How to handle being the only IT person at a company
Running legacy systems solo forces you into an endless loop of firefighting daily distractions like broken printers and lockouts, leaving zero time to fix root problems. This constant operational chaos creates permanent 24/7 on-call stress and makes major projects feel impossible to tackle alone.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1documenting needs with ballpark cost estimates for management
- 2breaking upgrade needs into project lists with priorities and risks
- 3automating data collection and recurring reports
- 4looking for employment elsewhere or exiting the role
- 5contacting head office for approvals
- 6planning to physically reset locked devices
- 7cleaning malware-infected systems and taking backups
- 8looking into company-paid certifications once things are sorted
- 9Asking AI tools for conceptual explanations
- 10Tracing a single user action like opening an email client to show all dependent background services
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I'm on call 24/7, I inherited a patchwork EOL environment, and a seasonal project buries me for months every winter for the next few years. Pay and benefits are good but I'm stressed and stuck.”source ↗
“Every time I sit down to start on the real problems, something on the operational side yanks me back off it, and the fix goes back on the pile.”source ↗
“Now I'm supposed to set direction and own the risk for all of it and that jump feels enormous. I'm not going to pretend otherwise, this job is stressing me out pretty badly.”source ↗
“some days it feels like I'm one bad outage away from going under, and I catch myself wondering if the smarter move is to quietly start looking for an off ramp before this thing wears me down”source ↗
“The old IT guy left, so its just me now”source ↗
“In the meantime, i am untangling the colossal mess that our current IT infrastructure is”source ↗
“The old IT guy had fortitoken enabled, unfortunately he uninstalled it, and i am unable to get in”source ↗
“My day to day stuff mostly involves fixing the CCTV system, sorting out printer sharing errors, teaching people the art of rebooting a system to fix issues and so on and so forth”source ↗
“I have no degree on this specific subject, nor certifications, just years of teenage spent among computers i am grateful to have this job, and i am learning valuable information, still, i occassionally get the feeling like a kid who just got access to nuclear codes”source ↗
“I can learn individual technologies, but sometimes I feel like understanding each technology separately isn't enough. I want to understand the bigger picture of why these things exist and how they work together.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 4How to manage remote IT infrastructure without a dedicated team
- 3Thrown into managing cloud architecture with no experience
- 2How do I take over home tech and cameras when my partner is gone?
- 9Why are cloud bills so unexpectedly high?
- 3How to build an IT department from scratch alone
- 3Why is my CRM so expensive and hard to customize?