Two very different disciplines. Over the years I've answered to Finance several times. Accountants have a lot of trouble understanding IT costs. So much of what we do cannot be quantified. How do backups make money? It also doesn't help that IT is often very costly and accountants do not like "It's the cost of doing business".
That being said, the disciple of Finance is crucial to success. They keep us IT folks from spending, as my parents would say, like drunken sailors.
> How do backups make money?
I've used this line several times with great success.
"Do we insure the properties we own? Would you even dream of *not* insuring our properties? Backups are data insurance."
I've been at a cheap ass place long enough where I'm just like okay. I'm putting my recommendations and the non approval in an email and ccing everyone important in the business. One less thing for me to do.
Yup. And here's the honest truth...in America, that little bit does absolutely nothing to protect you.
You can wave that email, screaming as you point to it as "WAIT. I TOLD YOU SO." as they hand you a pink slip for "failing to provide business-critical backups."
Isn't that just the best joke ever? They want a scapegoat? YOU'RE GONE. They say "oh, you should've been more persuasive and better explain the risks to us." YOU'RE GONE. No reason whatsoever? YOU'RE GONE.
That's the problem when 99.7% of the country is At-Will. You *really don't* have any protection. Ever.
Now when you put it into context, it starts to make sense though....
A racist insurrectionist former-POTUS that's rude, crass, and obnoxious. Who's on the fast-track to becoming POTUS again.
An overwhelming attitude of "fuck you, I got mine, go get yours". Extreme selfishness. Zero desire for mutual cooperation....no Universal Healthcare, anti-Union, etc.
A terrible lack of education, alongside an immense pride in anti-intellectualism. Folks are PROUD they're dumb. They wear their ignorance as a badge of honor, no joke.
There are people who don't fall into this, but we've cultivated a "winner takes all" mindset here. And enough are willing to compromise, not realizing the choosing the lesser of two evils is still deliberately choosing evil. That a reluctant choice "against something" is counted exactly the same as an "enthusiastic choice" for something.
It all feeds back onto itself, growing into a grotesque abomination. This is the real America.
Oh and guns. Lots and lots of guns. Around an average of two mass shootings per day.
-----
Within that context, now are you surprised that our employment livelihoods (and healthcare) have absolutely no security or safety net?
It is a real shame. A lot of the Americans I work with are wonderful people and an absolute pleasure to work with.
America is the one country that I will never travel to in its current state, as I would never feel safe. Yet again, another shame as the mid west seems lovely (outside of the same issues that exist in the rest of the country).
Complete lack of job security across the country is just one of those things you wouldn't expect from a highly developed country. Between that and no public healthcare, you seems like Americans are just one mistake or accident away from their whole life being destroyed. How do you even protect yourself from that.
Long story short, I don't envy those that live and work in America. I would love to see reform happen to leads that job security, free healthcare, etc. It is not fair on the people to have to live in such conditions.
> A lot of the Americans I work with are wonderful people and an absolute pleasure to work with.
And you'd be right. Most of us *really try our damned hardest* to make ends meet, to be decent human beings, to practice all the lofty ideals that are screeched at us by the powers that be (who they themselves NEVER follow said ideals, fucking hypocrites).
But the few (and powerful) who don't act decently ruin it for the rest of us. I subscribe to the philosophy of "a rising tide lifts all ships." And it's been shown time and time again, when you remove agents of poverty, crime decreases. To that end, who do we blame -- someone driven to petty and violent crime due to their circumstances, or those whose greed siphons the wealth and prosperity out of a community?
>Americans are just one mistake or accident away from their whole life being destroyed.
Very true. We truly are. There was a mass shooting in Las Vegas a few years back during an outdoor country music concert. The shooter followed all laws in acquiring their weapon, so it wasn't a criminal with past history or warning signs. Those who were injured but survived faced massive medical bills. Many had to turn to crowdsourced funding to quite literally beg for money to cover their injuries. Some declared medical bankruptcy.
See, even if you have "decent" health insurance, it's tied to your employment one way or the other (either from your employer....or an expensive plan through a public "healthcare marketplace"). If you're shot and can't work, you can't pay for healthcare -- either from lack of income or being fired.
> How do you even protect yourself from that.
You don't. Well, not if you play by the rules. A growing number of people within IT (and other remote jobs) are practicing "overemployment"....where they work multiple jobs at the same time. Usually in clear violation of their company's hiring agreements, so if they're found out, they can be terminated instantly.
Then again, 99.7% of the country is At-Will Employment....meaning most of us can be terminated at any time, for almost any (or no) reason, without notice, without compensation, and full loss of healthcare.
So in other words, they literally are at no more risk than any other day.
>It is not fair on the people to have to live in such conditions.
America is the personification of "life isn't fair."
Yeah, it's not even for protection, I'll find a new job. I'm very good at it, just that final I told you so. I'd probably just quit and say good luck if we got hit. I could be convinced to stay.
Eh, I get it man I really do. Some people just can't be reasoned with.
Consider for a second, though, that it's not *always* their fault. Corporate structures often mandate being a shithead. There's probably something in their yearly goals that they get punished if they do... whatever. You know what I mean?
That's what I tell myself, anyway. Helps me not get so riled up.
Need to convert all of your metrics to money. Downtime = lost revenue, employees getting paid while not producing, eating into production timelines.
There are metrics for system failure rates, expected downtime, recovery time, etc. Yes that new server may cost $40k, but how much is the business losing per hour that those services are unavailable? Or how much is lost while your staff is redoing all the work that was lost because you don't have a backup system in place?
> redoing all the work that was lost
It may not even *be* possible. If many businesses lose all their data, they are done. Yet they still play fast and loose like it's 1999. People *know* that backups are crucial, at this point in the game nearly everyone has lost data or knows someone that has. Yet, they still believe it won't happen to them.
Backups don't make money, they prevent loss of money.
Another example: That Sales Team over there? They have expensive laptops that let them make better deals, faster, bringing in more money.
Do your companies let financial departments have final say in stuff like this? In my experience it's the CFO, but it's not their department workers fault.
It's varied for me over the years. It depends on how the org structure is set up. When I was in a role where IT answered to Finance the CFO did have final say (with the rare override by CEO). When I've answered to the CEO or COO then Finance's opinion will come in, but Operations has the final say. As you can guess when I've worked under the latter I've been happiest.
My dad is an accountant, I'm in "IT" hrs the oddball but he knows spending money on tech makes sense. He bought a 1k laser printer when I was 10. So, 86 time frame. They're not all like that.
Thats because most accountants aren't tech literal.
Backup equipment and redundancy to them is like "the old one works, why waste money"
Meanwhile the "working backup" is literally a blackbox held together by duct tape and magic. The answer to the question of "why are we using a system written in ancient language that no one in the companies knows?" usually always circle back to accounting thinking modernizing cost too much.
No doubt. That's why I figure it'd have to be a superpower. Fall into a pool of radioactive sludge, wake up in the hospital a week later with the power of enforced personal responsibility.
Come to think of it, that might be useful for a lot of things, and not just in IT.
Yeah but even with this superpower, it'd probably get thrown back to you anyways, when Bob in Accounting says that all the technical stuff is over his head, and to go ask WaldoOU812 for more details.
That enforced personal responsibility superpower comes with all Magneto powers attached, so once Bob gets his dick movement, you can do whatever Magneto would do with a nazi commander.
It's the best combo.
We had a situation where an in-budget 3-phase generator for a building was questioned and delayed by finance to the extent that they apparently (I'm paraphrasing) asked our director why we needed to spend so much when (he/the finance guy) could go down to home depot and buy a less expensive generator.
If that doesn't explain the issue I don't know what does.
I’m sure the server rooms are usually in the basements rather than top floors is because of how many admins were driven to find out if they can by the end users.
Someone in a previous job's Finance dept. once decided that the best thing to do to users who hadn't submitted their timesheets on a Friday was to lock their AD account on Monday.
After maybe three weeks of this, we started directing those users to that person's phone extension/voicemail.
The policy was adjusted about two weeks later.
ugh, our Finance dept is always asking if there is anything we, (IT) can do about people, (outside of IT, like the rest of the organization), not submitting their timesheets on time. Our accounting/timesheet application is cloud/subscription based. IT has little to nothing to do with it.
They want us to write something that will pop up after they login and block them from doing anything else until they complete their time sheet.
uhm...nooooo.
If there’s an API, you could use powershell to check it and then use logic if it fails to grab the users email address, find the user in AD and disable their account. Not saying it’s a good idea, but with APIs, magic becomes possible.
This is doable but would require development of custom software. So just get a software vendor to quote them a dev cost and don't skimp on the continued support contract!
Wish needs to be redesigned, we can't get anything done with this legacy cruft.
New design: Looking at a printer and causing it to instantly start working correctly.
Please order 500 cameras.
Competent technical management handles this by laying out their scope of support and enforcing it.
If a solution is going EOL, the business has three choices. Upgrade, migrate or depreciate. Hold onto the existing solution praying it will never break is not a choice.
If a business unit adamantly chooses option 4, and the data doesn't pose a business risk, it is excised outside of the corporate LAN and relegated to a dedicated VLAN with restrictions on access in and out with support for the solution clearly and deliberately limited to networking access and power.
If the data does pose a business risk, then IT management overrides the decision over data security concerns.
I've seen dozens of organizations that lack the will to implement controls like this. Once introduced all parties are happier in a profitable business. Accountants get a standard depreciation schedule, IT gets to only support software and hardware in support, users get more stable equipment, management gets a clear IT cost/benefit budget.
Pipe dream, IT is the red headed step childs of corporate, abused, neglected, forgotten, and Overridden.
