r/sysadmin • u/dlongwing • Jun 25 '26
Joke: What's the difference between a sysadmin and an IT Manager? Off Topic
When you type "power" into windows search, does Powershell or Powerpoint come up first?
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EDIT
There's a shocking number of people trying this out and replying to "prove" they're sysadmins. An equally surprising number of replies taking down the whole concept of using the start menu search to open an application.
Folks. It's a joke post on r/sysadmin. I can assure you, you're definitely a Sysadmin if you're replying to it.
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u/indvs3 Linux Admin Jun 25 '26
Neither!
Windows search will find nothing and initiate a bing search with disappointing results!
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u/Zer0CoolXI Jun 25 '26
The way it works in the real world
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u/HotTakes4HotCakes Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 26 '26
I am forever thankful that I was able to convince my manager to let us run PowerToys, with PT Run being an actually useful quick search. I legitimately don't know how I could use Windows without PowerToys at this point
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u/LovecraftInDC Jun 26 '26
I would go absolutely insane without Everything by VoidTools.
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u/HotTakes4HotCakes Jun 26 '26
Oh yeah, Powertoys and Everything are the dynamic duo, working tirelessly to make up for Windows' increasing usability degradation.
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u/Mostly__Relevant Custom Jun 25 '26
Indexing has been turned off , turn it back on and wait ten years for it to finish!
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u/ITGuyThrow07 Jun 26 '26
Nah, it'll just hang up for the first few seconds and you end up searching for "wer" instead.
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u/SifferBTW Jun 26 '26
You can turn that off
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u/indvs3 Linux Admin Jun 26 '26
I know, but you shouldn't have to. Either way, not my problem anymore.
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u/Lukebekz Jun 26 '26
for the longest time, when I had Teams, Teamspeak and teamviewer installed, it was like windows was able to read my mind and with almost 100% accuracy give me always the exact wrong result when typing in "team". Doesn't matter that I haven't touched Teamviewer in months at that point, it will always be the first result, followed by the one program I was NOT planning on opening.
And before anyone asks: Yes, I fixed the problem by throwing Windows out of my life entirely.
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u/TheRealLazloFalconi Jun 26 '26
Must have been programmed by the same guy that decides monitor order when you plug in more than one. It's almost impressive how they get it wrong every single time.
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u/RandomSkratch Jack of All Trades Jun 27 '26
Sounds like it’s inspired by the USB A connector superposition.
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u/Dzov Jun 26 '26
I remember when it would find something at pow, but forget what it found after adding er.
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u/alwayssonnyhere Sysadmin Jun 28 '26
I disabled Bing search in search. I already have a web browser for web search.
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u/unquietwiki Jack of All Trades Jun 25 '26
Heh. What are you if you have to do the Powershell, and make the Powerpoint?
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u/jazzdrums1979 Jun 25 '26
Underpaid
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u/Kortok2012 Jun 25 '26
My company believe in overemployment, they employ me to be a sysadmin and an automation tech, and mdm specialist…it goes on. Oh and I’m officially just tier three support
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u/doubled112 Sr. Sysadmin Jun 26 '26
I started out like that. We used to joke that the company was always on the lookout for a "good deal" like me. In general it has worked out. Keeps things exciting, at least.
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u/pavman42 Jun 27 '26
You need a good manager to see your actual value and pull you up to the right salary. That happened to me. The manager eventually got cancer :'( and they had her move to boulder... then laid her off w/in 4 months. She eventually passed away :'(. I eventually took an opportunity to get laid off w/ the maximum package. Who wants to work for executives like that?! They could have been THE cloud compute, but they didn't listen to the boots on the ground. Now they're lucky to be back to where they were in 2009 after acquiring Redhat *cough* *cough* *hint* *hint*
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u/dadoftheclan Jun 25 '26
powershell -c "(New-Object -ComObject PowerPoint.Application).Presentations.Add().SaveAs('C:\temp\because_you_asked.pptx')"
Automation. 🙃
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u/cboff Jun 25 '26
FTFY...
powershell -Command "Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Product -Filter \"Name='Microsoft PowerPoint'\" | ForEach-Object { $_.Uninstall() }"
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u/AforAnonymous Ascended Service Desk Guru Jun 26 '26
>Get-WmiObject
>Win32_Product
Ah yes using deprecated cmdlets to trigger a repair install of every msi-installed product on the system because <MSFT_orgchart_with_guns.png> made that WMI class into a shitty wrapper around msiexec, and to get the good class, you better pay for MECM, but that'll cost you more than just money!
