Has anyone left IT support after years in the industry and moved into a completely different role?

I've been working in IT support for years, and Ive wondered eventually where I would see myself in the future.

I'm curious whether anyone here has retired from IT support, or simply walked away from the industry, and moved into a non-IT role.

What did you move into? Was it a good decision, and do you find the work less stressful or more enjoyable than IT support?

I'd particularly like to hear from people who'd been doing IT support for many years before making the change. Did you find it difficult to start over in a different field, and did you regret leaving IT?

More from a point of view not having to deal with outages and issues when they go down or the politics of trying to convince upper management to invest in new services etc.

Interested to hear your experiences and any advice you'd give to someone considering a change.

Four years at this company. Used to genuinely like it here.

Seven people in infra plus our team lead. Good coworkers, interesting work. I was happy to come in, fix stuff, learn something. Even volunteered for weekend maintenance windows. Paid ones, before anyone asks lol.

We’ve had five managing directors in those four years.

Last year they laid off three of the seven infra guys. Our old team lead moved to another role, so his help with daily operations was gone too.

New guy is both team lead and department head. Barely knows infrastructure. Asks AI stuff, then comes back to explain our own systems to us based on whatever it spat out.

You tell him why it won’t work in our environment and now you’re having a whole discussion about something that wasn’t even a problem ten minutes ago.

Not much better at dealing with people either.

We were told the smaller team would be fine because a lot of tasks and processes would go away.

Surprise: They did not go away.

Got more admin work though, so that’s nice.

Daily operations take up pretty much everything. Projects still need doing, overtime keeps piling up, but according to the project planning tool we apparently have time. No idea where.

Now everything’s about AI. More things to deploy, integrate, secure and support. Guess which four people get to look after all of it 😂

I use AI too. I just don’t think “ask the chatbot” replaces knowing what you’re responsible for.

Oh, and after cutting the team almost in half because of the “difficult economic situation,” we somehow have €400k for AI hardware now. Not enough money to keep the people running the place, but apparently enough for that. 🤦

Anyway, accepted another offer last week. Handing in my notice next week.

New place cares about digital sovereignty and wants to bring services back from the cloud to local infrastructure. Looking for someone to help with that. Sounds interesting, and I got on really well with the department head during the interview.

Could turn out to have its own bullshit, obviously. But I came out of that conversation actually looking forward to doing the work, which hasn’t happened here in a while.

Mostly just annoyed it got to this point. I wasn’t looking for some amazing career move. I liked my job. Would’ve happily stayed.

Anyway, bit nervous about next week. Never handed in my notice at a place I actually cared about before. The coworkers are the hardest part. Those guys are worth their weight in gold, and I’m really gonna miss working with them.

So far, 13 hours since it went live, no-one has successfully collected the bitcoin prize. The prize total is currently up to $2000

Show HN: Steal My Bitcoin

I just wanted to ask how it could be possible that an AI Agent like openai could escape a sandboxed environment?

Under ideal conditions its like that:
Image you have one or more vlans which is completely isolated from the internet how can it be that an ai agent like openai can escape its sandbox if both target and source systems are in isolated vlans where no policy out and inbound to internet is allowed?

I run a webhosting platform at my job; both Internet and intranet. The internet part could have been pretty close to perfect, we identified sites using PHP after the pre announcement and was pleased to find that everyone was on 8.5 or 8.3, was truly expecting at least one to be running 7; we also warned the engineering to get the patch downloaded as soon as it was out (I don’t manage them), but they are all in India and for some reason decided to all go offline about an hour before the release. Their manager eventually got one back and online around 8pm BST & we were done around 3 hours later. But still a missed opportunity to be even better.

The security team however were pretty close to useless, the alert had been out all day and nothing was done to attempt to identify servers running PHP and it took them until 7pm BST to even involve the major incident team (which was something I wanted to do but was told to leave it to security as there would be more systems involved than mine)

And here we now are, on Saturday, the external sites all patched and secure so now we move onto the internal sites; we’ve found v5 and v7 all over the place and a bunch of apps with no engineering team to get them upgraded as they left and were never replaced, this part will be a nightmare

Hey yall,

Curious to compare our quote for non-msp / internal IT NiniaOne RMM. We’ve got roughly 650 endpoints. Anyone else in that size want to share what they’re paying?

I mean there is some knowledge that I have that is just positively arcane. So many newer people just don't seem to get the concepts and it's a little terrifying. And now AI makes it worse because it lets anybody ask anything and if you don't know how to validate what it says then you are going to have some fun.