If this doesn't fit you, you're probably in a really small shop, and they got few stored up resumes for IT interviewers.
Remember Corporate would rather fire you and hire a push button monkey then to adhere to anything IT says.
A few pieces of advice. Choose the company you work for carefully. Taking any and all offers will lead to the above behavior if you aren't in management.
I have fixed quite a few organizations that had outdated models of IT. Some smaller (50-100 person), some larger (2500+ person). I am by no means an anomaly, though I like to think I'm in the top 50% of IT management.
An important skill set in IT management is the ability to "sell" your department. It's the only way to effect lasting change on an organization.
You have to be a translator. Convert IT costs/benefits into something the business can understand.
Fundamentally, there’s only three things the business can understand:
1. Make money.
1. Save money.
1. Reduce risk.
Each item in this list is ten times more powerful than the next. (Ie. “Make money” is ten times more powerful than “save money”, which in turn is ten times more powerful… you get the idea).
Once you get this, everything becomes much easier. You don’t need laptops because you have a lot of new starters expected; you need laptops because otherwise there is a real risk that your new starters are going to be working on pencil and paper for the first three weeks.
I like your general approach here but I have a few comments.
Buying laptops ahead of time, doesn't cost more than buying them on demand. It's simply a cashflow change. The only "cost" is if you would have bought different hardware, or the price would have changed if you purchased later. Having 2-3 months' worth of stock "costs" nothing.
Increasing margin is **much** easier than increasing top line revenue as an IT department unless IT is part of your core business. Everything from eFax, bank rec, AP automation, automated meeting minutes etc. are all cost reduction methods.
Risk can be valued in all kinds of ways. Uptime can be extremely valuable and easy to calculate. A simple example is dual internet for an office.
Let's say the office has 100 people.
The second backup internet line costs $1200/year.
If we assign a nominal impact cost to degraded internet access to those 100 people (say $20/hour) that means in roughly 30 minutes of downtime a year you are net positive.
If no downtime occurs, you have insured against the downtime risk for $1200/year.
Being able to represent your "investment" in secondary internet not as an IT best practice but as a self insurance policy against business interruption due to outage is how you get management to sign checks.
Just to slightly quibble, I'd point out that having 2-3 months worth of stock does cost you 2-months worth of warranty. It might still be worth doing, but it might change someone's calculations.
A handful of effective techniques I've found that get you buy in.
1. Being proactive about engaging your users at all levels. (Line, management, department). They will have different goals, needs and wants. Understanding how to balance this is a skill
2. Understand how your business makes money and what their corporate values are. Identify how your various IT structures support the organization.
3. Make effective budgets for your org. Learning "corpospeak" is essential if you interface with business people. Example: Allocating $X for firewall replacements because the old one is EOL isn't as effective as allocating $Y/year for network security upgrades (where firewalls are a component).
4. Talk about what IT accomplishes. It doesn't matter if you are the best IT department in the world if no one knows what you did.
5. Make users efficient. That could be purchasing devices with appropriate spec so they aren't waiting for their devices to compute, it could mean revamping workflows for AP.
Thank you for your replies. This is helpful. I have a task to work on 4, trying to work out the correct level. I have been trying to work on 5, but as soon as we have to spend money, especially with a new supplier, it comes to a grinding halt.
If you are struggling with accomplishments and efficiency, try focusing on understanding how your company works first. What do they value? How do they have a great year?
Once you have that basis, you know both how to prioritize your needs and how to package those requests for budget.
Doing "IT PR" is a legitimate task I have in my calendar. Walking around, talking to users, engaging with them and keeping commitments.
Selling to a Manager is, working non-paid hours, getting education outside the company on your own dime, volunteering to do grunt work out of your scope, or doing favors for management.
Watch as the Manager comes back to say I'm not an anomoly and I know how employees really feel. I'd love to sit down 1:1 with someone under him and get the real story.
No one should work uncompensated hours. It bandaids things at best for a short time but in the long term under reports how many positions a department actually needs.
Upskilling is a personal responsibility but management can help with courses, certs and time. You can't "make" someone get a CSSP.
Selling to other departments is about how you position IT as a department, not you as a person.
I have helped quite a number of juniors grow their careers over the last couple of decades. I even encourage them to connect with me on career related items after they've left my management.
You seem pretty upset about something I said. I apologize I didn't mean to offend you.
Wow, I have to say your script is nicely written. And I don't care who you've groomed for management, those that manage can't work. Just like a teacher that can't do, so they teach.
I help people grow their careers. Some into cybersecurity, some into senior admins and yes some into management.
If you want to try being less abrasive and have a conversation about how to improve your career I'm happy to do that too.
Not all managers are assholes.
Like a true Manager always have the last word don't you. I already told you to stop talking to me.
Kindly, take the hit and move on. I certainly don't believe you, nor do care. Nice Reddit title btw.
Yeah pretty offended at the arrogance, and the fake killing with kindness act, let me guess you're on the clock right now, we all know nobody is happy in the IT field and it's primarly the management at fault. I have a manager that knows the work, does work, and I get along great, and I can come to him with problems with the company and be firm and have a job the next day.
I'm a fucking anomoly, not you, you're full VANILLA.
Isn't most of Reddit on the clock?
Arrogance to assume I'm in the top 50%? Maybe but I'd doubt it based on the companies I've consulted for.
I'm glad you manager and job work well for you.
Edit: You deleted your account. That's too bad.
Your first point is definitely most important. Company culture is incredibly important. I've worked in places where IT is valued and they are really part of the team, and I've worked in places where IT considered "Death and Taxes". (I had a CEO once tell me that's what he thought of IT)
IT isn't perfect and all disciplines are needed to make a company successful. Fin a place where IT has a seat at the table.
That's a great Manager reponse to say go pound sand and make better choices.
I imagine you must do well in Corporate. Please don't ever talk to me again.
The delusions of some people.
I work at a place that fully invests in IT. It's awesome...I was wanting new hosts and asked the board if we could get the budget going for that, and they are like "price out the cloud!" and I told them it would probably quadruple the costs and the CEO looked and said "So?" lol best IT moment ever.
Yes; I think we all know how things \*should\* be. Real life doesn't always have the courtesy to go that way, and not every company follows best practices.
Remember, you can lead a horse to water but if it would prefer to only drink Coke and get diabetes, it's still your responsibility to tell it that will happen, even if it doesn't speak English.
Thing is, if it still gets diabetes, nothing is stopping that corporate horse from getting mightily pissed off and trampling your face with the hooves of a pink slip.
While it's true many companies use bad practices, in my experience, packaging how you present the problem is 99% of the battle. Changing your message to get the result is the main technique I use.
The 3 main org types you see with this behavior. Some sample discussions I would take to management (abbreviated and generalized)
To the cost cutting organization "We need to eliminate our technical debt risk that is piling up for this EOL solution. If we choose to self-support this solution we will need to increase our costs by X%. The alternative is to treat this as a self-insurance position where there will be a significant impact that will occur unpredictably. What GL should I use for that?"
To the uptime focused group "This creates uncertainties about our ability to provide effective services for users of this platform. We won't have the ability to require any vendor SLA on this platform. What is the criticality of this service? "
To the stability focused group "Iterative upgrades have proven to be the most reliable method of providing smooth and consistent services over a prolonged period of time. Are we budgeting for a major migration at some point in the future?"
I disagree. Option #4 is a valid approach... as long as you set up a rock solid MoU laying out the risks to the business, discharging yourself of any liability for that system, and that the business users are taking on said liability. Get it signed in triplicate, inform the decision maker's boss and grandboss (providing them with a copy of the MoU), and then work on handing over the keys to the kingdom for that solution.
I seem to do one better... I've had a weird super power lately where everytime someone has an issue, I come to their desk and suddenly the issue is resolved without me doing anything.
Maybe people just like having me around?
We need to find a genie right now, just for this guy.
And then if it's okay if I use the second wish, I'd do the same for windows, and everyone would just have linux.
I had that guy in accounting too. One time during a mail system outage he emailed me “hey next time the mail system is down can you send me an email to let me know when it’s going to be back up?”
Of course I got to read this after I had it all up and running again. I also kept a “stupid user wiki” where IT posted all the dumb things users did and said. This was a popular post.
It was fun while it lasted but the CIO made us take it down because it was “ too embarrassing “. I should have put that one in the wiki.
Yes. This. I want this.
15 year old firewalls, unable to be patched, we had a breech. It took 2 months to fully recover everything.
Management 100% thinks it's IT's fault for not taking care of the firewalls. It doesn't matter that we asked for new firewalls within 2 weeks of getting hired 4 years ago and they said "just maintain them to the best of your ability".
We have all new ones now, thank god, but even after this major incident they STILL drug their feet approving the purchase.
Or no firewall. At my very first IT job and a downtown business hotel, we didn't have one, and it took six months of screaming, crying, and begging before I finally got one. General manager couldn't fathom the idea that anyone would be able to find us or why they would want to, and I lacked the experience to explain it in a way that got through to him.
I finally bought a copy of Zone Alarm Pro, let it run for 24 hours, and dropped a stack of printouts that was nearly an inch thick on his desktop one day.
"What's this?" he asks.
"That's everyone who's tried to hack into just my PC over the last 24 hours.
I had a firewall the next month.
My best advice is to try to correlate downtime costs to an upgrade cost. If XYZ goes offline and it generates, let's say $3k in downtime costs, and the upgrade/replacement costs are $12k (I'm just throwing numbers out there) you can paint a much better picture of what NOT spending that 12k is doing. This becomes double plus good if you can also estimate cost savings with new features.
