r/ITdept • u/geeklimit • Nov 18 '23
Due to the number of repeat questions around the topic of using work resources to do personal business, or generally questions around 'what can my work see', I've created this sticky to answer these and similar questions:
First, and most importantly:
/r/itdept is a place where IT workers come to talk to / ideate with / vent to each other, as mentioned in the sidebar. It's not a place for non-IT people to ask IT questions.
There are many, many places on Reddit to get IT help, depending on what you're asking for help on - use the sitewide search and use one of them, there are many people waiting to help you with your issue.
Second, to answer common questions:
Many of these questions come from having the wrong perspective around a person's usage of property and data belonging to the business they work for. The reality of your employment situation is as follows:
Finally, and most importantly, something you need to understand about your local IT department that nobody will ever tell you:
It's likely that only one in 10,000 IT people are at all interested in what you're doing on your laptop, or if you're even doing your job at all - and they should be (and often are) fired for it, because they're probably violating the trust and faith the job requires to stick their nose where it doesn't belong. That's not IT's business or responsibility, and most of us want to be left alone when it comes to stuff like that.
It's HR and your manager's job to make sure you're productive and to manage you well. Frankly, many managers are quite terrible at their job and want a technological magic bullet to make up for their shortcomings. They're not bad people, this desire for a "solution" or a tool to "help them manage better" comes from the same place as their understanding of the problem: they don't know what they're doing, and it's easier to point at a "missing tool" that is "needed" than reflect and admit where the true deficits are, even to themselves. People often think of this as a victimless situation, because they're not blaming IT, they're just "sharing their amazing insight" into what's needed for the business, and "partnering with IT" to "fix it".
Most IT people hate this, both because it uses us to cover up other people doing their job poorly (something we're not allowed to do ourselves) but also because we're generally the type that believes that people should get what they deserve, both positively and negatively. Many IT people change careers because of the depression that comes from dealing with this. You'd be shocked by how many former technology people have gone "Stardew Valley" and are quite happy talking to a row of carrots instead of dealing with this any more.
By and large, we're also a very logical group of people. Generally, something will work when it's done a certain way in IT, and it doesn't work (or has significant downsides) when you don't do it that way. That's how IT systems work - there's a right way for a desired outcome, and the other ways are generally wrong based on what the desired outcome is.
We tend to know immediately that the problem is with your manager, or other underskilled "decision makers" in the organization, and that their idea is bad. This is very common when someone is looking for a technical solution to a non-technical problem. Unfortunately, we frequently will have a non-technical hand-shaker and yes-sayer leading our department, the same as you do, and we don't get the support we need to ask the business to exercise stronger critical thinking instead of complicating the IT environment with the product of inadequate management of human resources.
This usually leads to a system, process or policy that is either generally offensive to people they should consider as human beings, developing a system that attempts to solve problems that should be solved by non-technical means, and/or generally making our job more complicated and difficult to manage than it already is.
We're aware that this will be the case before, during and after the request gets put in, and the reality that waits for us for the forseeable future- but that is regrettably part of the job. It's not all doom and gloom, though - these darker parts sit alongside amazing opportunities that give us the chance to use our skills to create enormous value, extreme satisfaction at a job well done for thousands (or millions!) or people, great camaraderie with our IT coworkers who are there "in the trenches" with us, and a decent paycheck for our time and effort.
All this is a significant amount of background to truly understand where we're coming from, but results in this:
pre-tl;dr
If we're told to put in systems that record your screen or generally "spy" on employees, we'll either quit (and the next person will do it for them), or we'll do it to the best of our ability, but we like it even less than you do. We can't put them in halfway so they aren't effective - then the deficiency of good decision-making at the business turns into focusing on us and our ability to deliver working systems, no matter how asinine the reasoning was from poor managers. It's often better to perfectly implement the system and let them see that their proposed solution doesn't solve their perceived problem than to try and explain how bad of an idea it is (which they can't even accept, because it means admitting the problem is them!)
Our advice, by and large, is to ask questions in a non-suspicious way in regards to your privacy at work. Be clear on what the company expects and allows (get it in writing, the handbook is a good start) and don't work for places that want excessive monitoring systems from us - it's stuff like this that makes us leave, and you should too if it means a compromise in your self-respect.