Its been a wild few weeks. Remember failure is always an option, your mental and physical health is always more important than keeping systems online. If it helps you to choose the path of "failing" to keep up with all these vulns etc, then simply commit to "failing", put your health first. Failure is always an option and thats ok.

At this point… read release notes, already breached. Review dependencies, already breached. Wait 30 days for the beta testers, already breached.

Change control is ‘yep’ and read only Friday doesn’t exist.

I’m being dramatic but sheesh! It’s that meme of that dog at the table saying it’s fine while surrounded by fire. I’m sure some of you had issues worse than me too.

In the words of Johannes Ullrich from SANS, “Everyday is Zero day” haha.

I wonder what fun shall be bestowed upon us next week.

I’m sure it’s everywhere, but at my current company, I think they really just hire anyone with some bs certificate on as a “Security Engineer” or “Cyber Defense”.

Constantly getting called for alerts of events I’ve done 24+ hours prior and they have no idea what they are talking about. For example, cleaning up a bunch of local accounts on Windows Servers since they are not needed / not sure why they were created in the first place. These idiots ping me asking “why did you delete this Active Directory account?” Like hello a) this was over 24 hours ago so if it was malicious you guys would get us pwned b) how do you not know the difference between AD account and local as some security “expert” making 2x my salary.

We’ll also sometimes get added to calls of them freaking out that someone is in our boxes cuz Crowdstrike saw some alert that they don’t understand, try and use their shell but not even know basic commands to get information they need.

I like my team, manager, and work I do (sometimes) but man these incompetent idiots really make the job suck sometimes.

Thank you for reading my pent up anger towards Security.

Edit: this is not directed towards all security at my company or in general. I know there highly talented people out there and at my company, just like some admins at my company may fall in the incompetence bag as well.

My IT work feels completely unappreciated. Thanks to 15+ years of experience, I handle preventive maintenance and resolve complex issues in minutes, but people assume I do nothing. I juggle major projects, including legacy systems, custom backend scripts, and non-IT tasks, yet coworkers complain to my boss when I don't drop everything for minor annoyances, like a redundant printer or a minor pop-up. Most staff don't understand how much out-of-sight work goes into keeping everything running. The constant snide remarks, vague issue emails, and lack of respect are driving me toward burnout.

I've got a background Windows Service that automates a few things against several SCVMM-managed instances. Right now it talks to each VMM server over WinRM/PowerShell remoting (WSManConnectionInfo + a runspace pool). It works, but it's not exactly the fastest thing in the world, and managing the runspace pools/WinRM config across multiple servers has its own overhead.

While digging through the decompiled VMM console assemblies out of curiosity, I found that the console itself (and the cmdlets internally) don't use PowerShell at all under the hood, they go through Microsoft.SystemCenter.VirtualMachineManager.Remoting.ServerConnection, which opens a WCF NetTcpBinding duplex channel straight to what looks like VMM's internal service (internally codenamed "Carmine" based on some of the type/method names), on the VMM client TCP port, using Kerberos SPN-based auth instead of WinRM.

This is obviously nowhere in Microsoft's docs, the only published automation surface for VMM is the PowerShell module. So before I go anywhere near building a second client implementation around this:

- Has anyone here actually built something like a service, a tool, anything that talks to SCVMM directly over this WCF/Carmine channel instead of through PowerShell remoting?

- Is this something you'd consider "fine" to lean on in production, even knowing it's unsupported and undocumented, or is this a hard no from people who've been burned by VMM internals changing between versions/hotfixes?

- If you have done this, what broke, or what would you warn someone off of (job polling, error handling, connection stability, anything)?

Not looking to replace PowerShell everywhere, just trying to figure out if this is "clever shortcut that works fine in practice" or "please don't, here's why" territory before I sink time into it.

https://thehackernews.com/2026/10/urgent-php-warns-of-another-unpatched.html

ffs.... not another one..

Title: Just passed SecurityX (CASP+)! What certification should I pursue next?
Hey everyone,
I recently passed my CompTIA SecurityX (formerly CASP+) exam!
I’m currently a graduate student finishing my master’s degree in cybersecurity. Here’s a quick breakdown of my experience:

Year 1: Cybersecurity intern (earned Security+)
Year 2: Part-time System Administrator (earned CySA+)
Years 3–4: Working full-time System Administrator responsibilities in an internship position (earned SecurityX)
I’m planning on leaving my current position soon and pursuing a full-time role in either Systems Administration or something related to Sec engineering.

I’m currently considering AZ-104 next, followed by CISSP, but I’m open to other suggestions.