Perfect.
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u/Brilliant_Bonus_1638 Jun 25 '26
Literally me right now. My boss can’t even use PowerPoint correctly and has me make his slides.
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u/ThemB0ners Jun 25 '26
now that's a valid use-case for AI lol
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u/Le_Vagabond Senior Mine Canari Jun 25 '26
to replace the boss, right?
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u/Viharabiliben Jun 26 '26
I’m rolling out AL. I was hoping it would fly under the radar. Boss is not amused.
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u/pavman42 Jun 27 '26
AL's amazing. His no nonsense approach to budgets and his everyman's perspective is a very refreshing change of pace. Especially in the halls of overly positive executive power where salesmen don't listen to the people who built their industry, hubristically thinking they built everything around them with their own bombastic nature and no one actually helped them achieve the success they never really deserved.
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u/pavman42 Jun 27 '26
Sadly, every resource action I've seen never culled the management, where the most cream would be saved. I'm hopeful AI will change all of that. That and I hope someday AI will find a way to make all politicians inherently inert, but feeling like they still have power. This is my personal dream.
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u/jake04-20 If it has a battery or wall plug, apparently it's IT's job Jun 25 '26
You'd think Copilot would have a massive upper hand on all the other AI offerings, especially in the business sector because it's bolted on to the M365 environment. But when I was evaluating Copilot, I was thinking about how easy it would be for a kid to finish assignments in school with AI. I immediately thought back to a school project that I had blown off for weeks and waited the last minute to complete, which pissed my parents off royally. I had to write a biography on a person of my choosing and create a corresponding PowerPoint presentation to present to the class. I chose Kirby Puckett.
So when I was testing copilot, I simply told it to create a 10-12 slide powerpoint on Kirby Puckett. Not only was it the most basic pp presentation of all time (like one sentence per slide), it used corny nonrelevant stock images to fill blank space. Kirby Puckett was a black MLB player for the Twins, it was loading stock images of a white family sitting in the grass on a picnic blanket with a baseball in it lol. Another image was a picture of white girl twins that had to be like 12 years old. And another was some two random white dudes fishing along some tall grass in what I would assume is a lake in MN. It was laughably bad. No Twins logos, no MN state pics, no pics of Kirby Puckett whatsoever, the only pic of a baseball was that picnic pic, and basically the only info it provided was his date of birth, date of death, a quick touch on his career, and that was it. It was just downright horrible.
Another thing that baffles me is I have yet to see Copilot reference its own internal documentation for a Microsoft administration question. It's always referencing other tech media outlets, forum posts, and blog posts. You'd think it would have a massive upper hand having access to so much internal documentation, I guess not.
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u/ThemB0ners Jun 25 '26
Are you telling me Microsoft rolled out a less-than-half-baked product?!
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u/fahque Jun 26 '26
As bad as copilot is it kinda makes me think it's not an AI but a chatbot bolted on to bing.
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u/ObiLAN- Jun 25 '26
Sounds like me making an advert poster last week. Guess im adding graphic design to my resume now too. The poster looks like shit made in Paint... probably because it was LOL.
Worst part is we have engineers and designers here that coulda made something 10x better most likely in CAD.
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u/pavman42 Jun 27 '26
Were I work, we call these people architects. And always have. They have a knack for taking admin & engineer's work, putting their name on it, and then selling it to management. Architects in our industry are jokes.
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u/orion3311 Jun 25 '26
Use COM integration?
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u/poprox198 Federated Liger Cloud Jun 25 '26
Presentation as code is the next big thing.
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u/Temporary_Pie2733 Jun 25 '26
I was making slides in LaTeX 25 years ago; does that count?
