Welcome to the new year!

Sometimes you might be tempted to name your servers and switches after your favorite characters because its memorable and I like my servers, they are my family...

Please do yourself the favor of adopting a standardized naming scheme for your organization moving forward, as having a domain full of

Ariel, Carbon, Helium, Rocky, Genie, Lilo, Stitch, Shrek, Donkey, Saturn, Pluto, Donald, BugsBunny, and everything else taken from the compendium of would-be andrew warhol pop culture art installations

is not helpful for determining infrastructure integration and service relationships when comes time to turn things off or replace the old. You shouldn't have to squawk test every piece of your infrastructure after the original engineer stood it up in the first place and left... leaving you asking the question "what does this thing do?"

Things you should be putting in names (to name a few for example):

Site, Building, Room, Zone, Function code (like DC for domain controllers, FS for fileservers, etc), Numerical identifier

This way, others who have no idea what is going on can walk in and recognize what something does by inference of the descriptors in the name. If you do adopt a standard, please DOCUMENT IT and ENFORCE the practice across your organization with training and knowledge management.

GIF Related: https://media.giphy.com/media/l4Ki2obCyAQS5WhFe/giphy.gif

Is this even possible?

I have our business asking for this. We have a hybrid AD environment.

I am a big believer in IT builds on core concepts, also it's always DNS. I ask all of my admin candidates these questions and one in 20 can answer them.

Are these as insanely hard or are candidates asking for 100K+ just not required to know basics?

1. What does DHCP stand for?

2. What 4 primary things does DHCP give to a client?

3. What does a client configured for DHCP do when first plugged into a network?

4. What is DNS?

5. What does DNS do?

6. You have a windows 10 PC connected to an Active Directory Domain, on that PC you go to bob.com. What steps does your Windows 10 PC take to resolve that IP address? 2 should be internal before it even leaves the client, it should take a minimum of 4 steps before it leaves the network

So, some of you may have seen my original post last week: here.

Well, Friday the guy did it again, and I had finally had enough. I ended the conversation I was having on the phone, and asked him to take a walk with me for a second. We strolled across the office over to his Boss's office, and I think he knew what was coming, because about 2/3 of the way there he started coming up with some bs like "oh I need to go do this real quick." I said "oh no it's ok this will only take a second." He's kind of impressionable, so he just came along regardless. His boss happened to be on the phone when we got there, so I told him to stand in front his boss's office door and stay there until his boss gets off the phone. Of course, he didn't want to. His exact words were: "I can't do that, he will get mad at me for just standing there."

WHAT. THE. FUCK. Like seriously? Did he really just say that? It took every ounce of me not to throw him out of the God Damn window. I said: "Dude, you do this to me almost on a daily basis. What makes it any different?" He says: "Gee, I guess I never thought of it that way before." Then he started rambling on about how he thought that I was ok with it because I hadn't said anything to him about it previously.... even though I had spoken to him several times and asked him several times to email me and not just stand there.. but who really gives a fuck about trying to explain myself any further at this point?

By this time, his boss had finished with his phone call, and overheard some of our conversation since we were standing not directly in front of his office, but just off to the side and I guess he was either on hold or on a conference call that he really wasn't paying attention to. He pulled us both into his office, and shut the door. We both sat down and his boss said he already knew why we were there, and proceeded to ask $employee why he felt it was ok for him to do this to anybody. Again, $employee just starts rambling on about how he didn't realize blah blah blah. His boss cuts him off mid sentence and tells him to be quiet, then picks up the phone and dials somewhere....

When the person answers, his boss asks for a woman, and is transferred to said woman (found out later on... getting to this in a minute... that it was HR for another company that is like a subsidiary to ours). He tells the lady on the phone these exact words: "Tell Jane Smith(obv not real name) to pack her desk up and leave the premises." I was like.. wtf? Who is that and why does this have any relevance to the issue at hand. Well, I look to my right at dickhead, and his face is ghost-white pale. I knew at that point... that was his wife. She didn't have the same last name as him... I guess she hadn't changed it yet from getting married, which is why I didn't recognize it. His boss then hung up the phone, looked at him, and said "I suggest you do the same." Fucking savage.... his boss just fired his wife right in front of him, then fired him right after. This was like a textbook mafia execution. Turns out his wife was the office gossiper at the other location and they were looking for a reason to get rid of her anyway, and from what I was told, Captain Asshat had done this on more than one occasion to other people in our office (standing there waiting for someone to get off the phone). Company was literally looking to fire them both anyway.

