Ten rounds of interviews to be asked the same thing two hundred times.

I have to be honest, I’m getting really worn out with the way interview processes are run these days. I just finished ten rounds of interviews, each lasting between an hour and an hour and a half. By the tenth one, I was completely drained. Nearly every round involved the same repetitive questions: “Tell me about yourself, tell me about your career, tell me about your expertise.” After repeating myself countless times, I started giving shorter answers simply because I couldn’t keep restating the same points over and over.

The final interview in particular was exhausting. The interviewer spent almost the entire time pressing me on “what I’m passionate about,” rephrasing the same question dozens of times as though trying to trap me in a “gotcha” moment. On top of that, they asked overly abstract architecture questions that are rarely touched in day-to-day practice, things you configure once and then never revisit.

After being asked about my “passion” for the fourth time, I finally told him, politely but firmly, that I wasn’t interested in being treated like an intern. After twenty years in this field, I don’t think anyone deserves to be subjected to repetitive, superficial questioning that doesn’t actually evaluate their capabilities.

The guy’s eyes sank like I had just committed a crime. This only ever happens with people over 40 in corporate environments, I’ve never had these kinds of interactions with younger staff. I honestly don’t know how to bridge that gap anymore, and at this point, I don’t care to try.

Why is it that people act like work is supposed to be the only thing that defines you? I do my job because it pays well. I work hard to keep it, and I pick up new skills because I have to, not because I “love” doing it. Nobody stays passionate about the same thing after doing it for 15 or 20 years. You deal with the nonsense, push through it, and get the work done. That’s what a job is. If it were truly a passion project, I wouldn’t be getting paid for it.

https://redd.it/1nbzbak
@r_systemadmin

On-Call Compensation

TLDR: is it common to receive no extra pay for being on-call?


I've been working in IT for over 15 years. I've worked for MSPs, small companies and large corporations. In every position, I was part of an on-call rotation. Every job before my current role included additional compensation or benefits for being on-call. My current role did include a 10% increase in pay but I don't feel that it covers the difference in pay or responsibility. I get more on-call alerts in this role than any other place I've worked. Sometimes I go several nights without enough sleep and am expected to work a full shift. Is it common to have on-call just be an expected duty without additional compensation?




https://redd.it/1nbzmrh
@r_systemadmin

GPUGate Malware Targets IT Firms Using Google Ads and Fake GitHub Commits

**Date:** September 8, 2025

**TL;DR:**

* Malware campaign uses Google Ads and fake GitHub commits to spread malware.
* GPU-gated decryption helps attackers evade sandboxes and analysis tools.
* Targets IT and software development companies in Western Europe.

A new malware campaign called GPUGate is leveraging Google Ads and malicious GitHub commits to trick users into downloading trojanized installers disguised as popular tools like GitHub Desktop. Once installed, the malware uses GPU-based checks to bypass virtual machines and sandboxes, making detection and analysis significantly more difficult.

For sysadmins and security teams, this attack highlights the growing threat of malvertising and supply chain-style impersonation. IT departments should closely monitor traffic for suspicious domains such as gitpage\[.\]app, enforce strict download policies, and educate teams on verifying software sources. This campaign also suggests the need for updated endpoint detection rules that account for GPU-based evasion techniques.

**Full Story:**

[https://thehackernews.com/2025/09/gpugate-malware-uses-google-ads-and.html](https://thehackernews.com/2025/09/gpugate-malware-uses-google-ads-and.html)

https://redd.it/1nbwnfg
@r_systemadmin

Biggest fuck up you made?

I was new onsite and accidently restarted the Host machine... And panicked looking for the physical machine.

https://redd.it/1nc44gg
@r_systemadmin

Trapped sysadmin.

49 years old with 4 kids. Oldest just started college and the youngest is in 5th grade. I have been in the IT feild since I was 22 years old. I absolutely hate it! I am miserable everyday but I just cannot start over doing something else as I have responsibilities that cost money. The idea that the last quarter of my life will be spent working in a feild that gutts me is just depressing. I do not see a way out and really just needed to vent. Anyone else trapped like me? Misery loves company.

https://redd.it/1nc717a
@r_systemadmin

Your Favorite Co-Worker?

Making this post to add entertainment for the night,

Come join the campfire and tell us nerds about your favorite co-worker! Good or Bad.

