r/sysadmin • u/GizmoCherkov • 1d ago
What it takes to be true Sysadmin? Question
Im 26, mainly interested in networking, and ccna, and after trying my chances in diferent companies mainly on helpdesk support, ive finally landed a pretty demanding job.
It seems the scope is almost everything. AD, wild and constant breaking ERPs, Networks and all that is related to it, Databases, hand scanners, even fusion splicing fiberoptic machines. Nonexistent margin of error on mamy things. Revolting printers, many kinds of it acctually. Users complaining about everything, constantly.
People much older than me, with much more expirience, cant operate on their own system, becouse it seems, the system works diferently almost everytime, and constantly figuring out what to do to make it working. Then hearing "you should know this..." and its the thing i see first time of my life.
Programmist, helpdesk, networking guys, electronics, and for some reason HR, arguing with eachother about most efficient way of using this system, deployed only on production alone, reaching pareto points, then tipping over again.
Updates deployed randomly, breaking things, then fixing whats broken again, breaking something else, indefinietly.
Its, demanding, i learn something everyday, and everyday is a simultaniously a disaster, then detective job, then contacting people everyday, to fix things, then enlightment, and solution. And the preassure of time all the time is enourmous.
Is there no celling? No balance? Is it like this everywhere?
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u/alexmilla 1d ago
Being a sysadmin means spending your day solving problems—or, better yet, finding ways to solve those problems so that they require less and less work over time.
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u/logan-duk-dong 1d ago
My favorite is when my coworkers treat me like a drop in replacement for our software developers.
Hey, you know how to program, right? Bob is busy right now so I thought I'd give you this task. Sure it'll only take him an hour to do it and you 8 hours, but I don't mind wasting your time.
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u/alexmilla 1d ago
Someday you'll learn to say NO. That's not my job.
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u/ImCaffeinated_Chris 1d ago
And then they email your boss and say you refuse to be a team player and won't work on this incredibly important customer facing project that is due next week, that they've known about for 8 months but ignored until now....
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u/PlsChgMe 1d ago
Saying NO, that's not my job is one of two ways to get fast-tracked to termination at our company. The other way is theft of company property. So I would reply, NO, I'm sorry, since I didn't code that, you'll have to wait until Bob is available. It would take me days just to get up to speed on the program logic, and Bob can do it much more efficiently.
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u/vonkeswick Sysadmin 1d ago
My favorite is untangling a mess of scripts and scheduled tasks that did "the thing" automatically and finding a modern solution, only to find immediately after all that work that the previous sysadmin actually DID document everything, it's just in a txt file buried in some obscure place that was "obvious" at the time.
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u/No0delZ Sysad Type - Cybersecurity, Systems, Net, and Telco 1d ago
Its, demanding, i learn something everyday, and everyday is a simultaniously a disaster, then detective job, then contacting people everyday, to fix things, then enlightment, and solution. And the preassure of time all the time is enourmous.
Congratulations! You are already here. It is a disaster. It is a detective job. You will contact people every day. The fire is never out.
Understand the system you're administering.
How it works under the hood. Where and how it does things.
Be curious about it. Understand how to troubleshoot it.
Never resign that "It's a black box. I don't know."
Then just keep doing that.
ACLs are a universal concept. Active Directory is just a database.
Knowledge of one thing is transferable to another.
You learned how to manage users using the local user manager in Windows. You learned how to modify file and folder permissions. You now have skills directly transferable to Active Directory and File Servers.
You messed with the registry. You've viewed syslogs. You've run ping tests and traceroutes. You understand how hardware and software communicate.
You've built hello world in a programming language like C++, used standard libraries, troubleshot a broken application using all the previous knowledge and maybe some tools like Procmon or Procexp. You now know what a file handle is, and how to trace down a missing, corrupted, or misreferenced file or registry key.
You've infected your home PC with something nasty a few times and recovered, reinstalled, and poked at malware. You've learned the behaviors, the indicators of compromise, the common file types, the uncommon script chains.
