How to the system administrator not to remain without work

And while not getting caught

If you are an admin, you have nothing to do, and your company does not need you every day, then you may be reduced in the near future as unnecessary. In this article, I collected the best practices from system administrators who can provide themselves with work so that the company can not live without them for a day. These practices even allow you to build entire IT departments where you had nothing to do. Whether or not to apply them is up to you:

1. Solve any user problems

Put your favorite screensaver on your computer? Stick a film on a mobile phone? Verify two contracts in Word for a lawyer? To paint an organization form? View your home laptop? Doing work for the company employees and doing for them what the company does not need is a reliable way to earn the love of users and get more work. You can even hire additional specialists to the IT department for this - any whim of the company for its money.

2. Handwork - always in price

If you install the operating system and applications on the user's workstation in one keystroke and 15 minutes, then the employees of the company may have the impression that the administrator has a dusty job. For this reason, exclude automation in working with users: put operating systems from the disk by entering the license key manually, install applications byte by byte, each time look for drivers for printers on the Internet and perform jewelry tuning of systems. Updating the 1C platform on computers is generally a task for a week, and not two mouse clicks.

3. Do not waste company money on unnecessary tricks

An additional power supply to the server, a hot-swap drive, a stackable switch, sockets and patch panels for organizing the network - these are the ones you can save the company money for, and it is thanks to their absence that the management finds out that IT malfunctions are not so rare and systemic the administrator should always be there “just in case”.

4. More freedom for users

The absence of restrictions on the launch of unknown applications, the rights of local administrators on computers, the antivirus controlled by the user - this is what makes users feel at home and this is what creates the work of the system administrator. Either users will add the virus to the computer, then they will remove the “extra” files from the C drive root, or the computer will slow down due to the number of “Internet accelerators” set up. There is nothing to be done - you can pay for freedom by hiring an additional couple of technical specialists.

5. Buy only branded servers

It is the server that stores company data, and its safety depends on its quality. If the company does not have enough money to buy a branded server, then you can save on switches, cable network and user computers - you will ensure their work with your own efforts. And it doesn’t matter that for this money it was possible to take two servers simpler and update everything else - data security does not suffer a subjunctive mood, but for everything else there is a system administrator.

6. Implement the systems that the company needs now

If the company needs just mail, then it can be deployed on a free or paid mail hosting. When the company needs to ensure that customer letters are always delivered, and the dismissed employee could not destroy his correspondence without a trace, it will be possible to deploy his simple mail server in the company. When the company needs a little more than just mail, it will be possible to go to the “same” mail server. As a result, the company has one mail, and the system administrator has three implementations and two migrations. Acting also with other systems, the system administrator will definitely not leave himself without work.

7. Do the job fast

Spending working time on planning is too costly for the company and delays the timing of the work. Any system can be implemented / upgraded by one or two, and all minor flaws can be quickly eliminated in a couple of days or even faster if there are assistants.

8. Rely on advertising and marketing

If the solution has already been "chosen by thousands of organizations around the world", then this is enough to implement it in the company without studying the technical details, specifications and test deployment. If, in the end, the solution is not as good as it was announced, then it will be possible to hire a separate specialist to maintain it in working condition - after all, thousands of organizations around the world have chosen to do just that.

9. Change equipment only when it cannot be repaired

The longer the old computers work in the company, the more money the company saves on buying new ones and the more administrators work. You can even hire a separate specialist to repair old equipment in order to save even more money on the company. Well, about the fact that the office would live for at least a day without a system administrator, there is no question at all - problems for every day are guaranteed.

10. Create your own development

If the company cannot afford to buy a solution, then there is a system administrator for this, which can assemble almost the same system, but cheaper. Yes, it’s possible that the solution collected by the administrator will have a couple of small flaws that will require regular maintenance, but this is better than if the company spent a lot of money on the “same” solution. Of course, no one except you will understand this system, but these are trifles - after all, it will not be easy to dismiss you already.

PS:

If you follow the tips listed above, you can completely occupy one IT specialist with support for 20-30 users, and with an infrastructure size of 100-150 users, you can already create your own IT department for 5-6 people. If you single-handedly serve 50-60 users and want to reduce you due to the fact that “the company has maintenance tasks for one day a week”, show this article to the management and let them decide if they want a new admin was always busy with work or not.

Ivan Kormachev
IT Department Company
www.depit.ru