The other employees at my office hated this guy so much that they're buying me lunch this entire week for being the straw that broke the camel's back. I really do feel bad, as I didn't want this outcome (especially the wife thing), but I didn't know what else to do. I held my tongue for so long and didn't want to go to his boss.

I've been discussing this with several people recently as I joined a new company and I'm working with a new sysadmin/security team, and these guys are the most unhelpful people I've ever worked with. No justification on their NO responses when I know I'm right about specific action items.

Why is this particular role infested with so many cranky assholes, for real?!?!!?

EDIT: Reddit's formatting is bullshit. It's a testament to how incredibly fucking broken all of this bullshit truly is at this point that we can't even support basic unformatted lists on the internet in 2022.

(what a fucking joke)

EDIT: Despite the inflammatory headline, I appreciate the comments and this thread has been SUPER interesting, and RIP my inbox. Trying to respond to them all. MANY of you won't like them.

FOLLOWUP:

Asshole sysadmins seem to be largely the entire IT dept at one job, then leave for something else and bring that attitude elsewhere.

• this situation is unfair to the individual.

"Because people only ever ask "why are sysadmins...?", nobody ever asks "how are sysadmins?"" - Very valid point, but doesn't give anyone an excuse to always be an asshole.

• this situation is unfair to the individual.

"Stupid people" - yeah dude it's your job to support people that don't know how to do your work, that's why you have a job doing the work you do. I get it, they can be annoying, but again... It doesn't give you a license to be a dickhead.

• this situation is unfair to the individual. all of them.

All of your companies to hire proper support staff. about 2/3 of these comments are from massively overworked people that are doing 10 jobs. Stop letting them do that.

• this situation is unfair to the individual. all of them.

The main thing I've noticed in this thread, and it speaks volumes to my point: a lot of sysadmins seem to think no one around them knows anything about their job, and I'm here to tell you that many of your coworkers do. And when you push back with bullshit reasoning, we know you're full of shit and stop respecting you.

• this situation is unfair to the individual. all of them.

I think this group might be better titled "IT Support/Sysadmin" based on these comments. Sounds like you motherfucks are severely overtasked and allocated. I don't blame you, but I blame you for being assholes. Chose a role. Is it IT support, or is it sysadmin?

• this situation is unfair to the individual. all of them.

I never said I wasn't an asshole. I wanted to see what people think about this problematic role and why it seems so many are drawn/fall into it to help address some of my work friends dealing with some pretty annoying situations in their work.

• I own my asshole behavior and try to use it for good, but mostly try to be nice.

Sysadmin is a tough job. No question. But let's distinguish tough from bullshit here, people.

Being nice is considered a weakness - this one does suck for people that just want to help.

• this situation is unfair to the individual. all of them.

It's not personal, but it's definitely consistent. Think about that.

Later:

What I didn't do well was condense a year of work into a post. It's been good, but what I didn't communicate was years of the bullshit I typed in many responses. (Collecting those)

I was just working on a server via ssh in my MacOS 27.2.1 Terminal App and it blocked me from pasting a script because "it detected malware". No way to "paste anyway".

WTF!? These are my servers, these are my scripts it's none of your business what strings I use! Also I don't want any of it checked against your databases! This is more an invasion of privacy than anything else!

I HATE it when people ask "How do I become a sysadmin?" on here because it shows even less than no effort. These are literally the worst possible people to get into this field because they want everything handed to them. This sort of person is about the worst kind of person who could work in this field.

The unfortunate thing is there are a lot of companies now who don't really want IT staff who can figure things out, and instead they just want people who have been trained in certain technology and can do as they are told.

