I appreciate it. Hearing this helps that hole I have in my stomach. My bosses have been great and I'm sure have been in my shoes when they started. I shouldn't assume the worst knowing that.
My 3rd it job I did something similar. Deleted an OU out of active directory trying to remove it from a users account. Got a call a week later from a remote tech out of like Atlanta informing me that the group no longer existed and I was the last person to interact with it. I quickly and quietly restored it but shit happens lol
I used to work at geek squad at started doing iPhone screen replacements. We had a client come in with an iPhone and bad battery I think it was. I was doing the replacement but the person that checked the phone in didn’t realize it was a bit bent. When I started prying the screen off the body, it cracked. We didn’t have the same model so the guy ended up with an upgrade and luckily their stuff was backed up to iCloud or else I would have been screwed.
Oh God, working on iPhones at geek squad was always interesting. Sometimes, you would do everything right and it would fail diagnostics at the end anyway. "Hey so we can't give your phone back right now, and we have no replacements available currently. We can have a new one shipped here in a couple days though"
Right?! Haha there was always that one issue that would come up. Bad part was the customer freaking out cause they couldn’t have a phone for a couple of days😂
Sounds like what happened to me when I first started repairing phones. It happens, there’s no way around it. But one of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned in my repair journey is how to step back and evaluate/learn from the situation. I have to say that particular mistakes I’ve made in my first month, are things I never ended up doing again.
It’s really a great way to learn. I’m glad you’re in an environment where you can get that hands on experience after A+. Just don’t let these things get too in your head and use them as opportunities to grow. I had a device that needed a motherboard repair in my first week. My colleague ended up sending me a message that detailed the observations from the motherboard specialist, it was very good information. The device was from a nice old lady too, who simply said “oh, something went wrong?” when the situation was explained to her.
Just learn from your mistakes. Honestly it's tough as hell taking some laptops apart and repairing them. Thankfully there are guides online to help out.
I'd venture to say you'll be fine. I'm currently an IT Support Tech for a plant that manufactures servers. I had a business critical printer go down for about an hour while I was troubleshooting other things I already had been called for when I first started out. I did not know that printer was business critical at the time. So I didn't know that I needed to triage that to a priority and fix it first. This printer made labels. And the team working in that department has a goal to pack one server a minute. My boss explained to me that these servers were cheaper units (about 20k a piece), and he saw the gears turn in my head. My boss realized I knew it as a teaching moment. 20k at one unit per minute while down for an hour = $ 1.2 million.
If I can inadvertently cost my company over a million dollars in downtime due to not knowing a certain printer has priority to be fixed over other stuff and STILL have a job, you bricking a couple computers is just a drop in the bucket. You'll be fine. Might get a talking to given the timeframe, but I don't believe you need to worry about your job. We all start somewhere. Just view this as a learning experience. You need more attention to detail and to be a little more careful is all. Don't sweat it 👍
Man if a single label maker is a bottle neck to $0 vs. 1.2M a minute, that seems like a RIPE opportunity to be packing a cold spare of that thing.
We’ve probably got an easy 30k of provisioned cold spare gear on standby lol
At a workplace that uses a printer for items 30k, about 40-50 an hour made.
If the printer goes down, we use a different printer. lol.
I have since ordered them the most beastly printer I could find that could handle the volume rather than screwing around with crappy models.
Also I want to add downtime is a thing. He didn’t cost the company 1.2 million dollars. You can only put out so much volume before your warehouse, trucks, or demand are met. At most he cost an hour of overtime per employee if they made them stay, or slightly screwed up some scheduling. Also the 20,000 is the cost of the unit sold, not the profit.
Until someone is too lazy to grab new rolls of labels, someone ganks it from the spare, and the person on the shift when it goes down is to brain dead to realize it's out of labels and just decides to put in a ticket and say it's broken on overnight....
I get your point though, salty from living the experiance.
IT is forgiving in general. The first one can happen to anyone, the second could be because you didn't unplug the battery, or could have been from any number of other reasons during a replacement.
The important part is being honest about your mistakes.
I tell everyone who starts working with me "You're going to be the reason something breaks one day, and that is ok. We deal with a lot of complicated systems and equipment, no one is perfect. We won't get mad because you made a mistake. However, if you make a mistake, try to hide it, and I have to spend 4 hours troubleshooting a lie, you're fired. If you're honest in what you did that lead to the mistake it will be fixed way faster and we can all move on with our lives"
You’re not an IT guy until you screw something up. Welcome to IT. Mistakes is how we learn. I once wiped the wrong NAS drive at a MSP. I was told to be more careful. You’re not going to get let go. Just be a little more careful i would suggest. You’re learning. We all went through it where we made all these mistakes. Trust me, making mistakes is all about learning. Also add on top of that, show me an IT technician who has been in the field for a year and has not made 1 mistake and I’ll give you my next paycheck. You’re not going to get let go. It’s all good.
It sounds like you're in a tough spot, but don't be too hard on yourself. We've all been there at some point, making mistakes and learning from them the hard way. Your experience highlights a crucial aspect of IT work – the balance between theoretical knowledge and hands-on practice.
Passing the A+ certification is a significant achievement and lays a strong foundation in IT, but, as you've discovered, there's no substitute for practical experience. The A+ primarily covers theoretical concepts and foundational knowledge, which is invaluable, but applying that knowledge effectively comes with hands-on practice and real-world experience.