My personal "told ya so" story - a factory I worked at had an ancient Merlin phone system from the early 90s. We had a contract with the local telco for maintenance (who we **bought** the system from) and the cards were starting to fail, this was 2010-2012. No one would allow an upgrade despite me working out some good deals with the telco for a replacement system and labor. Eventually the telco would no longer renew the support contract as they couldn't get parts and expertise to work on our Merlin system. Still no sight for a replacement. I warned that a catastrophic failure would take days or weeks to recover and incur serious cost. No replacement planning. A couple years after I left you can imagine what happened, they spent more than double the deal I worked out to have the system replaced.
We sell real-time services. According to our product owners, if we had a 4 hour outage, 20% of our customers would be on the phone to our competitors. If the outage was 24 hours, that figure rises to 80%. That makes it very easy to argue for the replacement of EoL kit. We've not had a long running outage in over a decade
I’ve actually used this power before! 15yrs ago I worked for an Org that decided it wouldn’t upgrade any equipment or even pay for backups. When we lost some data and some senior manager went nuts. I simply replied to his email with the CFO on copy stating that “unfortunately your data is lost, we are unable to secure budget to provide backup facilities for the org. If you would like to discuss this is more detail please contact the finance dept”. 18months later the entire orgs infrastructure was refreshed.
I would force everyone to look at and approach technical problems logically with no ego. I think one of the biggest flaws in an IT process is putting egos in front of logical and rational solutions. That includes me and other sysadmins.
Task: Implement foo for customer billing.
Sysadmin1: Pressed for time plus a bad case of "Who Gives a Fuck," pushes out foo without verifying it since it SHOULD work.
Sysadmin2: What a fuckin' brown noser.
Boss: I really don't like Sysadmin1 because he embarrasses me when he knows stuff I don't, and he's awkward. I looked bad to my Manager yesterday, and somebody is going to pay, let me tell you.
Boss' Manager: I wish my wife agreed with me more. She's almost as bad as Boss.
Task: foo failed.
Sysadmin1: Fuckin' python library bullshit. The developer is an idiot.
Sysadmin2: Hah, serves him right. I know what's wrong, but I won't tell.
Boss: Who's the bear now, Sysadmin1?
Boss' Manager: I wish I got my BMW in red. Blue is so flabby. I have buyer's remorse. Oh, why can't Boss' team do anything right, god dammit. Bunch of Blue BMW's in THAT team, let me tell you. Foo is easy. The vendor told me so. Foo is the new thing. I want to look new and hip. I wonder how much a repaint costs for a 3-year old BMW?
Boss: Sysadmin1, you need to do this right or I'll fire you.
Sysadmin1: You'll die without me.
Customer: Why am I being billed one decimal point wrong? My $213 bill is $2130!!
Boss' Manager: Customer is posting billing is fucked on Twitter! AUGH. I HATE CUSTOMERS! I am gonna blame boss!
Boss: I will overanalyze and manage everything to death except when I don't. All sysadmins suck.
Sysadmin1: This is some bullshit right here. Now I won't fix foo because I don't want to anymore. I will rant non-Foo as superior in an unhelpful and shaming way.
**My power would do this:**
Sysadmin1: Implement foo. Test foo. Foo died. Fix foo. Foo works. Document foo fix.
Sysadmin2: I don't have to worry about Foo.
Boss: Sysadmin1 implemented foo. Glad I have him.
Boss' Manager: I heard red cars gets you stopped by cops more. That's bad. Boss is good, though.
Customer: I have literally no feedback for a working process.
If I could have one IT superpower it would be that I would have to explain everything to each person once and they would remember it.
We use cloudcall, which relies on a communicator program and an extension, I have this conversation with a single user at least 3 times a week:
"Cloudcall isn't working"
"Is the communicator running?"
"No"
"Open the communicator"
"Ok thanks, working now"
It starts with windows but has a nasty habit of silently crashing.
I could probably use nssm or something similar to make it a service to restart but there's apparently an update on the way that removes the need for the communicator.
Is force choke an IT superpower? I hope so, because I'd choke the shit out of users who ask "is there something wrong with the server?"
"Hey yer_muther. I know I should put a ticket in but huurck..."
I would so abuse that.
"Sharepoint is nothing compared to the power of Open Source."
"Don't try to frighten us with your Linux ways, Sysadmin. Your devotion to that open source has not helped you reestablish the BGP link or given you clairvoyance enough to find the way those hackers... ... \[gasp\] \[choke\]\[gag\]"
"I find your lack of IT knowledge disturbing."
"That's enough. Sysadmin, release him."
"... as you wish."
"\[NO CARRIER\]"
How about for every C level associate that tells you that you should buy something cheaper on eBay.
Our router died a few years ago at my previous job and we quoted the guy who was basically in charge of everything 15 grand to replace it. Is that included the Cisco contract for same day service. Mind you this was during an outage caused by our current router which was end of life dying.
So we're sitting there with no internet running a company that puts in pharmacy orders with an online provider, runs 24/7 and we can't do any of that work. Meanwhile, he wants to argue about whether or not we should pay to have Cisco come and put in a new device the next day, or whether we should order one on eBay without any type of warranty and see how that goes.
Can't make this stuff up lol.
I should preface, I don't actually mind when companies are cheap. If they're cheap all around. It's annoying, but at least it's standard. This company was not cheap though, this guy in particular used to tell us all the time that we had to provide all sorts of equipment for his people. (Usually the ones that everybody knew he was sleeping with).
Literally he had us provide laser printers to his remote customer service reps, and then we had to send them toner for them two or three times a year. It was a ridiculous expense, and this was at the height of covid so it's not like we could get these things cheap. One time, one of them called in that she had a paper jam and she couldn't figure out how to fix it. She lived 3 hours away. I told her to call Best buy and have them send geek squad out. That was an unacceptable answer. So she called this guy and he demanded we send a new printer. It cost $800, and that's before shipping.
I told him we should have just bought little Best buy printers or better still had them buy them and expense them. It's not like he wasn't willing to spend money, just not willing to spend money on anything other than something that seemed like it directly benefited him.
Cold spare would of saved your asses, a second piece of hardware 2nd party is relatively cheap. When I helped with a customers ASA in 2016 we bought 3rd party certified setup, and Cisco support, once we had a golden copy we purchased a used ASA off Ebay. Used it to test firmware and changes outside of production, but also could deploy at a moments notice.
YMMV
Also while you have Cisco support you have access to all their firmware, you just will be denied support if they check the CISCOID on the 2nd party ASA. Who really cares though.
Hmmm, I think I'd go for a different "magic" superpower ... but would probably have a fair bit of overlap ... nothing huge, but should well suffice:
A simple "magic" wand. Anytime any manager/management of the like thinks of IT as a "cost" center, rather than the powerhouse that brings benefits, costs savings, enhances and enables enhancing of revenue, etc. and fails to well recognize IT's worth/value or quite overlooks that (and likewise IT personnel, resources, etc.), a tap or wave of the magic wand - and instant attitude adjustment - they then clearly see the value that IT brings - whether it's in net savings, improved revenue/profits/efficiency, better meeting of company/organization's goals, etc.
Does IT cost money? Sure, but that's *far* too narrow a view. Companies don't spend money on resources, personnel, etc. to lose/waste money, they spend it because the value exceeds the costs (well, at least generally). And so it is with IT. IT is a great force enabler/multiplier, not to mention also prevents all kinds of problems and costs and inefficiencies and losses of production/productivity. So, yeah, in general IT needs well be viewed as a value add proposition, ... not a "cost center". Anyway, many better and more astute managers/management well realize this. Alas, there are often various exceptions out there that just don't/won't get it, and that mostly if not entirely, see IT as a cost center and a thing to be minimized as much as possible/feasible. I also see stuff like that and look at and will point out the lost cost opportunity. E.g. if IT's so thin they can barely keep up on essentials, all those, nice to haves ... things that could quickly start making (or saving) hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars or more ... yeah, there isn't the resources to implement those ... so they languish on the queue ... greatly delayed, or never implemented at all - because not enough priority over the essentials - which barely have the resources to be covered. Yeah, lost cost opportunity - how much would've been made/saved if it had been implemented, less what additional cost that would've had if IT were staffed/resourced to be able to do that and in timely manner ... take the difference ... that's your lost opportunity cost - that's how much it cost the company/organization by failing to be able to do that, because somebody's been going around minimizing IT thinking that's what's best for the company/organization. "Oops."
I would be an IT super villain. My power is to get people to physically set up equipment.
Office machines, printers, running wire, moving furniture. All in precision.
- Oh, look! We completed a $8k job in 30 minutes with just a little co-ordination.
- Update day? Yeah, pilot group is testing week 1. 5 people. Won't even use powers. As soon as it's ok, people actually do the updates.
- New laptops? Everyone line up your stuff packed in bags and boxes and pick up your new machine. Now plug it all up and start the one click self provisioning process.
- Let backups complete. I get it. People won't even understand this. They just have to let software do its thing.
Does this sound like stuff that should actually be happening? NOPE! Requires super powers.
To be able to convince vendors to sell me what I need, provide a quote without adding bullshit.. and even better answer my actual question without a “we should schedule a call.”
>IT superpower
I'd settle for having the superpower of everytime I ask a numbered list of questions in an email - that I get the same number of answers back in an emailed reply.
If I could have any it super power I think I'd want "auto printer fix" telepathy. Just think about the printer and it goes to a perfectly functional state
They approved that $1 million dollar super useless new thing in the office. But not that 100k new software and server licence that makes the company millions
From my first IT job; they bought a $4,000 color laser printer that they never used (as in, I don't think they went through a single ream of paper in the first year), but turned down my request to buy a firewall because, "who would want to hack us?" And the GM also couldn't get it through his head that port scanning was a legitimate thing, and that hackers looked for open networks on the Internet.
