Ironically, the entire premise of this article is steeped in a class war. It’s the rich trying to keep us focused on fighting eachother, rather than realizing that they’re fucking all of us in the ass.

I just want to be clear, this was like highschool cs classes. I took things a bit more seriously in college.

I never wrote messy code or illogical code, or any code that didn’t work. We were learning C++ in those days and if you know anything about C++, you can basically cram an entire program into a single line. You can also do some shorthand stuff for calculations and updates to variables… So while the class was instructed to use whitespace and comments and update variables like “var = var + #” I would do var += #… I wouldn’t comment it, mainly out of hubris.

I was pretty good at it but I was lazy as all hell with it.

I don’t code, at best I script. I’m a sysadmin, not a dev, so I play around in PowerShell mostly.

I just started to naturally do all of this. Not because I was taught to, but because I’ve written too many scripts that I later looked at, and thought, WTF is going on here… Who tf wrote this? (Of course it was me)…

So instead of confusing my future self, I started putting in comments. One at the beginning to describe what the file name can’t, and inline comments to step me through what’s happening, and more importantly why I did what I did.

The sheer number of comments can sometimes double the number of lines in my script, but later when I’m staring into the abyss of what I wrote, I appreciate me.

I loved doing this is school, just trying to mess up my teachers.

AI in the current state of technology will not and cannot replace understanding the system and writing logical and working code.

GenAI should be used to get a start on whatever you’re doing, but shouldn’t be taken beyond that.

Treat it like a psychopathic boiler plate.

Well, I’m probably going to try to get my ccnp for kicks. I’ll re-do my CCNA, then do my ccnp. By the time I go for my NA cert I’ll pretty much be ready to go for the np cert.

I’ll build a new resume emphasizing my network stuff, though my resume is already fairly heavily focused on networking as is, and try again.

I’m pretty happy with my job in almost every way, I know most of the things I would need to know to be successful, despite it being a more generalist position, and my co-workers are cool. Management is better than most, and the pay is more than the last two generalist positions I’ve worked, plus it’s work from home, so I’m pretty comfortable where I am for now. The pay, despite being higher than I’ve gotten previously, is a pretty far cry from what I probably deserve, just way too low, under $55k USD (I’m not in the US, but the conversion puts me under 55). From what I’ve seen online, median salary for a systems admin, which is basically what my job mostly entails, is around $73k USD… So I’m around $20k/yr shy.

I know network admins are similar, depending on the complexity/importance of the network they administrate. I’m aware of people in networking that are making more than 100k USD a year; and right now I consider that to be where things start to cap off for networking. I’d be pretty happy with $73k USD.

What, like the CCNA? Which I achieved and it expired last year, and got me nowhere?

I prefer linkin_park_numb.mp3.com

It just hit different

I feel this, especially since I’m more into networking, but my work is more generalist.

I open my mouth about networking and people’s eyes glaze over. Even very experienced senior people can’t really understand what I’m talking about when it comes to some of the more intermediary networking concepts. Meanwhile I tune into a podcast that’s networking focused and they’re basically speaking Latin for me.

There’s so much that I don’t know. I get the broad strokes of things but I’m hopelessly lost on so many of the more nuanced bits of networking.

I really want to break away from generalist work and get into a network focused position, but after 10 years as a generalist in various MSP companies, most places won’t take me seriously as a networker and won’t even sit down for an interview.

I’m good at other stuff, damn near expert level with some things, but my passion is networks and the workplaces I’ve been at just don’t care to help me learn any of it. My current place barely has any networking more complex than a profile based L2L VPN… Switches are basically ignored, and VLANs are rare.

I facepalm every time I discover that the guest network is just bridged into the same subnet as the LAN. I’ve raised the issue a few times and never been given the green light to fix it, often because the network isn’t able to be managed remotely.

You kids. Got off my lawn. Leave me in peace with my scour.net.

I don’t think either answer is wrong.

Oh yeah, I’ve seen that. People hit the most minor roadblock and just stop working until someone else fixes their shit.

It’s an attitude of “we’ve tried nothing and we’re out of ideas!”

I don’t like those people either.

Unless the recipient literally rats you out, I don’t think they’ll even try to…

I would think that cyber ops would be more concerned with fraud, underage sexual content, sexual predators… That kind of stuff.

Usually the MPAA sues people for distributing video content, and in many places, they’re not super aggressive about it.

I did this for a coworker not too long ago.

I think it was for Firefly…

They gave the USB drive back too. Win-win

I dunno about OP, but I am, and I have definitely prioritized tickets based on how interesting they sound.

User setup for a new hire that is already here and waiting? Meh. Weird network problem with no apparent solution which will likely require days of investigation? Sounds good.

I find that when a user continually makes a stink to get their ticket dealt with first, I gently try to correct them, and when that inevitably doesn’t sink in, and they call during a critical issue, I tell them quite firmly that things are down and nobody at x site can work, so your printer will have to wait. Log a ticket and I’ll address it when I’m done Brenda.

… They usually back off when you make it clear to them that they’re not the most important thing you’re dealing with at any given moment.

I fucking hate this.

Most days I spend more time accounting for my work than I do actually working.

Only if we like you.

I’m pretty sure I’ve done most of these at some point or another.

It really depends whether I like you or not.

Liking my users is entirely dependent on how much work you make me do, and how difficult that work becomes because of your personality.

I’ve gotten tickets that were literally “$thing is broken”, or “help! Call me!” With no information given, not even a callback number. I’ve also gotten a rambling voicemail, in which a user describes an issue with a piece of software and doesn’t identify themselves, not provide any callback information. The CID on the voicemail wasn’t available either, and since I work with several companies doing support, I couldn’t even identify the client, nevermind the specific user.

There’s also the needy users that create tickets for every prompt, dialog, message, delay… Pretty much anything that could happen at all ever, whether it affects their ability to do their work or not.

There’s also the unavailable users, they are not available ever, at any time, for any reason. I have literally gotten critical tickets which require me to access the users workstation to fix, while it is logged in as the user, and I could call less than 5 minutes after they create the ticket, and they’re busy. Email them and they have an out of the office message, or reply with something about them being in a meeting (with no information about when they will be free), or simply don’t reply at all. After a few weeks of trying to contact them to connect and resolve their very simple (but “critical”) issue and getting nowhere, close the ticket, only to be met with a flurry of emails from them about how the problem isn’t solved. Immediately call or reply and you get voicemail and silence.

Most of my users do fine, and it’s usually a minority that are troublemakers, and I want to make that clear… But the troublemakers are the driving force for me to find ways to fix pretty much every problem without ever opening their system though remote control. I can do all kinds of things from registry edits and hacks, to writing and scheduling PowerShell scripts to fix their shit every time they log in, and deploy that by a remote PowerShell command prompt, and nothing more.

Yeah William, you might be the c-whatever bullshit, but if the issue is sooo fucking critical, make five goddamned minutes for me to fix your shit or it’s not getting fixed. I don’t care if you own the goddamned planet, I can’t fix your shit without access.