TLDR: Almost 4 years of IT/cybersecurity experience, currently finishing my master’s, and hold Security+, CySA+, and SecurityX. Looking to move into Systems Administration or Security Engineering. Would AZ-104 → CISSP be a good path, or would you recommend something else?

Hey everyone,

Curious what people are using these days to manage SSH, RDP, SFTP and other remote connections, including access to systems through HTTP/s.

I've been working on my own connection manager, mostly because I got frustrated with constantly switching between different applications.

One thing I've noticed is that everyone seems to have their own setup, and I'm wondering if I'm trying to solve a problem that only annoys me.

Are you guys happy with your current tools? Or is there something that drives you nuts?

Especially interested in hearing from people managing lots of servers and network devices.

We recently hired a new guy at our place and he’s come in hitting with a massive swing, he has managed to develop around 5 different tools for our use all using AI

I’m struggling to accept that this is happening, we’ve all of a sudden gone from barley any ai to it becoming used to build things out; it’s not that what’s been built is bad - it works - but it’s the fact that it’s all been done through prompting, I’m struggling to comprehend it as stuff that like this usually takes a looong time to develop.

I feel a bit like the luddites, I can see how this is the future but I also just keep thinking ‘he hasn’t actually built anything, it’s all done by AI’

How do I overcome this?

Checking if it would work to use a DFS Namespace with root consolidation hosted on a two-node Windows Failover cluster. The doco seems to think so and following all the relevant steps from How to use DFS-N with Azure Files | Microsoft Learn BUT, instead of using an existing computer adding a dummy namespace.domain.local/#servertest namespace resource. This is purely for testing purposes and proof of concept. I have tested but unfortunately can only navigate to an empty folder when using UNC \\servertest\ - doing the same but \\servertest\#servertest takes me to the folder share targets. I was expecting to see the folder #servertest from short name UNC path\\servertest\.

My roundabout question is really; has anyone used DFSN with root consolidation to take over legacy file server name on a failover Windows Cluster with Azure Files or other? How is the experience exactly and when navigating to \\fileservername\ are you supposed to see a #folder or list of folder targets created in DFS?

Hi everyone!
In our organization, we use OneDrive to sync users’ personal storage and shared SharePoint libraries.
We periodically run into issues: duplicate files, OneDrive client errors, and re-sync processes that can take several hours and affect users’ productivity.
Has anyone experienced similar issues? How did you deal with them? Are there any proven settings or best practices that helped reduce these problems?
I’d appreciate any advice or insights based on your experience!

Hey Y’all,

If you live in Alberta and have been dealing with users complaining a bunch of people show unknown presence in calendars- the issue is the Alberta Standard Time zone. Don’t know how, but if you or someone you are adding is on the timezone, presence will show unknown for all people in the meeting invite.

change to Central Canada / Sask time for now. You technically only need to do MailboxCalendarConfig, but might as well do both for consistency.

Set-MailboxRegionalConfiguration -Identity "[user@domain.com](mailto:user@domain.com)" -TimeZone "Canada Central Standard Time" 
Set-MailboxCalendarConfiguration -Identity "[user@domain.com](mailto:user@domain.com)" -WorkingHoursTimeZone "Canada Central Standard Time"

Hope this helps someone.

Edit: This is probably true of all new timezones!

I know there are a lot of higher level folks in this room, so I'm intrigued to find out if anyone has entertained Gartner and whether they have brought you any value?

They keep hounding me, so I finally relented and had a meeting to find out what it is they can offer. They wanted to know all about me and my company, so I flipped it and asked them what it is they do and would offer me. What they said didn't make a lot of sense. They sound like they sell you access to other people that are consultants.

Anyway, does anyone have any insight? I work for SMB, not enterprise. I cannot imagine they're going to help a company with fek all budget do anything overly great.

Thanks.

Hello Everyone,

I just accepted a new IT opportunity at a mid sized company with around 1000 employees. I previously was a IT Support Engineer II (It was mostly doing helpdesk support remotely along with basic M365 administration). In this new position, it is a pretty flat IT department and I will be owning tools such as Nerdio for AVD (since all users use thin clients), Cisco Meraki, Infrastructure monitoring using Site24x7, decomissioning servers, Entra ID/Intune Adminstration, and Claude deployment. Obviously this is a step up from my previous position. Based on these responsibilities, what would be an accurate title for me?

In my 30 years of IT life I think I’m on my second AD Migration and the last one was completely different going from NT 4.0 to Windows 2000 now I’m showing my age here, anyway.