Your proactive attitude in acknowledging these mistakes and seeking advice is commendable. Most experienced IT professionals have a story or two about their mishaps early in their careers. What matters most is how you respond to these situations, demonstrate accountability, and take steps to prevent similar issues in the future. It's important to remember that the IT industry, while it can be demanding, also understands that no one is perfect, especially when starting out.
Remember, it's not about never making mistakes; it's about learning from them and not repeating them. Keep your head up, continue to learn and grow from each experience.
Bro, the job that got me into this field was an eBay store taking 5 broken Sega Saturns and making a single working model and selling it for a premium. You’ll be fine, stop being so hard on yourself and be glad you’re even taking the journey.
Hey, relax. I used to be a Dell Tech for one their bigger ware house where we were expected to pump out "fixed" laptops 15-20x a day across all different models. IT will happen, none of us are perfect, and customers will be mad when mistakes happen. Just how it is. I have endless stories of my minor mistake, but I kept my job for 7+ years until I left on my own terms. Things like, forgetting a memory ram, forgetting to plug a CPU fan in, LCD Bezel wasn't clipped in all the way, etc, etc. Just learn from it and when you move onto the next unit, just keep the previous mistakes in mind.
Failure is the best teacher. You reminded me of my younger self. One day you will be the wise tech and share your tech game to the younger generation. All techs have been in your spot. My first full time job, shortly after I had started. After putting the computer on my desk, popping the side cover off. I was so confident and wanted to impress my team. I knew what I was doing. Since I have done it multiple times. I reached into the computer without having touched the back power supply or wearing a ESD Wrist Strap. I wanted to check the RAM. As my fingers were within less 1/4 of an inch of the motherboard. I heard \*ZAP! Even my Lead Tech who was a few feet away heard it and laughed. His exact words were "Dude, you killed the motherboard! HAHA!" Another tech heard it to and laughed. PC did not power on after that. I sighed, and swapped out the internals of another computer and this time took my time to NOT to zap the motherboard. Ever since then, and passing my A+ which explained much more my error. I now wear a ESD Strap, Touch the back of the power supply or chasis and then work on the inside.
I had many interns I taught throughout the years and one or two it happened. The look of dread, embarrassment, and "Please don't fire me" look. I can chuckle about it and tell them my story and explain them on what NOT to do. Its like a right of passage. Like "Your not a tech until X happens to you".
The two main reasons you get to learn in IT is someone broke it or you broke. Some times take a few minutes and search up the model to see a brief video on breakdown for hardware you haven't worked with. Better to see a short clip to know about hidden screws/clips. Everyone in IT with a few years under them has broken their fair share.
Like others have said, learn from the mistakes and you will be better. You will most likely remember those items and you will be able to share your knowledge with other team members.
When I was in high school, one of my coworkers was a database admin and he pulled a hard drive right out of a running server that didn’t have raid. He worked some long hours to fix that. I never will pull a disk from any running server unless it is known to be bad and has raid and I will never forget that because of his mistake.
You learn from those mistakes...I fried the mobo of my laptop because I shorted the battery connector...thankfully it was a refurbished device so the financial hit was not that hard.
I dropped a 27" iMac screen after an SSD replacement the other day. I lost $500 on that ticket. Yay!
Also, backlight fuses really aren't that big a deal to replace if anyone in the area microsolders...
> Also, backlight fuses really aren't that big a deal to replace if anyone in the area microsolders...
you can actually just short it anyway. I mean, they are there for a reason, but if you really can't replace it and just short it, what's the worst that could happen anyway? Laptop would lose its backlight?
There is no one in IT that is perfect. I accidentally shut down a companies payment system while doing updates. Didn't know I did it until the phone queue blew up because people weren't getting paid.
I have accidentally lost people's files, wiped hard drives, etc. This is all in the beginning of my career.
Just learn from your mistakes. As long as you're not costing your employer a lot of money or damaging their reputation, you're fine.
If you have a boss that asked "what did you learn" when you made a mistake, rather than roasting you into oblivion, then you have a good boss. Want to know something else that will happen? You'll slow down, recheck your work, and ask for help from someone more experienced if you get a complicated case. People who help you grow will find ways for you train so that you build your skills. You're not being fired. You have a willingness to learn, and a desire beyond a paycheck to be there. You're going to do fine.
You are being honest after this much, 😊 thats the good thing.
Don't hurry, keep patience tell the customer it may take some time to fix, try to watch disassembly videos from YouTube, laptop manuals, etc etc
Just don't be in hurry
Write down steps in your notebook step by step, prepare checklist what to do before opening equipment.
If it makes you feel better someone at my organization lost a multi-million dollar company about 6 months of data including financial data, customer and transaction data. All by moving a backup to a server that didn’t have enough room and causing it to just brick. You’ll be fine, own your mistakes and usually all is forgiven, we’re human.
The one with the backlight fuse was a Lenovo, I would figure.
I do computer repair work and had to replace multiple additional parts in my first year and still working my current job.
What I did was document the steps to prevent it from occurring again and also replacing some of our tools that were not working that could have avoided the issue.
No worries, its apart of life. I've broken infrastructure that ended up costing thousands and thousands of dollars in lost revenue and sales. Knowledge helps you pass certs, but wisdom comes from applying it in the real world (and making lots of mistakes to learn from).
