I've been in IT for close to 35 years. I am old. I will be 56 soon and almost at the end of my Journey. I grew up, with MS-DOS, editing Autoexec.bat files, learning command line to automate stuff. Tinkering with Linux, Windows 1.0 up to Windows 11, fell in love with Deployment (Ghost, SCCM, InTune etc) took the ball and ran with it and learned as much as I could to make my job easier but also the lives of the techs and end users easier by making procedures as easy as possible for them.

I know I am old and crabby but I find new hires in IT don't have the basic skills in Windows, let alone command line and have no idea how or what to automate. Some days it's difficult.

Am I alone here, as an OLD guy in IT?

I used to spend trucks of money buying Christmas gifts for coworkers, tech savvy friends, employees, etc. from ThinkGeek.

I have since purchased the oddball item from various places online and IRL but it's not the same as the shoppers heaven that was ThinkGeek.

Title sums it up. Boss wants every single company password for everything a word doc on our server. he says "the cloud cant be trusted passwords should never go there. Our doc is password protected and on our password protected server"...

For reference I was looking at bitwarden. Any advice on how to convince him would be great please and thank.

Hi All,

I make around 100k now and work almost fully remote, but have been offered a job at another company. The salary is around 200k but it is in office and the commute is 1 hour 10 minutes each way.

The commute is in a nice car.

What would you do?

Edit: Just came back to this post and saw 1000+ comments, I don’t even know how to respond to all that 😳

I'm not an expert in it. I use it when needed here and there. Mostly learning the commands to manage Microsoft 365

Edit:

You guys rock!! Good collaboration going on here!! Info on this thread is golden!

Arriving at work this morning, an "SME" sized business in the UK, something seemed a little off. Further investigation showed that all of our Windows 2022 Servers had either upgraded themselves to 2025 overnight or were about to do so. This obviously came as a shock as we're not at the point to do so for many reasons and the required licensing would not be present.

We manage the updating of clients and servers using the product Heimdal, so I would be surprised if this instigated the update, so our number one concern is why the update occured and how to prevent it.

Is 2025 being pushed out as a simple Windows update to our servers, just like "Patch Tuesday" events, have we missed something we should have set or are we just unlucky?

Is this happening to anyone else?

Edit: A user in a reply has provided some great info, regarding KB5044284, below. Microsoft appear to class this as a "Security Update", however our patch management tool Heimdal classes it internally as an "Upgrade" and also states "Update Name: Windows Server 2025". So, potentially this KB may be miss-classified by Microsoft and / or third-party patch management tools, but it requires further investigation.

Edit 2: Our servers were on the 21H2 build.

Edit 3: Regarding this potential problem your milage may vary depending upon what systems / tools you use to patch / update your Windows servers. Some may potentially not honour the "Classification" from Windows Update, and are applying their own specific classifications, so the 2025 update could potentially get installed even if you don't want it to be.

Edit 4: Be aware that the update to Windows Server 2025 may potential be classified as an "Optional Update" in your RMM, so if you have chosen to also install these then this could also be a route for it to be installed.

Edit 5: Someone from Heimdal has kindly replied on this matter...

• https://old.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1gk2qdu/windows_2022_servers_unexpectedly_upgrading_to/lvl4of4/?context=3

... so I thought I'd link to their reply so it's not lost in other comments. So, it appears that Microsoft have screwed up here, and will have cost me and my team a few days of effort to recover. I very much doubt that they'll take any responsibility but I'll go through our primary VAR to see if they can raise this with their Microsoft contacts.

Edit 6: This has made The Register now...

• https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/06/windows_server_2025_surprise/?td=rt-3a

... so is getting some coverage in other media.

It's not been a great week at work, too much time lost on this, and the outcome is that in some instances backups have come into play however Windows Server 2025 licensing will have to be purchased for others. Our primary VAR is not yet selling WS 2025 licensing so the only way to get new 2025 keys is by purchasing 2022 licensing with SA :(

Our CEO want to cancel all work from home arrangements, because he got inspired by Elon Musk (or so he says).

In 3-4 months work from home are only for all hours above 45 each week. So if you put in 45 hours at the office, you can work from home after that. Contracts state we have a 37,5 hour week.

I am head of IT, and have fought a hard battle for office workers (we are a retail chain) to get WFH and won that battle some time ago.

