hello<\/p>\n

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wanted to ask for those who work in small to mid companies, max 100 peoplish, what is your daily routine like? i am a one man IT in our company and find it hard for things to do to remain busy in all honesty (dont hang me for this statement)<\/strong><\/p>\n

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it only takes so long to check backups and updates also ifeel like watching logs like a hawk are not really necessary?<\/p>\n

i handle everything from password resets to server and infrastructure and of course, have to get approval for major projects.<\/p>\n

i love my situation cause i am my own boss pretty much but certain times just wonder if this is the norm in small companies?<\/p>\n

so i am like a king where i am but i dont want my skills to stagnate due to the lack of work since we are a small company if that makes sense.<\/p>\n

would like to hear your thoughts<\/p>","upvoteCount":76,"answerCount":59,"datePublished":"2021-08-04T12:37:18.000Z","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"dontworryok","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/u/dontworryok"},"suggestedAnswer":[{"@type":"Answer","text":"

One of the things I have always done, and mostly I have worked for smaller companies, schools, and my current employer, a medical practice, is to learn the business as thoroughly as I can. I always kept a hand in teaching at schools. I worked a week or so in the warehouse when I ran IT for a sporting goods company, and at least observed the other departments. Understanding as many aspects of the business as possible made it so that I could be proactive about figuring out ways IT could further the success of the business/school. IT should never be seen as just a crisis response service, but should instead be seen as a valuable service for constant improvement.<\/p>\n

Other things I do when I have time:<\/p>\n

    \n
  • Documentation. It is never complete, and never up-to-date. My goal is to have something that I can hand to my successor (or that the practice can hand to him/her if I get hit by the proverbial bus) so that even if we never talked he/she would be well positioned to just step in and take over smoothly.<\/li>\n
  • Explore systems that will help me keep things running better. I found PRTG and Lansweeper this way, and they are a crucial part of my proactive monitoring of everything.<\/li>\n
  • Learn new skills that will help me do things better even if I don’t at the moment have a particular plan for them. Powershell fits into this category though I haven’t made the progress I have wanted to.<\/li>\n
  • Keep up with Spiceworks. Admittedly a lot of my posts are trivial and attempts at humor, but that is just part of community life here. I have found enough gems, new ideas, though provoking arguments, heads-up warnings about new security risks, etc., to justify the time I spend and probably more. Plus, it is a good place to give back to the IT community, even though I may not be an expert in any particular area.<\/li>\n
  • Explore ever-tighter security. We can never be secure enough and it is quite the high-wire balancing act to maintain high security and low interference for the users from the security. Some of the things I have done in my “spare” time:<\/li>\n
  • I implemented application whitelisting via File System Resource Manager. Good details here on SW on this.<\/li>\n
  • I designed and built temperature and humidity monitors with alerting capabilities for our equipment rooms using Raspberry Pis.<\/li>\n
  • I put in place a system to alert me when a workstation attempts to write a file with a known ransomware extension.<\/li>\n
  • I put Robert5205’s Strikemap in place to monitor probes of our public IP.<\/li>\n
  • I have improved and am still working on improving our backup system.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    All of these things were done best during the quiet times when the phone wasn’t ringing off the hook, all the software systems were behaving, and the users were all happy.<\/p>","upvoteCount":19,"datePublished":"2021-08-05T10:36:37.000Z","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/t/daily-routine-in-a-small-mid-company/807504/11","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"NULL","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/u/NULL"}},{"@type":"Answer","text":"

    As someone in the same situation, I’m on Spiceworks more than I should be, I read up on trends, cyber security, various websites and forums etc. I make rounds 3 times a day just to show my face and make sure there’s no issues that folks just haven’t reported yet. I make sure I stop by the site directors office a few times if nothing else just to update on things or see how they’re doing. So long as the work that needs doing, is done, and you haven’t broken out your gaming laptop to do “research” you’re good \":slight_smile:\"<\/p>\n

