What You Sound Like To A Sysadmin

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You don't even have to be a Sysadmin to appreciate this article. Hell, most of us hear this stuff just because we are the only tech savvy person among our family and friends.

“I think the firewall is blocking me.”

I don't know what a firewall does but I like the word so I just threw it in there as a sort of garnish. You can probably rule out the firewall.
 
“It would be easier if you just made me an admin.”

Ahh yes, the old make me admin trick for the user who thinks he's tech savvy. That's when you get a call a week later saying their PC isn't working right and you find 5 different media players, toolbars and suspicious software all over the place.
 
Ahh yes, the old make me admin trick for the user who thinks he's tech savvy. That's when you get a call a week later saying their PC isn't working right and you find 5 different media players, toolbars and suspicious software all over the place.

I never asked for any special rights on my work computers or server, after being there a while I was looking for something and noticed my computer name on the network had been changed....To 1337. After another few months they gave me full rights more or less, few months after that they gave my access card rights to the server room etc etc. None of them are onsite, they all work out of the corporate office. So I guess once they knew I could handle things and did not touch things or change things without first asking, they felt it was easier to let me just fix my own problems, from time to time I also helped with quick stuff for other people in the office that they would have had to come onsite to fix.
 
Seems like alot of these articles confuse SysAdmin with Helpdesk.
Ideally in a perfect world a System Administrator would not have to speak an end-user , ever.
 
Seems like alot of these articles confuse SysAdmin with Helpdesk.
Ideally in a perfect world a System Administrator would not have to speak an end-user , ever.

That is part of the alure being a sysadmin/network admin. They all think you are the unbusy helpdesk guy that fixes phones.

FYI: Objects dropped on my desk tend to lie there until they are retrieved by their owner or sold on ebay/craigslist.
 
Seems like alot of these articles confuse SysAdmin with Helpdesk.
Ideally in a perfect world a System Administrator would not have to speak an end-user , ever.

Except when you work for a smaller company and you're expected to be the System Administrator, Helpdesk, Phone guy, TV installer, and all around handy man.
 
These are great, and all 100% true. Especially:

“You don't look very busy”

I'm going to make whatever you're concentrating on much harder by talking to you while you do it.

“This will only take you a minute.”

I secretly think your job is really easy.

Me and the other guy here were literally just talking about this phenomenon 1 hour ago. Do they know that 1. I'm onsite and they are getting charged hourly, so every question, every distraction, costs them more? and 2. If my job was easy I wouldn't be here fixing their problems.
 
Except when you work for a smaller company and you're expected to be the System Administrator, Helpdesk, Phone guy, TV installer, and all around handy man.

Or the helpdesk is actually incompetent. Just dealt with this today. The guy is trying to take a mandatory online class, the problem was that he needed to open the class in a different browser. But when they remote in they see that the guy is running in classic mode so without doing any other checking they say he needs a new computer because he's still is running XP. Again, it's 7 in classic mode.

A tech went down and figured out what's was really wrong, but now the user is putting in tickets insisting on a new computer, even though he got that one four months ago.
 
Or the helpdesk is actually incompetent. Just dealt with this today. The guy is trying to take a mandatory online class, the problem was that he needed to open the class in a different browser. But when they remote in they see that the guy is running in classic mode so without doing any other checking they say he needs a new computer because he's still is running XP. Again, it's 7 in classic mode.

A tech went down and figured out what's was really wrong, but now the user is putting in tickets insisting on a new computer, even though he got that one four months ago.

Incompetent help desk here. We're completely virtual at my site, and the server we hit changes every day. I've found one or two that have something wrong on their end that makes to where clicking links in Outlook will crash IE (because we can't install anything of our own of change browser defaults). I give them specific details saying "this server causes this issue, these ones do not, this one here also has this issue." Their response? "It must be your profile." Yes, because everyone that's on that server has a profile issue until they get to a different server where the problem magically disappears.

Sometimes it's tough knowing what's going on and not having the ability to talk to anyone who can fix it.
 
"You're IT, right? Here, I have an insanely complicated question regarding the inner workings of our SAP setup"

"Sir. You're going to need to call the SAP support group, they can answer your question without an issue."

"But you're IT! You should know this!" -__-

Contrary to popular belief.... I don't know everything.
 
"You're IT, right? Here, I have an insanely complicated question regarding the inner workings of our SAP setup"

"Sir. You're going to need to call the SAP support group, they can answer your question without an issue."

"But you're IT! You should know this!" -__-

Contrary to popular belief.... I don't know everything.

Ah yes..end users who think IT is an expert in every third party program ever created.

Sure, we can fix that...at our hourly on-site rate for however long it takes to resolve the issue through phone support for that program. Oh, and if there's a fee for the support you'll be charged that, too.
 
Or the helpdesk is actually incompetent. Just dealt with this today. The guy is trying to take a mandatory online class, the problem was that he needed to open the class in a different browser. But when they remote in they see that the guy is running in classic mode so without doing any other checking they say he needs a new computer because he's still is running XP. Again, it's 7 in classic mode.

A tech went down and figured out what's was really wrong, but now the user is putting in tickets insisting on a new computer, even though he got that one four months ago.

sounds like you work with the same helpdesk as me :D
 
They left out one:

User: "(ARGLE BARGLE)... F*CK BLACKBOARD!"

Sysadmin: Welcome to my life
 
Here's a couple good ones:

"I program websites for a living and your website is messed up"
translates to:
"I made a blog one time using youtube tutorial videos"

"Your website is always so slow."
translates to:
"I have no idea how the internet works or that there are dozens of points of failure between me and any given destination on the web."