In high school in the mid to late 90s I knew I wanted to work in IT, but it wasn't as exciting or as well known as it is today, so I had to figure something out. So surprise, surprise, I talked to people.

My high school had some IT guys so I'd talk to them and ask them about how they got where they are. I'd watch the work they were doing. I ended up getting to help out and further watched and learned from that.

I would go tot he library and read books about computers. I would read magazines about computers and IT as well.

I had a summer job working for a small company doing paperwork and some light warehouse stuff in college, and they were upgrading from a mini computer (which I had read about so I knew what it was) to a PC based accounting systems. So I watched the consultant a bit and watched what he worked on. I talked to him a little. I saw the laptop he brought with him and I saw the books and manuals so I found some stuff to read.

My senior year of high school I got a part time job doing IT stuff from all the little bits and pieces of knowledge I had picked up. I probably made like 8 bucks an hour but it got me doing desktop support and playing with things. I'd watch what other people did when managing servers. Based on what I was watching I'd then go to the library and get some books about things like Netware and just read them.

Since it was the late 90s and HTML was the new hotness I'd build web pages. I'd look at other web pages and tutorials online (with dialup!) and I'd learn stuff. I'd get books at the library. I'd ask for books for Christmas or my birthday that I'd see at Barnes and Noble.

I joined listservs. I'd read newsgroups.

In college I started working part time on campus and I'd talk to the full timers and ask about how they got where they were. I'd take on additional projects over time because I had done research and learned things.

By the time I graduated college I had been paying attention to the field, reading and talking to people and I then applied for an entry level full time position at age 23.

During my early career Linkedin came out. It's kinda stupid, but it gave me a way to look people up, see where they went to college, what their career progression was, etc. I'd see most people did desktop support for 2-3 years, some for longer, some shorter, but roughly all that before getting a junior sysadmin job. I'd look at other people's profiles and see they tended to find a job one level up maybe every 3-4 years. I'd see the whole process from desktop support -> junior -> mid level -> mid level -> senior -> senior -> lead -> Manager.

It's not like I did anything magical, and it wasn't like it was even THAT much work just kind of being aware.

So it makes me wonder how the fuck do these people just have no clue? I didn't have a parent who told me "this is how you work in IT" or something. I had no real mentor. I just had to talk to a lot of people and do a lot of reading and watch what other people do.

So it irritates me beyond anything when these people show up and say "so what certs should I get?" "How do I become a sysadmin?" "What should I study?"

Have they just been totally asleep at the wheel? How is it possible they live in the same universe that I do yet they have zero clue? I don't live in silicon valley. My parents weren't rich and didn't buy me my own computer at age 5 or something. I think we had a family computer starting when I was maybe 11 or 12, and I ended up working and getting my own when I was maybe 16.

These questions just show that someone has literally spent no time on this, has not tried even a little and has no understanding. They just want to skip ahead. It's like asking how to become a doctor when you haven't taking a biology class yet or wanting to be an engineer when you haven't taken calculus yet. There is an evolution. You need to be doing good at the level you currently are at before you can jump 17 levels. You don't go from a guy asking "how do I become a sysadmin?" sitting in his mom's basement to being a highly paid IT professional in like 6 months. If you can't even take the time out of your "busy" schedule to pay attention or look at some books or even in 2016 read shit on the web, how are you ever going to succeed?

Seriously folks, it’s getting really bad. Stop being lazy and put some effort into finding what you want before you come here asking for someone else to “help” you.

/rant

I really hate it with some IT folks that constantly complain about how stupid users are. I've seen it many times and in many posts here recently. Like, dude, that's your job. To help support staff and make people more efficient.

I remember my first job in high school as tech support at a local dial-up place. There was this one guy that was just really rude to people. He'd also sometimes put them on mute and then tell everyone around him how stupid this person was that they were talking to. The person calling does not give a crap about IP addresses, or DNS, or IRQs, or anything else. Nor should they. They just want their Internet to work and it's your job to help them. That's literally what you're being paid to do. They act like they're being inconvenienced by having to deal with these "idiots" all day.