    Other little things - cable management (never ending project) cleaning up the closets of anything that doesn’t need to be there, organize inventory, create a VM and play with different OS’s or Linux distros, look into better alternatives to current in place solutions. Look for money - I say this last one as it was advice an old boss gave to me<\/p>\n

    “When someone asks what you’re doing, say you’re looking for money. When they say why, or what? tell them, you’re looking for ways to save the company money by reducing overhead, automating tasks etc” It’s always stuck with me.<\/p>","upvoteCount":11,"datePublished":"2021-08-05T11:20:50.000Z","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/t/daily-routine-in-a-small-mid-company/807504/12","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"captitguy","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/u/captitguy"}},{"@type":"Answer","text":"

    I hope this helps…<\/p>\n

    I’m a one man 100ish person shop, just past a badly needed refresh. I think I changed everything but the wire in the wall. So, I feel you. I worked feverishly for months to make this happen, and now well - everything kinda just works like it’s supposed to. Now what? Make your like even easier.<\/p>\n

    Well, I take lunches. I Talk to people in the company. It’s amazing what you can find that you didn’t know was broken by just by walking around.<\/p>\n

    When you feel yourself cruising, take a long honest look at the times when things were really busy, and figure out what would have been nice to have like documentation if you suddenly need to scale out (rent-a-techs) or what can you stage before the next “big” refresh?<\/p>\n

    You know your organization - how can you automate your daily tasks so you can handle the extraordinary?<\/p>\n

    Do you have a disaster plan? Is it updated?<\/p>\n

    Do you have an incident response plan?<\/p>\n

    And of course, forward think. What tech is coming down the pipe that I need to know before I have to implement it?<\/p>\n

    Also, cruising gives me the option to review each contract as it comes up to see if this tech is the best fit for our current situation, or if there’s a better software or procedure. I know we’re about to change accounting software soon, so what can I do beforehand to help that department get through it?<\/p>\n

    I look at this like maintenance of a house - there’s daily stuff, seasonal stuff, and then there’s the emergency stuff. If the first two are caught up, emergency stuff is so much easier to handle.<\/p>","upvoteCount":9,"datePublished":"2021-08-05T11:36:01.000Z","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/t/daily-routine-in-a-small-mid-company/807504/13","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"spiceuser-5m4u0","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/u/spiceuser-5m4u0"}},{"@type":"Answer","text":"

    I’m in a 100-120 person company and we have two IT, including myself. We have VMWare farm with vSphere and at least 20 servers. We have a huge amount of data to look after, backup, etc. Printers take up much of the day to look after, head cleanings, calibrations, malfunctions, etc. I look after AT&T and Verizon mobile devices and AV consoles. And we don’t even have automated updates yet. We still have Windows 7 computers. An we are updating to Windows 10 every chance we have. Anything technology-wise IT takes care of it with the company. We have to look after manufacturing processes at different offices, etc. Although our security is very lax, we are now looking into providing more security. So that involves learning more about that too now. So there is lots to do for us anyway. We do have a Windows Engineer consultant to use for the major and complex operations.<\/p>","upvoteCount":3,"datePublished":"2021-08-05T11:43:56.000Z","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/t/daily-routine-in-a-small-mid-company/807504/14","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"jerryhorn","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/u/jerryhorn"}},{"@type":"Answer","text":"

    \n
    \n
    <\/div>\n \"\"\n How to Suck at Information Security – A Cheat Sheet<\/a> Security<\/span><\/span><\/a>\n <\/div>\n
    \n Doing loads of reading tonight so apologies but here's another post, I'm going into a client tomorrow and showing them this as they are doing most of them.... \n\nhttps://zeltser.com/media/docs/suck-at-security-cheat-sheet.pdf<\/a> \n <\/blockquote>\n<\/aside>\n\n

    I bet there are a few things on this list you are doing. I’m guilty of it as well. Gives you a nice starting place of things to research, improve, etc.<\/p>","upvoteCount":3,"datePublished":"2021-08-05T12:07:51.000Z","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/t/daily-routine-in-a-small-mid-company/807504/15","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"mattpawlikowski","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/u/mattpawlikowski"}},{"@type":"Answer","text":"