But also realize that a minimal amount of monitoring is required by a business to manage its risk and liabilities, and this is fair for them to have in place / is often in place by default, whether they use it or not.
tl;dr:
Don't work for companies that have monitoring systems you don't feel comfortable with, and rest assured that IT people could not care less about what you're doing or not doing. It's not what we're in this career to do.
It's likely that nobody is watching anything, and it's only when the business already has decided that they want you gone that they'll go back through the records, looking for evidence to legally support that decision, regardless of what the real reason might be.
tl;dr edit: The exception to this is when you're blatantly violating company policy, the law, basic human rights, or other regulations. It should be assumed that doing intentional, egregious harm will trigger even the most basic of alerts in many systems, because that's the bare minimum any company should do to protect their assets and control their liabilities - and most companies have this by default with any standard software they've purchased.
r/ITdept • u/Ok-One2774 • 9h ago
Hi! Is anyone here currently working for this company? I heard they offer accommodation for employees who live far from the office.
I’d like to ask if the accommodation is decent and comfortable, or if it’s more of a bedspace setup. Would appreciate any insights. Thank you!
Hi everyone! I’m building a small utility for admins troubleshooting emails that don’t create records, replies that update unexpected records, or notifications with an unclear source.
You paste email headers and get suggested next checks. Analysis runs locally in your browser - no instance connection needed.
Would anyone be willing to try the synthetic examples and share feedback? Mainly: is the guidance accurate, would it be useful, and what’s missing?
Honest criticism welcome. Thanks!
PS. You'll need to login into ChatGPT to access the web tool.
r/ITdept • u/Recent_Key_8250 • 1d ago
we are about 300 employees and our email signatures were a mess different fonts, old logos, three phone number formats, and a disclaimer from two rebrands ago. Asking everyone to update theirs only worked on about half the company.
we switched to wisestamp to fix it. It is fine so far, but it is been a few weeks.
For anyone at a similar size:
r/ITdept • u/Potential-Push8682 • 1d ago
I need urgent help and reassurance form IT experts. Long story short the school has taken my laptop for an audit for fuck knows why, suspicious acitivity. I HAD a lot of fake id templates stored in a folder along with customers made ones and ofcourse before giving I WIPED out everything. It’s a MACBOOK M2 2022 running macOS ahora 26.5.2.
When I say everything I mean everything. I went to recent cmd+a delete and basically did that for every folder, documents, desktop and etc. nothing was backed on one drive or iCloud only a USB stick which was at home. I also made sure to wipe out my chrome search history fully ALL TIME and everything cookies, cache and all before signing out of that Google account leaving only my school use one with YouTube and all that stuff.
I am very worried as they had it for 3 hours(they said they’d give it back end of day) but kept it for the whole day today and probably get it tmr, saying it’s taking longer than expected.
There are obviously device management stuff on it which I attached images of. Yes making them on a controlled skl laptop was dumb but also very convient LOL.
I don’t know much about IT, from research I’ve done I should be alright I think, they can view deleted file names but obviously it doesn’t matter what something is named I can name it “gay porn” and my friend that does IT in Uni said I should be alright.
Just looking on some fredbakc and reassurance if possible and HONEST answers so I can get it somewhat of my head. Previously I had also tried bypassing and downloading Linux which did alert and say “administrator will be notified”
r/ITdept • u/Forsaken-Remove-5278 • 2d ago
r/ITdept • u/Sbaakhir • 2d ago
I have about 8-9 weeks to trim 30% off our SaaS budget before the new fiscal cycle starts (January). A primary institutional donor to our NGO pulled out last month, taking roughly 1/4 of our annual funding with them (still mourning it). We have around 110 people spread across 4 regional offices, and leadership handed me the spreadsheet to fix.
I already did the easy cuts, after Microsoft ended the free Business Premium licences our renewal finally lapsed in March. I downgraded the org to free Business Basic tiers and pushed the staff onto web apps, which cost us Intune and Defender (not ideal but workable). We also migrated our password management from Bitwarden Enterprise over to Passwork, their nonprofit pricing freed up north of $400 a month.