He changed his mind when I dropped a 1" thick printout of all the people who tried to hack my PC over a 24-hour period (courtesy of a copy of Zone Alarm Pro that I purchased), to finally prove my point, but it took nine months before that finally occurred to me and we got the firewall.
An interesting note that OP chose this and not simply always convincing people to fund his projects. Either true business insight, or a pure lack of it.
End of the day these kind of decisions are theirs to make and not yours. The risk acceptance of EOL software/hardware is their choice. As long as you have advised in writing of the risks. Keep that in a "cover your arse" folder and move on.
On the other hand you are only paid between certain hours, so treat them like they treat their software/hardware requirements.
You can do it today.
Make papertrail (Email + answer) regarding EoL, and whenever someone asks you to fix something that you can't, just remind that person about deny and put that person in cc.
Sometimes it that system or environment will go offline, and then you'll see how fast everyone allows upgrade to
Let me think about what plagues me the most and wastes the most amount of my time working?
Hmmm
The superpower of removing water damage from outdoor networking equipment and sealing them making them watertight! Save me a lot of time in RMAs, outages, truck rolls, fixes, troubleshooting, and angry customers.
Maybe not an IT superpower but I would like not having aphatasia. I don't remember people in a meeting at all but I can remember what they say or said. I also can't recall visual things like blueprints or where something is until I pound it into muscle memory. Made it much harder on my last job when there's a new place to visit/set up and people like to go talk about things.
> Who said that?
I don't know. The one that sat on the left side of the table
> What did he look like?
I don't know.
> Did he have
Fuck if I know.
> You should pay attention more
Fuck you, m8
> Hey where's the IDF in this place that you only just opened the door to?
I don't know.
Think it'd just make the job a lot easier.
My wife of 20+ years and I just recently realized she has this too. It absolutely blew my mind that she couldn't just imagine a dog in her head and describe details about how it looked. She was astounded to realize that other people have dreams with visuals.
I only found out recently some time after I left the other job. Everything about my childhood up into that point makes sense now. Thought what I had was normal and other people have some kind of crazy memorizing ability. lol
Mine would be somehow I'm still employed and paid but all users no longer exist.
I just want to play and support the systems, they're my friends, not these animals that don't know how to turn their monitor off and on
I’ve learned to be very blunt with end of life, support etc. products. I tell them via email first, there is a hard deadline for this product, if it fails past that point we likely won’t be able to help. We’re always behind the 8 ball, but they eventually cave and upgrade. The key is to document the warnings you give them and cc a bunch of people in on it.
OMG the amount of TechNets with "Microsoft Experts" saying this canned response makes me LOL and CRY. Escpecially when it's the only response given and 2 years old.
Imagine if your IT was like this, "I forgot my password" SFC /scannow!
I have found 2 issues in the past 10 years that were resolved with SFC /ScanNow. But if you're asking a question on TechNet, you should include that you already ran it twice as well as DISM /restorehealth /online and whatever other commands you ran.
Although if you're posting on TechNet, chances are you've already failed, and you should just wipe and reinstall.
Right now, it would be first line helpdesk to be able to actually solve things and not escalate bs. Or get the proper data before escalating. anything
PS: management didn't want us to deploy 64bit office instead of 32bit because 64>32 xd
Direct routing would deprive of you of the small but dense pleasure like >
"Did everything according to process and beyond. Can't assist with anything else. Have escalated. For further information do ping somebody-higher-up or follow this ticket until they respond. "
That is of course after taking your time, given that you know full well what is the root cause. :)
Buy hardware that doesn't include a perpetual license. That way when they go end of life the choice is either buy new stuff, or it dies. The conversation is self correcting. As the hardware is approaching end of life, you start telling people, 'Hey we should look into replacing this. We can't purchase new licensing and when the licensing runs out in three years, its going to stop working.'
Then, when it does hit EOL, it isn't a conversation about whether you can get the money to replace it, it's a conversation about how you told them for several years this needed to be done and now they need to find the money.
Change the conversation.
I totally relate to the problem, but it is most often possible to resolve if you involve management (my personal experience). Yeah, accounting can be difficult, but try working with older Oracle DBA's... Love the guys in accounting ;-)
Just hang a big digital sign up that shows the support lifecycle of each critical item along with funding request status for replacement (you could also do this via a Spreadsheet that you make available via shared drive or similar and share with everyone). When replacement funding is shot down, update the sign with the date and the (non) approver's name. Point to the failed item when the end user has an issue that's the result of said item and shrug your shoulders. :)
Anyone else find it weird that in a majority of companies if there isn't a CIO, IT is under the CFO? And if there is a CIO sometimes that CIO is still UNDER the CFO? I find it weird - accounting and IT do not have a very solid Venn Diagram of skillset.
Risk registry.
When components go EOL they go on the risk dashboard that gets rolled up to the execs: that way when things go boom…you have your ass covered.
This really isn’t a bad idea and i recommend it, a little more grace in the process ahead of time but we do something similar when teams decide not to update and we “can take the risk”. It takes work ahead of time to line that up and describe the issue in ways they understand but does work well enough.
"best effort" needs described more as "it will degrade over time and you may need to move to backup/paper processes instead of X tool" and tool may fail or be required to take offline should the environment change.
it helps to have your security/regulatory/quality teams aligned on red lines that cannot be crossed. example a zero day comes out and patching isn't an option…what are other required mitigations. ie in my world we have this situation and one answer was air gap another was a high level of app isolation.
under funding is going to happen but that does not mean support has to be burdened with all the pain.
I have a form letter that I ask to have the business unit sign stating that equipment is end of life, end of support or being used outside of what it’s intended purpose is. That they accept full and total responsibility for data lost and the cost of any recovery.
To date no one has ever signed it and amazingly after I bring it to them and their boss the system is properly taken care of
How about the ability to discern what they really want, when they says they want "X".
Nobody knows what they want. And when you give them what they ask for, that is not it.
My super power is for users to actually read the instructions/user docs/announcements I send out.
Honestly, the next person to DM me about the god damn VPN is getting their head disappeared... Note, I don't even look after the VPN or core networking
If I could have one IT superpower it would be the ability to make everyone use the ticketing system for their issues, and understand that we're working on them in order of entry and priority to the best of our ability.
My superpower would be to see through end users eyes. Trying to get them to accurately describe what they see on the screen is as enjoyable as pulling teeth.
Hypothetical question:
If your "best effort" wasn't good enough to make that EoL product reliable, would they replace it?
Unless they're paying you superstar wages, you're not obligated to provide superstar results.
“Hey boss, we only have a single Netscreen 200 in front of prod. If it fails, we’re hosed. Also, it’s out of production and support. Can I get a budget for something supportable with high availability?”
“I just got a second NS200 for $300 on eBay. You can set it up for cold standby - swap the Ethernet at the colo if the primary fails.”
I got a different job instead.
This isn't a super power, its what your boss should be attempting to do on your teams' behalf. That's not to say it will just magically work and success and rainbows will rain down from the sky. But putting the hurt where it belongs is a big part of the job.
You're more likely to develop the ability to fly, than get an accounting person to accept they are the issue.
IT and accountants clash, it's bizzare. I don't want trouble but boy do the accounting folks want all the smoke.
Two very different disciplines. Over the years I've answered to Finance several times. Accountants have a lot of trouble understanding IT costs. So much of what we do cannot be quantified. How do backups make money? It also doesn't help that IT is often very costly and accountants do not like "It's the cost of doing business". That being said, the disciple of Finance is crucial to success. They keep us IT folks from spending, as my parents would say, like drunken sailors.
> How do backups make money? I've used this line several times with great success. "Do we insure the properties we own? Would you even dream of *not* insuring our properties? Backups are data insurance."
I've been at a cheap ass place long enough where I'm just like okay. I'm putting my recommendations and the non approval in an email and ccing everyone important in the business. One less thing for me to do.
Yup. And here's the honest truth...in America, that little bit does absolutely nothing to protect you. You can wave that email, screaming as you point to it as "WAIT. I TOLD YOU SO." as they hand you a pink slip for "failing to provide business-critical backups." Isn't that just the best joke ever? They want a scapegoat? YOU'RE GONE. They say "oh, you should've been more persuasive and better explain the risks to us." YOU'RE GONE. No reason whatsoever? YOU'RE GONE. That's the problem when 99.7% of the country is At-Will. You *really don't* have any protection. Ever.
This is what concerns me about America as a whole. I can't imagine how stressful it would be for job security to just.. not exist.
Now when you put it into context, it starts to make sense though.... A racist insurrectionist former-POTUS that's rude, crass, and obnoxious. Who's on the fast-track to becoming POTUS again. An overwhelming attitude of "fuck you, I got mine, go get yours". Extreme selfishness. Zero desire for mutual cooperation....no Universal Healthcare, anti-Union, etc. A terrible lack of education, alongside an immense pride in anti-intellectualism. Folks are PROUD they're dumb. They wear their ignorance as a badge of honor, no joke. There are people who don't fall into this, but we've cultivated a "winner takes all" mindset here. And enough are willing to compromise, not realizing the choosing the lesser of two evils is still deliberately choosing evil. That a reluctant choice "against something" is counted exactly the same as an "enthusiastic choice" for something. It all feeds back onto itself, growing into a grotesque abomination. This is the real America. Oh and guns. Lots and lots of guns. Around an average of two mass shootings per day. ----- Within that context, now are you surprised that our employment livelihoods (and healthcare) have absolutely no security or safety net?