I absolutely understand it can sometimes be frustrating. I've been there many times. It's a reality. But the high horse that many IT people put themselves on is delusional.

I am building a new pc for my CFO's workstation and asked for the profile information (user/password ) so i can install new RD server icons and software to make sure they everything they need to do their job is available. They denied my request and stated i shouldn't be asking for anyone's login info and should just install the equipment. Am i in the wrong here, I have been asking for individuals login info to troubleshoot issues for ever. As the main IT guy in the office, i don't see the problem here

For clarity, I'm talking about signing into multiple applications, not having to re-auth due to inactivity or timeout.

Example: If I sign in to a machine where all my previous authentications have expired, I have to log into windows, then sign into other applications (ex: OneDrive, Outlook, Teams, Miro, Jira). Each application I sign into is met with a 2FA challenge. I sign in to each application using the same email/password and 2FA challenge application.

I had presumed that I could sign in once and have access to all these other applications while I was authenticated on that machine. We're use Azure AD for 2FA and login for all the aforementioned applications.

When I ask our sysadmin team why I have to sign in to each application, they say it would be a significant security risk to allow a single login to allow access to every application.

Am I misunderstanding what SSO is? Or is there some documentation or resource I can send my sysadmin to help them understand that it's not a security concern?

Howdy folks. I've inherited a few shops that had Fortinet setups from previous companies. I strongly dislike and find distasteful the MSP nickel and dime, get everyone on a contract cycle, so since these are no longer supported, I'm looking to jump ship. My typical replacement is just straight standard Ubiquiti equipment, but two of these customers are heavy users of the SSL VPN and are PC shops.

Any suggestions for boxes with a simple VPN app, preferably with support for 2-factor, and AD integration would be great. I'm planning on replacing their wireless APs (one site has Fortinet, one has Meraki) with Unify but the lack of a 'good' VPN client for Unifi is jamming me up.

I don't know if this is a rant, but I want it to turn into a civil discussion because I truly want to raise awareness for others, and for myself. If there is something I am missing, or someone else disagrees with me, I want to hear that opinion.

I want to keep this short, but I will struggle with that so I broke everything down into categories to help you all skim it.

Background:

I am a server admin at a large branch of a multi-billion dollar company. I work in a team of 11 other server admins, with only 1 other female.
I am also Transgender (MTF).
No one at my work knows that I am trans. I transitioned at my last place of employment.

Sexist Experiences:

I have experienced subtle sexism that I don't think most women notice. I went from saying something to my team while everyone listens to my plan, to having team members talk over me when I suggest a simple powershell script instead of manually doing something.

I now have to be 3 times as aggressive to get my ideas out there. And I have to ensure people were aware that it was my idea because I have had people take credit for the same course of action.

I have had customers or coworkers approach people I outranked and asked them for something instead of me. Or I have answered questions only to have the 'asker' look to my male subordinates for confirmation.

The thing is, most of these people are not sexist, but I think that they are just unaware of what they are doing.

I understand that this applies to all professions, but I decided to post on here just because I feel like members of the IT community have a higher level of intellect than society as a whole.

So please respond with questions, comments, and your own experiences you find relevant to this topic.

My school district (LAUSD, 600K users) claims NIST 800-63B compliance but:

• Caps passwords at 24 chars (NIST: should allow 64+)

• Requires upper+lower+number+special (NIST: SHALL NOT impose composition rules)

• Blocks spaces (NIST: SHOULD accept spaces for passphrases)

• Forces privileged account rotation every 6 months (NIST: SHALL NOT require periodic changes)

What's even crazier is that the policy document says (direct quote) " A passphrase is recommended when selecting a strong password. Passphrases can be created by picking a phrase and replacing some of the characters with other characters and capitalizations. For example, the phrase “Are you talking to me?!” can become “RuTALk1ng2me!!”

That's an insane recommendation.

There are some positive implemented policy: 15-char minimum, blocklists, no arbitrary rotation for general accounts

But as a whole, given we got hacked due to compromised credentials, it feels like we learned nothing. Am I just overreacting??