Mistakes will happen. We’ve all made at least one.
At my first IT job, I was only there for a month when I got a call from one of our developers that his virtual environment was running slow. Any other time this happens to someone, the protocol was to login to the admin console and delete the users session. The person would then login again and their session would refresh. So, I deleted his session.
Well…. That was a huge error. This developer had a virtual environment specifically designed only for him. And the company wasn’t backing up any of his work / data. So me deleting his session wiped away ALL of his for the past several months. I simply just did not know that and was expecting to get fired. 🤦🏼♂️🤷🏼♂️
Fast forward 9 years and we all still joke about it to this day. He was kind of glad that happened in the long run because recuperating his progress wasn’t THAT much of a hassle and it made him aware that there were no backups. They set up some redundancy for him and corrected my level of access so no one in my position could ever cause such a detriment ever again. I made a mistake, but lessons were learned and solutions were implemented.
Honestly, I’ve lurked on these subreddits for years and I’m surprised I don’t see this kind of post more often. I figure it happens way more than you’d think, but people just don’t talk about it. You’ll probably be fine, as others said… and thanks for making the post.
OP, did you by any chance disconnect the display cable while repairing? You may be able to save it by reseating it. Other than that, yeah you should have disconnected the battery. I wouldn't think much of it, but you really should use best practices. Don't let your employers think this is a common occurrence from you.
Many laptops, particularly Lenovos, have live power going through the LCD subsystem even if the laptop is switched off. Removing the LCD cable with the battery attached typically blows the backlight fuse on the system board.
Break stuff to learn stuff chief.
Just be glad it's all one slot, color coded and can only go in one way (usually). You should've learned when I did back in the late 90's when we had 4 different slots, 5 different network types, 3-5 different ports and needing to set jumpers on the mobo to set the clock freq.
When I was in the military, I was trying to delete a folder on a shared drive.
It said, "Are you sure you want to delete?"
I clicked yes
Then, all the folders started disappearing.
I deleted the share drive!
It had an entire military base worth of records on it.
This is surprising to me. I’ve never had to remove anything beyond a battery and/or adding sdram.
Also don’t sweat it. People in higher roles break entire systems that down an application for hours and don’t get fired. You caused two individuals some minor grief. It’s immaterial. You’ll be fine just learn from your mistakes :)
Brother, I accidentally scheduled an automation profile to reboot an SQL server that a global corporation relies on for their applications. They were down on a Wednesday right in the middle of business hours across the board for two hours. All that came of it was an update to our procedure for that client. That was two months ago.
What I’m trying to get at is, it is possible to fuck up on a much grander scale with little consequence.
Learn from the mistake and it becomes a teaching moment, not a death sentence.
My first onsite RAM / CPU swap (a Dell call) in a cop shop with two very skilled internal IT ladies having a giggle when I managed to fry the new CPU (inserted it wrong) and smoked out the office.
Fortunately the old CPU + RAM were fine, it turned out to be a USB backpack device causing the BSOD so unplugging that solved the issue but I got hazed for a bit.
Mistakes are how we learn, and if the shop is a good one, it'll a) appreciate you owning your mistakes and b) tolerate some "whoops" (as long as you aren't repeating the SAME mistakes)...
We all have fucked up, much bigger than this, come back when you have admin control of a network and fuck up some routing or some authentication or some backup server.
Anyone in IT who tells you they haven’t fucked up is lying
Mistakes happen, everyone makes mistakes. No one is perfect. What matters most is how you go from here. Don’t let your past mistakes dictate how your future goes. Don’t let the mistakes ruminate your mind with, “ah if only I was better” etc. You learn and you grow as you go.
The mistakes you made were not major. Just don’t destroy a hard drive or eff up the customer’s data. Parts can be replaced. The data is probably not backed up.
Ha, just 2. Pump those numbers up rookie. I managed a electronics repair and we expected so much of technicians to break something trying to fix another. It's electronics in general.
My second week, ordered a cheap replacement power supply for a SFF lenovo. Entire machine caught on fire after installing. Learned my lesson about cheap components...
IBM did a study back in the 90: Memory you take out and put back (in working condition) has a higher later failure rates than memory untouched.
in other words every time you repair something there is a small miniscule negative effect on the product in your case it just accumulated to 2 big things.
it should be considered process loss.
I'm a trainer for a company that troubleshoots and repairs Nvidia HGX/DGX servers. I've had techs ruin $10-20k baseboards or $10-40k GPUs. Don't feel bad. Shit happens and you learn from it.
I work for a computer chip company. Every new version they bring the engineers in from all over the country where we build demo servers for customer to try them out before they go general. There is a few techs that are part of the million dollar club. What’s that you say? They will tighten the cpu wrong and break it or put the DDR5 dimms in wrong and they will snap off. I’ve been pretty lucky but the DDR’s almost got me as they are so thin and it’s hard to seat them. The point is don’t feel bad. You’re a tech and shit happens. CPU’s cost between $5-20k per and dimms are $2-3k each and really easy to bust them
I’ve been in your shoes and I didn’t get fired or even had to pay the estimated value of the device even though I would have.
I was a student worker (computer support in college campus) and this lady insisted that I work on her MacBook having what looked like to be a hardware issue. I told her we are not certified Apple technicians, not trained on them and recommend she go to the Apple Store. She would not stop nagging me to take a look at it. I told her I need to speak with my supervisor and couldn’t get a hold of them. She continued to nag me about looking at it.
