So I’ve been working at the same company for 5 years now, managing the IT infrastructure as the System Admin, Security Admin, Deployment Planner, Research person, Network Person and a whole range of other job roles that I don’t care to mention.
I’m 27 years old now. Just over 2 years ago, the company I’m at went through some changes, which included a management buyout, moving away from being a subsidiary of a global multinational,(with hundereds of internation IT staff available for help),to a local owned and operated independent company.
With these changes came a huge change in my responsibilities and requirements for my job role.
Also during the change negotiations many people left fearing job cuts and other problems, my boss, and I were left from the original 4 people.
The new company required a complete revamp of its IT infrastructure, as being the far away blip on a multinationals screen does not lend itself to high IT budgets but rather hand me down hardware from all over the world.
It started with new domain registrations, New Lotus Domino Mail Infrastructure on new Servers, then went to Active Directory Rollout, New Antivirus and Firewalls, new internet service providers and upgraded network devices. Hard to believe, but completed single handed by myself and maintained till this day :-)?
Novell gone 🙁 M$ in… New SQL based ERP system, which was implemented over a 8 months by consultants which only worked on the ERP package and not the back end servers and SQL, that was left to me. Software Update Service, Trend Officescan, Serverprotect and Scanmail for Domino, Windows XP rollout and migration, Lotus Notes upgrades and setups, Terminal Servers and Test Environments for the ERP, LTO Tape drives and Arcserve Backups, Media Pools and off site tape storage. All the best practices harvested during hours and hours of late nights reading and learning, till the point when one’s brain can’t take any more.
At first I was happy to do this as it was a “new” company, and I was getting great experience doing this from scratch, plus I could finally install everything the Vulcan way, logically, in a way it made sense and had longevity. So I did it.
We then started with the first VPN remote office in another part of the country, then the second, 3, 4, 5, and soon time for me to fly internationally to set up a sales office overseas. We are 5 IT staff now including the IT manager, a System Analyst for the ERP and 2 support staff and myself.
Today there is VoIP, Spyware and Adware, Windows XP Service Pack 2 and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, PDA’s !!!! Terminal services for the remote offices, URL filters to stop people accessing porn all day, antivirus updates from Trend the totally f*cked my entire network on a Saturday because of poorly tested pattern files… and the list keeps growing and growing. Average users skill sets are slipping further and further away from technology being advertised. Blackberries on TV one night and on my desk the next with the “I heard you can get e-mail on one of these…” Policies and procedures that are out of date before I’ve completed them, and Sarbanes Oxley and DRP and System Recovery Procedures.
This leads me to one thing, one problem, which I can’t find an answer for in this borderless job field. How we are going to avoid burnout I have now idea, no one can continue like this for too long, but it’s not stopping. Are we all doomed to suffer from this, with our unclear roles increased responsibilities, ever incomplete knowledge? I can’t see how one can continue amassing huge amounts of information, just be up to date enough, or secure enough to do your daily job…
New technologies are being developed every day, and it does not take too long to hit the mainstream, there are new security flaws and considerations daily. Open source, closed source, tomato sauce…
So now that the data center has been rebuilt, with raised floors and Pyroshield gas, UPS’s and Rack based servers, which are totaling nearly 24, and hundreds of pc’s and 5 WAN offices with 2 Warehouses. There is so much more I can’t even bring myself to type it.
Just the content on the current home page of techrepublic would keep a decent, motivated admin busy for weeks…Unfortunately, I’ve lost my motivation.
Where are we going to end up? I imagine it is somewhere between firefighters and ‘crisps’.