Context: I'm a teacher, not IT. Noticed this teaching a cybersecurity unit when a student brought up the LAUSD hack few years back and if we learned anything. We were all just horrified to see this is the post -hack suggestion. Tried raising concern with CISO but got ignored so I'm trying to raise awareness.

Might be late to the party but all licensing drama and Broadcom bs aside, from a *purely* technical and workflow point of view I honestly don’t see any other product out there that can seriously compete with VMware.
Proxmox might be a decent runner-up (and I like it for what it is) but Hyper-V is just... no.
Like, not even close. Next to other things, there is one single piece that every other hypervisor solution is missing out (imho): vCenter. There's simply no *real* alternative to it.
No centralized management system that even comes close in terms of UI, consistency, scalability, and actual day-to-day usability.

Yes, Datacenter Manager for Proxmox is a nice idea and heading in the right direction but it's still in alpha and it may take years to get anywhere near vCenter's level. Haven't used Xen Orchestra in depth so I’m open to input there.

But SCVMM? Seriously?
I mean, the fact that people call it "scum" is that some kind of devs gallows humor?
The UI is straight out of 2008, it’s slow, bloated, unintuitive, expensive, and honestly painful to use. It’s a joke compared to the mighty holy grail of centralized virtualization control of the vCenter.

What actually really blows my mind is this:
I keep reading posts in this sub from people managing "hundreds" of Hyper-V hosts.
HOW. DO. YOU. DO. THAT?
You’re not seriously RDP into 500 individual hosts, right? ...Right!? Or are you *really* using SCVMM?

Since February I've been working as a lead infrastructure architect in a company that runs a large-scale Hyper-V environment. And once again it just confirms everything I ever hated about it.
You can't even set a proper boot order for VMs on Hyper-V. Just crappy delays. No actual sorting. No priority groups. Yeah, sure, "just powershell it", got it.
Sorry, no, I won't script for something that trivial. It's simply a joke and I could go on for hours.

Honestly, I'm *this* close to walking into the CFO’s office and asking for a blank check to go full-on VMware, Broadcom apocalypse or not. IDGAF.

If I'm missing something major I'm absolutely willing to learn - point me in the right direction.

But if not… welp.

(Now go ahead, downvote me to hell.)

I hate them so much and I hate the end users who cry for one vs using a windows based laptop when their roles does not require a use for a MacBook.

My idea of punishing asshole mac end users with a Linux based loaner was denied by upper management.

With the Microsoft 365 outage affecting Exchange Online and other services over the past day, I thought this would be a good time to discuss something that seems increasingly unpopular in IT: running your own Exchange servers.

I'm an IT Director for a manufacturing company with multiple facilities, and we've continued operating Exchange on-premises rather than moving our email infrastructure to Microsoft 365.

And days like yesterday remind me why.

While organizations relying on Exchange Online were dealing with mailbox connectivity problems and service interruptions, our Exchange environment remained operational. Our employees could continue using Outlook, accessing their mailboxes, and communicating internally without depending on Microsoft's cloud infrastructure being available.

Obviously, we can't control whether external organizations can send or receive their email, but at least our own mail system wasn't part of the outage.

There are still some significant advantages to running Exchange on-premises:

Control over our infrastructure

We control our servers, maintenance schedules, updates, backups, and recovery procedures. We aren't dependent on Microsoft resolving a cloud infrastructure problem before our users can access their mailboxes. Our email environment operates independently of Exchange Online. A Microsoft 365 outage doesn't automatically mean our employees lose access to email. This doesn't eliminate every possible dependency, but it does remove a major one.

We have a solid backup schema and maintain our own disaster recovery procedures. We control our backup retention, recovery testing, and restoration priorities. If something goes wrong, we can investigate and initiate recovery ourselves rather than waiting for a cloud provider to restore service. We determine when to perform maintenance, deploy updates, and make infrastructure changes. We can coordinate those activities around manufacturing operations rather than having changes introduced into our email platform outside our control. Our mailboxes and Exchange databases reside within infrastructure we manage. We maintain direct control over how that data is stored, protected, backed up, and recovered.