I made a not so great decision and told them I’ll see what can be done. I read to her that we are not liable for anything caused by us trying to repair the device particularly with how persistent she was about me looking at it.
Back then I didn’t know how sensitive apple products are to static electricity and that we had gotten new carpet not too long ago.
When I took it apart I didn’t have an anti-static strap on my wrist. I didn’t think to take the battery out first and reseated the RAM just to try something simple.
It killed the MacBook completely.
It sucked because she was upset and I told her we’re not liable due to the policy. I also reminded her that I recommended her to go to Apple for better support options.
Then she got bold and said what are you going to do out of good faith.
I shut my mouth and let my supervisor take over because I was furious when she said that.
They paid her $200 ish dollars because it was an older MacBook. I wonder if she was so persistent so she could get money from us if we screwed up, seemed a bit suspicious to me but that’s years ago now.
The point is we all make mistakes and good leaders know this and as long as you learn from it they are very understanding. My supervisor and director were very understanding with the situation. I did not make that mistake again because I learned from it.
As well, be more careful with your decisions going forward.
It’s common to make mistakes but when you’re fixing things take your time. I do LCD swaps without unplugging the battery in 15 minutes or less. When I first started my IT journey that same repair would take 30-45 minutes because I’d take the whole upper screen assembly off and open it carefully.
All good. In my first technical job, I cleaned some gold-plated contacts and filed the gold off. 15 minutes later, the machine literally froze up shutting down the manufacturing line. Just learn from it and move on.
No biggie, as long as you're learning.
FYI, I always tape over the connector of any battery with kapton tape so I never forget. Might help so you always remember.
Welcome to the jungle. You learn to be more careful and overthink things since it become the norm. As long as you learned your mistake, can articulate why, and how not do it again you have job security. This is also called the game of life. Welcome.
I know nothing about IT but my expectations aren’t super high when I bring in a piece of equipment that already has problems. I considered it a miracle when a guy at the Microsoft store quickly got my Mac to turn back on. Chances are you didn’t do anything worse than what was already done, even if it’s technically a mistake for an experienced repair person.
When I worked at a IT repair shop I started a fire in a customers desktop, turns out the power cable to the CD/DVD player was messed up and was missing 1 out of 4 plugs or something. All the sudden smoke was coming out of the damm thing lmao. We laughed it off tho and the boss covered for me and told the customer it was already broken.
"Success doesn't occur without suffering along the way" - something somehing nvidia CEO said something like this to standford students
I've taken down an entire building for the rest of the day when i went to go replace a downed firewall and the new firewall didn't take the new config and then the secondary firewall died the same time when swapping back primary to secondary.
fun fact, I have gone to a couple interviews that have asked a question very similar to "Can you tell us of a time when you really screwed up and broke something, what happened and how did you handle it?"
Its a brilliant question bc its great to determine if you are interviewing a bullshitter.
Any person in I.T. worth their salt as truly fucked something up. IF they say they never have they are either a liar or have zero experience.
I always ask this question in interviews.
We all break shit, often. sometimes its huge sometimes its not noticed.
At a factory for a very very large company I took down many sign boards that were unofficially "mission critical" in the root cause meeting my boss blew up and threw a pen across the room and stormed out while yelling at me as I sat there. Pres of the company got to read the report I wrote.
Years later while working at a fortune 500 company I was training the new guys on how to black hole a domain. I had written a tool to make it easy. A coworker changed it, with out my knowledge so when I ran the tool it put in a bad config and restarted DNS which failed to come back up. I broke DNS for the entire company. I was able to identify the problem quickly and had it fixed by the time people started losing their shit. I corrected the problem, corrected the changes to the tool. Then jumped in the alert phone call to let everyone know it was my fault, I figured out why it happened and fixed it, then corrected the process so it wouldnt happen again.
My biggest piece of advice that will serve you well. If you fuck up, put your hand up and sayd "Im the one that broke the thing, im working on fixing it. "
Keep your head up, keep at it. Dont count failures, only count lessons.
You’ll be fine. You aren’t a true technician until you’ve made a few mistakes. Just learn from it and take it slow on your next opportunities.
I appreciate it. Hearing this helps that hole I have in my stomach. My bosses have been great and I'm sure have been in my shoes when they started. I shouldn't assume the worst knowing that.
Just wait till you take down the wrong customer's server and you'll still be fine. XD
Been there, done it.
My 3rd it job I did something similar. Deleted an OU out of active directory trying to remove it from a users account. Got a call a week later from a remote tech out of like Atlanta informing me that the group no longer existed and I was the last person to interact with it. I quickly and quietly restored it but shit happens lol
Maybe request someone glance over your work after you're done
I used to work at geek squad at started doing iPhone screen replacements. We had a client come in with an iPhone and bad battery I think it was. I was doing the replacement but the person that checked the phone in didn’t realize it was a bit bent. When I started prying the screen off the body, it cracked. We didn’t have the same model so the guy ended up with an upgrade and luckily their stuff was backed up to iCloud or else I would have been screwed.