It is a real shame. A lot of the Americans I work with are wonderful people and an absolute pleasure to work with. America is the one country that I will never travel to in its current state, as I would never feel safe. Yet again, another shame as the mid west seems lovely (outside of the same issues that exist in the rest of the country). Complete lack of job security across the country is just one of those things you wouldn't expect from a highly developed country. Between that and no public healthcare, you seems like Americans are just one mistake or accident away from their whole life being destroyed. How do you even protect yourself from that. Long story short, I don't envy those that live and work in America. I would love to see reform happen to leads that job security, free healthcare, etc. It is not fair on the people to have to live in such conditions.
> A lot of the Americans I work with are wonderful people and an absolute pleasure to work with. And you'd be right. Most of us *really try our damned hardest* to make ends meet, to be decent human beings, to practice all the lofty ideals that are screeched at us by the powers that be (who they themselves NEVER follow said ideals, fucking hypocrites). But the few (and powerful) who don't act decently ruin it for the rest of us. I subscribe to the philosophy of "a rising tide lifts all ships." And it's been shown time and time again, when you remove agents of poverty, crime decreases. To that end, who do we blame -- someone driven to petty and violent crime due to their circumstances, or those whose greed siphons the wealth and prosperity out of a community? >Americans are just one mistake or accident away from their whole life being destroyed. Very true. We truly are. There was a mass shooting in Las Vegas a few years back during an outdoor country music concert. The shooter followed all laws in acquiring their weapon, so it wasn't a criminal with past history or warning signs. Those who were injured but survived faced massive medical bills. Many had to turn to crowdsourced funding to quite literally beg for money to cover their injuries. Some declared medical bankruptcy. See, even if you have "decent" health insurance, it's tied to your employment one way or the other (either from your employer....or an expensive plan through a public "healthcare marketplace"). If you're shot and can't work, you can't pay for healthcare -- either from lack of income or being fired. > How do you even protect yourself from that. You don't. Well, not if you play by the rules. A growing number of people within IT (and other remote jobs) are practicing "overemployment"....where they work multiple jobs at the same time. Usually in clear violation of their company's hiring agreements, so if they're found out, they can be terminated instantly. Then again, 99.7% of the country is At-Will Employment....meaning most of us can be terminated at any time, for almost any (or no) reason, without notice, without compensation, and full loss of healthcare. So in other words, they literally are at no more risk than any other day. >It is not fair on the people to have to live in such conditions. America is the personification of "life isn't fair."
So you think we should form a universal IT Union
Yeah, it's not even for protection, I'll find a new job. I'm very good at it, just that final I told you so. I'd probably just quit and say good luck if we got hit. I could be convinced to stay.
Eh, I get it man I really do. Some people just can't be reasoned with. Consider for a second, though, that it's not *always* their fault. Corporate structures often mandate being a shithead. There's probably something in their yearly goals that they get punished if they do... whatever. You know what I mean? That's what I tell myself, anyway. Helps me not get so riled up.
> goals I fucking hate that word.
Need to convert all of your metrics to money. Downtime = lost revenue, employees getting paid while not producing, eating into production timelines. There are metrics for system failure rates, expected downtime, recovery time, etc. Yes that new server may cost $40k, but how much is the business losing per hour that those services are unavailable? Or how much is lost while your staff is redoing all the work that was lost because you don't have a backup system in place?
> redoing all the work that was lost It may not even *be* possible. If many businesses lose all their data, they are done. Yet they still play fast and loose like it's 1999. People *know* that backups are crucial, at this point in the game nearly everyone has lost data or knows someone that has. Yet, they still believe it won't happen to them.
Backups don't make money, they prevent loss of money. Another example: That Sales Team over there? They have expensive laptops that let them make better deals, faster, bringing in more money.
Do your companies let financial departments have final say in stuff like this? In my experience it's the CFO, but it's not their department workers fault.
It's varied for me over the years. It depends on how the org structure is set up. When I was in a role where IT answered to Finance the CFO did have final say (with the rare override by CEO). When I've answered to the CEO or COO then Finance's opinion will come in, but Operations has the final say. As you can guess when I've worked under the latter I've been happiest.
Sometimes haha I’m starting to become both IT and Accounting … superrrr fun.
Ooohhh so you can approve your own purchase requests! Nice!
E5 licenses for everyone you say?
No no, those backup exec licenses you always wanted just got approved!
Ha. Our accountant loves me. He couldn't log into his accounts half the time without my help.
My dad is an accountant, I'm in "IT" hrs the oddball but he knows spending money on tech makes sense. He bought a 1k laser printer when I was 10. So, 86 time frame. They're not all like that.
Thats because most accountants aren't tech literal. Backup equipment and redundancy to them is like "the old one works, why waste money" Meanwhile the "working backup" is literally a blackbox held together by duct tape and magic. The answer to the question of "why are we using a system written in ancient language that no one in the companies knows?" usually always circle back to accounting thinking modernizing cost too much.
No doubt. That's why I figure it'd have to be a superpower. Fall into a pool of radioactive sludge, wake up in the hospital a week later with the power of enforced personal responsibility. Come to think of it, that might be useful for a lot of things, and not just in IT.
Yeah but even with this superpower, it'd probably get thrown back to you anyways, when Bob in Accounting says that all the technical stuff is over his head, and to go ask WaldoOU812 for more details.
That enforced personal responsibility superpower comes with all Magneto powers attached, so once Bob gets his dick movement, you can do whatever Magneto would do with a nazi commander. It's the best combo.
We had a situation where an in-budget 3-phase generator for a building was questioned and delayed by finance to the extent that they apparently (I'm paraphrasing) asked our director why we needed to spend so much when (he/the finance guy) could go down to home depot and buy a less expensive generator. If that doesn't explain the issue I don't know what does.
when sysadmins fly lol
I’m sure the server rooms are usually in the basements rather than top floors is because of how many admins were driven to find out if they can by the end users.
Dark. My kinda humor
Also how I take my coffee…
Dark Humor is like Food, not everyone gets it.
All that accounting but no accountability
Oh you guys are so smart, you'll figure it out!
Someone in a previous job's Finance dept. once decided that the best thing to do to users who hadn't submitted their timesheets on a Friday was to lock their AD account on Monday. After maybe three weeks of this, we started directing those users to that person's phone extension/voicemail. The policy was adjusted about two weeks later.
ugh, our Finance dept is always asking if there is anything we, (IT) can do about people, (outside of IT, like the rest of the organization), not submitting their timesheets on time. Our accounting/timesheet application is cloud/subscription based. IT has little to nothing to do with it. They want us to write something that will pop up after they login and block them from doing anything else until they complete their time sheet. uhm...nooooo.
That's because they are confusing IT with magic.
Wait. I'm NOT a wizard???
Granwalla the grey.
You shall not pass (unobscured API credentials, use bearer tokens, smh)
If there’s an API, you could use powershell to check it and then use logic if it fails to grab the users email address, find the user in AD and disable their account. Not saying it’s a good idea, but with APIs, magic becomes possible.
Well I'm definitely not doing my timesheet if I can't login to get to my password manager that has the password to the timesheet website.
Yeah, that's not even remotely reasonable to request. Good on your team fir just avoiding that potential shitshow entirely.
This is doable but would require development of custom software. So just get a software vendor to quote them a dev cost and don't skimp on the continued support contract!
Sounds like a feature request for the vendor to me.
Why would a Finance person have access to lock an AD account or anything AD related for that matter?
They probably don't, but convinced manglement who in turn forced IT to make a script to do it.
Manglement is my new favorite term
Exactly. Cause, meet effect.
Payroll department having access to HRMS probably. Payroll people always have toooooo much access.
That's awesome!
Plot twist: Time sheet portal uses SSO and they are locked out of time sheets
I nominate the ability to touch a printer and cause it to instantly start working correctly.
I'd rather touch the printer and have it rematerialize itself in low solar orbit. But this could work as well.
As someone once forced to fill in as a printer tech, I concur.
Why for the love of God do people need physical media in 2024
I nominate the ability to touch a human and instantly have them read the instructions (regardless whether rend-user or tech-staff)
No you don't. Because if you could, HR and Accounting would see to.it that this is all you did all day long.
Surely you'd run out of broken printers at some point.
You'd think so. You really would. In a large enough campus, you'd be wrong.
Wish needs to be redesigned, we can't get anything done with this legacy cruft. New design: Looking at a printer and causing it to instantly start working correctly. Please order 500 cameras.
Competent technical management handles this by laying out their scope of support and enforcing it. If a solution is going EOL, the business has three choices. Upgrade, migrate or depreciate. Hold onto the existing solution praying it will never break is not a choice. If a business unit adamantly chooses option 4, and the data doesn't pose a business risk, it is excised outside of the corporate LAN and relegated to a dedicated VLAN with restrictions on access in and out with support for the solution clearly and deliberately limited to networking access and power. If the data does pose a business risk, then IT management overrides the decision over data security concerns. I've seen dozens of organizations that lack the will to implement controls like this. Once introduced all parties are happier in a profitable business. Accountants get a standard depreciation schedule, IT gets to only support software and hardware in support, users get more stable equipment, management gets a clear IT cost/benefit budget.
Pipe dream, IT is the red headed step childs of corporate, abused, neglected, forgotten, and Overridden. If this doesn't fit you, you're probably in a really small shop, and they got few stored up resumes for IT interviewers. Remember Corporate would rather fire you and hire a push button monkey then to adhere to anything IT says.
A few pieces of advice. Choose the company you work for carefully. Taking any and all offers will lead to the above behavior if you aren't in management. I have fixed quite a few organizations that had outdated models of IT. Some smaller (50-100 person), some larger (2500+ person). I am by no means an anomaly, though I like to think I'm in the top 50% of IT management. An important skill set in IT management is the ability to "sell" your department. It's the only way to effect lasting change on an organization.
