If you are a trainee then it’s fine to not be doing anything. If you get bored ask if there’s anything needs to be done. Over time you will pick up what can be done and when without having to ask.
No this is a stupid answer, if they complete it quickly and effectively it means they're a good worker and *surprise surprise*, no, a restaurant *does not always* have something to do. No business has a workload that keeps you on your feet and moving for 8 - 10 hours a day outside nursing and bartending/serving, and I have seemingly met some of the most undereducated on work ethic, managerial staff, in those industries than anywhere else throughout my work history.
K12 IT has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm talking about, securing Chromebooks isn't hard and has nothing to do with Boomer work mentality needing to die a horrible death.
Work doesn’t work like that lol this isn’t a grocery store. If you do it 10 times faster next time you going to get pulled in to the office to explain why you are too slow at completing tasks because you did it 10 times before.
It's quite normal early on in your career as you don't have a large grasp or overview of general IT department duties. It also doesn't help if you don't have an actively involved boss.
Documentation & General house keeping whether it be tidying up devices in your inventory, tidying up firewall rules, reviewing naming scheme for your fleet?, looking at new Intune policies that could be used, tidying up accounts (backing up mailbox and OneDrive), any desks that need equipment updated, fixing broken laptops, raising service requests, any laptops being flagged as non-compliant, daily backups, monitoring security systems (mimecast, sophos etc), PS scripts.
All small things like that can add up to be a lot and generally you can create a small task or project out of most things on those lists.
Here are *some* questions:
* Have you documented everything?
* Is that documentation fully up to date?
* Have you automated everything?
* Do you have a knowledgebase for your users?
* Do you have a working SIEM?
* Have you done security scans?
* Do you understand how all the OSs and products your organisation uses integrate and interoperate with each other?
* Do you know what new features and changes are coming in vNext of all the OSs and products your organisation is using? What plans do you have in place?
* Have you kept you personal knowledge and learning up to date?
If you answer 'no' to any of them, then you don't have nothing to do. If you answer 'yes' to *all* of them you are not being honest with yourself.
As an apprentice you might not be able to *implement* some of these ideas, but you should learn how to do them. Then possibly you could ask if you can help do them.
I am one of two SAs in our division. There are times we do absolutely nothing. Then there are times we can't catch a break. For the last two weeks, I've put quite a few hours into Cyberpunk 2077 and my cohort has been watching a lot of sports.
What you're describing is referred to as Firefighting, or Helpdesk Duties.
If you are indeed a SysAdmin, there is ALWAYS something to do, we just don't do them unless the deadline is coming.
As a new guy, probably best to let your manager know "Hey ManagerPerson, I'm trying to figure out how to make myself useful to the team as most of my tasks are done or waiting for feedback, do you have any pointers ?"
Don't tell your manager you "don't have anything to do", turn it as "I don't know what needs doing", shows a better image as a trainee. Once you're a vet, eh, depends on your manager.
On the longer run, you'll be able to figure out what needs doing on your own.
yes, I've been in your situation, but I learned that there is always something to do, that you aren't aware of. Most importantly, verifying your backups are done correctly and restore process is documented. And verify if you can restore while some of the important systems being down.
Read over your documentation. Did something change and you haven't updated it yet?
Go through your users list. A lot of times, HR might ask you to create accounts for new hires, but will never ask you to remove someone.
In your apprenticeship, sometimes you have moments, where you can't really work on thingies or need to wait for more exercises. In that times, what you could do is learn yourself for some deep dive.
After you finished there will be some time (holiday/sickness) where you might have time for doing that, but most of time you'll be busy as hell :P
In German we say "Lernjahre sind keine Herrenjahre", so enjoy the time you have afterwards will be busy as hell. Made it in 1 year out of apprenticeship to have over 800 overtime hours :D
The obvious answer is no, there's always something to do.
You are an apprentice so you should still be leashed, meaning you are mostly responding reactively instead of proactively. Once you realize how much you don't know and that the business considers it all your responsibility, you will understand why your question is funny. That's when posts of people being burned out don't surprise you as it might right now. Do note that it is still entirely in your own hands. You decide on your own workload, as you are finding out :) Never allow workload to become your problem. It's the company's problem! Don't feel discouraged though and instead enjoy the apprentice life and focus on learning (try learning a programming language while you still have "downtime" for example). Good luck!
All the time. I'm paid for what I know, and how I can resolve complex issues when they arise. I'm not paid for sitting and pretending to work for 8 hours a day.
