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I guess I just got made "in-house IT guy"

yh125d

yh125d

Diamond Member
For reference, I'm just a drafter. No formalized tech learning, just a computer autodidact/nerd from the forums


Boss-man just came and told me that I'm the new "tech guy" for our office (~15 employees)

It was a quick convo, but I'll be taking over server backup duties from our current guy, keep records of each machine and its hardware, advise boss-man on computer and equipment upgrades, and work with our 3rd party network admin.

For example, he just bought a LED LCD for our conference room to use as a monitor so we can show clients stuff on a big screen. Boss-man set it up himself, but that I'd probably be doing in the future


Cool deal, I've kind of been wanting to start doing this for awhile now since our last guy got fired.


Anyone else in a similar situation? I think I got this because my boss had a hard time getting the computer hooked up to the TV so he could show something to a client, and I later offered to look at it after-hours to see if I could get it working
 
Sort of, but not exactly. My old company had outsourced IT, but sometimes I was the goto to get something done quicker. As the company was going down it couldn't afford to pay for IT anymore, but I got laid off before I could get into it. That's something I'd like to do.

My ideal real job(not pure fantasy) would be to do survey computations, and IT work for a small company, with IT being the primary duty. In other words, where I wouldn't hear a bunch of shit if I fell behind on the computations.
 
Um,.. my condolences.. 1st level IT support is HELL.

And if you didn't ask for any more money to assume new duties on TOP of your existing duties..
you should have..
 
Small offices have always intrigued me since historically I've worked in massive ones. Do you guys have some sort of messaging and calendaring solution like Exchange? Do you have a domain or do you just use local accounts? Print and/or file servers?

A friend of mine who's a CPA inherited tech duties for the small company she works for. Sounds similar to yours. With pretty limited knowledge, she gets by just fine I guess.
 
wheresmybacon said:
Small offices have always intrigued me since historically I've worked in massive ones. Do you guys have some sort of messaging and calendaring solution like Exchange? Do you have a domain or do you just use local accounts? Print and/or file servers?

A friend of mine who's a CPA inherited tech duties for the small company she works for. Sounds similar to yours. With pretty limited knowledge, she gets by just fine I guess.
Click to expand...

Where I worked, it was very simple. Basically just a file server and print server with a bunch of CAD stations. Everything was setup suboptimally, but it wasn't my problem, and I don't fool with other's computer work unless asked.
 
wheresmybacon said:
Small offices have always intrigued me since historically I've worked in massive ones. Do you guys have some sort of messaging and calendaring solution like Exchange? Do you have a domain or do you just use local accounts? Print and/or file servers?

A friend of mine who's a CPA inherited tech duties for the small company she works for. Sounds similar to yours. With pretty limited knowledge, she gets by just fine I guess.
Click to expand...

No exchange. We use cox e-mail tied to outlook

I *think* what we have is a domain, where I can log onto my profile on any computer on the network. I really know quite little about network, Im more of a "which GPU/CPU should I buy" type

We have a simple file server, just a 1TB drive partitioned into 5x200gb that hosts all of our drawings and shit. Thats what I'll be backing up. I think the way we do it now it a daily backup to just a 1TB external, and a weekly backup to another TB drive that goes home with someone (me)

Print server, not sure. I guess our plotters are just hooked up to the network and print requests get sent to the server which sends them to the printer? Don't know
 
And I don't really think there will be enough extra responsibility to warrant a raise. I'll still be doing my normal job 95% of the time. I might get one anyway though. He told me in the middle of the office, so he wasnt gonna discuss a raise in front of everyone. We might talk more in-depth later


And even if it is more responsibility than I'm expecting, I'd more likely ask him to pay for a couple network training courses instead of a raise. That way I'd get more training, maybe a nice certification or two, which is definitely a plus for a resume, considering I don't have much except on-the-job training and forum-learning, which I cant really put on a resume
 
Just be mindful of where you want your career to go.

I've seen a lot of young guys take on little additional responsibilities and it slowly adds up, to the point where they aren't doing their original jobs any more and they end up getting derailed from their career/promotion path.
 
I'd happily do this for my department, but the IT guys have everything so locked down that it makes it impossible.
 
Even though we have a in-house Network Operations Center and a Desktop Support guy...they keep giving offloading duties to me that I'm not trained for (web development, etc).

Every time a change is needed on our website, I have to pour through PHP and HTML code that I know very little about...but my variety of experience + Google is usually enough to get the job done (though sometimes it's a bit "hack-ish").
 
rcpratt said:
I'd happily do this for my department, but the IT guys have everything so locked down that it makes it impossible.
Click to expand...

Bah... all you need is a Windows password recovery disk. Just change the local administrator's password, and you can basically do whatever the hell you want.
 
I was sort of made the IT guy for the office group we were in since most didn't want to deal with the regular IT dept. I didn't mind as it would be a nice break of the monotony.
 
Oh OK. I thought this was like a real deal. Sort of like how sometimes people will get chosen or offer up for free "photographic services" at a wedding or event. It's bad for the job market if people can get stuff like that for free, and if you were to actually BE the IT guy it would water down MY job market ever so slightly.

EDIT: Read that wrong - I read dfuze as OP for some reason.

yh125d - YOU are watering down my job market (kinda). Please do a shitty job, or at least tell your boss to move you to full time IT instead of drafting so he can fire the 3rd party IT guy.

Srsly though - its sort of a hard field to really make money in unless you have a lot of exp so its definitely gonna make you more rounded. SO will all the non-stop sitting and snacking in the marathon computer hacking sessions.
 
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kami333 said:
Just be mindful of where you want your career to go.

I've seen a lot of young guys take on little additional responsibilities and it slowly adds up, to the point where they aren't doing their original jobs any more and they end up getting derailed from their career/promotion path.
Click to expand...

Definitely be aware of this. Figure out what you want to do with your career.

I was in a similar position before. It was a very small company and I was brought on for software development, but I also took over IT issues. On bigger projects like Exchange migration and Citrix setup, it consumed a lot of time. The company was very supportive and wanted to know which I wanted to do more, but at that time I just didn't know.

If I could do it over again, I might still do both but definitely focus more on programming.
 
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ultimatebob said:
Bah... all you need is a Windows password recovery disk. Just change the local administrator's password, and you can basically do whatever the hell you want.
Click to expand...

Completely effs-up NTFS security and permissions if you remove the password using a 3rd-party tool. While it may be partially usable, your Windows installation is somewhat hosed when you forcibly change the password.

If you *happen* to have the PW reset disk from the time Windows was installed, it would probably be a clean way to do it.
 
AFurryReptile said:
This. 99% of what I run across can be fixed by rebooting a computer or resetting a password.
Click to expand...

Small offices like the OPs aren't like the big joints. You can teach people how to properly use a computer, and you're very close to the users so it's easy for them to ask you a question instead of trying something first, and fucking up the system.
 
This isn't the sort of thing that'll lead to me not being a drafter anymore. We'll be keeping our 3rd party tech lady to handle the heavy networking stuff, I won't really be doing all that much. I'll just be there to save my boss some time and money by keeping from calling her in to take care of every little thing. We only have 15 employees and very little that needs done, definitely not enough to warrant a full time tech guy anyways. Our 3rd party tech lady is only here maybe <5hrs a week usually


And the only career I'd consider pursuing besides drafting is something in the IT world, hence why I might try to get some free network training classes from the extra responsibility rather than just a small raise
 
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