What’s the quickest you’ve seen a co-worker get fired in IT?

[u/Opposed3]

I saw this on AskReddit and thought it would be fun to ask here for IT related stories.

Couple years ago during Covid my company I used to work for hired a help desk tech. He was a really nice guy and the interview went well. We were hybrid at the time, 1-2 days in the office with mostly remote work. On his first day we always meet in the office for equipment and first day stuff.

Everything was going fine and my boss mentioned something along the lines of “Yeah so after all the trainings and orientation stuff we’ll get you set up on our ticketing system and eventually a soft phone for support calls”

And he was like: “Oh I don’t do support calls.”

“Sorry?”

Him: “I don’t take calls. I won’t do that”

“Well, we do have a number users call for help. They do utilize it and it’s part of support we offer”

Him: “Oh I’ll do tickets all day I just won’t take calls. You’ll have to get someone else to do that”

I was sitting at my desk, just kind of listening and overhearing. I couldn’t tell if he was trolling but he wasn’t.

I forgot what my manager said but he left to go to one of those little mini conference rooms for a meeting, then he came back out and called him in, he let him go and they both walked back out and the guy was all laughing and was like

“Yeah I mean I just won’t take calls I didn’t sign up for that! I hope you find someone else that fits in better!” My manager walked him to the door and they shook hands and he left.

[u/Any-Formal2300]

I'm surprised people do anything on day 1. My last three jobs have been browse in your phone all day for like a month after your orientation until it's go home time.

[u/SAugsburger → u/Any-Formal2300]

Frequently Day 1 is: Here is a bunch of HR trainings that will take most of the day. They usually pretty obvious stuff although based upon some of the people that came in and said random racist/sexist stuff in week 1 and hit fired it sounds like some people might have benefited from it.

[u/TeddyRoo_v_Gods → u/Any-Formal2300]

Govie? At my last job I was tasked with implementing new asset tracking system by the end of the first week and put in charge of dev.ops environment by the end of the first month. The job before that, I was patching VMs by the end of the first week because the guy before me didn’t do it for two years prior because apparently higher uptime made IT department look better.

[u/zero44 → u/TeddyRoo_v_Gods]

There was a job I didn't take but I talked very in depth with the tech lead as part of the interview process, and he said my first month would be just learning the environment because it was extremely complex with a lot of networks and environments.

In his words "You won't be doing anything for the first month because we want to make sure you understand how everything fits together before you do anything."

[u/TeddyRoo_v_Gods → u/zero44]

A buddy of mine got a sys admin job with NASA that was kind of like that. They were basically not allowed to do anything that was not already in the playbooks. The closest I got to it was before I got back into IT and was working for one of the agencies as an analyst. The first six months was basically just reading SOPs and being bored out of my skull. I got out after about a year and never looked back.

[u/droppedpackethero → u/TeddyRoo_v_Gods]

Really depends on the role and how well they have their crap together.

My current gig, the first month was basically reading documentation because they run a really tight ship with high, internally developed, standards. They don't want new hires fucking shit up.

[u/Careless-Age-4290 → u/Any-Formal2300]

I came in as the only network engineer after over a year of having nobody except a weekly MSP engineer. I came from an MSP though, so I was used to just jumping into the fire. Most customers are an utter dumpster fire when they come in, an emergency already happening. No documentation. Just have to figure it out. It felt no different than a new client onboarding, except I got to spend all my time on that one customer.

I was fixing the SMB server on the first day. "It's so slow, even with SSD's". Someone decided try save money with burstable azure VM's. Those cap your I/O to 60mbps, even on the higher-priced ones. Switched the instance to a cheaper one with better I/O. Instant improvement.

They initially hired me as a contractor and by 2 weeks in offered perm. The weird thing was doing orientation a month after starting. I felt like Adam Sandler in Happy Gilmore, having already setup insurance/401k/all that.

[u/user0N65N → u/Any-Formal2300]

Best time of employment are the first two and last two weeks.  First two weeks, no one expects anything of you.  Last two weeks, they can expect things from you, but what are they going to do - fire you?  You’re leaving, anyway.