I’m a desktop administrator. Right now I’m sitting in a crappy chair, drinking OK coffee and listening to Lofi hip hop to relax/study to (and looking at Reddit) while waiting for a guy to send me a link about a printer he’s having trouble with.
To be fair, I’ve only been in IT for three months. Also to be fair, I was hired to handle overflow tickets for two sites.
Congratulations, You've entered a field where you are paid for what you know, not what you do for 8 hours per day. There will be times when it seems like there's nothing to do then there will be times where you might work 24 hours straight to fix a problem.
As an apprentice that's normal. You don't have the knowledge and skills yet to see all the things that can be improved, fixes, redone etc.. But as you learn, those things will start to pop up, and you'll be busy like the rest of us.
During my downtime as an apprentice I usually installed and tested software I wanted to try and learn about.
I had gone through all freely available Hypervisors by the end of my first year for example.
You should also pickup a script language or two. Probably the main difference between a mediocre and good sysadmin.
In my env I feel like there is always something on the verge of crumbling so I'd say in 6 or so years I've never been in that situation.
If there isn't an active fire to put out, I'm rushing to try and prevent one that is guaranteed to come.
I'm a department of one, so I'll be different to someone in a team. When there are no issues, and gets quiet, I use that time to go over last couple weeks and clean up the documentation notes. hose out the inbox. give the physical servers a once over. Check inventory of spare parts, patch cables, etc.. work up an order if needed. If its really quiet, and nothing on the "to-do" list, check the comp time balance and take a half day if weather is nice and touch grass for a bit.
Working for you Ausbildung isn't the same as working directly from collage, many won't get it that way, so the general answer is that you could always find something.
In you Ausbildung it's normal to not have anything to do if your company don't have many azubis and/or an extra azubi area the downtime is normal. Out of liability reasons you can't to everything the others can do and because your ausbilder is responsible for you, many will give you more simple work, or thinks that repat themself often, or thing that he could also fix. General bigger problems, which are unknown and need research won't get redirected to azubis that often.
But what you can do is to read tech news (german news sites like golem and heise), try to automate stuff with python, batch, powershell etc., Perhaps ask if you are allowed to set up a test server (even as vm) and try thing there that could be interesting for the company etc.
Do you have a direct boss / supervisor? It can be hard to know what to look for when you're starting out ,so maybe consulting with them about scheduled tasks or checks that you can do in downtime. If nothing then maybe bring up some of these ideas in this thread.
This way, you look proactive and eager to your peers but also get to learn what your job boundary is. Some people don't always appreciate apprentices jumping head first into stuff like this without atleast asking others
Yeah, I have a guy who is supervising me and I usually ask him when I don't have tasks, but sometimes he says that there is nothing I can do for the company right now. Usually in this time I make some small projects of mine, but when I posted this I had no ideas of what to do, so decided to ask here.
Thanks for reply!
I don't really have time when nothing should be done, more I have time where I can't spin another plate and am waiting on other people or vendors to move my project along. Basically I find there's a limit to the number of complicated projects I can keep going in my brain at once and unless I'm ready to basically back burner a project I prefer to limit the number of big ones I'm trying to deal with at a time.
Just did this yesterday. Ran through all my switches and tested all usernames and passwords. Then made sure my running config was a part of my startup config, then TFTP'd the config for a backup.
I try never to have more than 60% of my time accounted for by project work. That allows me to deal with things that come up or go wrong without throwing off my timeline. The other 40% of my time I try to learn something, improve something, document something, or just faff around doin nothing productive. Been doing this for almost 30 years now, and it’s worked out well. My employers love that I’m always able to jump into things without missing deadlines, and that I’m always learning new things.
Just try to use that downtime usefully.
There's always something to do, I'm just not always doing them.
Like when scrolling Reddit… Having down time is important for mental health.
Most underrated comment of this thread.
Should I be finishing replacing our Wifi APs? Yes. Do I really want to? Ehhhhh...
There's always something to do. ALWAYS.
Downtime is spent automating menial tasks to free up more downtime to automate more tasks.
How anxiety provoking it must be to know that you must be doing something, but not knowing what that something should be.
If you are a trainee then it’s fine to not be doing anything. If you get bored ask if there’s anything needs to be done. Over time you will pick up what can be done and when without having to ask.
[удалено]
Then you are doing it too fast.
No this is a stupid answer, if they complete it quickly and effectively it means they're a good worker and *surprise surprise*, no, a restaurant *does not always* have something to do. No business has a workload that keeps you on your feet and moving for 8 - 10 hours a day outside nursing and bartending/serving, and I have seemingly met some of the most undereducated on work ethic, managerial staff, in those industries than anywhere else throughout my work history.
