4 ms·

This is not a promotion, this is making you to do something you have no experience with and making you do the job what the fired person done besides yours. Also

This is not a promotion, this is making you to do something you have no experience with and making you do the job what the fired person done besides yours. Also being responsible for the whole IT infrastructure alone is definitely what I would not do without any experience. If that’s how the company handles this, I would start to look for a new job immediately.

evercast 5y ago
Precisely this. If the management is willing to put an unexperienced person at the steering wheel of the company's IT infrastructure, it is a clear red flag. This is not to depreciate OP's talents. Instead, it sounds like the management has no idea what they are doing. Start looking for another place.
daedlanth 5y ago
This is excellent advice right here.
endymi0n 5y ago
While there's certainly something that rings a warning bell here, let me present a counter-opinion: The biggest strides in my career have been the ones where I had to stretch the farthest. It always felt scary as hell, but with a bit of "fake it until you make it", these phases served me as massive boosters for learning, career and personal development. I didn't have too many indications to read if the culture over there is okay, but if it isn't shitty and you manage to get some support and allies higher up, filling the position properly and saving that company's ass might pay off very well for you despite the stress involved. YMMV.
- loriverkutya 5y ago
  The indication of the culture for me is pretty clear from the followings: - no indication in the post that they going to hire a new person - If your company IT infra is down, you are probably dead in the water, leaving it to be managed by a single person who does not have any IT infra management experience is a pretty bad business decision - No indication in the post that the person offered any training or anything - my experience with 1 person responsible for IT support/management/sysadmin jobs are that they are 24/7, which leads to burnout and mental health issues
  - throwaway984393 5y ago
    I agree that it sounds like a tire fire. But he can also leave whenever he wants. So until it becomes too stressful, he's actually got something of an opportunity to learn a huge amount in a small time by trial and error. It's not like they're going to fire him for any mistakes at this point! He can always quit when he gets sick of it, but until then, it seems like a great (though challenging, of course) opportunity. And he'll have a great story to tell in his next job interviews: "how I was put in the hot seat and saved the day"
- rewgs 5y ago
  Absolutely agreed.
cmaggiulli 5y ago
If he received a new job title and a salary increase it’s a promotion
denton-scratch 5y ago
You now have a shitty job! I enjoy sysadmin, partly because of the variety of problems you are called-on to solve. But the fact is, if you do the job well, and everything works well, nobody gives you any credit. When things go wrong everybody will be looking at you, and if you haven't fixed it within 20 minutes, then you must be incompetent. So you're the only sysadmin in a multi-campus company? As someone noted up-thread, you can't do it alone. At least, you need someone on each site that can act as remote hands for you, even if that's not their main job. And you need people to delegate grunt work to - repetitive stuff, like building workstations for new hires. That's IT, but it's not sysadmin. Get some interesting hardware to take home and play with. Stuff like smart switches and firewall boxes (the same gear your employer uses). GNU/Linux has much better networking tools than Windows; if you're in a Windows shop, get a laptop with Linux on it. Whenever you do a manual job you've never done before, let part of the job be automating it, so you never have to do it by hand again. Let the automation scripts be the documentation. Learn to be pessimistic (a common sysadmin trait). If you have bad news, don't ever sugar-coat it. Things might not be as bad as you thought, in which case your reputation is improved. But what people don't want to hear is that the job takes two hours; and then find after two hours that it's a two-day job. If you can get yourself a full-time assistant/colleague, work as a pair when you can. It reduces stress a lot if you have someone checking your work as you do it (and your decisions). And you end up with two people knowing the systems, not just one. Get a hardback A4 notebook, and record everything you do. In theory, you have a lot of power (c.f. BOFH). http://bofharchive.com/ http://bofharchive.com/ You know stuff others don't, and you have superuser powers everywhere. Don't abuse it. Be as helpful as you can. People will be nice to you if they know they might need your help one day. The BOFH was a tyrant, and I don't think he'd get far in a modern business (the BOFH worked in a university IT department, and was God; a sysadmin in a modern business can't behave like the BOFH).*
- DnDGrognard 5y ago
  Re Laptop make sure you have one that has a serial port and all the custom cables to plug into the switches / routers etc. (possibly having a second laptop for redundancy) And seconding the physical logbook.