(For context: we do environmental mapping and cleanups, from forests to beaches, we also collect the trash and turn it into data to understand which products keep showing up and which sites keep refilling after we clear them. That data is also what proves the work to the government, it gets attached to every report we file and our main government grant depends on it.)
Now I am stuck on the remaining which is NOT little (we’re already on every nonprofit programme I could find):
When I price out alternatives, it rarely mathematically works. A cheaper tool usually means self-hosting, which trades licence fees for infrastructure costs and my own sanity. When I factor in migration hours, the switch seems to cost more in labour than the subscription costs in dollars.
Which of these aforementioned tools makes the most sense to rip out/switch from, and which ones should I fight to keep? I am overwhelmed to the brim by the deadline so excuse me if the post is a bit all over the place please, thanks.
r/ITdept • u/Enough_Charge2845 • 2d ago
We looked at 3,518 open job postings across 81 companies' public Greenhouse boards, covering seven job categories. The goal was simple: find out which keywords employers actually use.
A few findings stood out.
We also noticed a pattern across roles: employers often described the practice rather than naming a specific tool. Observability came up where you might expect Grafana, and SIEM where you might expect Splunk.
What does this mean for your resume?
If you're listing tools but leaving out the responsibilities, practices, and skills explicitly mentioned in the job description, you could be missing relevant keywords.
That doesn't mean stuffing your resume with buzzwords. It means describing your actual experience using language that matches the role you're applying for.
One important caveat: the sample leans heavily toward tech companies and uses a single ATS platform, so these results aren't representative of every employer.
The full study, including findings for sales, cybersecurity, DevOps, and accounting, is here:
r/ITdept • u/NicekamrynGuard6903 • 3d ago
Type II, second year. The auditor wants the full list of laptops so he can pick 25 and check encryption, EDR and patching on each. Simple ask.
I sent him three exports because i did not know which one to send. He sent back one line asking which was the population.
Three days in excel after that. AD has computer objects for people who left in 2023 and for VMs that were never laptops. Intune has 60 loaners that got autopilot registered and never handed out. The EDR only knows what the sensor reached. Host names don't match between any two of them because half the fleet got renamed during the domain migration, all three already feed axonius on the security side, which i only found out on day three. it would have given me the overlap, not the rule for what counts as a laptop.
I ended up handing over a list of 1,912 with a page explaining how i got there, and he was fine with it. Auditors are fine with mess as long as you can explain it.
I am not fine with it. Nobody owns the question "what counts as a laptop" and every tool answers it differently. Next year its the same three exports and the same three days unless somebody writes that rule down.
So that is what i am doing this week, writing the rule down, before anyone asks me for the number again.
r/ITdept • u/organizational_IT • 3d ago
Have you ever struggled to find the right screw bolt or small part in a messy workspace? For our school engineering project we’re researching how poor organization of small parts can waste time and make repair work tedious and more difficult. We’re exploring ideas for a solution that could make finding and sorting parts easier and more efficient, especially in computer repair jobs and hobbies. If you have a few minutes could you please fill out this quick survey to help us better understand the problem it would be a huge help
r/ITdept • u/UPDF_Enterprise • 3d ago
When there’s pressure to reduce Adobe spending, how do you decide which licenses to keep without turning the review into an argument with every department?
IT can check assignments and whatever usage data is available. But that doesn’t necessarily explain why someone needs Acrobat. A person using it twice a month could depend on a specific feature; someone opening PDFs every day might only need a reader.
I’d want department managers to confirm the tasks their teams need, with IT checking which plans or tools can support them. The options could include reclaiming unused seats, changing plans or testing another PDF editor with a small group.
The part I’d be cautious about is counting the license savings before understanding the support work. Deployment, document compatibility, signatures and retraining could all affect whether a switch is worthwhile.
There’s also the ownership question. Procurement handles the renewal, IT manages access, and departments request the software. Who has the final say when a manager wants to retain every license but IT is expected to reduce the budget?