Have a great evening!

https://redd.it/1nc60ws
@r_systemadmin

Patch Tuesday Megathread (2025-09-09)

Hello r/sysadmin, I'm u/AutoModerator, and welcome to this month's Patch Megathread!

This is the (mostly) safe location to talk about the latest patches, updates, and releases. We put this thread into place to help gather all the information about this month's updates: What is fixed, what broke, what got released and should have been caught in QA, etc. We do this both to keep clutter out of the subreddit, and provide you, the dear reader, a singular resource to read.

For those of you who wish to review prior Megathreads, you can do so here.

While this thread is timed to coincide with Microsoft's Patch Tuesday, feel free to discuss any patches, updates, and releases, regardless of the company or product. NOTE: This thread is usually posted before the release of Microsoft's updates, which are scheduled to come out at 5:00PM UTC.

Remember the rules of safe patching:

Deploy to a test/dev environment before prod.
Deploy to a pilot/test group before the whole org.
Have a plan to roll back if something doesn't work.
Test, test, and test!

https://redd.it/1nc91oa
@r_systemadmin

How I went from Help desk to Cloud Engineer in 2 Years

I have been in IT for 2 years and during that time I have been on a constant grind to learn and better myself. This was especially difficult with having two young toddlers and being in online school full time and studying for certifications and working a full time job while my wife also worked her full time job. This is what I did to get hired and get promoted quickly and move up and out of the Help desk role into more specialized higher paying jobs.

2023 Help Desk level 1 6 months -- 24/hr

Towards the tail end of 2023 I landed my first job in IT, this was extremely difficult and took me MONTHS to get, I was at the time jobless and in online school full time while also watching my 2 year old. I started off applying to everything and anything I saw in job board postings and realized after application 200 that this was not the play. I changed my strategy and adjusted my resumes to each of the jobs I knew I had a better chance at getting. This meant I would rework my resume to include keywords I noticed in their job advertisement that I knew I was capable of doing. I adjusted prior roles to showcase they included the soft skills and some hard skills needed for the role. This started landing me interviews and allowed for me to get my first job as a help desk level 1.

During this time I went into full grind mode, I would ask our system admin, network engineer, and security engineer and unbelievable amount of questions to try and learn my companies environment. I spent and unhealthy amount of my free time (always at night) studying certifications, networking, servers, etc. I would watch countless hours of Help Desk videos explaining various job duties and responsibilities, I would watch "how to" guides on things like GPO, AD DS, Entra ID, Azure, Intune, and more. I created labs at my house so I could get more hands on practice creating and breaking my lab environments. The constant learning and practice in the lab environments expedited my learning IMMENSLEY and gave me the confidence to voice my opinion when I would find misconfigurations in our on-prem and cloud environment. This lead to me being brought up in conversations and for management to take notice of my efforts.

2024-2025 Junior System Administrator 1 year 6 months -- 70k/yr

I was promoted to Junior System Administrator, my only problem, my senior was not a good teacher and as I would find out later did not have the necessary experience or expertise to be in their position. This caused for me to have to amp up what I was already doing by finishing my degree and getting my first certification. This certification was the Security+ and was able to teach me some very good information, however it was not entirely needed for my daily job and was more of a resume builder than anything. Gaining this role and constantly studying and learning more and more about Microsoft's best practices I realized there was still A LOT to configure in my current organizations Entra and M365. So this provided me the opportunity to become deeply familiar with solving security issues in our IdP like MFA enforcement, Risky User, Risky Sign-in policy, SSPR, Security Group reconfiguring, PIM Implementation. Resolving issues with Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, and creating retention policies. Finding new vendors for the company such as Cloud backups for the m365. I also went a got a few certifications such as the AZ-104 and SC-300 which really improved my ability and gave me so much more confidence in the azure and Entra platform.