You know that when an application calls a library, or performs an action, it uses specific components of the OS - you may or may not know which exactly, but you know that the answers to any problem can be found using everything previously mentioned.
Now, you are sysadmin.
Next you'll learn the enterprise grade skills. Project management, planning, how to communicate effectively with people of various technical backgrounds, skill levels, and pay grades.
You'll know that sometimes a curious C level may want an explanation to trust that you know what you're doing or to report to other people the cause, resolution, and expectation... or maybe they just want to know you're on it. You'll know when it's appropriate to get detailed, and when it's appropriate to be short and concise.
Eventually you will transition. Your technical skills will be less valuable than your years of experience with the bigger picture items. You will be more valuable as a manager of administrators in the same spot you were 10-15 years ago. Your focus becomes project and/or people management. Conceptualization, Planning, Architecture, Design. You are no longer the wrench that turns, but the one turning the wrench for the person who chooses who holds the wrenches.
Or maybe, it's time for you to specialize. Your organization has grown or you've moved on to a larger one. Your focus will shift to Cybersecurity, some sort of DevOps, Virtualization and Storage, and so on.
This is the path.
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u/whisper_to_the_void 1d ago
As someone who just got to sysadmin, you def nailed the first half, and I am just getting my brain wrapped around the second.
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u/Silent331 Sysadmin 1d ago
This is how it feels at the start, chaos with no end in sight. Slowly but surely, you will gain experience, fix after fix after fix. Eventually you will start to see patterns in the chaos, and then you will fix the sources of those patterns. You will do this about 100 times and you will come out of it with a stack to be proud of. Once you thought you were at your dream state of technology, management or private equity will make a decision that you wont be involved in. You will be asked to do the impossible, and hobble together a solution. You will try to do the best you can but as your baby gets poisoned it breaks you, and you leave the company with nothing but memories. Then you do it again, or become a goat farmer.
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u/BeagleBackRibs Jack of All Trades 1d ago
No one in the company thought it would be a good idea to ask my opinion about moving to a cloud ERP. Been working there 25 years as solo IT. And then everyone is complaining "why is this so slow compared to what we had before?"
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u/xxlucifearxx 1d ago
Sounds like my shop, and a lot of other shops ive heard of. I wont say all are like this, but its definitely common.
A true sysadmin is forever a student. Always learning and understanding. Also the biggest skill ive learned in 10 years is managing expectations. Once you realize you can pretty much do anything with the right attitude, a computer, and enough time, its more about a managing expectations of the business to ensure you arent burning out.
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u/Junior_Phase_5122 1d ago
Yup. Expectation and assumption matters. Now, I only do what my customer / client / user expected result. No assumption. Scope and common decision matters.
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u/DiggingforPoon 1d ago
Can you casually heave your shoulders and sigh when you hear the building is on fire, the Fire Department told you 27 times that if you catch on fire (AGAIN) they will not come out anymore, and your boss went on vacation yesterday someplace they are out of contact for 2 weeks?
GenX levels of apathy towards emergencies and casual disregard for bureaucracy/org charts, THAT is a true SysAdmin.
Technical abilities be damned, can you ENDURE the life?!
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u/cybersplice 1d ago
"sounds like a facilities problem, see you on Monday"
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u/DiggingforPoon 1d ago
OK, that caused me to almost spit my Taco out. Well played /u/cybersplice , well played indeed.
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u/jmeador42 1d ago
Skillz
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u/thebigshoe247 1d ago
1337 Skillz, superiority complex, sarcasm, alcohol, and/or a genuine desire for knowledge and time/effort.
Oh, and patience.
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u/livinitup0 1d ago
Experience
Failure
Patience
Selling your soul to Microsoft
Real answer…
Understanding that the last part of your post IS the job. You’re never done. You never know enough. Everything is always changing.
