What Are SysAdmins Thankful For?

It’s Thanksgiving week here in the United States, and while we’re all thankful for the usual suspects like our families, homes, health, and employment, there are some special things that technical workers are extra glad to have in the workplace.

Here are our Top 10 Things SysAdmins Are Thankful For in 2019:

1) That old forum post describing your exact problem

We’ve all been there, even if we weren’t troubleshooting a complex IT issue: you’re Googling your heart out, hoping that someone out there has had the same problem that you have. Suddenly: YES! This forum post from 2015 is almost the exact scenario. A helpful response in the thread helps you resolve your ticket. Sometimes it’s wonderful that nothing is ever truly erased from the internet.

2) PowerShell and other automation tools

While some may fear that automation is coming to take their jobs, savvy administrators recognize it as a way to make their lives easier. PowerShell has been kicking around since 2006 as a scripting tool that can automate and organize routine IT tasks that might otherwise take quite a lot of time. Easy to be thankful for getting those hours back!

3) Backups and disaster recovery

This one is pretty self-explanatory. When things go sideways, we’re all thankful we can restore a recent backup and get back to work.

4) Tickets or requests that provide all relevant information

When users go through the proper steps for their requests and also provide relevant and key details in their support tickets or IT requests, it makes everything go much smoother and take less time on all sides. Don’t forget updated contact information!

5) Clear, concise, and well-organized documentation

Sometimes you need to refer to the guidebook to get things done according to company policy. Coworkers who are good at producing documentation are cherished by their fellow IT brethren.

6) Decision makers who value IT

As business acumen becomes more important for CTOs and CIOs, their influence is spreading among the rest of the C-suite. Lower down the totem pole, IT staff genuinely appreciate when leadership invests in IT technology, training, staff, and especially vendor warranties and extended support.

7) Group policy

Group policies within Active Directory allow sysadmins to apply configuration settings to an entire group of users at once, such as security requirements, access control, patching, or folder redirection. Group policy is another feature that can save tons of time!

8) Being able to help people

For many IT tasks, the end goal is essentially helping people solve problems. Whether you are on helpdesk helping users directly or working on a large-scale initiative for the entire business, ultimately you’re helping enable the success of others. That helps keep many administrators going day-in and day-out.

9) Uptime

You can never be too thankful for reliable systems. Even if there is a certain thrill in the mad scramble to restore operations, having your DNS, servers, network, workstations, and applications all working in harmony is a great feeling.

10) Coffee and/or booze

Coffee for the morning (and afternoon pick-me-up, and evenings on-call). Booze for those fire drill days where everything goes wrong.

What are you thankful for in your role? Don’t forget to take some time this holiday season to consider what makes your life better, personally or professionally. Happy Thanksgiving!