A rant about people who know far too little about IT

[Killdrath]

So, here I am at my new job. As the first ever full time IT staff for the company, my first task is to see where we stand on our gear.

I go into our first IT room, and find a NICE full height, double sided, locking rackmount...

Then I open it up...

A beige box win2k server, P3 system (NOT a server mobo). just sitting on the floor.

A rackmount server running some special OS, but not plugged into the network.

Sitting on the FLOOR, unplugged, covered in dust and footprints...

Dell poweredge 2400 running SCO (finally got it booted today)

Dell poweredge 2450 rackmount, 2003 server enterprize DOMAIN CONTROLLER... (yes, sitting on the floor)

Mac Xserve rack server

And at our main office, the 2u rackmount server is sitting on a folding table...

And dont even get me started on the wiring... 2 ISP's, 3 wireless routers, ALL 3 of them cross-connected with dhcp on for them all!

Now... back to trying to find a password to the SCO box... (I had to hack the Mac box)

[Xpirate]

As the first ever full time IT staff for the company

Making them adhere to more intelligent IT practices might be difficult as well.

[Killdrath]

especially for a company whose unofficial motto is:

"just make it work"

i.e. dont bore them with legalities or problems, just make it happen. (the attic of both of our buildings is a SCARY jumble of wiring)

[Quakken]

Well squeeze all the money you can out of them, seeing as how they are inevitably going to get sued and go belly up any minute now.

[Xpirate]

Not necessarily, they could get purchased by a larger company. This usually results in a loss of job for the folks who just got bought out.

[Luke122]

So, here I am at my new job. As the first ever full time IT staff for the company, my first task is to see where we stand on our gear.

That sounds like my last two jobs.. it's amazing how crazy some people get when they arent qualified to work in IT! Tons of mish-mash systems, buying things they dont need to make stuff "work". I love walking into situations like that.. it's like a puzzle! Figure out what and why, but keep things running at the same time. It's like juggling!

Get yourself a cable tracer/tester, it'll save you a TON of misery trying to figure out why things are where they are, and how they are connected.

Congrats on the new job! Sysadmin jobs are a blast.. get paid to build/fix computers. Yay!