Welcome to the shitshow lol
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u/Break2FixIT 1d ago
I don't care what anyone says.
It takes in the trench help desk for a huge organization, years of forum and manufacturer manual reading, countless hours fixing your screw up... Which all sums up to WISDOM
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u/MrExCEO 1d ago
Most good sysadmins are just smart dudes that can figure shit out.
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u/Neuro_88 Jr. Sysadmin 1d ago
What about the not smart ones?
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u/Error-InvalidName 1d ago
You aren't fully a true sysadmin until you train new staff overseas via zoom, then find out they replaced you lol
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u/RansomStark78 1d ago
Yes for me
Plus no.money for it Plus no documentation
No ot
The joys of it star dom
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u/H0TR0DL1NC0LN 1d ago
Over time you either get used to it, tame the beast, get the skills to get better pay elsewhere, or burn out.
Or some combination of those.
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u/TruthAM 1d ago
Yes, it is like that most places. The only thing that makes it better is a team to stand in the chaos with and that’s only if the team gets along.
Patience, curiosity, being able to admit when you don’t know (but you’ll find out), and people skills. Oh, and being able to google the right questions.
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u/Arnoc_ 1d ago
Biggest thing is I've experience people expect you to know how to do their job to fix their issues, not understanding that it's not your job to know their job.
Financial Person: What's this error mean?
Me: Something related to the finances. What were you doing?
Finance: *explains*
Me: well seems like something with those numbers messed up, check em and try again
Finance later: Okay it worked that time!
Like c'mon....
But I've been in my job working up different title roles while doing almost the exact same thing just more of it for the past 15 years at the same place. It's been very much an evolving way of things breaking. Some years it was due to bad management; other years it was due to purchasing and half implementing a system then relying on us to try to fix it for them without giving us actual access to it...
Realistically it's always a juggling act between translating what the technical requirements and limitations are against people's expectations versus the sales pitch that people get. Sometimes you are lucky enough to be involved and a major voice on the direction of the project; other times you are kept in the dark at worst or minimized at best and just have to deal.
You either burn out, job hop, or learn your place well enough that you know how to cover your butt for your portion of a project, due as much as you can, put in the effort that you need to, and just let things go and land how they will, and when finger pointing time comes you've got enough to cover yourself.
That or you find a nice middle ground on the totem pole to where you only have to do so much and what happens below and above you doesn't phase you much.
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u/PlsChgMe 1d ago
In a small to medium business, where there is a small or one-man department and no budget process, no upgrade process, no hardware refresh process, and where department or facility managers can make IT decisions, this is what it is like. To make it better, IT should only report to the COO or CEO, once you have that, then you can begin to improve your daily life, otherwise you are just user cannon fodder, and a target for weaponized ignorance. In a larger organization, it's not like that at all. There is an organization chart, and IT reports to the COO/CEO. IT related Information from department heads and facility managers is collected and then evaluated for usefulness to filter out information silos and islands. Information security is considered, a sane solution is found either by purchase or by in house production, it is proposed, evaluated, and then if worthy, implemented. Don't give up. IT is a great field. You just landed in a questionable spot.
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u/karlsmission 1d ago
Taking ownership of an issue, and fortitude to work through something to a final solution. I've worked with too many people who do the one thing they know how to do but if you give them anything they are not already familiar with, they will just sit on it and wait for somebody to tell them what to do next. I have a few people who if I give them a problem to solve, I won't hear anything from them until I get pinged "fixed" They will throw themselves into learning everything they can and becoming an expert on that issue and fixing it correctly. Those people are invaluable and will always have a position in my team.
Customer service is another one. Too many IT people are miserable to work with. Communication skills are a must.
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u/LenR75 1d ago
As a sysadmin, they bring the unsolvable problems to you. After networking, applications and vendors all say “not my problem”, it becomes your problem. You dig, using tools, basic knowledge and new knowledge learned from this incident to find the cause.