evercast 5y ago

Precisely this. If the management is willing to put an unexperienced person at the steering wheel of the company's IT infrastructure, it is a clear red flag. This is not to depreciate OP's talents. Instead, it sounds like the management has no idea what they are doing. Start looking for another place.

daedlanth 5y ago

This is excellent advice right here.

endymi0n 5y ago

While there's certainly something that rings a warning bell here, let me present a counter-opinion: The biggest strides in my career have been the ones where I had to stretch the farthest. It always felt scary as hell, but with a bit of "fake it until you make it", these phases served me as massive boosters for learning, career and personal development. I didn't have too many indications to read if the culture over there is okay, but if it isn't shitty and you manage to get some support and allies higher up, filling the position properly and saving that company's ass might pay off very well for you despite the stress involved. YMMV.

loriverkutya 5y ago
The indication of the culture for me is pretty clear from the followings: - no indication in the post that they going to hire a new person - If your company IT infra is down, you are probably dead in the water, leaving it to be managed by a single person who does not have any IT infra management experience is a pretty bad business decision - No indication in the post that the person offered any training or anything - my experience with 1 person responsible for IT support/management/sysadmin jobs are that they are 24/7, which leads to burnout and mental health issues
- throwaway984393 5y ago
  I agree that it sounds like a tire fire. But he can also leave whenever he wants. So until it becomes too stressful, he's actually got something of an opportunity to learn a huge amount in a small time by trial and error. It's not like they're going to fire him for any mistakes at this point! He can always quit when he gets sick of it, but until then, it seems like a great (though challenging, of course) opportunity. And he'll have a great story to tell in his next job interviews: "how I was put in the hot seat and saved the day"
rewgs 5y ago
Absolutely agreed.

cmaggiulli 5y ago

If he received a new job title and a salary increase it’s a promotion

denton-scratch 5y ago

You now have a shitty job! I enjoy sysadmin, partly because of the variety of problems you are called-on to solve. But the fact is, if you do the job well, and everything works well, nobody gives you any credit. When things go wrong everybody will be looking at you, and if you haven't fixed it within 20 minutes, then you must be incompetent. So you're the only sysadmin in a multi-campus company? As someone noted up-thread, you can't do it alone. At least, you need someone on each site that can act as remote hands for you, even if that's not their main job. And you need people to delegate grunt work to - repetitive stuff, like building workstations for new hires. That's IT, but it's not sysadmin. Get some interesting hardware to take home and play with. Stuff like smart switches and firewall boxes (the same gear your employer uses). GNU/Linux has much better networking tools than Windows; if you're in a Windows shop, get a laptop with Linux on it. Whenever you do a manual job you've never done before, let part of the job be automating it, so you never have to do it by hand again. Let the automation scripts be the documentation. Learn to be pessimistic (a common sysadmin trait). If you have bad news, don't ever sugar-coat it. Things might not be as bad as you thought, in which case your reputation is improved. But what people don't want to hear is that the job takes two hours; and then find after two hours that it's a two-day job. If you can get yourself a full-time assistant/colleague, work as a pair when you can. It reduces stress a lot if you have someone checking your work as you do it (and your decisions). And you end up with two people knowing the systems, not just one. Get a hardback A4 notebook, and record everything you do. In theory, you have a lot of power (c.f. BOFH). http://bofharchive.com/ http://bofharchive.com/ You know stuff others don't, and you have superuser powers everywhere. Don't abuse it. Be as helpful as you can. People will be nice to you if they know they might need your help one day. The BOFH was a tyrant, and I don't think he'd get far in a modern business (the BOFH worked in a university IT department, and was God; a sysadmin in a modern business can't behave like the BOFH).*

DnDGrognard 5y ago
Re Laptop make sure you have one that has a serial port and all the custom cables to plug into the switches / routers etc. (possibly having a second laptop for redundancy) And seconding the physical logbook.