We already maintain servers, virtualization infrastructure, security tools, and backup systems for other business-critical applications. Exchange fits into that existing environment. We're not building an entirely separate infrastructure just to host email. Now, I'm not pretending on-premises Exchange is perfect.

There are real disadvantages. Patching, vulnerability management, certificate management, availability, disaster recovery, and security are entirely our responsibility. Exchange has also been a frequent target for attackers, and running an outdated or poorly maintained Exchange environment is a significant liability. With Exchange 2016 and 2019 out of support, organizations staying on-premises also need to account for Exchange Server Subscription Edition and its licensing and maintenance requirements. For smaller organizations without dedicated IT resources, Exchange Online probably makes considerably more sense.

But I think we've reached a point where cloud-first has become cloud-by-default, and those aren't necessarily the same thing.

Cloud hosting can reduce operational responsibilities, but it also transfers certain aspects of control to another organization. When that organization has a major outage, there may be very little you can do besides monitor the incident and communicate with your users. I don't believe on-premises infrastructure is automatically better than cloud infrastructure. I believe the right decision depends on the organization, its technical capabilities, its business requirements, and its risk tolerance.

For us, a capable internal IT department and established infrastructure make maintaining our own Exchange environment a reasonable decision. And watching the Microsoft 365 issues unfold has certainly reinforced the value of that independence.

I'm curious how many other organizations are still running Exchange on-premises in 2026. Are you staying on-premises intentionally, running a hybrid environment, or planning to migrate everything to Exchange Online? For those who have migrated, has the reduction in administrative overhead been worth giving up direct control over your email infrastructure?

Context:

For years I avoided Windows like a plague.

Since I’m kind of a cli guy and most of my work revolves around Linux based systems, I didn’t really feel the need to use Windows on my main machine (except some VMs for occasional use with specific software). I believe I dropped Windows altogether when Vistas came out and then 10 years ago I bought my first MacBook. No fixes, everything “just worked” and I can use nearly all the tools I was used to from Linux. My fate was sealed.

I sometimes had to use Win 7/10 vm. Sometimes I even had to solve some issues on Win8 at the customers site (still have PTSD).

And I couldn’t say it was something I would like to repeat often.

Fast forward this year. My MacBook died. As a converted iSheep I could buy a new one. But could I?

There is still specific Windows x86 software, I need for some critical tasks in my job and all Macs are now arm with questionable capabilities to run x86 apps on arm windows.

So I have bit the bullet and bought a Thinkpad with a plan to install Debian right a way.

It came with Win11 preinstalled. I haven’t time to do the reinstall that day and take the computer with me on the go and started to using it. And I really liked it. So much, that I am still using it with Windows 11 for more than a month.

——End of context——

It is polished, everything works on first try, there are no stupid “do you really want to do this” prompts I remember from my previous Windows experience and on top of that there is greatly integrated Linux subsystem.

Am I only one or did windows get really good recently?

TLDR: I bought a Windows 11 computer after years of using Linux/Mac and I find it surprisingly pleasant to use.

Just going to go on a little rant here, so pardon my Mexican slang, but for the love of Satanas and all poder satanico, please name your servers, your network infrastructure – heavens, even your data centers – after common words and names: comic characters, minerals, capitals. Feel free to mix and match themes, it does not matter. I just need to be able to say the hostname as a single word without spewing a series of letters from my lips. If it is part of an array, fine, add a number.

This isn't a DNA sequence, you're not adding vital info dropping rack location or operating system into the hostname. When my weighty consultant balls walk into your office, they're there to help you with your problems. I'm not here to decipher the bullshit data structure you devised to cram OS, data center, and corporate account into a hostname. This stupid trick costs time, focus, and therefore money. I get that you think you're being clever, but it's also actively hindering me from doing a todo maldito trabajo.