How would you all react to this?

Edit: I am blown away by all the responses, will try and get back to everyone

I have now put a stop to this, but my boss "IT Director" tells me how great it was and what a shame it is that its gone. I am now trying to find another solution, for free or very cheap, as I'm getting complaints about PDF Gear not handling editing their massive PDF files. They simply wont buy real licenses for everyone.

What's the solution here, and can someone put into words just how stupid the previous one was?

Edit - I forgot to say the machine was running Windows 8! The machine also ran all our network licenses and a heap of other unmaintained software, which I have slowly transferred to a Windows 10, soon 11 VM.

In a strange scenario.

Sole help desk and sys admin for an org with 100 people.

I joined when it was 3 people and over the last 3 years they’ve reached a 100 head count.

CEO has said I won’t get my bonus because the IT department didn’t have any problems…which is true because I ensured we never reached the stage where an IT issue needed executive guidance.

I’m dealing with too many life changing events at the same time and really needed this bonus.

I’ve showed the ceo the problems we’ve sold, the tickets, the migration from Google to Office, cybersecurity we’ve put in and even the training I’ve had to provide for new platform, teams, power bi etc but he still believes since there were no problems that escalated to him, hence no reason for the bonus.

More experienced sys admins; how on earth do you approach this scenario so I don’t encounter it ever again?

Thanks.

Obviously employers are constantly looking to replace older higher paid employees with younger talent, then health starts to become an issue, motive to learn new material just isn't there and the job market just isn't out there for 50+ in IT either, so what's your plan? Change careers?

Perfect way to ruin your weekend. I took this job 5 months ago as internal IT guy. Came into a place that has fat clients everywhere with no servers and everything MS365 cloud/onedrive. Passwords are flying around all over the place. And yes, they also used (and still use) Lastpass, which is, as we all know, compromised. When I came there, there were NO BACKUPS. Boss thought they were unnecessary because "everything is taken care of by Microsoft". It took me 2 months to convince him that he was wrong about that. So I did implement a backup system which is running now. Also took care of other stuff and was testing out Intune for consistent MDM deployment.

Boss was also global admin himself and fucks around with permissions and settings, causing problems that I don't understand because he doesn't tell me what he changed.

He also has this minion dude that works a couple hours a week and barely knows how to install a computer.

So yesterday I get called in and get this 3 page letter stating that I'm doing everything wrong, got my priorities wrong, I meddle in things that I should not meddle in, I'm watching Netflix at work on my laptop, which is a complete lie, and I'm not following orders. I'm not 21, I'm 52 with a ton of experience who's jaw dropped when he said that he didn't need any backups.

So at the end of the talk, he says he withdraws my admin rights. So now I can't do anything. "Sure you can, just pick out the roles that you need". The little minion still retains rights.The little minion also says that I did not share the backup account password with him. I did. He looked in the wrong column of the spreadsheet.

What the hell should I do?

​

*edit*

I want to thank you all for great advice.

I just got my associates and Linux Plus certification and have been looking for a job. I've noticed that almost every job listing has been asking about active directory and windows servers, which is different than what I expected and was told in college. I was under the impression that 90 something percent the servers ran on Linux. Anyway I decided not to let it bother me and to apply for those jobs anyway as they were the only ones I could find. I've had five or six interviews and all of them have turned me down because I have no training or experience with active directory or Windows servers. Then yesterday the person I was interviewing with made a comment the kind of scared me. He said that he had come from a Linux background as well and had transitioned to Windows servers because "93% of servers run Windows and the only people running Linux are banks and credit unions." This was absolutely terrifying to hear because college was the most expensive thing I've ever done. To think that all the time and money I spent was useless really sucks.

I guess my question is two parts: where do you find Linux system administrator jobs in Arizona?

Was it a mistake to get into linux? If so what would you recommend I learned next.

EDIT: I just wanted to say thank you to everybody for your encouragement and for quelling my fears about Linux. I'm super excited as I have a lot information to research and work with now! 😁

Wife joined a small team (education org) who all collaborate using private and shared laptops with local accounts only. For work they all use Microsoft365 with online versions of the Office Apps. An external guy is managing this environment of around 15 users and while onboarding new users he requests they share their password with him for onboarding purposes, and to "test if everything works". It was explained that the passwords are stored in a spreadsheet together with all other users passwords in case the admin needs to change something or login to their accounts if they quit or die, etc. Apparently this is a requirement by the management, and there are other non-admin users with access to this spreadsheet. What is your take on this? What's the point in having a password if it's not private? Can't the admin do everything without direct knowledge of the users passwords? Isn't this a huge security risk?