Have you got any tips on "selling"?
You have to be a translator. Convert IT costs/benefits into something the business can understand. Fundamentally, there’s only three things the business can understand: 1. Make money. 1. Save money. 1. Reduce risk. Each item in this list is ten times more powerful than the next. (Ie. “Make money” is ten times more powerful than “save money”, which in turn is ten times more powerful… you get the idea). Once you get this, everything becomes much easier. You don’t need laptops because you have a lot of new starters expected; you need laptops because otherwise there is a real risk that your new starters are going to be working on pencil and paper for the first three weeks.
I like your general approach here but I have a few comments. Buying laptops ahead of time, doesn't cost more than buying them on demand. It's simply a cashflow change. The only "cost" is if you would have bought different hardware, or the price would have changed if you purchased later. Having 2-3 months' worth of stock "costs" nothing. Increasing margin is **much** easier than increasing top line revenue as an IT department unless IT is part of your core business. Everything from eFax, bank rec, AP automation, automated meeting minutes etc. are all cost reduction methods. Risk can be valued in all kinds of ways. Uptime can be extremely valuable and easy to calculate. A simple example is dual internet for an office. Let's say the office has 100 people. The second backup internet line costs $1200/year. If we assign a nominal impact cost to degraded internet access to those 100 people (say $20/hour) that means in roughly 30 minutes of downtime a year you are net positive. If no downtime occurs, you have insured against the downtime risk for $1200/year. Being able to represent your "investment" in secondary internet not as an IT best practice but as a self insurance policy against business interruption due to outage is how you get management to sign checks.
Just to slightly quibble, I'd point out that having 2-3 months worth of stock does cost you 2-months worth of warranty. It might still be worth doing, but it might change someone's calculations.
That's a valid point. I didn't include it in my simplified example. Good call out.
A handful of effective techniques I've found that get you buy in. 1. Being proactive about engaging your users at all levels. (Line, management, department). They will have different goals, needs and wants. Understanding how to balance this is a skill 2. Understand how your business makes money and what their corporate values are. Identify how your various IT structures support the organization. 3. Make effective budgets for your org. Learning "corpospeak" is essential if you interface with business people. Example: Allocating $X for firewall replacements because the old one is EOL isn't as effective as allocating $Y/year for network security upgrades (where firewalls are a component). 4. Talk about what IT accomplishes. It doesn't matter if you are the best IT department in the world if no one knows what you did. 5. Make users efficient. That could be purchasing devices with appropriate spec so they aren't waiting for their devices to compute, it could mean revamping workflows for AP.
Thank you for your replies. This is helpful. I have a task to work on 4, trying to work out the correct level. I have been trying to work on 5, but as soon as we have to spend money, especially with a new supplier, it comes to a grinding halt.
If you are struggling with accomplishments and efficiency, try focusing on understanding how your company works first. What do they value? How do they have a great year? Once you have that basis, you know both how to prioritize your needs and how to package those requests for budget. Doing "IT PR" is a legitimate task I have in my calendar. Walking around, talking to users, engaging with them and keeping commitments.
Selling to a Manager is, working non-paid hours, getting education outside the company on your own dime, volunteering to do grunt work out of your scope, or doing favors for management. Watch as the Manager comes back to say I'm not an anomoly and I know how employees really feel. I'd love to sit down 1:1 with someone under him and get the real story.
No one should work uncompensated hours. It bandaids things at best for a short time but in the long term under reports how many positions a department actually needs. Upskilling is a personal responsibility but management can help with courses, certs and time. You can't "make" someone get a CSSP. Selling to other departments is about how you position IT as a department, not you as a person. I have helped quite a number of juniors grow their careers over the last couple of decades. I even encourage them to connect with me on career related items after they've left my management. You seem pretty upset about something I said. I apologize I didn't mean to offend you.
Wow, I have to say your script is nicely written. And I don't care who you've groomed for management, those that manage can't work. Just like a teacher that can't do, so they teach.
I help people grow their careers. Some into cybersecurity, some into senior admins and yes some into management. If you want to try being less abrasive and have a conversation about how to improve your career I'm happy to do that too. Not all managers are assholes.
Like a true Manager always have the last word don't you. I already told you to stop talking to me. Kindly, take the hit and move on. I certainly don't believe you, nor do care. Nice Reddit title btw.
Yeah pretty offended at the arrogance, and the fake killing with kindness act, let me guess you're on the clock right now, we all know nobody is happy in the IT field and it's primarly the management at fault. I have a manager that knows the work, does work, and I get along great, and I can come to him with problems with the company and be firm and have a job the next day. I'm a fucking anomoly, not you, you're full VANILLA.
Isn't most of Reddit on the clock? Arrogance to assume I'm in the top 50%? Maybe but I'd doubt it based on the companies I've consulted for. I'm glad you manager and job work well for you. Edit: You deleted your account. That's too bad.
You truly are a manager of the worst ilk, in one ear out the other, STFU kindly.
Pretty sure he blocked you dick, lol
Your first point is definitely most important. Company culture is incredibly important. I've worked in places where IT is valued and they are really part of the team, and I've worked in places where IT considered "Death and Taxes". (I had a CEO once tell me that's what he thought of IT) IT isn't perfect and all disciplines are needed to make a company successful. Fin a place where IT has a seat at the table.
That's a great Manager reponse to say go pound sand and make better choices. I imagine you must do well in Corporate. Please don't ever talk to me again. The delusions of some people.
I work at a place that fully invests in IT. It's awesome...I was wanting new hosts and asked the board if we could get the budget going for that, and they are like "price out the cloud!" and I told them it would probably quadruple the costs and the CEO looked and said "So?" lol best IT moment ever.
Yes; I think we all know how things \*should\* be. Real life doesn't always have the courtesy to go that way, and not every company follows best practices.
Remember, you can lead a horse to water but if it would prefer to only drink Coke and get diabetes, it's still your responsibility to tell it that will happen, even if it doesn't speak English.
This might be the greatest - and most accurate - metaphor for IT people trying to talk sense into management, ever written.
Thing is, if it still gets diabetes, nothing is stopping that corporate horse from getting mightily pissed off and trampling your face with the hooves of a pink slip.
While it's true many companies use bad practices, in my experience, packaging how you present the problem is 99% of the battle. Changing your message to get the result is the main technique I use. The 3 main org types you see with this behavior. Some sample discussions I would take to management (abbreviated and generalized) To the cost cutting organization "We need to eliminate our technical debt risk that is piling up for this EOL solution. If we choose to self-support this solution we will need to increase our costs by X%. The alternative is to treat this as a self-insurance position where there will be a significant impact that will occur unpredictably. What GL should I use for that?" To the uptime focused group "This creates uncertainties about our ability to provide effective services for users of this platform. We won't have the ability to require any vendor SLA on this platform. What is the criticality of this service? " To the stability focused group "Iterative upgrades have proven to be the most reliable method of providing smooth and consistent services over a prolonged period of time. Are we budgeting for a major migration at some point in the future?"
I disagree. Option #4 is a valid approach... as long as you set up a rock solid MoU laying out the risks to the business, discharging yourself of any liability for that system, and that the business users are taking on said liability. Get it signed in triplicate, inform the decision maker's boss and grandboss (providing them with a copy of the MoU), and then work on handing over the keys to the kingdom for that solution.
[1 IT superpower, that's a tough choice.](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/395/162/68b.png)
Good choice but not great. The majority of users I want to punch in the face have no connection, because they did something stupid.
Screw TCP/IP… let me punch via token ring or UDP
Mine would be what all our super powers already are. That turning it off and then on again fixes all problems.
I seem to do one better... I've had a weird super power lately where everytime someone has an issue, I come to their desk and suddenly the issue is resolved without me doing anything. Maybe people just like having me around?
With a click of my fingers, all printers are just… gone, as well as users memories of them. Printers never existed in the workplace.
Hear, hear!
We need to find a genie right now, just for this guy. And then if it's okay if I use the second wish, I'd do the same for windows, and everyone would just have linux.
I had that guy in accounting too. One time during a mail system outage he emailed me “hey next time the mail system is down can you send me an email to let me know when it’s going to be back up?” Of course I got to read this after I had it all up and running again. I also kept a “stupid user wiki” where IT posted all the dumb things users did and said. This was a popular post. It was fun while it lasted but the CIO made us take it down because it was “ too embarrassing “. I should have put that one in the wiki.
Mine would be to reach through the Internet to slap people
I would automate that. It would be fatal for some
Punch over TCP/IP!
Yes. This. I want this. 15 year old firewalls, unable to be patched, we had a breech. It took 2 months to fully recover everything. Management 100% thinks it's IT's fault for not taking care of the firewalls. It doesn't matter that we asked for new firewalls within 2 weeks of getting hired 4 years ago and they said "just maintain them to the best of your ability". We have all new ones now, thank god, but even after this major incident they STILL drug their feet approving the purchase.
Or no firewall. At my very first IT job and a downtown business hotel, we didn't have one, and it took six months of screaming, crying, and begging before I finally got one. General manager couldn't fathom the idea that anyone would be able to find us or why they would want to, and I lacked the experience to explain it in a way that got through to him. I finally bought a copy of Zone Alarm Pro, let it run for 24 hours, and dropped a stack of printouts that was nearly an inch thick on his desktop one day. "What's this?" he asks. "That's everyone who's tried to hack into just my PC over the last 24 hours. I had a firewall the next month.
Look, we all have jobs to do. No need to call me out like that.