Suppose you're a complete moron, and decide to use "cp" for corporate and "ss" for stores. Then "ai" for AIX, and "li" for linux. Then "ad" and "pr" for environment. And then let's suppose for archaic backward compatibility – that no one is quite certain is required but we all fearfully adhere to because we don't want to be the one that breaks everything – you are limited to 8 characters. You are now down to 2 characters to differentiate all your AIX boxes. What an ignorant fool you were to devise such a system. Below are all the reasons why.

Good luck being in the war room trying to talk about cpaiprpr and cpaiprrp to the VP dragged into the bridge call on Sunday.

What happens when the box owner wants that IBM Power10 to run Linux now instead of Aix. Oopsie! A pointless name change because you encoded the OS into the hostname.

If you add rack number to hostname, what happens when that box is repurposed and has to move? Oopsie, another name change. But even worse, 2 different pieces of hardware have had the same hostname.

How well does all the hostname hopping impact searching for relevant backups by hostname in the enterprise backup system? Ruh-roh, Raggy!

What about the cluster fuck hostname hopping will cause in the enterprise config management db? Most dolts assume hostnames are unique keys, but now you have 2 different entries with different serial numbers. Did some the DBA make that field as a unique key? You done goofed!

Side note: do not reuse numbers in your array! So over time, a cluster of 5 boxes might have hostname: sally7, sally8, sally9, sally12, sally13. And if you need to hunt down data from sally10 that box was decommissioned or even repurposed and running as sally10 but not part of that cluster, you're golden.

But I'm not done. Whatever bullshit fields you decided to cram into a hostname, why those? Why not add more? Why not number of NICs or LED color? After all, your mother named you "JoeSonBrownEyes2", right? Without that extra info embedded into your name, how else would the IRS tell you from any other Joe in the country while filing your taxes?

Microsoft's MVP threatens users with persecution for disabling Windows Update https://answers.microsoft.com/ru-ru/windows/forum/windows_10-update-winpc/%D0%BE%D1%82%D0%BA%D0%BB%D1%8E%D1%87%D0%B8%D1%82/b15b8831-845e-4d1d-814d-106d11d7264a Right there on microsoft.com domain, a person named Grand_Ross threatens that if user disables Windows Update on Windows 10, they are violating EULA and as such are liable under criminal law.

Your attempts to disable Windows Update are prohibited by articles 1229 and 1235 of Federal Law 230-ФЗ..., will be qualified by Law as illegal use of software, with all legal circumstances, as per article 7.12 of Federal Law 195-ФЗ, articles 1251, 1301 of Federal Law 230-ФЗ, also second and third parts of article 146 of Federal Law 63-ФЗ...

I won't dive into administrative articles, but article 146 is a criminal article (felony in common law terms) which carry maximum punishment of prison - 2 years max and 6 years max for parts 2 and 3. And in case you wondering, part 2 is illegal use of copyrighted material, which requires damages of $5000, which should obviously make it irrelevant for owner of a single Windows license. Part 3 requires a criminal group, $20000 in damages or being a high-ranked official. Obviously even more irrelevant.

But still the damage is there. A MVP, i.e. a person trusted by Microsoft, giving a legal advice that turning Windows Update off (or maybe even failing to get updates by never turning on the wireless) may land you in court.

And yes, it is already in the news: https://rg.ru/2018/01/24/microsoft-ugrozhaet-polzovateliam-tiurmoj-za-otkaz-obnovliat-windows-10.html

Microsoft may go to court after Russian users who disable Windows 10 operating system automatic updates, according to information on official Microsoft web site. That's an official Russian paper which publishes laws before they go live. Of course there's many more publications.

I'm sitting in on interviews for senior roles and some of these resumes are just insane. Someone puts they have 5 years of experience in AD administration and when I ask them about WQL or using Powershell for management and I get a blank stare. Or do web application support and can't tell me what Nginx is or what a user_agent is?

And I get it, we are not network admins or DBAs but how can someone in this game for years not know select * from <table> where blah blah or never had to do a packet capture on a server. I don't even mean actually reading the output but just being on a call with the network team troubleshooting.

edit: One thing is for sure, after reading these comments I can see why large companies struggle to find quality workers and pay us top dollar.

These are some hard truths that people have to swallow about working in IT.