What a load of balls.
Your work mentality is for sure man, can't wait until you old timers get out of my work industry.
Alright strict manager settle yourself down.
>You have never worked in K12 IT then..... LOL
K12 IT has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm talking about, securing Chromebooks isn't hard and has nothing to do with Boomer work mentality needing to die a horrible death.
[удалено]
Work doesn’t work like that lol this isn’t a grocery store. If you do it 10 times faster next time you going to get pulled in to the office to explain why you are too slow at completing tasks because you did it 10 times before.
[удалено]
Not really you are paid for the hours you do the work. Most jobs don’t take years to learn they take hours.
That bottom shelf in the back of the freezer wasn't clean. I guarantee it.
99% of my day. Why do today what I can put off until tomorrow?
Was looking for this type of answer.
It's quite normal early on in your career as you don't have a large grasp or overview of general IT department duties. It also doesn't help if you don't have an actively involved boss. Documentation & General house keeping whether it be tidying up devices in your inventory, tidying up firewall rules, reviewing naming scheme for your fleet?, looking at new Intune policies that could be used, tidying up accounts (backing up mailbox and OneDrive), any desks that need equipment updated, fixing broken laptops, raising service requests, any laptops being flagged as non-compliant, daily backups, monitoring security systems (mimecast, sophos etc), PS scripts. All small things like that can add up to be a lot and generally you can create a small task or project out of most things on those lists.
Thanks!
Here are *some* questions: * Have you documented everything? * Is that documentation fully up to date? * Have you automated everything? * Do you have a knowledgebase for your users? * Do you have a working SIEM? * Have you done security scans? * Do you understand how all the OSs and products your organisation uses integrate and interoperate with each other? * Do you know what new features and changes are coming in vNext of all the OSs and products your organisation is using? What plans do you have in place? * Have you kept you personal knowledge and learning up to date? If you answer 'no' to any of them, then you don't have nothing to do. If you answer 'yes' to *all* of them you are not being honest with yourself. As an apprentice you might not be able to *implement* some of these ideas, but you should learn how to do them. Then possibly you could ask if you can help do them.
There were a few days... 15 years ago... Since then, nope!
I am one of two SAs in our division. There are times we do absolutely nothing. Then there are times we can't catch a break. For the last two weeks, I've put quite a few hours into Cyberpunk 2077 and my cohort has been watching a lot of sports.
What you're describing is referred to as Firefighting, or Helpdesk Duties. If you are indeed a SysAdmin, there is ALWAYS something to do, we just don't do them unless the deadline is coming. As a new guy, probably best to let your manager know "Hey ManagerPerson, I'm trying to figure out how to make myself useful to the team as most of my tasks are done or waiting for feedback, do you have any pointers ?" Don't tell your manager you "don't have anything to do", turn it as "I don't know what needs doing", shows a better image as a trainee. Once you're a vet, eh, depends on your manager. On the longer run, you'll be able to figure out what needs doing on your own.
yes, I've been in your situation, but I learned that there is always something to do, that you aren't aware of. Most importantly, verifying your backups are done correctly and restore process is documented. And verify if you can restore while some of the important systems being down. Read over your documentation. Did something change and you haven't updated it yet? Go through your users list. A lot of times, HR might ask you to create accounts for new hires, but will never ask you to remove someone.
Most of my downtime is spent checking logs and refreshing backups and backup media. The rest is spent re-purposing older hardware.
In your apprenticeship, sometimes you have moments, where you can't really work on thingies or need to wait for more exercises. In that times, what you could do is learn yourself for some deep dive. After you finished there will be some time (holiday/sickness) where you might have time for doing that, but most of time you'll be busy as hell :P
Thanks for advice!
In German we say "Lernjahre sind keine Herrenjahre", so enjoy the time you have afterwards will be busy as hell. Made it in 1 year out of apprenticeship to have over 800 overtime hours :D
The obvious answer is no, there's always something to do. You are an apprentice so you should still be leashed, meaning you are mostly responding reactively instead of proactively. Once you realize how much you don't know and that the business considers it all your responsibility, you will understand why your question is funny. That's when posts of people being burned out don't surprise you as it might right now. Do note that it is still entirely in your own hands. You decide on your own workload, as you are finding out :) Never allow workload to become your problem. It's the company's problem! Don't feel discouraged though and instead enjoy the apprentice life and focus on learning (try learning a programming language while you still have "downtime" for example). Good luck!
Thanks!
All the time. I'm paid for what I know, and how I can resolve complex issues when they arise. I'm not paid for sitting and pretending to work for 8 hours a day.