"I have a [bachelor's/masters/phd] degree in [unrelated to IT] field. It's your system at fault here. I know how to type a password correctly."
translates to:
"I think I'm a god and you should be bowing before me no matter how wrong I am."
 
More like shit the Helpdesk hears. If you are in a good company as a sys admin/engineer you wouldnt even be getting these.
 
Ahh yes, the old make me admin trick for the user who thinks he's tech savvy. That's when you get a call a week later saying their PC isn't working right and you find 5 different media players, toolbars and suspicious software all over the place.

I said this to my IT a few times so they decided to challenge me. when I ran circles around their solution and made it way more elegant, streamlined, and scalable for my entire departments they actually gave me sudo on our Linux boxes.
 
Ahh yes, the old make me admin trick for the user who thinks he's tech savvy. That's when you get a call a week later saying their PC isn't working right and you find 5 different media players, toolbars and suspicious software all over the place.

Yep, there are many users who are very capable of handling themselves, and will actually save the helpdesk time as well as themselves frustration by having admin rights to their local machine.

The problem is, it can be difficult to know who those users are. The ones who THINK they know what they are doing, but don't create so much more work than the ones who know what they are doing save, unfortunately, so many companies IT departments have policies that end users simply don't get admin rights to their local machine, ever.

Frustrates the hell out of me, but it is what it is.
 
We just give *all* of our users local admin, and let the entry level schmuck (me) sort out all the issues. -__-
 
Zarathustra[H];1041767894 said:
Yep, there are many users who are very capable of handling themselves, and will actually save the helpdesk time as well as themselves frustration by having admin rights to their local machine.

The problem is, it can be difficult to know who those users are. The ones who THINK they know what they are doing, but don't create so much more work than the ones who know what they are doing save, unfortunately, so many companies IT departments have policies that end users simply don't get admin rights to their local machine, ever.

I'm the IT department for a software developer, so our development and QA types have to have full admin rights (and their own domain to join their test machines to). Same for our consultants who do installs, and part of the sales department that runs a very old application that needs local admin rights to run.
 
"I need access to this website"

"I want to slack off at work and I know of no other websites to spend hours on"
 
"You upgraded my MS Office and so it's your job to teach me how to use it!"

It was legitimately the first time I laughed in a users face.
 
"You upgraded my MS Office and so it's your job to teach me how to use it!"

It was legitimately the first time I laughed in a users face.

We had someone hired in HR that was an "expert" in computers. After the daily calls of how to do very basic things, I put her on the back burner. I took my precious time getting back to her. She did complain, but that drew more attention to herself that she had no clue what she was doing with computers. Basic Windows and Office stuff. She's still there, but she doesn't call me anymore... :D

My job is to support the IT infrastructure, not teach users how to use it. If I have free time (which I do occasionally), I will. I love teaching and showing people how to use the software. But, I'm not going to be their crutch when they got the job because they 'knew' how to use the software.
 
"You upgraded my MS Office and so it's your job to teach me how to use it!"

It was legitimately the first time I laughed in a users face.

If it was Office 2003 -> 2007 I do empathize a little though. That transition was rough.

Even I was pissed when forced to go through it. I knew where everything was in 2003, I didn't need or want 2007, yet one day it was there, and now I am pecking and hunting through the annoying ribbon, instead of my familiar menus.

I eventually learned it, and 2010 improved upon the 2007 ribbon, but I still have trouble finding things on occasion, whereas in 2003, I never had that issue. I would happily still be using 2003. For none of my uses did anything improve in later revisions.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041769376 said:
If it was Office 2003 -> 2007 I do empathize a little though. That transition was rough.

Even I was pissed when forced to go through it. I knew where everything was in 2003, I didn't need or want 2007, yet one day it was there, and now I am pecking and hunting through the annoying ribbon, instead of my familiar menus.

I eventually learned it, and 2010 improved upon the 2007 ribbon, but I still have trouble finding things on occasion, whereas in 2003, I never had that issue. I would happily still be using 2003. For none of my uses did anything improve in later revisions.

It's funny that you mention this. I have been through the Office 2007, 2010, and 2013 transitions at work (as an end user). They were always painful but eventually I just acclimated.

Recently, I was in front of an older Windows XP machine with Office 2003. It was like going back home after a long time away. Everything just felt *productive* with no extra crap thrown in just for the sake of argument. It was a very nice experience.
 
It's funny that you mention this. I have been through the Office 2007, 2010, and 2013 transitions at work (as an end user). They were always painful but eventually I just acclimated.

Recently, I was in front of an older Windows XP machine with Office 2003. It was like going back home after a long time away. Everything just felt *productive* with no extra crap thrown in just for the sake of argument. It was a very nice experience.

We are definitely on the same page here
 
Seems like alot of these articles confuse SysAdmin with Helpdesk.
Ideally in a perfect world a System Administrator would not have to speak an end-user , ever.

That is part of the alure being a sysadmin/network admin. They all think you are the unbusy helpdesk guy that fixes phones.

FYI: Objects dropped on my desk tend to lie there until they are retrieved by their owner or sold on ebay/craigslist.

Except when you work for a smaller company and you're expected to be the System Administrator, Helpdesk, Phone guy, TV installer, and all around handy man.

While I understand your frustrations, SysAdmins and, IT in general, tend to act like they would be better off without those pesky end users. You're an internal support department like accounting. You're all special flakes. You could eliminate half of the stupid demands on your time if you LEARNED HOW TO COMMUNICATE! When was the last time any sys admin you know deigned to communicate to the general public in any form outside notification of the occasional server crash and then acted like they were paying by the bit?
 
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