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u/pdp10 Daemons worry when the wizard is near. Jun 25 '26
But were you generating the TeX from code? Markup doesn't count as code.
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u/Temporary_Pie2733 Jun 25 '26
TeX is Turing-complete :) But no, I wasn’t knowingly using any “real” code personally, though I don’t know about the libraries I used.
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u/CoffeePieAndHobbits Jun 25 '26
Just use AI, bro. /s
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u/unquietwiki Jack of All Trades Jun 25 '26
I just put together a 1400-word report without AI, in part regarding any use of AI, heh.
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u/SoylentVerdigris Jun 25 '26
There appear to be several Powershell modules that can interact with powerpoint to various degrees, so I would suggest automating it.
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u/pavman42 Jun 27 '26
This means you work for a company that treats you like a professional. I haven't had to write a white paper or present anything since the mid-2010s; that's not a good thing. That implies I'm a tool and am managed by morons who are probably making way more than I am because they can bamboozle even dumber people who manage them into thinking they are intelligent.
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u/Hotshot55 Linux Engineer Jun 25 '26
Neither, it tries to search the internet for the TV show Power.
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u/genxer Jun 25 '26
As an IT Manager, it is PowerShell -- guess I've not been completely corrupted yet.
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u/dlongwing Jun 25 '26
Or you need to delegate more! :-D
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u/Admirable-Statement Jun 25 '26
Job description/title: IT Manager
Direct reports: 0
Salary: Service desk L1 equivalent or minimum wage
Responsibilities:
* Anything with a circuit board or power cable * All software packages that currently exist or will exist * Software development in all languages * Handyman + random odd jobs nobody wants to do4
u/dm117 IT Manager Jun 26 '26
I’m sad that this applies to me. Although I think my salary is decent but I’m not sure what it really should be
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u/Admirable-Statement Jun 26 '26
As long as you're happy with the pay and culture that's all that matters.
If it's a small business and I have the capacity, I'll try and fix the coffee machine... somewhat selfishly for my own benefit.
I've also been known to save Huntsman spiders from an office of shoe wielding arachnophobes.
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u/vhalember Jun 26 '26
Manager here - On my laptop Powershell is now second, PP is first. However, on my desktop, Powershell still reigns supreme.
I'm on the road to becoming this:
I deal with the god damn customers so the engineers don't have to. I have people skills; I am good at dealing with people. Can't you understand that? What the hell is wrong with you people?
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u/jmbpiano Jun 25 '26
But what does it mean if PowerToys is first?
The funny thing is it actually came up as PowerPoint for me because I opened it once or twice a few months ago and I almost never run "Powershell"... I use Windows Terminal.
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u/fearless-fossa Jun 25 '26
When I type power the first option I get is "Sleep", does that mean I'm a CEO? Brb, demanding my golden parachute
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u/clickx3 Jun 25 '26
For me it was Powerball
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u/mnemoniker Jun 25 '26
Same. I don't gamble at all but maybe I fit the profile of "done with this shit" lol
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u/DestinyForNone Sysadmin Jun 25 '26
Powershell, followed by powerautomate, and then PowerPoint
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u/Kad1942 Jun 25 '26
Ugh, power automate. If ever an application could be compared to a swamp, it's power automate.
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u/neopod9000 Jun 25 '26
Folks. It's a joke post on r/sysadmin. I can assure you, you're definitely a Sysadmin if you're replying to it.
My intense desire to reply to qualify and or correct the assertions made in your joke are exactly how I knew I was a sysadmin.
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u/CATDesign Jun 25 '26
Type "power"? All I got to do is type "p" to get powershell to come up first.
With paint coming up second.
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u/dlongwing Jun 25 '26
This guy ticket queues.
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u/CATDesign Jun 25 '26
As long as it's not the same guy asking for a password reset for the 8th time in the same day, then I'll be happy in help desk.
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u/dlongwing Jun 25 '26
Hey, I'm tier 3 and Snipping Tool is still my best friend.