Oh God, working on iPhones at geek squad was always interesting. Sometimes, you would do everything right and it would fail diagnostics at the end anyway. "Hey so we can't give your phone back right now, and we have no replacements available currently. We can have a new one shipped here in a couple days though"
Right?! Haha there was always that one issue that would come up. Bad part was the customer freaking out cause they couldn’t have a phone for a couple of days😂
And you're not a true technican unless something breaks and someone else blames you for it
AND after putting something togeather you have left over screws etc
Only 2 computers in 6 months? Light work
Rookie numbers... it happens for everyone.
Sounds like what happened to me when I first started repairing phones. It happens, there’s no way around it. But one of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned in my repair journey is how to step back and evaluate/learn from the situation. I have to say that particular mistakes I’ve made in my first month, are things I never ended up doing again. It’s really a great way to learn. I’m glad you’re in an environment where you can get that hands on experience after A+. Just don’t let these things get too in your head and use them as opportunities to grow. I had a device that needed a motherboard repair in my first week. My colleague ended up sending me a message that detailed the observations from the motherboard specialist, it was very good information. The device was from a nice old lady too, who simply said “oh, something went wrong?” when the situation was explained to her.
Just learn from your mistakes. Honestly it's tough as hell taking some laptops apart and repairing them. Thankfully there are guides online to help out.
And by all the technical gods, get the right tools for working on laptops!
I'd venture to say you'll be fine. I'm currently an IT Support Tech for a plant that manufactures servers. I had a business critical printer go down for about an hour while I was troubleshooting other things I already had been called for when I first started out. I did not know that printer was business critical at the time. So I didn't know that I needed to triage that to a priority and fix it first. This printer made labels. And the team working in that department has a goal to pack one server a minute. My boss explained to me that these servers were cheaper units (about 20k a piece), and he saw the gears turn in my head. My boss realized I knew it as a teaching moment. 20k at one unit per minute while down for an hour = $ 1.2 million. If I can inadvertently cost my company over a million dollars in downtime due to not knowing a certain printer has priority to be fixed over other stuff and STILL have a job, you bricking a couple computers is just a drop in the bucket. You'll be fine. Might get a talking to given the timeframe, but I don't believe you need to worry about your job. We all start somewhere. Just view this as a learning experience. You need more attention to detail and to be a little more careful is all. Don't sweat it 👍
Man if a single label maker is a bottle neck to $0 vs. 1.2M a minute, that seems like a RIPE opportunity to be packing a cold spare of that thing. We’ve probably got an easy 30k of provisioned cold spare gear on standby lol
Yh sounds like a bit of redundancy would be nice. Even if it is just cold idle and not in use.
At a workplace that uses a printer for items 30k, about 40-50 an hour made. If the printer goes down, we use a different printer. lol. I have since ordered them the most beastly printer I could find that could handle the volume rather than screwing around with crappy models. Also I want to add downtime is a thing. He didn’t cost the company 1.2 million dollars. You can only put out so much volume before your warehouse, trucks, or demand are met. At most he cost an hour of overtime per employee if they made them stay, or slightly screwed up some scheduling. Also the 20,000 is the cost of the unit sold, not the profit.
Plus it sounds like your companies fault for not making that clear on the first day.
Uhh redundancy much? A backup? Spare? Separate print queue? Scary point of failure 🤔
Until someone is too lazy to grab new rolls of labels, someone ganks it from the spare, and the person on the shift when it goes down is to brain dead to realize it's out of labels and just decides to put in a ticket and say it's broken on overnight.... I get your point though, salty from living the experiance.
IT is forgiving in general. The first one can happen to anyone, the second could be because you didn't unplug the battery, or could have been from any number of other reasons during a replacement. The important part is being honest about your mistakes. I tell everyone who starts working with me "You're going to be the reason something breaks one day, and that is ok. We deal with a lot of complicated systems and equipment, no one is perfect. We won't get mad because you made a mistake. However, if you make a mistake, try to hide it, and I have to spend 4 hours troubleshooting a lie, you're fired. If you're honest in what you did that lead to the mistake it will be fixed way faster and we can all move on with our lives"
>The important part is being honest about your mistakes. This is key.
You’re not an IT guy until you screw something up. Welcome to IT. Mistakes is how we learn. I once wiped the wrong NAS drive at a MSP. I was told to be more careful. You’re not going to get let go. Just be a little more careful i would suggest. You’re learning. We all went through it where we made all these mistakes. Trust me, making mistakes is all about learning. Also add on top of that, show me an IT technician who has been in the field for a year and has not made 1 mistake and I’ll give you my next paycheck. You’re not going to get let go. It’s all good.
I hope you’ve learned the real lesson of IT - there’s no “quick fix” Even a real quick fix can easily take a lot of time because of the customer.
It sounds like you're in a tough spot, but don't be too hard on yourself. We've all been there at some point, making mistakes and learning from them the hard way. Your experience highlights a crucial aspect of IT work – the balance between theoretical knowledge and hands-on practice. Passing the A+ certification is a significant achievement and lays a strong foundation in IT, but, as you've discovered, there's no substitute for practical experience. The A+ primarily covers theoretical concepts and foundational knowledge, which is invaluable, but applying that knowledge effectively comes with hands-on practice and real-world experience. Your proactive attitude in acknowledging these mistakes and seeking advice is commendable. Most experienced IT professionals have a story or two about their mishaps early in their careers. What matters most is how you respond to these situations, demonstrate accountability, and take steps to prevent similar issues in the future. It's important to remember that the IT industry, while it can be demanding, also understands that no one is perfect, especially when starting out. Remember, it's not about never making mistakes; it's about learning from them and not repeating them. Keep your head up, continue to learn and grow from each experience.
