it so hard for people to understand that if things aren’t breaking, it means people are doing their job correctly?
Yep, I remember in one job I was at for 8 years a manager 2 levels up complemented me for sorting out the networking for a re-arrange of our own office … I was gobsmacked because I’d been managing a whole network and server upgrade for a client that involved well over 1000 users at the time yet an hour of fiddling with wires under desks was the only thing that got his attention.
One job I was fired from and rehired within the day, after they quickly realised that I was their only Android developer and they couldn’t build an app with just hopes and wishes. They fired me again later, which they quickly regretted since I was the only one with the signing key (meaning they couldn’t update the app).
My first salaried job was also my first proper IT job and I was a “junior technician” … the only other member of IT staff was my supervisor who had been a secretary that got a 1 week sysadmin course and knew very little.
The server room was a complete rat’s nest and I resolved to sort it out. It was all going very well until I tripped over the loose SCSI 3 cable between the AIX server and it’s raid array. While it was in use.
It took me 2 days to restore everything from tape. My supervisor was completely useless.
A few months later I was “made redundant”, leaving behind me everything working perfectly and a super tidy server room. I got calls from the company asking for help for the following 6 months, which I politely declined.
Man fuck those guys. Not a sysadmin myself, but from what I hear the position is criminally underappreciated. Why is it so hard for people to understand that if things aren’t breaking, it means people are doing their job correctly?
Yeah, I got laid off twice more before switching careers. Both times they wanted me to come back and fix stuff after letting me go.
It goes hand in hand with the “if someone works hard, they should be given more work as a reward” line of thinking.
That’s when you offer consulting and tell them your hourly rate!
I didn’t have them over a barrel, they were just being lazy and trying to exploit me further for free.
It’s always fun when a job calls you up after you’ve been fired to ask how to do the things they didn’t know you were doing
Yep, I remember in one job I was at for 8 years a manager 2 levels up complemented me for sorting out the networking for a re-arrange of our own office … I was gobsmacked because I’d been managing a whole network and server upgrade for a client that involved well over 1000 users at the time yet an hour of fiddling with wires under desks was the only thing that got his attention.
One job I was fired from and rehired within the day, after they quickly realised that I was their only Android developer and they couldn’t build an app with just hopes and wishes. They fired me again later, which they quickly regretted since I was the only one with the signing key (meaning they couldn’t update the app).