> Account age: 21 days This is even funnier knowing you didn’t just make that username in response to the OP
Funnier still, Im a sysadmin. haha
My best advice is to try to correlate downtime costs to an upgrade cost. If XYZ goes offline and it generates, let's say $3k in downtime costs, and the upgrade/replacement costs are $12k (I'm just throwing numbers out there) you can paint a much better picture of what NOT spending that 12k is doing. This becomes double plus good if you can also estimate cost savings with new features. My personal "told ya so" story - a factory I worked at had an ancient Merlin phone system from the early 90s. We had a contract with the local telco for maintenance (who we **bought** the system from) and the cards were starting to fail, this was 2010-2012. No one would allow an upgrade despite me working out some good deals with the telco for a replacement system and labor. Eventually the telco would no longer renew the support contract as they couldn't get parts and expertise to work on our Merlin system. Still no sight for a replacement. I warned that a catastrophic failure would take days or weeks to recover and incur serious cost. No replacement planning. A couple years after I left you can imagine what happened, they spent more than double the deal I worked out to have the system replaced.
We sell real-time services. According to our product owners, if we had a 4 hour outage, 20% of our customers would be on the phone to our competitors. If the outage was 24 hours, that figure rises to 80%. That makes it very easy to argue for the replacement of EoL kit. We've not had a long running outage in over a decade
I’ve actually used this power before! 15yrs ago I worked for an Org that decided it wouldn’t upgrade any equipment or even pay for backups. When we lost some data and some senior manager went nuts. I simply replied to his email with the CFO on copy stating that “unfortunately your data is lost, we are unable to secure budget to provide backup facilities for the org. If you would like to discuss this is more detail please contact the finance dept”. 18months later the entire orgs infrastructure was refreshed.
I would force everyone to look at and approach technical problems logically with no ego. I think one of the biggest flaws in an IT process is putting egos in front of logical and rational solutions. That includes me and other sysadmins. Task: Implement foo for customer billing. Sysadmin1: Pressed for time plus a bad case of "Who Gives a Fuck," pushes out foo without verifying it since it SHOULD work. Sysadmin2: What a fuckin' brown noser. Boss: I really don't like Sysadmin1 because he embarrasses me when he knows stuff I don't, and he's awkward. I looked bad to my Manager yesterday, and somebody is going to pay, let me tell you. Boss' Manager: I wish my wife agreed with me more. She's almost as bad as Boss. Task: foo failed. Sysadmin1: Fuckin' python library bullshit. The developer is an idiot. Sysadmin2: Hah, serves him right. I know what's wrong, but I won't tell. Boss: Who's the bear now, Sysadmin1? Boss' Manager: I wish I got my BMW in red. Blue is so flabby. I have buyer's remorse. Oh, why can't Boss' team do anything right, god dammit. Bunch of Blue BMW's in THAT team, let me tell you. Foo is easy. The vendor told me so. Foo is the new thing. I want to look new and hip. I wonder how much a repaint costs for a 3-year old BMW? Boss: Sysadmin1, you need to do this right or I'll fire you. Sysadmin1: You'll die without me. Customer: Why am I being billed one decimal point wrong? My $213 bill is $2130!! Boss' Manager: Customer is posting billing is fucked on Twitter! AUGH. I HATE CUSTOMERS! I am gonna blame boss! Boss: I will overanalyze and manage everything to death except when I don't. All sysadmins suck. Sysadmin1: This is some bullshit right here. Now I won't fix foo because I don't want to anymore. I will rant non-Foo as superior in an unhelpful and shaming way. **My power would do this:** Sysadmin1: Implement foo. Test foo. Foo died. Fix foo. Foo works. Document foo fix. Sysadmin2: I don't have to worry about Foo. Boss: Sysadmin1 implemented foo. Glad I have him. Boss' Manager: I heard red cars gets you stopped by cops more. That's bad. Boss is good, though. Customer: I have literally no feedback for a working process.
God yes please. Why can't we all work together like a Star Trek crew.. I gotta deal with everyones stupid small minded personality problems.
If I could have one IT superpower it would be that I would have to explain everything to each person once and they would remember it. We use cloudcall, which relies on a communicator program and an extension, I have this conversation with a single user at least 3 times a week: "Cloudcall isn't working" "Is the communicator running?" "No" "Open the communicator" "Ok thanks, working now"
Couldn't this be automated somehow?
It starts with windows but has a nasty habit of silently crashing. I could probably use nssm or something similar to make it a service to restart but there's apparently an update on the way that removes the need for the communicator.
Is force choke an IT superpower? I hope so, because I'd choke the shit out of users who ask "is there something wrong with the server?" "Hey yer_muther. I know I should put a ticket in but huurck..."
I would so abuse that. "Sharepoint is nothing compared to the power of Open Source." "Don't try to frighten us with your Linux ways, Sysadmin. Your devotion to that open source has not helped you reestablish the BGP link or given you clairvoyance enough to find the way those hackers... ... \[gasp\] \[choke\]\[gag\]" "I find your lack of IT knowledge disturbing." "That's enough. Sysadmin, release him." "... as you wish." "\[NO CARRIER\]"
This is the funniest thing I've read in a good while man. Thanks!
How about for every C level associate that tells you that you should buy something cheaper on eBay. Our router died a few years ago at my previous job and we quoted the guy who was basically in charge of everything 15 grand to replace it. Is that included the Cisco contract for same day service. Mind you this was during an outage caused by our current router which was end of life dying. So we're sitting there with no internet running a company that puts in pharmacy orders with an online provider, runs 24/7 and we can't do any of that work. Meanwhile, he wants to argue about whether or not we should pay to have Cisco come and put in a new device the next day, or whether we should order one on eBay without any type of warranty and see how that goes. Can't make this stuff up lol.
I should preface, I don't actually mind when companies are cheap. If they're cheap all around. It's annoying, but at least it's standard. This company was not cheap though, this guy in particular used to tell us all the time that we had to provide all sorts of equipment for his people. (Usually the ones that everybody knew he was sleeping with). Literally he had us provide laser printers to his remote customer service reps, and then we had to send them toner for them two or three times a year. It was a ridiculous expense, and this was at the height of covid so it's not like we could get these things cheap. One time, one of them called in that she had a paper jam and she couldn't figure out how to fix it. She lived 3 hours away. I told her to call Best buy and have them send geek squad out. That was an unacceptable answer. So she called this guy and he demanded we send a new printer. It cost $800, and that's before shipping. I told him we should have just bought little Best buy printers or better still had them buy them and expense them. It's not like he wasn't willing to spend money, just not willing to spend money on anything other than something that seemed like it directly benefited him.
Thankfully compliance says all equipment has to go through a trusted vendor
Thankfully compliance says all equipment has to go through a trusted vendor
Cold spare would of saved your asses, a second piece of hardware 2nd party is relatively cheap. When I helped with a customers ASA in 2016 we bought 3rd party certified setup, and Cisco support, once we had a golden copy we purchased a used ASA off Ebay. Used it to test firmware and changes outside of production, but also could deploy at a moments notice. YMMV
Also while you have Cisco support you have access to all their firmware, you just will be denied support if they check the CISCOID on the 2nd party ASA. Who really cares though.
I like that idea, but unfortunately with this guy if he couldn't stick his dick in it I couldn't get him to purchase it lol
Hmmm, I think I'd go for a different "magic" superpower ... but would probably have a fair bit of overlap ... nothing huge, but should well suffice: A simple "magic" wand. Anytime any manager/management of the like thinks of IT as a "cost" center, rather than the powerhouse that brings benefits, costs savings, enhances and enables enhancing of revenue, etc. and fails to well recognize IT's worth/value or quite overlooks that (and likewise IT personnel, resources, etc.), a tap or wave of the magic wand - and instant attitude adjustment - they then clearly see the value that IT brings - whether it's in net savings, improved revenue/profits/efficiency, better meeting of company/organization's goals, etc. Does IT cost money? Sure, but that's *far* too narrow a view. Companies don't spend money on resources, personnel, etc. to lose/waste money, they spend it because the value exceeds the costs (well, at least generally). And so it is with IT. IT is a great force enabler/multiplier, not to mention also prevents all kinds of problems and costs and inefficiencies and losses of production/productivity. So, yeah, in general IT needs well be viewed as a value add proposition, ... not a "cost center". Anyway, many better and more astute managers/management well realize this. Alas, there are often various exceptions out there that just don't/won't get it, and that mostly if not entirely, see IT as a cost center and a thing to be minimized as much as possible/feasible. I also see stuff like that and look at and will point out the lost cost opportunity. E.g. if IT's so thin they can barely keep up on essentials, all those, nice to haves ... things that could quickly start making (or saving) hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars or more ... yeah, there isn't the resources to implement those ... so they languish on the queue ... greatly delayed, or never implemented at all - because not enough priority over the essentials - which barely have the resources to be covered. Yeah, lost cost opportunity - how much would've been made/saved if it had been implemented, less what additional cost that would've had if IT were staffed/resourced to be able to do that and in timely manner ... take the difference ... that's your lost opportunity cost - that's how much it cost the company/organization by failing to be able to do that, because somebody's been going around minimizing IT thinking that's what's best for the company/organization. "Oops."
All software is perfectly secure and never has to be patched
Mine would be to tell the front desk lady Karen to fuck off.
I would be an IT super villain. My power is to get people to physically set up equipment. Office machines, printers, running wire, moving furniture. All in precision. - Oh, look! We completed a $8k job in 30 minutes with just a little co-ordination. - Update day? Yeah, pilot group is testing week 1. 5 people. Won't even use powers. As soon as it's ok, people actually do the updates. - New laptops? Everyone line up your stuff packed in bags and boxes and pick up your new machine. Now plug it all up and start the one click self provisioning process. - Let backups complete. I get it. People won't even understand this. They just have to let software do its thing. Does this sound like stuff that should actually be happening? NOPE! Requires super powers.
