Seven questions to our System Administrator, Nils

Get to know Nils Sommermeier (System Administrator, Cologne office), written by Sophie Morawietz

Nils has been an integral part of our Office IT since April 2018. As a system administrator, he ensures, among other things, that the systems of all Avengas are working perfectly and that our new colleagues are equipped with hardware. Time for a short interview – time for seven questions to our Avenga colleague!

Nils, what does a typical working day in Office IT look like?

When I come to the office in the morning, I first open my mailbox, check the to-do list on my notepad and see who called me during my off-hours. I prioritize all the leftovers from the previous day or the new-arrivals and then work through them bit by bit. At the moment, I’m also in the process of cleaning up our mailing lists and building in hierarchies: at the top of the list is the company mailing list, then, for example, the Cologne location, then the Cologne project management, etc. In future, I will only have to add new colleagues to one distribution list and they will be automatically added to the others.

However, regularly recurring tasks make up at most 20% of my working time. 80% of my day is spent on spontaneous topics, which cannot be planned. It’s often a case of: Here, this isn’t working, or, there someone has problems with the internet connection or with his or her laptop. I like this because I always have to read up new topics and learn a lot – it would be boring having to do the same old thing all the time.

Which tasks and topics totally absorb you?

I think it’s great that I can just walk up to my colleagues in the Cologne office to look at problems directly or ask if everything is okay. I really like the fact that I can work with computers and people at the same time. We also want to switch our systems to redundancy over the next few months: If in future, we have a failure, we’ll have a replacement unit already in place and can simply switch to it so that the day-to-day business is not hindered. I’m really looking forward to this task and to refreshing my knowledge about it!

If you hadn’t become a system administrator, then…

…I would have been a soccer star for sure.

Clean desk or creative chaos?

Creative chaos. I try to keep my desk tidy, but it just doesn’t work.

And privately – what do you like doing most in your free time?

At the moment, I do a lot with my little godchild: trips to the zoo, the playground or Roermond. I also play Playstation. And for some time now I’ve been going running with some friends. They first had to persuade me to join in, but in a group, it’s really fun.