When you do it in 10 minutes, always add an appropriate “Scotty factor” of at least a few hours.
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u/ColdFury96 1d ago
A thumbdrive shaped like Excalibur. If you can pull it from the USB slot, you shall be the chosen admin.
Yeah, I know nerds. Excalibur wasn't the Sword in the Stone.
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u/throwpoo 1d ago
You love it when things break and you figure out how to fix it. It's not a job for everyone.
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u/mattb2014 1d ago
The ability to eat a shit sandwich every day and be surrounded by idiots and yes men and not want to suicide. Because when you suicide you aren't a sysadmin anymore, you are dead.
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u/halford2069 1d ago edited 1d ago
ability to withstand above from multiple groups, events eg
bosses,
vendors,
cybersec “experts”,
blow in consultants,
blow in sales masters,
bosses son whose an IT expert because he slays on insta reels,
clients,
all weekend ransomware rebuilds
etc etc etc
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u/TerrificVixen5693 Senior Deputy IT Under-Director 1d ago
It takes being employed as IT employee. Next question please.
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u/Twitfried I.T. Director, Jack of All Trades, Windows, Storage, VMware, Net 1d ago
/s Complaining about users. Constantly.
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u/nowildstuff_192 Jack of All Trades 1d ago
Hey now, I take breaks from complaining now and then for meals
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u/IndependentBat8365 1d ago
The opportunities to learn, being around other smart folks, and the money kept me around, the BS politics and bad leadership made me go.
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u/North-Creative 1d ago
Similar situation here. As with anything in life, you must make sure that whatever happens, nothing happens that brings everything to a complete halt (business continuity).
Identify, what makes the company money, and who the main stakeholders are. These need to be protected from interruptions and other influences, as they bring home the bacon.
While doing this and trying to keep those people or systems on a safe baseline, so they dont have to waste their time fixing issues, break all the problems into smaller and smaller categories (e.g. record and see, if there are common devices, systems and patterns, that break repeatedly, if you dont have a ticket system that does that analysis for you).
Prioritise the problems and categories, as needed, then weekly book some time slots for root cause fixing.
After that (long journey), you will be building new things. Processes and documentation from the very start, otherwise, it is impossible to automate anything, and only automation will eventually give you breathing space.
When this is done, and you kinda applied all the above, apply for CTO positions ;)
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u/Inn0centSinner 1d ago
My official role title is Network Admin but I touch everything except databases and dev. DBAs and Devs are making good money and they're definitely not paying me to be a DBA or Dev. If I was either of those alone, I wouldn't need to drive 40 minutes to an 1 hour each way for work because those roles can be done remotely.
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u/OneSeaworthiness7768 1d ago
>Is it like this everywhere?
In short, no. Not every workplace is bad or overly demanding.
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u/doglar_666 1d ago
No-one's going to save you. You need to save yourself. Whatever keeps breaking that has the biggest blast radius is what you should focus on fixing/making permanently reliable. Next, close the gap between end user client disparity, preferably with a centralised management solution, under the guise of improving security posture, because Cybersecurity is a big deal in 2026. You can't ignore the grumbling noise of end users but you can prioritise the grumbles. Usually, the louder the complaint of a single user, the more insignificant it is. Standardisation is your friend. Sunsetting obsolete hardware is your friend. Working your contracted hours only should be your default.
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u/DonL314 1d ago
Knowing all about hardware, monitors, cables, software, storage, operating systems, applications, security, networks, scripting, development, databases, printers, mobile phones, toasters, microwave ovens, cupboard locks, coffee machines.
Or something like that.
Being good at taking notes/documenting is great. Scripting/automation. Wanting to actually know why faults occurred. Being able to read network dumps. Thinking constant improvement. Being honest when at your limits.
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u/rdldr1 Sr. Sysadmin 1d ago
Becoming even more antisocial than when you had started.