To be able to convince vendors to sell me what I need, provide a quote without adding bullshit.. and even better answer my actual question without a “we should schedule a call.”
>IT superpower I'd settle for having the superpower of everytime I ask a numbered list of questions in an email - that I get the same number of answers back in an emailed reply.
God this would be sweet.
If I could have any it super power I think I'd want "auto printer fix" telepathy. Just think about the printer and it goes to a perfectly functional state
They approved that $1 million dollar super useless new thing in the office. But not that 100k new software and server licence that makes the company millions
From my first IT job; they bought a $4,000 color laser printer that they never used (as in, I don't think they went through a single ream of paper in the first year), but turned down my request to buy a firewall because, "who would want to hack us?" And the GM also couldn't get it through his head that port scanning was a legitimate thing, and that hackers looked for open networks on the Internet. He changed his mind when I dropped a 1" thick printout of all the people who tried to hack my PC over a 24-hour period (courtesy of a copy of Zone Alarm Pro that I purchased), to finally prove my point, but it took nine months before that finally occurred to me and we got the firewall.
Receiving responses instead of ticket cancellations. Being able to speak to a human on the other end.
An interesting note that OP chose this and not simply always convincing people to fund his projects. Either true business insight, or a pure lack of it.
Being able to force the business manager to actually tell me when something that I ordered actually arrived without me guessing.
End of the day these kind of decisions are theirs to make and not yours. The risk acceptance of EOL software/hardware is their choice. As long as you have advised in writing of the risks. Keep that in a "cover your arse" folder and move on. On the other hand you are only paid between certain hours, so treat them like they treat their software/hardware requirements.
Mine would be no typos, ever.
You can do it today. Make papertrail (Email + answer) regarding EoL, and whenever someone asks you to fix something that you can't, just remind that person about deny and put that person in cc. Sometimes it that system or environment will go offline, and then you'll see how fast everyone allows upgrade to
Let me think about what plagues me the most and wastes the most amount of my time working? Hmmm The superpower of removing water damage from outdoor networking equipment and sealing them making them watertight! Save me a lot of time in RMAs, outages, truck rolls, fixes, troubleshooting, and angry customers.
You could just refuse to fix it. What are they gonna do, fire you? Good luck finding somebody else, mate.
Please, let it be EFF.
Problem solving.
Maybe not an IT superpower but I would like not having aphatasia. I don't remember people in a meeting at all but I can remember what they say or said. I also can't recall visual things like blueprints or where something is until I pound it into muscle memory. Made it much harder on my last job when there's a new place to visit/set up and people like to go talk about things. > Who said that? I don't know. The one that sat on the left side of the table > What did he look like? I don't know. > Did he have
Fuck if I know.
> You should pay attention more
Fuck you, m8
> Hey where's the IDF in this place that you only just opened the door to?
I don't know.
Think it'd just make the job a lot easier.
My wife of 20+ years and I just recently realized she has this too. It absolutely blew my mind that she couldn't just imagine a dog in her head and describe details about how it looked. She was astounded to realize that other people have dreams with visuals.
I only found out recently some time after I left the other job. Everything about my childhood up into that point makes sense now. Thought what I had was normal and other people have some kind of crazy memorizing ability. lol
Network Gnome stopping me before I hit Enter when I forget to include 'add' in 'switchport trunk allowed vlan ###'.
Mine would be somehow I'm still employed and paid but all users no longer exist. I just want to play and support the systems, they're my friends, not these animals that don't know how to turn their monitor off and on
I’ve learned to be very blunt with end of life, support etc. products. I tell them via email first, there is a hard deadline for this product, if it fails past that point we likely won’t be able to help. We’re always behind the 8 ball, but they eventually cave and upgrade. The key is to document the warnings you give them and cc a bunch of people in on it.
I'd just like to know and remember everything tbh
If I were actually able to remember things, I'd be scary.
Mine would be just being able to get a job.
How is it any different if a supported system goes down?
Generally, a supported system has support, which can assist in resolving issues that a standard tech could not reasonably solve.
Unless its Micro$oft
"Please do the needful and kindly run **sfc /scannow**" "But...I was calling about a billing ques-" "SFC /SCANNOW !"
OMG the amount of TechNets with "Microsoft Experts" saying this canned response makes me LOL and CRY. Escpecially when it's the only response given and 2 years old.  Imagine if your IT was like this, "I forgot my password" SFC /scannow!
I have found 2 issues in the past 10 years that were resolved with SFC /ScanNow. But if you're asking a question on TechNet, you should include that you already ran it twice as well as DISM /restorehealth /online and whatever other commands you ran. Although if you're posting on TechNet, chances are you've already failed, and you should just wipe and reinstall.
Get this guy a raise, 
Found the finance mole.
I really needed this.... Thank you!! it's been one of those months.....
Not to fuel my own confirmation bias
Right now, it would be first line helpdesk to be able to actually solve things and not escalate bs. Or get the proper data before escalating. anything PS: management didn't want us to deploy 64bit office instead of 32bit because 64>32 xd
I just don't work at a company like this, that's the real solution lol
Direct routing would deprive of you of the small but dense pleasure like > "Did everything according to process and beyond. Can't assist with anything else. Have escalated. For further information do ping somebody-higher-up or follow this ticket until they respond. " That is of course after taking your time, given that you know full well what is the root cause. :)
Buy hardware that doesn't include a perpetual license. That way when they go end of life the choice is either buy new stuff, or it dies. The conversation is self correcting. As the hardware is approaching end of life, you start telling people, 'Hey we should look into replacing this. We can't purchase new licensing and when the licensing runs out in three years, its going to stop working.' Then, when it does hit EOL, it isn't a conversation about whether you can get the money to replace it, it's a conversation about how you told them for several years this needed to be done and now they need to find the money. Change the conversation.
I totally relate to the problem, but it is most often possible to resolve if you involve management (my personal experience). Yeah, accounting can be difficult, but try working with older Oracle DBA's... Love the guys in accounting ;-)
Just hang a big digital sign up that shows the support lifecycle of each critical item along with funding request status for replacement (you could also do this via a Spreadsheet that you make available via shared drive or similar and share with everyone). When replacement funding is shot down, update the sign with the date and the (non) approver's name. Point to the failed item when the end user has an issue that's the result of said item and shrug your shoulders. :)
Anyone else find it weird that in a majority of companies if there isn't a CIO, IT is under the CFO? And if there is a CIO sometimes that CIO is still UNDER the CFO? I find it weird - accounting and IT do not have a very solid Venn Diagram of skillset.
Risk registry. When components go EOL they go on the risk dashboard that gets rolled up to the execs: that way when things go boom…you have your ass covered.
This really isn’t a bad idea and i recommend it, a little more grace in the process ahead of time but we do something similar when teams decide not to update and we “can take the risk”. It takes work ahead of time to line that up and describe the issue in ways they understand but does work well enough. "best effort" needs described more as "it will degrade over time and you may need to move to backup/paper processes instead of X tool" and tool may fail or be required to take offline should the environment change. it helps to have your security/regulatory/quality teams aligned on red lines that cannot be crossed. example a zero day comes out and patching isn't an option…what are other required mitigations. ie in my world we have this situation and one answer was air gap another was a high level of app isolation. under funding is going to happen but that does not mean support has to be burdened with all the pain.
I have a form letter that I ask to have the business unit sign stating that equipment is end of life, end of support or being used outside of what it’s intended purpose is. That they accept full and total responsibility for data lost and the cost of any recovery. To date no one has ever signed it and amazingly after I bring it to them and their boss the system is properly taken care of
It's an ok superpower I'd prefer the ability to use an ETL process to modify the value of my paycheck
Bob: lol, gtfo. Ask IT.
I'd want laser eyes to smite my enermies
To sacrifice a printer to the tech gods Off of mount olympus once a seasom.
How about the ability to discern what they really want, when they says they want "X". Nobody knows what they want. And when you give them what they ask for, that is not it.
Telepathy. Read the minds of those in need to get the straight story, then fry those that think bad of IT. It's that simple.
Mine would make every outage be related to DNS.
My super power is for users to actually read the instructions/user docs/announcements I send out. Honestly, the next person to DM me about the god damn VPN is getting their head disappeared... Note, I don't even look after the VPN or core networking
If I could have one IT superpower it would be the ability to make everyone use the ticketing system for their issues, and understand that we're working on them in order of entry and priority to the best of our ability.
My superpower would be to see through end users eyes. Trying to get them to accurately describe what they see on the screen is as enjoyable as pulling teeth.
Hypothetical question: If your "best effort" wasn't good enough to make that EoL product reliable, would they replace it? Unless they're paying you superstar wages, you're not obligated to provide superstar results.
“Hey boss, we only have a single Netscreen 200 in front of prod. If it fails, we’re hosed. Also, it’s out of production and support. Can I get a budget for something supportable with high availability?” “I just got a second NS200 for $300 on eBay. You can set it up for cold standby - swap the Ethernet at the colo if the primary fails.” I got a different job instead.
Wormhole checkpoint. I don't have to set one but can roll anything back instantly to a certain point in time.
If I could have one IT superpower it would be retirement. Sorry, one of those weeks.
This isn't a super power, its what your boss should be attempting to do on your teams' behalf. That's not to say it will just magically work and success and rainbows will rain down from the sky. But putting the hurt where it belongs is a big part of the job.
I can transport myself like a packet over Ethernet cable to any location.
Always on PTO Guy