Let’s get this out of the way: AWS is like that one overachieving kid in class who has 900 extracurriculars, speaks six languages, and somehow still gets perfect attendance. Impressive? Yes. Overkill for most of us? Absolutely. So when it came time for me, a solo IT administrator, to pick a cloud platform for our small but mighty public utility,
Tag: solo IT admin
The systems are duct-taped, the code’s ugly, but uptime’s at 99.9%—you’re welcome. Let’s get one thing clear: I’m not just “in IT.” I am IT. I’m the one-person help desk, cybersecurity team, server admin, database whisperer, application analyst, GIS overlord, report writer, documentation gremlin, project manager, and reluctant code monkey—all rolled into one under-caffeinated, over-Googled human being. You’re welcome. And
Hi, I’m the entire IT department. If something breaks, I fix it. If it’s slow, I get blamed. If a vendor calls, it’s me. If the server’s beeping at 2 a.m., that’s also me—staring at it in pajama pants while questioning my life choices. And in between all that, I’m somehow supposed to “modernize our infrastructure.” Look, I’m not against
“A Brittle and Fragile Future” by Vinton Cerf – Then, Now, and Why It Still Hits (Especially If You’re the IT Guy) Back in 2017, I was still working as a Software Tester—writing test cases, clicking buttons until they broke, and logging bugs developers swore couldn’t possibly exist. I was also a dutiful subscriber to Communications of the ACM, because
Being a solo IT admin means you’re the helpdesk, the network engineer, the cybersecurity analyst, the patch management lead, the database whisperer, the app wrangler, and—if you’ve been around long enough—the historian of that one legacy system nobody dares touch. It’s a role powered by caffeine, duct tape solutions, and the faint hope that nothing breaks after 5 p.m. But
There comes a moment in every overworked, under-caffeinated IT professional’s life when the weight of everything—laptops, cables, books, random tech relics from 2009—finally causes the last zipper on your trusty old backpack to throw in the towel. That moment happened to me: a solo IT admin, online grad student, and someone on a no-mercy deep dive into network and cybersecurity
So there I was—halfway under a desk, tracing yet another mystery Ethernet cable (that led nowhere, by the way)—when my boss walked by and hit me with a corporate phrase so vague it might as well have come from a fortune cookie: “You need to start thinking like a manager.” Oh really? Buddy, I’m the only IT person here. I
Let’s get this out of the way: working solo in IT isn’t just a job — it’s an extreme sport. Except instead of medals, you get weird help desk tickets, 3 a.m. server alerts, and the unshakable knowledge that if anything breaks, it’s your fault. And you know what? Sometimes, after explaining for the fourth time that the Wi-Fi password