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Ask Slashdot: Best Practices For Leaving an IT Admin Position?
An anonymous reader writes "I've been the server admin at a university for the past five years. Recently, I was given the chance to move from servers to networking, and I jumped at it. I now find myself typing up all my open-ended projects, removing certain scripts and stopping others. What would the community recommend as best practices for passing on administration of some servers? I am trying to avoid a phone call that results in me having to remote in, explain something, jog to the other side of campus to access the machine, etc. Essentially, I'm trying to cover all my bases so any excuse my replacement has to call me is seen as nothing but laziness or incompetence. I am required to give him a day of training to show him where everything is on the servers (web and database), and during that day I'm going to have him change all the passwords. But aside from locking myself out and knowing what is where, what else should I be doing?"
Be fair of course in how you word it, but nothing speaks better than "I showed the new Admin X,Y,Z and he knows how to do X,Y,Z; here the signature to prove it". I know you are trying to avoid a new Admin coming in and then complaining about how the previous guy didn't know what the hell he was doing. Happens to everyone I'm afraid, but at least have your bases covered for what any replacement needs to know to operate in your permanent absence. It will also discourage the new admin from making any drama scenes with his/her new boss when he/she knows you have something in writing that is suppose to demonstrate/validate his/her new skills in the position. Other than that, don't burn any bridges, try to be helpful to the new Admin, when you have the free time, but don't go out your way and sacrifice your new job to help a struggling admin who might be in over his head due to fluffing up the resume.
If you are in a position to leave without being escorted hastily out of the door within a few minutes of handing in your notice, you might consider yourself to be in luck.
I can understand the rationale behind such a practice in a toxic workplace where such suspicious attitudes are rife, but it doesn't feel good being on the receiving end of it.
This happened to me once, back in 1990. I thought I was doing the right thing by giving plenty of notice so that a replacement could be found and given an orderly handover, but my desk was immediately cleared by the HR manager, who then personally escorted me out and drove me to my house to pick up the terminals and modem hardware I used to drive the systems outside hours from home. It felt like I was being sacked.
Yes. That is what most IT people will say.
It hurts but that is how it is.
When I left my previous job I left 12000 lines of badly commented and worse documented code behind.. The code runs the turnstiles and ticketing systems for an exhibition center... The nutters put me in charge of developing it from scratch with a hard deadline of 2 months in addition to an already 100% job...
Soooo there is virtually no docs on the code... the code is littered with test logic.. There are STILL 4 years later pieces of error code that will print messages to the screen to call me on my cell... a number I still use *shudder*
Why was it left like that? I begged to go back and fix all the shit for a year after it was put in 'production'.. My boss wouldnt let me. Too expensive to document things. My time was better spent doing other things. I hate that my name is on the system... but that is how it goes.
Worst detail: The whole mess is not a compiled exe.. it all runs in debug mode from visual studio on a machine in a small cabinet..
That kind of mess is one of the major reasons to leave a job. It will just end up biting you in the ass if you keep working like that, even if it is not your fault it ends up that way. Get out as soon as possible..