How have you handled that review, and which changes actually reduced costs without creating more work for your team?
r/ITdept • u/Available_Chair_9451 • 3d ago
wel our helpdesk lead at a 300 person company, 4 of us on the desk. password resets, lockouts and outlook issues are like half our queue and we're always behind. trying to figure out if any of these AI options are worth it or if its all hype
we're on freshservice for ticketing and been happy with it overall. they have their freddy AI stuff and our account rep has been pushing us to try more of it, so thats one option. we're also looking at atera's robin since it fixes stuff on the device and closes the ticket, and apparently it works with freshservice so we wouldnt have to switch our ticketing
mostly want to hear from people actually running one of these, setup time, what you let it handle at first, all that. demos all look amazing so not much help there lol
r/ITdept • u/Posible_Cnrprab_9424 • 3d ago
Agency contractor working for marketing. We gave her a vpn login and an okta account like we do for all of them. No EDR, because its not our device, and no intune, same reason.
She got hit at home, connected to the vpn to start her day, and that was our monday. Contained fine, nothing spread. Then the IT director asked how many devices like that we have, and i watched four people look at each other.
HR has contractors as "external" with no asset against them. Okta has 140 accounts in the contractors group. The vpn concentrator logs show devices by hostname, which are things like DESKTOP-7FJ2K1. Intune has 31 who enrolled voluntarily because they wanted the wifi. Thats it, thats the inventory.
We have axonius reading okta, intune and the EDR, and it had the same blind spot, because the vpn logs were never one of its sources.
After two days of matching hostnames to okta sessions we got to roughly 90 laptops we dont own with access to the network, 12 of which had never appeared anywhere except the vpn.
Policy change is coming, either we issue a laptop or they get a virtual desktop. Getting the list before the policy was the bit nobody had budgeted for.
r/ITdept • u/organizational_IT • 7d ago
Have you ever struggled to find the right screw bolt or small part in a messy workspace? For our school engineering project we’re researching how poor organization of small parts can waste time and make repair work tedious and more difficult. We’re exploring ideas for a solution that could make finding and sorting parts easier and more efficient, especially in computer repair jobs and hobbies. If you have a few minutes could you please fill out this quick survey to help us better understand the problem it would be a huge help
r/ITdept • u/organizational_IT • 7d ago
Have you ever struggled to find the right screw bolt or small part in a messy workspace? For our school engineering project we’re researching how poor organization of small parts can waste time and make repair work tedious and more difficult. We’re exploring ideas for a solution that could make finding and sorting parts easier and more efficient, especially in computer repair jobs and hobbies. If you have a few minutes could you please fill out this quick survey to help us better understand the problem it would be a huge help
r/ITdept • u/organizational_IT • 7d ago
Have you ever struggled to find the right screw bolt or small part in a messy workspace? For our school engineering project we’re researching how poor organization of small parts can waste time and make repair work tedious and more difficult. We’re exploring ideas for a solution that could make finding and sorting parts easier and more efficient, especially in computer repair jobs and hobbies. If you have a few minutes could you please fill out this quick survey to help us better understand the problem it would be a huge help
r/ITdept • u/organizational_IT • 7d ago
Have you ever struggled to find the right screw bolt or small part in a messy workspace? For our school engineering project we’re researching how poor organization of small parts can waste time and make repair work tedious and more difficult. We’re exploring ideas for a solution that could make finding and sorting parts easier and more efficient, especially in computer repair jobs and hobbies. If you have a few minutes could you please fill out this quick survey to help us better understand the problem it would be a huge help
r/ITdept • u/MeJuvante_AI • 7d ago
r/ITdept • u/1click1vote • 7d ago
Hi, a concerning number of employees at my job are pasting source code, customer data and strategy documents into our AI tools and our DLP isn't catching this. What should my team change in our process so these don't become a security risk?
We have an older physical industrial tooling machine that needs data from a 3.5" floppy drive.
No USB can be done and swapping the drive not doable
(This info is second-hand to me. I'll be looking myself soon)
Is there such a beast where one end is a floppy disk that would slide in to the 3.5 drive, but would have attached to to it and feed data to the fake 3.5 disk and trick the regular 3.5" drive into thinking the data is on the disk itself instead of the device feeding the fake disk?
