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Back story: I recently took over the Network Admin job at a smaller company. The previous Admin was well liked by everyone here but left for a better job situation. I started working here as the only other IT staff just under a year before she left. I was promoted to her position and it has been a major struggle since then as I have been constantly fixing stuff/ putting out fires cause by her mis-management of the systems here. It seems like almost every month a pretty severe problem will come up and the cause almost always points back to something she wasn't doing or was doing incorrectly. (A quick for instance: the backups on the main production server haven't run in almost a year. She didn't know it because she wasn't monitoring the logs).

Fast-forward 6 months and I have been feeling like whenever I get asked why something went wrong and we have to spend $10,000-20,000 that was not budgeted the frequent answer of "well it started with something Mrs Admin hadn't been doing right" is starting to sound like more of an excuse than an explanation. Has anyone else run into something similar at their job? Am I over-thinking? Is there a better way to explain that someone who was well liked may not have been as competent as the non-IT staff assumed she was? Advice appreciated in advance.

I'm in this situation now, only not nearly as severe. For the past year and a half or so, I've been working on some software for my cousin. This software has historically been for the new guy at our company. I got it when I was the new guy, and I'm still working on it because there is no new guy. The problem is, the code is absolute garbage. 10 years of newbies working on it has put it in bad shape. It's got to many bugs that every time I turn around, I uncover 5 of them. And when my boss asks me what's wrong, my only explanation is "this has been around for a long time, it's just now surfacing".

It honestly gets quite old after a while. It seems like every time we chat I have to blame something on the bad code. And what's even more frustrating, is that my boss doesn't understand code at all. (Which I'm assuming your boss doesn't understand your job either.) What I do at this point is straight up ask for help. We uncover a severe bug and my boss asks, "how did this happen?" I just say that I have no idea and tell him to ask somebody else. As soon as somebody else looks at it, they confirm my story. That would be my advice. If your bosses are wondering why this is happening, tell them to ask somebody else. Tell them that a second opinion might help. As soon as the second opinion comes in to confirm your story, you're in the clear.

It's really a pain saying that John Smith did a shitty job, but sometimes it has to happen. Better off saying that they sucked than having the other people think you suck. :p

The blame game happens everywhere no matter what position or company you work for.

Like yesterday, came to work and my manager called everyone into the my department's backroom. She asked who worked in this department yesterday and of course she knew the answer and I had to say me and she goes off and starts asking me why all this garbage is in the backroom including drink containers, carts, and items that should be put away. When I left the day before, everything was clean and there was no mess. The guy who closed was the one who left the mess and guess who got the blame? ME! WTF?!?!

First rule of taking over a network: Blame everything on the guy before you.

Seriously, at some point you're going to have to get out in front of it. It's been "your" network long enough that you should be able to see things coming now. If you keep using that excuse much longer people are going to start wondering whether the problem is you.

Was the previous network admin constantly fixing problems and putting out fires?

I don't know if it's a good idea to criticize a former employee that was well-liked. If I was in your shoes, I'd try to do my best to focus on the future, not the past. If you're asked why you need money to change something, focus on how it will help your company in the future, not on the fact that the previous network admin did something wrong or differently than you.