How can a sysadmin stay out of work

And do not get caught

If you are an admin, you have nothing to do, and your company does not need you every day, then you may be cut shortly as unnecessary. In this article, I have gathered the best practices from system administrators who can provide themselves with work so that the company cannot live without them a day. These practices even allow you to build entire IT departments where you had nothing to do. To use them or not - remains at your discretion:

1. Solve any user problems

Put your favorite screensaver on your computer? Stick film on mobile phone? Check two contracts in the Word for a lawyer? To paint the form of the organization? "View" home laptop? Doing work for company employees and doing for them what the company does not need is a reliable way to earn the love of users and get more work. You can even hire additional specialists in the IT department for this - any whim of the company for its money.

2. Handmade - always in price

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If you install the operating system and applications on the user's workplace with one keystroke and 15 minutes, then the company employees may get the impression that the admin has a dustless experience. For this reason, exclude automation in work with users: put operating systems from the disk by entering the license key manually, install applications bye-by-by-by-one, look for drivers for printers on the Internet each time and perform jewelery tuning of systems. Updating the 1C platform on computers is generally a task for a week, rather than two mouse clicks.

3. Do not waste company money on unnecessary personal belongings.

Additional power supply to the server, hot-swap drive, stackable switchboard, sockets and patch panels for networking - you can save the company’s money on them, and it’s because of their absence that management knows that IT failures are not that rare and systemic. the administrator must always be there "just in case."

4. More freedom for users

The absence of restrictions on launching unknown applications, the rights of local administrators on computers, antivirus, controlled by the user - this is what allows users to feel at home and this is what creates the work of the system administrator. Either users put the virus on the computer, then the “extra” files will be deleted from the root of the C drive, the computer will be slowed down due to the number of Internet accelerators installed. Nothing can be done - you can pay for freedom by hiring an extra pair of technical specialists.

5. Buy only branded servers

It is on the server that the company data is stored, and their integrity depends on its quality. If the company does not have enough money to buy a branded server, then you can save on switches, cable networks and user computers - you will ensure their work with your own efforts. It does not matter that for this money it was possible to take two servers easier and update everything else - data integrity does not tolerate the subjunctive mood, and for everything else there is a system administrator.

6. Implement the systems that companies need now

If a company just needs mail, then it can be deployed on free or paid mail hosting. When a company requires that customer letters are always delivered, and the employee being dismissed cannot destroy his correspondence without a trace, you can deploy your simple mail server in the company. When the company needs a little more than just mail, you can go to the "same" mail server. As a result, the mail in the company is one, and the sysadmin has three implementations and two migrations. In doing the same with other systems, the sysadmin will not leave himself without work.

7. Do work quickly

Spending working time on planning is too expensive for the company and delays the timing of the work. Any system can be implemented / modernized once or twice, and all minor defects can be quickly eliminated in a couple of days, or even faster, if there are assistants.

8. Rely on advertising and marketing

If the solution has already been “chosen by thousands of organizations worldwide”, then this is enough to implement it in a company without studying technical details, specifications and test deployment. If the decision turns out to be not as good as it was announced, then it will be possible to hire an individual specialist to maintain it in working condition - after all, thousands of organizations around the world have chosen to do just that.

9. Change equipment only when it cannot be repaired.

The longer the old computers work in the company, the more money the company saves on buying new ones and the more the administrators have to work. You can even hire a specialist to repair old equipment to save the company money even more. Well, about the fact that the office at least a day lived without a sysadmin is even out of the question - problems for every day are guaranteed.

10. Create your own designs

If a company cannot afford to buy some kind of solution, then there is a sysadmin who can put together almost the same system, but cheaper. Yes, it is possible that the solution collected by the administrator will have a couple of small flaws that will require regular maintenance, but this is better than if the company spent a lot of money on the “same” solution. Of course, no one except you will understand this system, but these are trifles - after all, even without this, it will not be easy to dismiss you.

PS:

If you follow the tips listed above, you can completely occupy one IT specialist with a support of 20-30 users, and with an infrastructure size of 100-150 users, you can already create your own IT department for 5-6 people. If you alone serve 50-60 users and they want to cut you down because “the company has maintenance tasks for one day a week” - show this article to the management and let them decide if they want the new admin was always busy or not.

Ivan Kormachev
Company "IT Department"
www.depit.ru