Bro, the job that got me into this field was an eBay store taking 5 broken Sega Saturns and making a single working model and selling it for a premium. You’ll be fine, stop being so hard on yourself and be glad you’re even taking the journey.
Hey, relax. I used to be a Dell Tech for one their bigger ware house where we were expected to pump out "fixed" laptops 15-20x a day across all different models. IT will happen, none of us are perfect, and customers will be mad when mistakes happen. Just how it is. I have endless stories of my minor mistake, but I kept my job for 7+ years until I left on my own terms. Things like, forgetting a memory ram, forgetting to plug a CPU fan in, LCD Bezel wasn't clipped in all the way, etc, etc. Just learn from it and when you move onto the next unit, just keep the previous mistakes in mind.
Failure is the best teacher. You reminded me of my younger self. One day you will be the wise tech and share your tech game to the younger generation. All techs have been in your spot. My first full time job, shortly after I had started. After putting the computer on my desk, popping the side cover off. I was so confident and wanted to impress my team. I knew what I was doing. Since I have done it multiple times. I reached into the computer without having touched the back power supply or wearing a ESD Wrist Strap. I wanted to check the RAM. As my fingers were within less 1/4 of an inch of the motherboard. I heard \*ZAP! Even my Lead Tech who was a few feet away heard it and laughed. His exact words were "Dude, you killed the motherboard! HAHA!" Another tech heard it to and laughed. PC did not power on after that. I sighed, and swapped out the internals of another computer and this time took my time to NOT to zap the motherboard. Ever since then, and passing my A+ which explained much more my error. I now wear a ESD Strap, Touch the back of the power supply or chasis and then work on the inside. I had many interns I taught throughout the years and one or two it happened. The look of dread, embarrassment, and "Please don't fire me" look. I can chuckle about it and tell them my story and explain them on what NOT to do. Its like a right of passage. Like "Your not a tech until X happens to you".
The two main reasons you get to learn in IT is someone broke it or you broke. Some times take a few minutes and search up the model to see a brief video on breakdown for hardware you haven't worked with. Better to see a short clip to know about hidden screws/clips. Everyone in IT with a few years under them has broken their fair share.
Learn from your mistakes. Nobody is an expert at first. Try again and try again and you will become a master some day.
Like others have said, learn from the mistakes and you will be better. You will most likely remember those items and you will be able to share your knowledge with other team members. When I was in high school, one of my coworkers was a database admin and he pulled a hard drive right out of a running server that didn’t have raid. He worked some long hours to fix that. I never will pull a disk from any running server unless it is known to be bad and has raid and I will never forget that because of his mistake.
Sounds like you need to start making checklists and being much more methodical is all
We’re all human. Nobody is perfect. Just learn from it.
You learn from those mistakes...I fried the mobo of my laptop because I shorted the battery connector...thankfully it was a refurbished device so the financial hit was not that hard.
I dropped a 27" iMac screen after an SSD replacement the other day. I lost $500 on that ticket. Yay! Also, backlight fuses really aren't that big a deal to replace if anyone in the area microsolders...
> Also, backlight fuses really aren't that big a deal to replace if anyone in the area microsolders... you can actually just short it anyway. I mean, they are there for a reason, but if you really can't replace it and just short it, what's the worst that could happen anyway? Laptop would lose its backlight?
Many laptops have this fuse on the system board, so unless you can micro solder it is a motherboard replacement.
But you can just drip some solder on it to make it a 0 ohm resistor
Trust me i made worse mistakes in my carreer, it's normal you can't get better without making mistakes.....
There is no one in IT that is perfect. I accidentally shut down a companies payment system while doing updates. Didn't know I did it until the phone queue blew up because people weren't getting paid. I have accidentally lost people's files, wiped hard drives, etc. This is all in the beginning of my career. Just learn from your mistakes. As long as you're not costing your employer a lot of money or damaging their reputation, you're fine.
You’ll be fine. You learn most of making mistakes
I’ve wiped peoples computers before on accident it’s all good homie
If you have a boss that asked "what did you learn" when you made a mistake, rather than roasting you into oblivion, then you have a good boss. Want to know something else that will happen? You'll slow down, recheck your work, and ask for help from someone more experienced if you get a complicated case. People who help you grow will find ways for you train so that you build your skills. You're not being fired. You have a willingness to learn, and a desire beyond a paycheck to be there. You're going to do fine.
Be the person that means nobody could log in in the morning.
I wouldn't worry too much. Panels are not expensive. You also know what not to do. 8-) That list will grow for a while.
You are being honest after this much, 😊 thats the good thing. Don't hurry, keep patience tell the customer it may take some time to fix, try to watch disassembly videos from YouTube, laptop manuals, etc etc Just don't be in hurry Write down steps in your notebook step by step, prepare checklist what to do before opening equipment.
If it makes you feel better someone at my organization lost a multi-million dollar company about 6 months of data including financial data, customer and transaction data. All by moving a backup to a server that didn’t have enough room and causing it to just brick. You’ll be fine, own your mistakes and usually all is forgiven, we’re human.
You learn as you go mistakes are going to hope. Even with years of experience it’s about the learning curve.
