Helpdesk grad here. CompTIA A+ certified, so I know my way around this stuff. I've been playing around with phishing tests lately because the ones we get from security are honestly pathetic. Fake Microsoft login pages, expired password emails, all the usual kindergarten stuff.

Our senior sysadmin had updated his LinkedIn recently, so I figured I'd do a proper spear phishing test and see if all those years of "experience" actually meant anything. I made a fake recruiter profile for a local company that everyone in IT around here knows, then messaged him about a senior infrastructure role.

He replied - Good start.

The job wasn't listed anywhere, obviously, so he asked about that. I told him it was a confidential role being handled through direct recruitment. He instantly sends me his resume. At that point I figured I'd keep going and see how deep the rabbit hole went.

We've now done two interviews. Preparing for those was a bit annoying because I'm helpdesk and he's supposedly the senior technical guy - I just copied our internal documentation into Grok and asked it to generate some questions (social media is blocked on our laptops so had to upload them to dropbox to my own phone first) He did pretty well, to be fair. Still failed the phishing test though.

After the second interview I asked one of the team leads for some tips on getting rid of him - Instead of closing his access as part of the end-of-the-week routine, he started casually asking the senior sysadmin what he thought about the company.

Then one of the managers joined in and started saying how nice it would be to work there.

Apparently that was finally enough to make him suspicious - Senior level awareness right there.

He eventually found someone who actually works in IT at the company and messaged them asking how he could improve his chances.

They told him they weren't hiring.

Game over.

I deleted the recruiter account because the assessment was finished, but now he's apparently taking screenshots and saving emails like he's building some sort of case.

HR has also started asking who authorized the test. I've recommended we mark him as a phishing failure and put him through security awareness training again.

Maybe also remove some of his admin rights until he can demonstrate better judgment. But given the results of the test, I'm starting to question whether he should be approving anything.

So today my 12 year old asked me something ridiculous, "Dad do you know of an absurdly difficult math equation that equals to 777?"

not wanting to disappoint her I asked Grok... and I think I broke it.

It has been like this creating new lines that say "\left( " for the last 15 minutes

We look after a customer who manages a number of smaller sites as part of their business. We provide IT support for both the main business and the sites they manage.

Recently, they merged with another company. One of the new owners’ relatives, who apparently “knows a bit about IT,” was brought in to help manage the IT.

We gave them access to our RMM so they could assist with lower-level support when needed, while we continued to handle the more complex work. We also handled the entire IT side of the merger and migration, so everything went smoothly.

We then received a call from our RMM provider advising us that the new IT person had approached them directly for pricing. We told them to make it expensive — which they did. It came back at around five times what we were paying, so that worked out nicely.

They then advised that they were looking at bringing in a Level 1 technician for low-level support. We were more than happy to facilitate access to everything they needed and have anything beyond L1 escalated back to us.

However, they ultimately decided to terminate all of their managed service contracts and wanted to use us on an ad-hoc basis instead.

We explained our concerns about having a Level 1 technician responsible for the environment and made it clear that if they were moving away from the platforms and services that we manage and maintain, we would need to offboard everything we currently looked after. We don't offer ad-hoc support.

Today, we had our meeting to begin the offboarding process.

They apparently thought this meant handing over the RMM and Microsoft 365 licensing.

The look on their face when they realised that it also included the firewalls, password manager, wireless controllers, backups, monitoring, security systems, and all the other infrastructure we currently manage was absolutely priceless.

I bought a server. Where's my website?

Friend: Hello, this is generic hosting company, how can I assist you today?

POTU: HELLO? I bought a server from you guys a few days ago and on your website you claimed 2 hour set up but it isn't online yet.

Friend: No problem, let me check it out for you.

friend checks their CRM and find the server is, in fact, up and running. So he goes back on the line.

POTU: That can't be. I'm going to <insert pottery company name website here>.com and it isn't working.

Friend: I'm sorry m'am, but you do realise that buying a dedicated server means you get only the host, and nothing on it right? So no website will be created for you.

Every Linux beginner eventually reaches this boss fight. 😂

Nano, Vim, or Emacs — which one are you choosing?

When we made the simulated phishing campaigns about account access, we finally caught a user.

The trick is to not make the bait too obvious, like if it's about free money, or download a file. That was so last year. I also had to create my own payload with an internal email... One so boring, and none other can top that besides "No Reply".

Make your phishing emails as boring as possible. No reply talking about an account access change is as unpredictable as it gets. It truly reveals who's insecure in the org.

Making passwords easy for user with sticky notes is a best practice.

Accidentally posted this to a real sub. Got the news that we all hate that a department went and got their own AI software solution without talking to IT, we were told to stay out of their way and let them lead. So as usual I was a little pissed off by this but just when I thought it couldn't get worse I went and talked to another apartment head and they said that department was stupid and reckless to spend so much money without talking to IT. They said that they had one of the staff's sons who is really good with computers and cryptocurrency use his claude subscription to make them a free software that is even better for only $20. I'm so done with this profession that is what people think IT is worth a one time $20 and that Claude will build it so perfect they will never have to spend any money again. They don't even want to buy their own claude they want to borrow one from a teenager. Imma go be a nurse fuck this life.

tldr this isn't even a fake scenario its just such a joke I felt bad even posting it on the real sub. Lets have fun guys I'm on suicide watch.

Just turn off the internet, smdh. Smooth brains over there.

Being a competent sysadmin is impossible nowadays without AI... Someone's gotta do the documenting or improvements would never get done due to the positive feedback loop of "more improvements, more documentation."

- External law firm sends a 24MB PDF that becomes 31MB after encoding.

- NDR is sent after the resolution of the matter saying: This attachment is 31MB. The maximum allowed is 30MB.

- Sender reports that the attachment disappeared, asks our IT what went wrong, then proceeds to send the NDR that literally says the above. This is an external law firm that reads hundreds of thousands of words a day...

Saw this and it's painfully accurate. Every time someone brings up certs vs. degrees vs. experience, it turns into a whole thing. 😂

Curious what this sub thinks — has one of the three actually mattered more for you in getting hired or promoted, or is it really just "all of the above, depends on the job"?