• My first salaried job was also my first proper IT job and I was a “junior technician” … the only other member of IT staff was my supervisor who had been a secretary that got a 1 week sysadmin course and knew very little.

    The server room was a complete rat’s nest and I resolved to sort it out. It was all going very well until I tripped over the loose SCSI 3 cable between the AIX server and it’s raid array. While it was in use.

    It took me 2 days to restore everything from tape. My supervisor was completely useless.

    A few months later I was “made redundant”, leaving behind me everything working perfectly and a super tidy server room. I got calls from the company asking for help for the following 6 months, which I politely declined.

      • Yep, I remember in one job I was at for 8 years a manager 2 levels up complemented me for sorting out the networking for a re-arrange of our own office … I was gobsmacked because I’d been managing a whole network and server upgrade for a client that involved well over 1000 users at the time yet an hour of fiddling with wires under desks was the only thing that got his attention.

      • One job I was fired from and rehired within the day, after they quickly realised that I was their only Android developer and they couldn’t build an app with just hopes and wishes. They fired me again later, which they quickly regretted since I was the only one with the signing key (meaning they couldn’t update the app).