'Everyone left the company [on] my first day': New IT employee forced to take over system control of the whole company after entire department quits on the spot

Most hires are eased into their new jobs. They usually spend the first week meeting everyone on the team, adjusting to any technical aspects of the position, and learning from seasoned employees at the company. It's best for all involved if a new hire is not thrown into the deep end. After all, they might not have the tools to stay afloat. It's not that they're not capable, but everyone needs time to settle into a new role. One would think that this would be self-explanatory, but unfortunately, far too many managers these days have no idea how to properly introduce a new hire into the fold.

Here, we have an IT employee who was shown some of the ropes by a fellow team member on their first day. However, on the second day, the employee noticed that the same team member who they were supposed to consult if they needed help was absent. In fact, he quit his position entirely. To make matters worse, the other folks on the small but mighty IT team had also put in their two weeks' notice and were on vacation for the majority of that time. That meant that this new hire quickly became a one-person operation on day two of their new job. Good luck!

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  • This is the kind of conundrum that could have been properly communicated and handled from the start. If senior management had orchestrated an earlier start date for the new hire, that could have avoided some of the drama. Worst case, they could have at least been transparent about what was about to happen from the get-go. Then, it would been less of a shock for the new hire at the very least.

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    So... after doing pentesting for some time I moved and started a regular sysadmin position in a multinational in EU, i filtered other companies because i thought this one was big enough and i would have space to grow here.
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    In my first day a sysadmin walked me through all the systems and stuff he was doing, the company uses some very obscure software from IBM for some reason, he told me they switched from IBM Notes to Outlook last year, and some users were still using it, he showed me some AS400
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    machines that were managed externally, i meet the other 2 senior sysadmins and we had a good day talking about experiences and the job.
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  • 05
    The next day i was dumbfounded to learn that the person i was with yesterday was on his last day, and
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    the other two guys went into vacation... I was alone with systems i didn't know, no accounts, and had no control over, not even a manual or a word doc with some texts... We don't even have an IT share with stuff, installers or whatever, NONE!... Turns
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  • 07
    out the two seniors took the vacations and put the 15 days resignation letter, at the same time. Dk move tbh. i call this ad :k move, not because they wanted to leave for a
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  • 08
    better job, just tell me you're leaving as a colleague and explain more about the systems i'll have to manage.
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  • 09
    Two weeks later i didn't even had an AD account, as the international IT director is always OOO, and the rest of admins needs permission to create my account.
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  • 10
    Two months now, I have a regular user account, (an admin told me i have to *earn* the admin? whatever that means) I have to support 5 EU countries 300 users, 20 very obscure systems that for some reason each office have their own CRM and software... I'm basically a
    via mTbzz
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  • 11
    middleman, the users tells me they're blocked and i talk to the software vendor to unblock them. I can't even RDP to help because i don't have permissions, so most of the support is on call.
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    The only time i could talk to the IT director was when we were on a sudden call to talk if we should reduce from 90 days to 60 days the password expiry policy, i told him that was an anti-pattern and won't stop hackers and was making our
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    users lazy to use sequence passwords like summer2023, ...2024...2025. He said OK, and proceed to ignore me talk to other admins, the AD is a mess, some offices aren't even in the domain, and everyone is local admin, heck!!! my domain user is local admin in my
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  • 14
    pc, w?? no plan for backups, users download stupid slone had GTA San Andreas, you can't even begin to comprehend the absurdity of the company's state, we have more than fifteen versions of FortiClient running in parallel, some even have FC 3.3... it's out of control, a b b ready to
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    explode anytime, as a pentester i was crying... I accepted the fact i was going to be powerless and just did my job as a translator/middleman.
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    Today my country manager tells me i must call ISP to negotiate a new deal and switch completely our whole phone/internet company to save
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  • 17
    money. I told him this is not something IT should be doing, it's the finances team or anyone else's job... Some IT admin from Budapest calls and tells me to just do it, and to get a good price out of them. So here i am with 2 weeks full of meetings with sales reps from ISPs to switch
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    our whole network, also he asks me *why* I turn off my work phone at home, he was surprised to hear that I don't bring work home, i bring the phone with me because it's my responsibility but i won't answer any call outside of work hours, he asked me to at least answer Teams or
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    emails, and I told him no, why would I answer emails in my personal time? He told me "Let's talk about it later", but I won't yield here, not without some payment rise.
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    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

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    Anyways, i can't quit or be fired because for some personal reasons, i need to keep this job for at least a
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    year, so wish me luck and patience... At least the payment is not horrible. EDIT: I think i oversimplified the ISP contract part, i never handled negotiation with ISPS before, I know IT draft the requirements of the network, speed, etc... But i wish they at least would tell me the prices we
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  • 23
    want or the upgrade we want, to do more research, they told me our current expenses and that's it. I have to figure out a lot of things to negotiate this deal, one thing i got out of this is that i will learn a lot about phone lines and infrastructure.
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    I'm trying my best to answer all the comments, sorry if i miss one. I can't quit the job because it's a requirement i signed. As i said in another comment, i have a "special" situation in EU. I'll do my best at this job propose upgrades, tools and anything that helps... I'll learn
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    whatever i need while keeping update with the latest cyber security knowledge, and I'll prioritize my health, that's why i told them i was not going to be on-call outside the working hours in my contract.
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  • 26
    Thank you all for your input, I'm going to take the most of your advice and post an update by the end of the month when i finish my meeting with my country manager and the IT director.
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    billdietrich1. Put it all in writing, make sure management is informed of the bad practices and risks and recommendations.
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