• It's easy to get into IT, but takes a lot more effort than many people are willing to put in to do well in IT. The barriers to entry to being a PC tech or help desk guy are pretty low. Even a minimal amount of effort at this level can then trick people into thinking they've got it. Getting even one step up takes exponentially more effort.

• Soft skills are incredibly important, even if you don't deal with end users. A lot of IT people are limited by their poor soft skills. A lot of junior people give bad advice to each other about appropriate soft skills. There are also an unfortunate number of people who think they have good soft skills and don't.

• Real, serious technical skills are necessary and take a lot of effort to obtain. There are a ton of people floating around at the lower levels. What they view as high end stuff isn't high end. If you have real, serious technical skills, you sometimes are only competing with 1-2 other people when you apply for jobs.

• You have to be constantly learning and researching because everything is constantly moving and something you just learned last week is going to be a low end, borderline useless skill in a much shorter time period than some of the younger IT people are expecting.

• Being able to read and understand complex material on your own without help, and being able to write well is vital to your career. Not being able to do these two things well will keep you in lower tier jobs. Not enough people put effort into this because they believe they can get by without it. You need to know how to find primary sources and do research. If you're depending on youtube videos to learn everything, you're expecting other people to digest everything for you, and you're going to be limiting how high you can climb.

• People with degrees from a traditional university have definite advantages in this field. Not having a degree will close some doors and will put a ceiling on your career growth. People without degrees do find success within those limitations since right now there's plenty of work for everyone, but it doesn't change the fact some doors are closed to them

• Doing well in this field takes a long time and you have to be patient. You can't get deep knowledge of anything in 6 weeks. There is no way to get 5 years of experience in less than 5 years.

• Having an inflated title hurts your career in the long run. Being an "IT Director" or "senior systems engineer" when you are 24 doesn't mean you are successful. It means you have an inflated title.

• The people who protest this list the most are the ones it applies to the greatest.

A little about me, I have been working in the IT industry for 20+ years in multiple roles from Engineering, Product Development and Enablement to Sales. I currently work as a Technical Specialist helping customers with the Intel vPro® platform.

Come learn how the Intel vPro platform integrates a suite of PC technologies into a single package designed for today's IT professionals. The platform brings together business-class performance, hardware-based security, modern remote manageability and platform stability. With the platform, IT professionals can accelerate business productivity, better safeguard data and assets, manage from anywhere, and gain long-term fleet stability—all while delivering a great user experience.

Here’s where you can find out more about the Intel vPro platform: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/architecture-and-technology/vpro/vpro-platform-general.html

And here are some basic questions to get us started:

What is the Intel vPro platform used for? Businesses use the Intel vPro platform to deliver benefits to performance, security, management, and stability. IT organizations choose the platform for fewer hardware changes and a more seamless experience for business users. Additional features in the Intel vPro platform include connectivity support for Wi-Fi 6 and Thunderbolt™ technology, plus remote management support with Intel® Active Management Technology (Intel® AMT). With Intel® AMT activated, IT organizations can access a PC even when it is turned off.

How does the Intel vPro platform work? The Intel vPro platform is included on select Intel® Core™ vPro® processors and Intel® Xeon® processors. It ensures that the latest PC technologies—including security features, manageability capabilities, Wi-Fi 6, Thunderbolt™ 4, and graphics—are integrated and validated to work together. Most Intel vPro platform capabilities are hard at work right out of the box. For example, battery life and business-class performance and productivity features, as well as simplified connectivity and hardware-enhanced security features, function without any action being taken by the user in any product featuring the Intel vPro platform.

How do I know if my computer has the Intel vPro platform? Look for the Intel® Core™ vPro® processor badge on your PC. When you see the badge, you know that the PC manufacturer has validated the system as meeting the requirements and specifications for the Intel vPro platform.

Now it’s your turn…ask me anything about the Intel vPro platform! I'll be live from 9am to 4pm PST, so we've got all day!

EDIT: Thanks for the questions r/sysadmin. It’s time to wrap-up this AMA and hope you found the answers helpful!