    You could take-over congratulating people in the Official I made the next pepper thread<\/a> since I don’t have the time to do so anymore \":slight_smile:\"<\/p>","upvoteCount":2,"datePublished":"2021-08-05T12:22:20.000Z","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/t/daily-routine-in-a-small-mid-company/807504/16","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Jrx1216","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/u/Jrx1216"}},{"@type":"Answer","text":"

    I’d say this is more common than not. That was certainly my experience in the SMB world. One of many reasons I went on to work in Enterprise IT.<\/p>\n

    If you’re happy with the pay and everything else you can work on sharpening your skills via Pluralsight, LinkedIn Learning, YouTube, etc. I’d also recommend working in the office at least a few days a week and showing your face so they don’t forget why they’re paying you. Staring at logs all day would drive me insane, lol.<\/p>","upvoteCount":4,"datePublished":"2021-08-05T12:28:23.000Z","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/t/daily-routine-in-a-small-mid-company/807504/17","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"crimsonkida","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/u/crimsonkida"}},{"@type":"Answer","text":"

    I know you didn’t ask for advice from larger environments, but I am one of 4 techs plus a manager for 1200 users, and if you think you might be spinning your wheels at your level, consider some next level thinking.<\/p>\n

    Documentation, from networking info to who to call in case the Bus Factor comes into play? Disaster recovery? Asset tracking? Network monitoring? If you think you’re up to the criticism, have a network security audit done? Who handles the finance and administration (ie warranties, subscriptions, licensing, budgeting, planning)?<\/p>\n

    Look to the hardware end, do you have adequate UPS in place? Is that documented? Do you have spare gear(switches, workstations, firewall etc)on the shelf? When was it last tested? Nothing worse than your backup\\spare gear failing when you need it. Are your data cabinets in order? Everything labeled and documented?<\/p>\n

    These things fill my time!<\/p>","upvoteCount":5,"datePublished":"2021-08-05T12:54:52.000Z","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/t/daily-routine-in-a-small-mid-company/807504/18","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"chivo243","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/u/chivo243"}},{"@type":"Answer","text":"

    Any “free” time I spend getting up-to-date learning the latest versions etc.<\/p>","upvoteCount":1,"datePublished":"2021-08-05T12:56:42.000Z","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/t/daily-routine-in-a-small-mid-company/807504/19","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"John5152","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/u/John5152"}},{"@type":"Answer","text":"

    Just continue to show up to work every day but secretly start working remote for another company.<\/p>","upvoteCount":1,"datePublished":"2021-08-05T13:19:05.000Z","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/t/daily-routine-in-a-small-mid-company/807504/20","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"michael9900185288","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/u/michael9900185288"}},{"@type":"Answer","text":"

      \n
    1. Make sure all your stuff – all of it – is documented to a T. That alone could take ages depending on how your company’s environment is set up. But that way if you’re suddenly hit by a bus, abdupted by aliens, or elope to another company, they aren’t totally screwed for documentation and how-to’s on their own systems.<\/li>\n
    2. I find myself in a similar boat often of wanting to feel busy or productive when the ticket queues and emails are slow. I read up on things I have questions about if they have online documentation, I have Pluralsight playing pretty often (we have a few licenses and I assigned myself one. Admin abuse!), and if I’m not learning I’m tinkering with either a system we have or testing out a system we might get. I do also spend some time coding or scripting little bits and bobs that make my job easier. There’s several that I use on a regular basis and I’m happy to have spent the time to make a tool like that.<\/li>\n
    3. It’s never too late to pull the tarp off the dusty corners of your IT workflow and see what needs to be re-done, updated, or optimized. Or perhaps your office literally has dusty corners and crap hiding under tarps. Time to inventory and get rid of those and clean the place up!<\/li>\n
    4. If you want more stuff to do I guarantee a manager will have something<\/em> they want done if they are given time to think about it.<\/li>\n<\/ol>","upvoteCount":4,"datePublished":"2021-08-05T13:34:41.000Z","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/t/daily-routine-in-a-small-mid-company/807504/21","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"the-real-grinny","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/u/the-real-grinny"}},{"@type":"Answer","text":"