Now Cloud Engineer 100k+/yr

I was recently hired by another company who offered me a six figure salary and will be starting my new role as a cloud engineer. I did the same thing I did when I was looking for a Help Desk job I tailored my resume to the jobs I was applying and used the key words in the job posting to be included in my resume. It was definitely easier now that AI is better than it was. I used AI like ChatGPT to adjust my resumes bullet points to focus on bypassing ATS and utilize

resources like Harvard resume builder links to improve the way my resume looked so it would be more appealing to hiring managers. I then instructed ChatGPT to tailer the resume to the specific jobs I was interested in and focus on my experience that fits those jobs. I made sure that every bullet point that was in my resume was something I have done in my job and all the knowledge displayed was something I could actually do. On each interview I would type up multiple questions that are common interview questions and have answers ready to go. I would also write a quick summary of my experience in bullet points and place it on the screen so I could be clear and concise on my remote interviews. All of this (while probably sounding like overkill) I feel greatly helped me getting the multiple offers I got. Most importantly I still applied to a lot of jobs not nearly as many as I did for Help Desk but it will take time.

https://redd.it/1ncb4nn
@r_systemadmin

mac and intune in general is horrible

I just wanted to rant a little about how unfun it has been to integrate Intune as our first MDM. We already had the licenses sitting around, but never got around to actually setting up an MDM. With the growing number of colleagues, it finally became a top priority, so we decided on Intune mainly because the licenses were already there.

The project scope was huge: Windows, Android, and Apple devices all needed to be fully managed by Intune. On top of that, different departments required different apps, and we had to enforce a ton of security policies: no app store, no admin rights, encryption, Defender for Endpoint, etc. Doing all of this on my own while trying to learn how everything works was brutal.

The last piece of the puzzle was getting Apple devices set up, and I’m not going to lie this was the absolute worst experience of the entire project. Just setting up Apple Business Manager took days. Then figuring out how to actually enroll Apple devices was nothing short of a nightmare. Half the time it barely works: you reset the device, use the Configurator app, cross your fingers that the Microsoft Entra login actually shows up, then sit there waiting for Intune configurations to apply. It’s slow, clunky, and honestly miserable to deal with.

And don’t even get me started on Microsoft’s documentation. Why are there 20 different guides for the same thing, all giving slightly different instructions? Finding the one guide that actually matches reality is a mess. Between the inconsistent documentation, the awful speed of Intune, and the painful Apple setup, this project has been one of the least enjoyable IT tasks I’ve ever worked on.

I really don’t understand why there aren’t more people screaming about how bad some parts of Intune are. It feels like everyone just quietly suffers through it.

https://redd.it/1nccgdc
@r_systemadmin

sysadmin but no infrastructure actually exists

Hello everyone,

I’ve finally been accepted for a SysAdmin role and signed the contract, as I really wanted to move on from my previous position in application support. But there’s a catch:

1. The company I’m joining is a vendor a partner with multiple providers offering data applications like Informatica, Denodo, and Cloudera.


2. I found out that vendor companies don’t usually maintain their own infrastructure, since they don’t host services for customers.


3. They only have about three or four servers with one or two applications installed for testing purposes, plus a Windows Server domain controller that, oddly enough, everyone in the company has access to.


4. This left me a bit confused about my role. When I asked my team lead, he explained that I’ll be responsible for installing and configuring applications on the customer’s side starting from setting up the OS, through application installation and configuration, until go-live. After that, my responsibility ends.

i am really confused i don't know what to ask you guys and don't know what to do exactly but I'm open for any advice.



https://redd.it/1ncezle
@r_systemadmin

npm got owned because one dev clicked the wrong link. billions of downloads poisoned. supply chain security is still held together with duct tape.

npm just got smoked today. One maintainer clicked a fake login link and suddenly 18 core packages were backdoored. Chalk, debug, ansi styles, strip ansi, all poisoned in real time.

These packages pull billions every week. Now anyone installing fresh got crypto clipper malware bundled in. Your browser wallet looked fine, but the blockchain was lying to you. Hardware wallets were the only thing keeping people safe.

Money stolen was small. The hit to trust and the hours wasted across the ecosystem? Massive.

This isn’t just about supply chains. It’s about people. You can code sign and drop SBOMs all you want, but if one dev slips, the internet bleeds. The real question is how do we stop this before the first malicious package even ships?



https://redd.it/1ncf87f
@r_systemadmin

For anyone having issues installing nuget this morning...

might just be a caching thing in my area but I'm seeing an expired cert right now for *.azureedge.net on the nuget download endpoint I've been shown to.