Our company has been asset tagging everything at a desk to ensure that we can control the full lifecycle of hardware from procurement to disposal.

I’m trying to shift our process for the desk level hardware to only tag monitors as an asset and make keyboards/mouse, webcam, docking stations as consumables that we wouldn’t asset tag and only classify as consumables to track inventory levels

Our cto is consented we will loose visibility into where things are going and why we have to continually purchase more hardware when the firm isn’t growing

Any advice ?

Edit.. to add more context on the dollar amount of each model as many are saying to set a $ threshold

Monitor - $350 Headset - $250 Webcam- $160 Docking station - $100 Keyboard/mouse - $60

TLDR:

I accepted a job as an IT Project Manager, and I have zero project management experience. To be honest not really been involved in many projects either.

My GF is 4 months pregnant and wants to move back to her parents' home city. So she found a job that she thought "Hey John can do this, IT Project Manager has IT in it, easy peasy lemon tits squeezy."

The conversation went like this.

Her: You know Office 365

Me: Yes.

Her: You know how to do Excel.

Me: I know how to double click it.

Her: You're good at math, so the economy part of the job should be easy.

Me: I do know how to differentiate between the four main symbols of math, go on.

Her: You know how to lead a project.

Me: In Football manager yes, real-world no. Actually in Football Manager my Assistant Manager does most of the work.

I applied thinking nothing of it, several Netflix shows later and I got an interview. Went decent, had my best zoom background on. They offered me the position a week later. Better pay and hours. Now I'm kinda panicking about being way over my head.

​

Is there a good way of learning project management in 6 weeks?

Every sysadmin should have ...... On their desktop/software Toolkit ??

Curious to see what tools are indispensable in your opinion!

Greetings from the Netherlands

I’ve been a Sys admin for like the last eight years, every one of my mentors has always told me to keep the news about a layoff to myself. So I’ve just been made aware that there’s another layoff happening and I know that somebody from my team is impacted, but I don’t know who.

So outside of loyalty to the company, why is it that every mentor in the field that I’ve ever had has told me to keep quiet ? I understand, not ranting about it to the entire company. But if I trust my team, but they’re not going to go rogue , why stay mum ?

: Edit :

The consensus is that it’s part of the role to keep secrets. No one has shared any stories of a time where it was of benefit to share with their IT team. Seems like any of the stories I read in the past were all myth. At least based off this small sample size.

I’ve personally had managers notify the department (the staff that’s not being cut) before the company knew. Have any of you had similar experiences ?

: Edit x2 : Layoff happened. Lost 3 people (including my director) , 2 people remain (1 of which is me.) Yay for dysfunction. It was already a shitshow. Now it’s just amped. All good.

If you’re just now reading this. Assume you do know who is getting laid off, would you tell your remaining department members, any of them?

This is the 8th layoff I’ve survived in the last 8+ years. I’ve never been laid off myself. At this point I’ve started calling myself the grim reaper. 🪦 Happy Friday everyone.

You know the ones. There used to be 100s that turned up when you searched for Infrastructure or Vmware or Microsoft, etc.

Now..nothing. Literally nothing turning up. Everyone seems to want developers to do DevOps, completely forgetting that the Ops part is the thing that Developers have always been crap at.

Edit: Thanks All. I've been training with Terraform, Python and looking at Pulumi over the last couple of months. I know I can do all of this, I just feel a bit weird applying for jobs with titles, I haven't had anymore. I'm seeing architect positions now that want hands on infrastructure which is essentially what I've been doing for 15 odd years. It's all very strange.

once again, thanks all.

I am the only tech person for a company I work for. I oversee onboarding, security, servers, and finance reports, etc. I am looking for some insight.