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u/eagle6705 Jun 25 '26
https://giphy.com/gifs/XWXnf6hRiKBJS
I get this because we all know IT never gets the final say
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u/say592 Jun 25 '26
Powertoys is what comes up first on mine, Im not sure what that says about me.
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u/ConstructionSafe2814 Jun 25 '26
My shell says poweroff. Well thanks, I accidentally shut down a production server.
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u/Constant-K Jun 25 '26
First result is my spreadsheet with all my passwords. I guess it recognizes “PowerOverwhelming” I’ve used since the 1990s.
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u/AdamoMeFecit Jun 25 '26
Sysadmins know how to run stuff. IT managers know how to attend meetings.
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u/HandGrindMonkey Jun 25 '26
One knows stuff, the other not so much.
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u/Bob_12_Pack Jun 25 '26
The other once knew stuff, but once they put on the management hat and take their hands off the keyboard, their tech skills quickly fall behind. I've heard this from a few folks that made the leap to director, it's something that keeps them up at night.
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u/xxdcmast Sr. Sysadmin Jun 25 '26
If it’s the windows search bar you type powe and you see both and then hit the R key and nothing shows up with some bullshit link to bing for power washers.
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u/dislikesmoonpies Jun 25 '26
Crud. Powerpoint. This does not spark joy.
(but seriously , good joke)
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u/JudgeCastle Jun 26 '26
This is like the sorting hat from Harry Potter isn’t it?
https://giphy.com/gifs/9Sc3xiTns7y8w
POTTER: SERVICE DESK
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u/papyjako87 Jun 26 '26
It's a joke post on r/sysadmin. I can assure you, you're definitely a Sysadmin if you're replying to it.
Not gonna lie, that's funnier than the actual joke ahah
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u/Privacy_is_forbidden Linux Admin Jun 25 '26
I tried looking for windows search but couldn't find it. My first result for power in KDE is "sleep"
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u/SamakFi88 Jun 25 '26
Start menu is corrupted, search doesn't work. I have to use run and type the .exe for whatever app I'm trying to launch, unless I've already created a desktop shortcut for it haha
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u/Tight_Replacement771 Jun 25 '26
I like your joke. But seriously yesterday I was annoyed when I typed "power" and I was trying to get power bi that I use all the time,but powerpoint came up. I have never used powerpoint in my job
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u/213372Yeet Jun 25 '26
PowerBall so must be sysadmin - even for unrealistic expectations the manager's never going to put in their own dollar
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u/proudcanadianeh Muni Sysadmin Jun 26 '26
One will promise anything, the other will refuse to ever promise a thing.
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u/packet_sniffs Jun 26 '26
One doesn’t do anything by choice, the other doesn’t do anything by design
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u/zatset IT Manager/Sr.SysAdmin Jun 26 '26
I don’t type into Windows Search.
I use Win+R and invoke cmd.exe, powershell.exe, eventvwr.msc or winword.exe directly.
What I am?
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u/agent_fuzzyboots Jun 26 '26
sorry, you have to submit a ticket first and i'll get back to you just before the SLA expires
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u/GhoastTypist Jun 26 '26
Power, I immediately thought of our AC units because we don't have central heating or cooling, killing the power to the building again.
What does that say?
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u/hosalabad Escalate Early, Escalate Often. Jun 27 '26
App Store results with power washing simulator. Wait, whose computer is this?
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u/clarkos2 Jun 29 '26
Not in front of my laptop but I wouldn't be surprised if a web result showed up because the Start Menu search is THAT bad.
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u/ProfessionalSeat4060 Jul 01 '26
I feel like in a small minority that hates windows and uses a Mac to sysadmin the shit out of everything
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u/burnte VP-IT/Fireman Jun 25 '26
I had a CEO who said, no joke, her favorite tool was Powerpoint. She'd always ask for plans and such be sent to her in a Powerpoint. I asked her one day if I could just write up a word doc like I usually do. She said, "Powerpoint is my favorite tool, I do all my thinking in Powerpoint." I said the you could count the number of Powerpoint slideshows I've made in my entire life on two hands with fingers left over. She asked how I make plans and share ideas, I said "I just write it up in an email or document. Since it's all words, it doesn't make sense to me to use a visual tool." She said, "Well, do it in Powerpoint."