      As plenty have mentioned already - documentation. Make it idiot proof so that if you get hit by a bus, the CEO could figure it out if needed.<\/p>\n

      Another thing to consider - You may be < 100 users now<\/em> but are your systems prepared for scale. Lots of things can happen in business… acquisitions that double your userbase, a new system that will change how the company conducts business, etc. Now nothing quick and large-scale like that may be likely or even happen, but think to yourself for a moment, “Is what I have set up for now, at < 100 users, going to work when we grow to 125, 150, 200, 500, etc. five or so years down the road?” and start brainstorming and prepping that.<\/p>\n

      I had a professor in college who’s favorite phrase was “billable hours”. You may plan and work on 1000 projects and maybe 5 go into production. It seems like it’s a lot of time wasted - but the company though it was valuable enough for you to work on and paid you to do so. And at the end of the day, that’s what work is all about.<\/p>\n

      Now, if you feel you are stagnating, that’s a different story altogether, and then maybe you start looking for greener grass.<\/p>","upvoteCount":3,"datePublished":"2021-08-05T13:54:56.000Z","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/t/daily-routine-in-a-small-mid-company/807504/22","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"thegr81337","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/u/thegr81337"}},{"@type":"Answer","text":"

      Great advice from everyone. I just want to ring in on documentation. Imagine yourself coming into your environment with no one to talk to. Just start in documenting everything you do. This will make you MORE valuable not less. As you document question yourself about current policies. What are your password lengths, complexity, duration? Does your company process credit cards or handle medical issues. I am guessing not or you would be very busy. Are you secure from outside penetration? What reports are you getting from your firewall? Are your servers and work stations up to date as regards OS updates? Do you publish a web site? Is it secure? Has someone (not you) saved a spreadsheet with company passwords on the web server. Please don’t take offense at that question. It has happened many times! How often do you check for updates of the software used by your company? As you document you will end up with a good To Do list. It is amazing how much documentation increases your awareness of responsibility. I have been with my present employer for 12 years and I am still documenting processes. We are quite a bit larger so I haver have trouble finding some important process that is not documented. We have had large personnel changes in our department so all of this is very much on my mind right now. I recently took a weeks vacation and ended up working remotely many hours because “I am the only guy who can do it.” I am sure that is the case for most of what you do in a one man house. I hope this helps in some small way and good luck as you go forward!<\/p>","upvoteCount":2,"datePublished":"2021-08-05T14:00:06.000Z","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/t/daily-routine-in-a-small-mid-company/807504/23","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"jimmersbj","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/u/jimmersbj"}},{"@type":"Answer","text":"

      I’d think about your company’s current corporate initiatives and how IT can play a role in facilitating that. Just about every major corporate goal will require IT involvement or new software or equipment to support the new needs.<\/p>\n

      If your company has monthly staff meetings, listen to what’s going on in the other departments and think about whether there may be an IT solution to their issue/idea. If your company doesn’t have staff meetings, you could consider scheduling some time to speak with the department heads about how IT could help in what they’re doing.<\/p>\n

      Something my very first boss said has stuck with me so far in my career: if you are always thinking about creative and innovative ideas to solve problems, every company will find you very valuable.<\/p>","upvoteCount":4,"datePublished":"2021-08-05T14:34:32.000Z","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/t/daily-routine-in-a-small-mid-company/807504/24","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"theitguy107","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/u/theitguy107"}},{"@type":"Answer","text":"

      I’m a one-person IT army myself, and have been for most of my 15+ year career. There’s not much I can add to what others have said, except to echo the points that resonated with me:<\/p>\n

        \n
      • Learn to appreciate the slower times - IT in that environment is subject to surging and ebbing, so don’t be too hard on yourself when it’s slow.<\/li>\n
      • That being said, stay productive in some way: documenting, learning, planning, improving, streamlining processes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>","upvoteCount":5,"datePublished":"2021-08-05T15:59:00.000Z","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/t/daily-routine-in-a-small-mid-company/807504/25","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"lovetoflyguy","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/u/lovetoflyguy"}},{"@type":"Answer","text":"