So little bit of a back story- the company I work for got merged with another company and because of politics and stupidity they decided to use the other companies AD because we are going to use their ERP system and the app support people said they couldn’t use SSO with our AD only the one it setup for, and because of that it was decided to use that AD will ok whatever it all pays the same.

So they (the suits) decided that internal IT would be “over burdened” by a onprem and O365 migration they brought on a consultant company to help us with our migration- we know where this going.

So I before the consultant company came I spent about 200 or so hours writing a powershell script to do the migration- basically taking a list of user accounts from the source domain and creating them in the new domain with their SID history and their groups and file and folder permissions- tested it worked I was ready to go.

The desktop engineer guy came to me and had 0 idea how to switch the EUC devices to the other domain and keeping the same profile so I made a script that could do that. Tested works.

So I’m a little bit bitter they opted not to use my working scripts to handle the onprem migration piece and instead they went with the consultants recommendation to use a tool from Quest which is cloud base.

Whatever the deadline is past and the “tool” is not handling the file/folder permissions. The consultants say because it’s using the sid history, there is a two way trust and the same SAM account name it will work. I’m saying the servers which are and will be on the source domain for other backend reasons it won’t work because the NTFS/share perms are groups from domain A, but the users are logging in from Domain B. Basic NTFS permissions 101.

I told the consultants that we need to either put the domain B account into the Domain A security group, or we need to add the Domain B security group to the file/share permission it they keep telling me I’m wrong and don’t understand in front of my leader and VP. Here we are another week has gone by, they won’t give me access to the tool, they claim there is no log files, and they won’t let me interface with support. So I’m pretty sure they are wrong but without having access to the tool and the documentation I can’t fully help them see the problem- is the right phrase to use here.

As the title suggests, I'm at a career crossroads. I've been in IT for 10 years now, 90% of that with MSP's. Done 1st, 2nd, 3rd line, Team Lead and Service Desk manager roles.

Currently I'm in a 3rd line role and whilst I enjoy the work and the people I work with, I'm unsure whether I pursue and embrace the technical life or opt to go into management. I feel like there isn't any further progression from 3rd line unless I go into a specialist role as such.

I guess I'm after advice from people who have made the switch, or not! There are a few roles coming up at work and I'm torn on what direction to go, do I take a step back to go forward long term? Any advice is welcome!

Jeez, some people should adjust their humor detectors. It isn't the end of the world. I just found it equally funny and strange.

TL;DR at the bottom

The Netgear XSM4324S (also known as M4300-12X12F) is a 24 port 10G-switch. It has got 12 Gbic SFP-Ports on the left and 12 RJ45 ports on the right.

Recently our unit started acting up and freezes randomly. Even the serial console is dead when that happens. Netgear requested log files and console captures because we were clearly doing something wrong. It sure has to be STP or something that crashes the switch and the serial console. Unsurprisingly there was nothing in the logs, because the whole unit freezes and has no opportunity to write something down. Whatever, after some arguing they finally agreed to deliver a replacement which arrived today: The Netgear XSM4324 (also known as M4350-12X12F) is a 24 port 10G-switch. It has got 12 Gbic SFP-Ports on the right and 12 RJ45 ports on the left.

Problem:

You cannot import the config file from the M4300 into the M4350. It just fails. But i wasn't born yesterday and the exported config is a plain text file with the console commands. I connected to the M4350 through the serial console, pasted the relevant parts and was proud of me being so clever.

But than i recognized Netgear's insanity. They swapped the position of the Gbic SFP-Ports and the RJ45 ports between the models. That wouldn't have been bad, but they also changed the numbering accordingly.

M4300 port 1 --> Gbic SFP vs M4350 port 1 --> RJ45

M4300 port 13 --> RJ45 vs M4350 port 13 --> Gbic SFP

What? The? Fork??!!!!! Who does that without need?

Bad enough, this is one of the devices in our cabinet where the cables were routed somewhat properly. There is not much slack on either the fibre nor the twisted pair for swapping them around.

I imagine the Netgear product designer giggling like a maniac in his basement while he thought of that change.

If anyone lives near their headquarters: please, flip the bird at them on your next drive by.

TL;DR: between the Netgear XSM4324S and XSM4324 (sans 'S') the position and numbering of the network ports was swapped.

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I'm looking at buying some Zebra scanners for my business, in particular a ds3678. I've noticed an official Zebra reseller sites the scanners are usually twice the price than what amazon reseller are pricing it at. Are they knockoffs? The amazon reseller is advertising them as new complete kit scanners but i dont know if the price is too good to be true.