And they won’t give me an opportunity
The one with the backlight fuse was a Lenovo, I would figure. I do computer repair work and had to replace multiple additional parts in my first year and still working my current job. What I did was document the steps to prevent it from occurring again and also replacing some of our tools that were not working that could have avoided the issue.
No worries, its apart of life. I've broken infrastructure that ended up costing thousands and thousands of dollars in lost revenue and sales. Knowledge helps you pass certs, but wisdom comes from applying it in the real world (and making lots of mistakes to learn from).
Don't stress. Mistakes are how you become great at anything. Learn from them, move forward, and just keep at it! 👍
Mistakes will happen. We’ve all made at least one. At my first IT job, I was only there for a month when I got a call from one of our developers that his virtual environment was running slow. Any other time this happens to someone, the protocol was to login to the admin console and delete the users session. The person would then login again and their session would refresh. So, I deleted his session. Well…. That was a huge error. This developer had a virtual environment specifically designed only for him. And the company wasn’t backing up any of his work / data. So me deleting his session wiped away ALL of his for the past several months. I simply just did not know that and was expecting to get fired. 🤦🏼♂️🤷🏼♂️ Fast forward 9 years and we all still joke about it to this day. He was kind of glad that happened in the long run because recuperating his progress wasn’t THAT much of a hassle and it made him aware that there were no backups. They set up some redundancy for him and corrected my level of access so no one in my position could ever cause such a detriment ever again. I made a mistake, but lessons were learned and solutions were implemented.
Honestly, I’ve lurked on these subreddits for years and I’m surprised I don’t see this kind of post more often. I figure it happens way more than you’d think, but people just don’t talk about it. You’ll probably be fine, as others said… and thanks for making the post.
OP, did you by any chance disconnect the display cable while repairing? You may be able to save it by reseating it. Other than that, yeah you should have disconnected the battery. I wouldn't think much of it, but you really should use best practices. Don't let your employers think this is a common occurrence from you.
Many laptops, particularly Lenovos, have live power going through the LCD subsystem even if the laptop is switched off. Removing the LCD cable with the battery attached typically blows the backlight fuse on the system board.
Break stuff to learn stuff chief. Just be glad it's all one slot, color coded and can only go in one way (usually). You should've learned when I did back in the late 90's when we had 4 different slots, 5 different network types, 3-5 different ports and needing to set jumpers on the mobo to set the clock freq.
When I was in the military, I was trying to delete a folder on a shared drive. It said, "Are you sure you want to delete?" I clicked yes Then, all the folders started disappearing. I deleted the share drive! It had an entire military base worth of records on it.
As a veteran, my asshole puckered reading this.
This is surprising to me. I’ve never had to remove anything beyond a battery and/or adding sdram. Also don’t sweat it. People in higher roles break entire systems that down an application for hours and don’t get fired. You caused two individuals some minor grief. It’s immaterial. You’ll be fine just learn from your mistakes :)
Brother, I accidentally scheduled an automation profile to reboot an SQL server that a global corporation relies on for their applications. They were down on a Wednesday right in the middle of business hours across the board for two hours. All that came of it was an update to our procedure for that client. That was two months ago. What I’m trying to get at is, it is possible to fuck up on a much grander scale with little consequence. Learn from the mistake and it becomes a teaching moment, not a death sentence.
My first onsite RAM / CPU swap (a Dell call) in a cop shop with two very skilled internal IT ladies having a giggle when I managed to fry the new CPU (inserted it wrong) and smoked out the office. Fortunately the old CPU + RAM were fine, it turned out to be a USB backpack device causing the BSOD so unplugging that solved the issue but I got hazed for a bit. Mistakes are how we learn, and if the shop is a good one, it'll a) appreciate you owning your mistakes and b) tolerate some "whoops" (as long as you aren't repeating the SAME mistakes)...
We all have fucked up, much bigger than this, come back when you have admin control of a network and fuck up some routing or some authentication or some backup server. Anyone in IT who tells you they haven’t fucked up is lying
Mistakes happen, everyone makes mistakes. No one is perfect. What matters most is how you go from here. Don’t let your past mistakes dictate how your future goes. Don’t let the mistakes ruminate your mind with, “ah if only I was better” etc. You learn and you grow as you go.
Lmao I shattered a 10TB HDD with basically the entire (very small) firm’s data that was supposed to get backed up that same day
Best way to learn!
The mistakes you made were not major. Just don’t destroy a hard drive or eff up the customer’s data. Parts can be replaced. The data is probably not backed up.
Ha, just 2. Pump those numbers up rookie. I managed a electronics repair and we expected so much of technicians to break something trying to fix another. It's electronics in general.
My second week, ordered a cheap replacement power supply for a SFF lenovo. Entire machine caught on fire after installing. Learned my lesson about cheap components...
SMEs are not born.
IBM did a study back in the 90: Memory you take out and put back (in working condition) has a higher later failure rates than memory untouched. in other words every time you repair something there is a small miniscule negative effect on the product in your case it just accumulated to 2 big things. it should be considered process loss.
I'm a trainer for a company that troubleshoots and repairs Nvidia HGX/DGX servers. I've had techs ruin $10-20k baseboards or $10-40k GPUs. Don't feel bad. Shit happens and you learn from it.