        I’m 1 of 2 people in IT, 50 users total. There are definitely slow days, and there are definitely days where I’m pulling my hair out and wishing for more hours in the day. That’s totally normal! My day to day duties include:<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. Checking/responding to email and Teams<\/li>\n
        2. Checking O365 quarantine and logins<\/li>\n
        3. Verifying backups are running as they should (cloud and on-prem), deleting really old ones off the NAS<\/li>\n
        4. Research/working on projects<\/li>\n
        5. Planning my next phishing test (muahahaha)<\/li>\n
        6. Assisting users<\/li>\n
        7. Typing up procedures/documentation<\/li>\n
        8. Creating/modifying training programs<\/li>\n
        9. Climbing on ladders to fix projectors, or hitting the printer a couple times to get it to work (boooo)<\/li>\n
        10. Scrolling through Spiceworks<\/li>\n
        11. Training, reading, and anything education related<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          Whenever I have free time, I always default to numbers 10 and 11. IT is always evolving, so it’s crucial we continue to read up and learn as much as we can. The more we learn, the more we can see what we can do to make our job and the jobs of others in the organization easier & more secure!<\/p>","upvoteCount":5,"datePublished":"2021-08-05T16:28:46.000Z","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/t/daily-routine-in-a-small-mid-company/807504/26","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"rachelburch","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/u/rachelburch"}},{"@type":"Answer","text":"

          Be thankful that don’t have to be super-busy all the time, A critical hardware crash or a ransomware infection can change that on a dime… but if it’s slow and you want to do something useful: documentation, asset management (including non-networked peripherals), inventory maintenance including licenses, testing item-level and full restores from backup, writing how-to’s, setting up an IT intranet (maybe a SharePoint site), training (yourself and users), shooting the breeze, cleaning up the server room, preparing project proposals, drinking coffee, reading the latest security bulletins and IT news, reviewing security practices and procedures, etc, etc,<\/p>","upvoteCount":2,"datePublished":"2021-08-05T16:31:21.000Z","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/t/daily-routine-in-a-small-mid-company/807504/27","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"oliverw8","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/u/oliverw8"}},{"@type":"Answer","text":"

          I think you found what most people here do when its really quiet, thats why I’m here too \":wink:\"<\/p>","upvoteCount":2,"datePublished":"2021-08-05T17:05:32.000Z","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/t/daily-routine-in-a-small-mid-company/807504/28","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"mhunt","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/u/mhunt"}},{"@type":"Answer","text":"

          Contribute to the company. What does the company do? Fairly certain there would be some additional role you could fill in the company, besides IT.<\/p>\n

          We have only 20 users and I am so far behind on the IT tasks, because supporting our software as the Technical Support Team Lead is my primary role and maintaining our network is only secondary. I wish all I had to to was IT. You need to broaden your horizons.<\/p>","upvoteCount":0,"datePublished":"2021-08-05T17:29:42.000Z","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/t/daily-routine-in-a-small-mid-company/807504/29","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"grantnoturbus","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/u/grantnoturbus"}},{"@type":"Answer","text":"

          …I find it hard for things to do to remain busy in all honesty - I get it. I said in an interview one time that if everything is quiet, it’s working the way it is supposed to, ie - I’ve done my job. Possible suggestions to take up time.<\/p>\n

            \n
          • Read up on technologies that could benefit the company<\/li>\n
          • Plan out technology improvements for the company<\/li>\n
          • Setup a test environment, if you are looking to kill more time, tear it down and set it back up<\/li>\n
          • Study things you want to know more about in IT<\/li>\n
          • Write a book (ok, just kidding here)<\/li>\n<\/ul>","upvoteCount":3,"datePublished":"2021-08-05T17:54:39.000Z","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/t/daily-routine-in-a-small-mid-company/807504/30","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"randomparts","url":"https://community.spiceworks.com/u/randomparts"}}]}}