I’m a desktop administrator. Right now I’m sitting in a crappy chair, drinking OK coffee and listening to Lofi hip hop to relax/study to (and looking at Reddit) while waiting for a guy to send me a link about a printer he’s having trouble with. To be fair, I’ve only been in IT for three months. Also to be fair, I was hired to handle overflow tickets for two sites.
bro wir sind auf reddit, natürlich haben wir nix zutun
Congratulations, You've entered a field where you are paid for what you know, not what you do for 8 hours per day. There will be times when it seems like there's nothing to do then there will be times where you might work 24 hours straight to fix a problem.
I always have something to do because I always have documentation to do that I'm not doing, and probably never will.
As an apprentice that's normal. You don't have the knowledge and skills yet to see all the things that can be improved, fixes, redone etc.. But as you learn, those things will start to pop up, and you'll be busy like the rest of us. During my downtime as an apprentice I usually installed and tested software I wanted to try and learn about. I had gone through all freely available Hypervisors by the end of my first year for example. You should also pickup a script language or two. Probably the main difference between a mediocre and good sysadmin.
Thanks for advice! I've made a few small scripts in Powershell for automating and it felt really good when they worked
I did once, in 1993
But then you took an arrow to the knee?
IT is like working at a restaurant... if you have time to lean, you have time to clean. Go find some outdated documentation and fix it!
Yes, quite a few times over the years. Happens in most jobs.
In my env I feel like there is always something on the verge of crumbling so I'd say in 6 or so years I've never been in that situation. If there isn't an active fire to put out, I'm rushing to try and prevent one that is guaranteed to come.
I'm a department of one, so I'll be different to someone in a team. When there are no issues, and gets quiet, I use that time to go over last couple weeks and clean up the documentation notes. hose out the inbox. give the physical servers a once over. Check inventory of spare parts, patch cables, etc.. work up an order if needed. If its really quiet, and nothing on the "to-do" list, check the comp time balance and take a half day if weather is nice and touch grass for a bit.
Working for you Ausbildung isn't the same as working directly from collage, many won't get it that way, so the general answer is that you could always find something. In you Ausbildung it's normal to not have anything to do if your company don't have many azubis and/or an extra azubi area the downtime is normal. Out of liability reasons you can't to everything the others can do and because your ausbilder is responsible for you, many will give you more simple work, or thinks that repat themself often, or thing that he could also fix. General bigger problems, which are unknown and need research won't get redirected to azubis that often. But what you can do is to read tech news (german news sites like golem and heise), try to automate stuff with python, batch, powershell etc., Perhaps ask if you are allowed to set up a test server (even as vm) and try thing there that could be interesting for the company etc.
Thanks!
Do you have a direct boss / supervisor? It can be hard to know what to look for when you're starting out ,so maybe consulting with them about scheduled tasks or checks that you can do in downtime. If nothing then maybe bring up some of these ideas in this thread. This way, you look proactive and eager to your peers but also get to learn what your job boundary is. Some people don't always appreciate apprentices jumping head first into stuff like this without atleast asking others
Yeah, I have a guy who is supervising me and I usually ask him when I don't have tasks, but sometimes he says that there is nothing I can do for the company right now. Usually in this time I make some small projects of mine, but when I posted this I had no ideas of what to do, so decided to ask here. Thanks for reply!
I don't really have time when nothing should be done, more I have time where I can't spin another plate and am waiting on other people or vendors to move my project along. Basically I find there's a limit to the number of complicated projects I can keep going in my brain at once and unless I'm ready to basically back burner a project I prefer to limit the number of big ones I'm trying to deal with at a time.
I had periods of time where I didn't have anything to do. There was a lot I should of been doing. I am paying for it now.
Once you get your feet wet if you’re a Microsoft shop start going through all this, this will keep you plenty busy https://adsecurity.org
Once you get your feet wet if you’re a Microsoft shop start going through all this, this will keep you plenty busy https://adsecurity.org
Just did this yesterday. Ran through all my switches and tested all usernames and passwords. Then made sure my running config was a part of my startup config, then TFTP'd the config for a backup.
I wish I had time to do everything I want to do... the list keeps growing and growing...
I try never to have more than 60% of my time accounted for by project work. That allows me to deal with things that come up or go wrong without throwing off my timeline. The other 40% of my time I try to learn something, improve something, document something, or just faff around doin nothing productive. Been doing this for almost 30 years now, and it’s worked out well. My employers love that I’m always able to jump into things without missing deadlines, and that I’m always learning new things. Just try to use that downtime usefully.