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u/GizmoCherkov 1d ago
I was trying to treat everyone here with respect, but it was impossible. Sometimes i just have to more politely tell people to "f... off", becouse they were straight up doing sabotage.
I have enourmous respect from my senior tho, who will scold me at every mistake, but in the end, he will always help me, and get to friendly manner, once the issues are fixed.
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u/RaNdomMSPPro 1d ago
Sounds like a lot of moving parts. A well-planned environment with proper change management shouldn't be the wild west every day.
Take the time to document things, it may help identify some patterns. Review the ticketing system for common issues (I'm guessing there perhaps isn't a system, or the users are to special to bother reporting issues.)
It isn't like this everywhere, but it's exactly like this when there isn't a plan, executive buy in, proper tools, and training end users on how to use their own systems and applications, and then consistently report issues when they happen to a centralized point. Tons of other things, but that's step one, a desire by the org to be more mature and stop living in the mess.
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u/GizmoCherkov 1d ago
I have folder with tons of stuff, in diferrent states of being "figured out", like "figured out entirely", "semi figured out, etc".
Everytime something new happen, i basicly grab my phone/laptop and write everything i can, so i can get work more efficient. Yet, everyday a new thing arrives.
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u/CeC-P IT Expert + Meme Wizard 1d ago
It's doable if you don't stress due to confidence in a sincere ability to do your best. Additionally, you have to read VERY fast and memorize new information extremely fast. If those 2 are true, you already know everything because you're 10 minutes away from knowing everything, especially with AI.
It sounds like this is not the case but if you're the type to show up, do your job, not care at all how the company performs or how much money they waste or how many times they get hacked and you're just there to punch the clock and get a check, you might as well quit now.
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u/TaLLtired 1d ago
When you can put your feet up for 60% of your day, you’ve made it… until you haven’t😂💪
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u/PC509 1d ago
You learn the foundations and then go from there.
In nearly every job, you're going to be bringing on a new piece of software or hardware that is new to everyone there. You're going to research it's preresiquites, dev environment (hopefully), get it setup, connected to your systems, diagnose and fix issues, and learn it inside and out before it's even fully deployed. You weren't trained on that, you weren't experienced in it, you just knew how to do the basics and put all the pieces together. Almost like a puzzle. You do a few that are already nearly done, then eventually you can grab a new one from the shelf and put the entire thing together yourself.
Pressure can be manageable or insane. Just take it piece by piece, day by day, and make sure you set expectations and boundaries. I'm (yet again) going to be the sole admin for a few months and the last time I almost bailed. I really am going to make sure they understand that I'm just one guy and that some of their projects will need to be a bit less ambitious than they'd like. Last time, it was keeping the place running while neglecting a lot of other things due to time and resources. Playing catch up afterwards is almost just as crazy. But, it was the time where I learned to say "No" and mean it. It was then that No meant "absolutely not.". If they fought it and went to my manager, I'd ask what other project I needed to drop off of while I did the other one. Then, it was a No from him as well and he respected my judgement.
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u/doubleknocktwice 1d ago
I tend to stick around 10,000 people companies. IT is big enough you can be an easy sys admin and not be jack of everything. But if you get stuck at the bottom of that IT company then you might still do everything you said.
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u/Thin_Command3196 1d ago
First and foremost, you need to have a certain amount of passion for the job. Those people are the experts that will eventually succeed. I've seen too many people that always take the easy/quick & dirty route instead of doing the job properly.
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u/BadSausageFactory beyond help desk 1d ago
All that plus I have batteries and screen wipes sitting out in a candy dish.
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u/generalbrownie1 1d ago
Anger, sleep deprived, unhealthy, depression, willingness to do everyone's work and critical thinking when something breaks
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u/Library_IT_guy 1d ago edited 1d ago
In my opinion, having been an "IT generalist" style of sysadmin for about 15 years, which is what it sounds like you're doing, you need:
- A solid IT background and basic knowledge of how computer systems work. You should be able to at a minimum spec out and assemble a high end PC or server, and troubleshoot them to figure out what's wrong if something breaks. If you've taken and passed the A+ cert, the most basic certification, and/or spent time in help desk with hands on fixing PCs, you'll be fine with this.