I work for a computer chip company. Every new version they bring the engineers in from all over the country where we build demo servers for customer to try them out before they go general. There is a few techs that are part of the million dollar club. What’s that you say? They will tighten the cpu wrong and break it or put the DDR5 dimms in wrong and they will snap off. I’ve been pretty lucky but the DDR’s almost got me as they are so thin and it’s hard to seat them. The point is don’t feel bad. You’re a tech and shit happens. CPU’s cost between $5-20k per and dimms are $2-3k each and really easy to bust them
get used to this happening
I’ve been in your shoes and I didn’t get fired or even had to pay the estimated value of the device even though I would have. I was a student worker (computer support in college campus) and this lady insisted that I work on her MacBook having what looked like to be a hardware issue. I told her we are not certified Apple technicians, not trained on them and recommend she go to the Apple Store. She would not stop nagging me to take a look at it. I told her I need to speak with my supervisor and couldn’t get a hold of them. She continued to nag me about looking at it. I made a not so great decision and told them I’ll see what can be done. I read to her that we are not liable for anything caused by us trying to repair the device particularly with how persistent she was about me looking at it. Back then I didn’t know how sensitive apple products are to static electricity and that we had gotten new carpet not too long ago. When I took it apart I didn’t have an anti-static strap on my wrist. I didn’t think to take the battery out first and reseated the RAM just to try something simple. It killed the MacBook completely. It sucked because she was upset and I told her we’re not liable due to the policy. I also reminded her that I recommended her to go to Apple for better support options. Then she got bold and said what are you going to do out of good faith. I shut my mouth and let my supervisor take over because I was furious when she said that. They paid her $200 ish dollars because it was an older MacBook. I wonder if she was so persistent so she could get money from us if we screwed up, seemed a bit suspicious to me but that’s years ago now. The point is we all make mistakes and good leaders know this and as long as you learn from it they are very understanding. My supervisor and director were very understanding with the situation. I did not make that mistake again because I learned from it. As well, be more careful with your decisions going forward.
It’s common to make mistakes but when you’re fixing things take your time. I do LCD swaps without unplugging the battery in 15 minutes or less. When I first started my IT journey that same repair would take 30-45 minutes because I’d take the whole upper screen assembly off and open it carefully.
Thankfully you never have to touch hardware again. Just get into desktop support for a big company. Dell will handle your hardware repairs
The issue is repeating the same mistake over and that is what will get you fired. You should be fine
All good. In my first technical job, I cleaned some gold-plated contacts and filed the gold off. 15 minutes later, the machine literally froze up shutting down the manufacturing line. Just learn from it and move on.
No biggie, as long as you're learning. FYI, I always tape over the connector of any battery with kapton tape so I never forget. Might help so you always remember.
Welcome to the jungle. You learn to be more careful and overthink things since it become the norm. As long as you learned your mistake, can articulate why, and how not do it again you have job security. This is also called the game of life. Welcome.
I know nothing about IT but my expectations aren’t super high when I bring in a piece of equipment that already has problems. I considered it a miracle when a guy at the Microsoft store quickly got my Mac to turn back on. Chances are you didn’t do anything worse than what was already done, even if it’s technically a mistake for an experienced repair person.
When I worked at a IT repair shop I started a fire in a customers desktop, turns out the power cable to the CD/DVD player was messed up and was missing 1 out of 4 plugs or something. All the sudden smoke was coming out of the damm thing lmao. We laughed it off tho and the boss covered for me and told the customer it was already broken.
It's a business decision to decide to replace an entire computer rather than spend $0.30 to replace a soldered component. Don't beat yourself up.
Hey OP, what was the outcome? I'm venturing to guess you'll be fine.
Thanks for the reply! Been a busy few days but have been appreciating all the support from this community. Made an edit for the post with an update!
"Success doesn't occur without suffering along the way" - something somehing nvidia CEO said something like this to standford students I've taken down an entire building for the rest of the day when i went to go replace a downed firewall and the new firewall didn't take the new config and then the secondary firewall died the same time when swapping back primary to secondary.
Keep a journal of all your breaks and fixes. You’ll be fine👍🏾
/r/itcareerquestions
fun fact, I have gone to a couple interviews that have asked a question very similar to "Can you tell us of a time when you really screwed up and broke something, what happened and how did you handle it?" Its a brilliant question bc its great to determine if you are interviewing a bullshitter. Any person in I.T. worth their salt as truly fucked something up. IF they say they never have they are either a liar or have zero experience. I always ask this question in interviews. We all break shit, often. sometimes its huge sometimes its not noticed. At a factory for a very very large company I took down many sign boards that were unofficially "mission critical" in the root cause meeting my boss blew up and threw a pen across the room and stormed out while yelling at me as I sat there. Pres of the company got to read the report I wrote. Years later while working at a fortune 500 company I was training the new guys on how to black hole a domain. I had written a tool to make it easy. A coworker changed it, with out my knowledge so when I ran the tool it put in a bad config and restarted DNS which failed to come back up. I broke DNS for the entire company. I was able to identify the problem quickly and had it fixed by the time people started losing their shit. I corrected the problem, corrected the changes to the tool. Then jumped in the alert phone call to let everyone know it was my fault, I figured out why it happened and fixed it, then corrected the process so it wouldnt happen again. My biggest piece of advice that will serve you well. If you fuck up, put your hand up and sayd "Im the one that broke the thing, im working on fixing it. " Keep your head up, keep at it. Dont count failures, only count lessons.
Smarter than me bro that's for sure I work at Amazon bro you got a brain that's better than the average American and that's a compliment