Not the first time, it seems: Fix NuGet PackageProvider No Match Found Error

https://redd.it/1ncdqnh
@r_systemadmin

User cant use password to log into office portal

Recently while trying to log in to the office portal, Microsoft asks for your PIN or Facial recognition instead of a password, is there any way to just use the password? At this stage what is the point of even creating a password if the user is forced to use the PIN for everything?

https://redd.it/1ncilre
@r_systemadmin

Best IT asset management for a small business? Ideally a plug and play option

Just need a good rec ofr something solid to replace sheets. Anything that’s real easy to set up and manage. We’re not big enough for full-on enterprise stuff, but I still need to know who has what and when it was last used. Any tools out there that you’ve used and liked? Would prefer SaaS, but open to ideas if the setup’s not a pain. And before you guys say it, snipe it is not a good plug and play option. Budget isn’t a major issue, I just need something that works with minimal manual oversight

Thanks.

PS: I’m relatively inexperienced, and this is my first HR job in a fairly large company. I’ve only done most of my work manually, granted it was for much smaller businesses, hence my avoidance of snipe it. I’d rather just have the business pay for something more convenient

https://redd.it/1nck487
@r_systemadmin

Microsoft announces a return-to-office mandate of three days per week

Article here: https://www.theverge.com/report/774414/microsoft-return-to-office-policy-announcement

It'll start with those currently around the Seattle office, and then move to those around the US and internationally.

https://redd.it/1ncmclm
@r_systemadmin

Anyone else experiencing their Remote Desktop window closing automatically

Several users so far this morning have had their Remote Desktop window vanish on them. I logged into the AVD as well as I was looking around, BLOOP, my window went away as well. I logged back in, windows were still like I left them, so session was disconnected. Seeing if this is happening to others.

https://redd.it/1ncmc4p
@r_systemadmin

ChatGPT Fixed it

Can you relate? https://imgur.com/a/JunuRtY

something my coworker said when dealing with a vendor support tech.

https://redd.it/1ncutbg
@r_systemadmin

What are good Jira alternatives for IT support and workflows?

Jira feels like overkill for smaller IT teams that just want to track requests, handle approvals, and keep things moving without a ton of overhead. What tools are you all using instead that actually fit well inside day-to-day workflows?

Keep hearing about Foqal, any thoughts on it?

https://redd.it/1ncvesm
@r_systemadmin

IT Miracles

I'll go first.

The sprinkler pipe burst in our data center right over our storage rack. One of our NetApp shelves got filled with water. We pulled the shelf and emptied about two gallons of water into the garbage can. We carried the shelf to the boiler room and let it sit there for two hours to dry out. We popped the shelf back in and it fired up like nothing happened. No disks were lost.

https://redd.it/1nd1q4i
@r_systemadmin

Salary expectations?

Hi everyone, I had some questions regarding the salary in the field as I’m nearing graduating college with a B.S. in Cybersecurity and spoke to my boss about a full-time position post graduation.

For context, I have been working part-time (~24 hours a week, 40 hours a week over summers) as a Junior IT Analyst for about a year and a half now at a mid size government contracting company in the Washington D.C. area (~400 employees, most on government sites while only about 40-50 work in HQ). Although my noscript is Junior IT Analyst, I manage myself and report directly to the CFO. He was in charge of all IT things before alongside his actual work, and I am the first and only IT hire in the company. This is actually my first job in my career, other than like retail stuff in highschool. My work basically consists of this:

Assisted the CFO in the migration of all employees from commercial Microsoft 365 to Microsoft GCC High. This allowed a level of CMMC compliance that opens up many contracts.

Created the first internal IT ticketing system for employees. It’s basically just an app I made built into our employees MS Teams. It allows to submit tickets, software requests, view FQAs, etc. I use this to manage the tickets and requests people have.

I deploy any software our employees might need, especially our software developers that always need different things deployed.

Use PowerShell to automate lots of process for HR, like new user creation.

Set up devices for all new hires.

And overall keep the day to day IT procedures running, managing the system from Microsoft Admin Center, Entra, Intune, etc.


I’m currently payed $20 an hour. However, once I graduate and can work as a full-time employee, I’m obviously hoping for a decent salary. I’ll have my degree and a TS clearance. So basically my question is, what would be a fair salary to request? I just want to have a good idea of the average salaries in the industry before discussing finances with my boss.

https://redd.it/1nd3dq3
@r_systemadmin