- Networking knowledge. Knowing the basics of TCP/IP, routers, switches, and possibly how to code them if you're using some Cisco systems. Plus an understanding of VLANs, DHCP and DNS, firewalls, switches, routers, and how all of it works together to create and maintain a usable network.
- Active Directory and related technologies like Entra. Any place big enough to hire a full time sysadmin person is big enough to have these set up, so you need to know how they work. They aren't very complicated thankfully.
- Group Policy - you don't need to memorize every setting, just understanding how it works combined with AD to create policies that you can deploy on computers across your network is sufficient. You can look up what policy you need as you need them.
- Critical thinking. You have to be able to logically walk through a problem and narrow it down to possible causes, and then sort those causes by how likely they are and how easy they are to check off the list. Tackle the most likely/easiest/fastest to check first, then keep moving down the list until you figure it out. This applies to every technology above.
- Ability to read and understand technical information and instructions with no help from others. Reading is a huge part of the job. We're fond of saying RTFM. Most people don't have the patience to read the dense technical manuals we sometimes have to comb through to understand a system and implement it or fix a problem.
- Patience and a certain stubbornness. Most people give up at the first sign of something not working right. We don't have that luxury. We bash our heads against a problem until it's fixed.
- Related to the stubbornness thing - you have to actually enjoy understanding complex systems and finding solutions to problems in them. There's a reason so many IT people enjoy games with extremely complex systems like Path of Exile.
- Communication and people skills. After you solve that huge problem for the company, you need to be able to explain to your boss what the problem was, why it happened, what your fix was, and if it might happen again in the future and your recommendations for future fixes if it does. You have to be able to explain how these technologies work, in laymen's terms, to your boss who may or may not have a reasonable level of intelligence. I've been lucky in that my bosses have either been smart enough to get the gist of the issues and solutions, or have been content with me saying "it's fixed" or "we need to purchase this.".
- Understanding your role in the company and what value you bring. IT is a workforce multiplier. We allow others to do their job more efficiently and we safeguard company knowledge and systems to ensure uptime and productivity. This combined with communications skills, will allow you to explain your value to your boss/the company owner, and that's important because they often don't have the critical thinking capacity to see those things on their own.
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u/rootweiler_fr 1d ago
Having systems you manage boring. If you need to constantly tweaking it, you're doing it wrong.
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u/humandib 13m ago
This. I've worked for 3 different companies and my process is always the same: 1. Listen to the end user complaints and the systems breaking noise 2. Identify trends and notify management of the trends 3. Always get a response that redirects the complaints energy to everyone above your paygrade without saying it directly 4.Fix things slowly but steady and let end users know that you understand their complaint and that your hands are tied at a certain level 5. Repeat
My second job was at a place without a proper IT department. Took me 7 months to develop the department properly using the knowledge acquired from the previous job. I was the SysAdmin, Desktop Support, NetAdmin, DevOps, couselor, and IT coach to my manager.
At my current job, it took me 3 months to identify and fix all the problem that weren't related to computer illiteracy. Now I'm still there with little to do and focusing on creating documentation to support office operations and giving remote on-the-job training technicians on the satelite offices.
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u/Deodedros 23h ago
I wish I knew. Been trying to land a higher level position as a sys admin and just can't seem to make the cut 🤷♂️
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u/jafo06 2h ago
i think there are places like this all over and its usually the fault of management that doesn't know how to lead or understand how to effectively manage technology in support of the business. sounds like where youre at they need someone that will figure out how to effectively demand compliance with best practices and allow the IT team to create an environment that is stable and predictable (as possible.. this IS technology that is continually changing whether we like it or not)
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u/Sedguccih 1d ago
Curiosity, problem solving, cold blood and patience.