Recently one user had their account compromised. As far back as last month July 10th. We had a security meeting the 24th and we were going to have conditional access implemented. Was assured by our tech service that it would be implemented quickly. The CA would be geolocking basically. So now around the 6th ( the day the user mentioned he was getting MFA notifications for something he is not doing) I reset his password early in the morning, revoke sessions, reset MFA etc. Now I get to work and I am told we lost 500k. The actor basically impersonated the user (who had no access to finances to begin with) and tricked the 'medium' by cc'ing our accountant ( the cc was our accountants name with an obviously wrong domain, missing a letter). The accountant was originally cc'd and told them, "no, wire the amount to the account we always send to". So the actor fake cc'd them and said, "no John Smith with accounting, we do it this way". They originally tried this the 10th of last month but the fund went to the right account and the user did not see the attempt in the email since policy rerouting.

The grammar was horrible in the emails and was painfully obvious this was not our user. Now they are asking me what happened and how to prevent this. Told them the user probably fell for a AITMA campaign internally or externally. Got IPs coming from phoenix, New jersey, and France. I feel like if we had the CA implemented we would have been alerted sooner and had this handled. The tech service does not take any responsibility basically saying, "I sent a ticket for it to be implemented, not sure why it was not".

The 6th was the last day we could have saved the money. Apparently that's when the funds were transferred and the actors failed to sign in. Had I investigated it further I could have found out his account was compromised a month ago. I assumed since he was getting the MFA notifications that they did not get in, but just had his password.

The user feels really bad and says he never clicks on links etc. Not sure what to do here now, and I had a meeting with my boss last month about this thing happening. They were against P2 Azure and device manager subscriptions because $$$ / Big brother so I settled with Geolocking CA.

What can I do to prevent this happening? This happened already once, and nothing happened then since we caught it thankfully. Is there anything I can do to see if something suspicious happens with a user's account?

Edit: correction, the bank wasn't tricked, moreso the medium who was sending the funds to the bank account to my knowledge. Why they listened to someone that was not the accountant, I dont know. Again, it was not the bank but a guy who was wiring money to our bank. First time around the funds were sent to the correct account directed by the accountant. Second time around the compromised user directed the funds go to another account and to ignore our accountant (fake ccd accountsnt comes woth 0 acknowledgement). The first time around layed the foundation for the second months account.

Edit 2: found the email the user clicked on.... one of those docusign things where you scan the pdf attachment. Had our logo and everything

Edit 3: Just wanna say thanks to everyone for their feeback. According to our front desk, my boss and the ceo of the tech service we pay mentioned how well I performed/ found all this stuff out relating to the incident. I basically got all the logs within 3 hours of finding out, and I found the email that compromised the user today. Thankfully, my boss is going to give the greenlight to more security for this company. Also we are looking to find fault in the 3rd party who sent the funds to the wrong account.

I saw this advice in another thread here, and was wondering, do you think forcing yourself to "be curious" actually helps, or works? Is this something you've taught yourself or something you've always had in your life?

Currently a sole admin for an org with 297 users. Woke up to my accounts blocked and thought we were under attack.

Turns out the directors thought that people could self manage the Windows server and their IT needs. It’s all part of their restructuring efforts to reduce costs. I’m suffering from the flu so I don’t have the energy to argue with the line of thought that granting server admin to managers with no IT experience isn’t a good idea.

Anyway, they haven’t contacted me to confirm anything in writing/phone call. I’m slightly concerned that this self managing idea is going to backfire on me somehow as it’s not in writing.

Would I be liable for anything given that I have no access to any of my admin accounts? Any words of advice?

Thanks.

For me it's quite a few things...

1. The smart fridge in our lunch room
2. Turning the TV on when people have meetings. Like it's my responsibility to lift a remote for them and click a button...
3. I was told that since televisions are part of IT, I was responsible to run cables through a concrete floor and water seal it by myself without the use of a contractor. Then re installing the floor mats with construction adhesive.... like.... what?

Anyways let me know the dumbest thing management has ever told you that IT was responsible for

Thanks

Hey All

I have a client who is pushing back hard on Microsoft MFA on their cell phones. They're refusing app, text message, and personal E-Mail, on the basis they're afraid of their personal data being compromised. I tried to share that I use this personally, I use it with other clients, some of which are 800+ users in size.

Does anyone have any resources that I can share that MFA is not only safe to use, but a security standard? The best part is, this is a 4 person org.

thanks again for the help guys. I got all the input I needed