The 5K iMacs cannot be used in target mode so is useless as a screen for anything but the OS installed on it. Unless you’re a god-tier hardware hacker, that is, and can do a lot of soldering and re-engineering.

Oh, that is absolutely 100% true. With overseas folks (especially India) it’s around 30% apparitional. I’ve worked with these “ghosts” in person so I do have direct experience. They do nothing and produce nothing and then move on to the next job or contract in 3-9 months.

Nice gig if you can get it and have no self-respect.

This is also true:

We end up with every problem. Developer code problems, putting together BBQ grills¹, electrical issues, lighting, copiers, doors, staplers, and any complex business task no matter how little it has to do with actual systems — it all winds up in my department eventually. I’ve done a lawyer’s job, an accountant’s job, an engineer’s job, an insurance adjuster’s job, a graphic designer’s job, a developer’s job, a DBA’s job, a lecturer’s job and many many others. And no, I am not talking about making sure their computer works and that they have access to the tools they need. I mean actually doing the work they should be doing ².

The peril of being the only team that can troubleshoot and reliably solve problems is that you end up as the dumping ground for all problems. And then are hounded ceaselessly about them even if they have nothing to do with you or your department.

It is not fun.

1. No, I am not making this up.
2. I absolutely refuse to do this anymore. I’d rather be fired.

These are indeed the main problems with working in IT. It’s so oddball how everyone expects you know everything about anything that runs on electricity of any kind. I will never understand that. I don’t even assume a tax attorney knows anything about contract law. However, the hoi polloi believes that because I know how Linux works, I can troubleshoot an issue involving some obscure code they wrote in 1998 or fix a coffee machine.

It is completely mystifying.

It’s not every day in my field that you get to run a regression analysis on survey data, but some days you do.

Please stop lying to people about Cybersecurity being in high demand and graduates getting jobs.

This high demand is only true for people with a lot of experience. For newbies, there is no demand. The reason is that you have to have seen a lot of things to be any good at cybersecurity, and someone with only a college degree hasn’t seen and doesn’t know shit.

I’m not even a cybersecurity specialist, but I do have 20+ years experience in my field. And with that knowledge I can run rings around the new-grad cybersecurity people without even the least little effort. IMO no one should be allowed to go into cybersecurity without at least 10 and preferably 15 years of experience in IT Operations and/or programming.

Is it normal for admins to never follow up with users?

The service desk/help desk should be handling contact with users, especially in large orgs. This is for a variety of reasons, among them that it’s simply not time- or cost-efficient to have those making high salaries and with more important business priorities spending an hour helping a user find their start menu or use Excel.

In addition, once the users have the contact info of someone like me they start reaching out directly about issues like the above. It’s insane for the business to spend what I make an hour to help Jen from Accounting figure out how to format a PowerPoint slide.

For instance, a project I’m working on now matters a whole lot to our existing and our potential large enterprise customers. If I complete the project (which I will, I fucking rule) it will mean millions of dollars in potential revenue is easier to acquire and to retain.

Now, all that said, how does me spending two hours on the phone helping someone learn to bold items in Word make any kind of sense?

Windows 2022 Servers Unexpectedly Upgrading to 2025, Aaaargh!

Well that’s a fucking nightmare scenario there. I wondered when Microsoft was going to force updates everywhere, even though it’s hugely destructive in the enterprise space.

I guess now we know!

The new level of Tech coming into the IT field today, they don’t have the basics down. Is anyone else seeing this issue?

For sure. The younger techs have extremely poor troubleshooting skills and lack of knowledge because they did not grow up with computers. They came up on phones and click and drool interfaces, so they know how to do nothing and don’t understand how anything works.

Most of them should not be in the field as they cause more problems than they solve. The vast majority of them don’t really seem to get any better, either. I know I will incur the wrath of many but it does seem to matter if you’ve grown up with real, general-purpose computers or not.

This is all true:

When I started in IT, the average sysadmin supported 5-7 systems. Back then I only had about 15-20 passwords. Now I (and my team) support 200+ systems/software/services and I have more than a thousand passwords just for work alone.

The complexity increase is enormous. A lot of people have left the field because they just could not hack it as the minimum cognitive ability required has gone way, way up.