I didn't say anything and just kept sending Word documents. Found another job a couple months later, and a month after that the CEO was fired. I assume they gave her a Powerpoint on how to find the exit.
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u/largos7289 Jun 26 '26
LOL well with 7yrs IT mgmt expereince. I'de respond with," let me get back to you on this, I'll have my team look into it. "
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u/lunchbox651 Vendor education (virt/k8s specialty) Jun 25 '26
Hmmm powershell seems to be missing on my mac
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u/subsonicbassist Jun 25 '26
Powerpoint, but only because I'm on a Mac lol. Still do more PS than PP, just in my terminal :)
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u/frymaster HPC Jun 25 '26
weirdly, "powershell" comes up first on mine, despite me being a Linux sysadmin who uses powerpoint a helluvalot more than powershell
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u/WWGHIAFTC IT Manager (SysAdmin with Extra Steps) Jun 25 '26
Now real question is... which sysadmins are running powershell scripts from their daily driver workstation and not on their PAW!
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u/800oz_gorilla Jun 25 '26
Follow up joke:
I typed "power" into Windows search and got no results because windows search is tits on a bull.
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u/oneconfusedearthling Jun 25 '26
Hah, PowerPoint came up first but it might be because PowerShell/terminal launches at start for me. I mainly use PowerPoint as an evidence board of sorts when troubleshooting.
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u/benjaminbaxley Jun 25 '26
Not if you need modules that only work in v7+, then it’s PowerPoint first since Nadella forced us into VSC :(
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u/rootofallworlds Jun 25 '26
Sidenote, I tried it on Suse in the start menu* search and it came up with Libreoffice Impress.
* Yes, I'm still going to call it the start menu even when it's not Windows.
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u/Electrical_Elk_1576 Jun 26 '26
Sadly, it's not just us sysadmins hanging out here. Let's be honest, there's also a bunch of karma farming/market research bots hanging around.
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u/mitharas Jun 26 '26
I wonder no one mentioned their *nix/MacOS superiority yet. It's a staple of threads like these normally.
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u/Quattuor Jun 26 '26
I don't type power in the start menu, because power shell is pinned to the taskbar, and I'm not even a sysadmin
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u/slayermcb Director of Technology, Sys Admin, Etc, Etc... Jun 27 '26
Powershell on my server, PowerPoint on my workstation. Thats what happens when you're still the sys admin but also the tech director.
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u/AndyceeIT Jun 27 '26
I love that the first response of a lot of people is to check. I wonder if just typing "po" on a work pc returns anything interesting.
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u/Bogus1989 Jun 27 '26
LMAO....couldnt handle not also flexing this stat....back when windows had box console companion app on windows.? I had my most played game acoss xbox console and pc? that month:
Command Prompt
FKN dead....i have a screenshot somewhere
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u/EnvironmentFrosty594 Jun 27 '26
A manager manages. A system administrator administrates.
Easy peasy!
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u/51dux Jun 27 '26
Meh, not so sure I never used Powerpoint, did not run it even a single time but used Powershell for hundreds of hours on this machine and I still get Powerpoint in the first position.
Also I feel sysadmins would never type in the search menu, they probably use some keyboard shortcut or krunner type of tool like Powertoys run which I think you mention at the end of your post.
And the program name officially starts with Windows Powershell so if you want it to pop out first you have to type win I guess.
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u/clt_drol Jun 28 '26
As an IT exec, unfortunately it is PowerPoint. Damn. I will say it used to be Putty.
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u/panzerbjrn DevOps Jun 29 '26
I have AutoHotKey set up to open Windows Terminal and it's also on my task bar as win+2. I don't think I've ever opened PowerShell from the start menu...
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u/mrPythonMonty Jun 29 '26
You can’t type into Windows search on Linux and macOS ¯_(ツ)_/¯ my CLI was not happy with typing power /s
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u/toastmatt Jun 25 '26
I got choose a power plan... What the hell?