Tell HN: I'm nervous and don't know where else to go

Alternatively raise your concerns with your bosses boss.. Since I would also assume your bosses boss approved his vacation knowing that this upgrade was coming they may be less then helpful. Or they could have been lied to by being told you are comfortable with all aspects of the project.

If you're not comfortable, get them to postpone, or ignore it all and get you resume in order. This is one of those red flags for bad companies.

Do you know anyone there that uses this software? Can you ask them what the experience was like the last time this happened (from their point of view)? Maybe you don't need a login, maybe they just push the update out and you pretend to be involved!

And: "I assume my boss has left the process to be automated", that would be something to check with said boss. Assumptions are the mother of all f-ups ;)

Kidding, wouldn't worry too much. If your boss works in IT he is probably used to getting called when not in the office. Maybe just tell him you are nervous because of the update. But I very much doubt anyone would blame you if there are any difficulties.

If boss is gone, go to their supervisor.

Do this today. Assuming you're in the US, you have most of the workday to figure out what you know and what you don't.

And, as somebody else posted, calm down. Either your boss trusts you, or your boss is an arsehole. Either way, that's a good thing to know now. In the first case, great. In the second, no great, but you know you don't want to work for him beyond this internship.

So, don't calm down, but feel a bit justified in being worried all of a sudden.

Be very clear that you need to have login sorted out before you can begin work on the project. Write down all of your concerns in a text document, and save them to be raised the internal kickoff meeting (There should be one. If not, ask for one).

Meanwhile, search their documentation as best you can, and see if you can get an idea of what the actual work would entail. Research can count as productivity, and you may find more questions that need to be raised.

I wish someone could have told me that when I was an intern. Many times.

If the upgrade blows up, it won't be your fault because you're just an intern. There are multiple people making way more money than you are who are responsible for running the company. If those people leave an intern in charge of a mission-critical system and it breaks, it's their fault. If you do end up in the soup and you're able to save the day by calling Epicor support, you'll end up with some very nice letters of reference.

If it doesn't blow up, great, it means your advisor trusts you to keep the plates spinning while he's out. Keep doing what you're doing and you'll have a bright future.

Next time get trained before the guy with the knowledge disappears :)

Polish your resume no matter what, because you're working for people who should rightfully make their living biting the heads off chickens out back of a circus tent for a nickel admission fee, not managing anything that matters.

You haven't provided a lot of info, but based on what you say, it seems that:

1) you are an intern, not a full-time employee (FTE)

2) Your boss seems to be the one supposedly in charge of the Epicor update, but it also seems that he felt you could be put in charge while he's away. Wait, though: in charge in case the automation he put in place doesn't work.

3) You feel the task it daunting, and you are panicking.

4) It seems you are mostly worrying about the case where the automated update process fails, and people would revert to you to ask for help.

If the above is correct, I'd suggest the following:

1) Use a written form of communication to tell your boss what makes you anxious. Written would help you in case of any legal issue, any wrongful termination, or simply in case your boss will try to blame you for any issue as a result of a failed update.

e.g. "Dear boss, I hope you will have a wonderful holiday next week. I am concerned about the Epicor update scheduled for Monday, Oct 17th, as I have no useful information to be able to support the company in case the update doesn't go as you planned. I just wanted to make sure that you were ok with this, and don't expect me to be able to intervene in case of issues. Of course, I will do my best if something happens, and I would appreciate if you could let me know what's expected of me during the update, or even in preparation for the update (e.g. would you need me to study anything during the weekend?) Thanks."

2) Do not assume that your goal now is to prep for the update, spend the weekend studying Epicor or whatever else. You might still want to do it, but again, it is not required. It seems your boss didn't tell you anything like that.

3) You might want to review your "contract", even if you are an intern and not a FTE. What did you sign when you started working with this company? Try to see if there's anything weird in the liabilities you incur for any wrongdoing. Probably nothing, though. Relax.

4) You're an intern, you're probably young, and this is a great learning opportunity for you. Your anxiety is a consequence of your inability to communicate with your boss properly, even if he might have made a mistake of leaving you alone in all of this. Analyze how the conversation went, and see if you could have done better.

5) Finally, do not listen to the others suggesting that you should polish your resume and run for the hill. It's too rushed. You gave us sparse information, and there's very little to suggest that this would be the best course of action.

Try, instead, to make the best of this situation. And don't panic. Panic is often anxiety, self-inflicted anxiety. You probably didn't do anything wrong; you might have a boss that is not fully aware of what's going on inside your brain, and that happens.

Good luck! Hope that this was helpful in some way.

Talk to your boss if he is still around, or talk to your boss' boss if not.

Try to be open about your emotions. "I am feeling nervous about the Epicor upgrade". Paradoxically, you should confidently express what your anxieties are. Explain as much as you can about why: "I think I need more information to understand if this is something I can do, and what to do if something goes wrong".

If you are in a junior role and you're feeling like this, it's almost certainly not your fault. Your only responsibility is to speak up about how you're feeling. Realising this can be liberating.

Like everyone else says, breathe, and make sure there's visibility up your management chain. Make it clear you haven't been given the tools, and have full transparency when you talk to support. If I am reading this right, everyone - including the vendor - is going to try and nail you. Don't give them an in with dishonesty. You've done nothing wrong, and although it's heresy among techbros, not knowing some random computer thing isn't a moral failing.

Unfortunately I also agree with the point about the resume. This won't be the first time your org does this kind of thing. In fact, it might be the standard way they do everything. I've seen that movie before, too. You get lucky, you can even get lucky many times, and luck combined with ability can take you places. But eventually luck runs out, and the situation goes down that toxic orgs always want it go down: with you in the toilet. Then they can go back to fingering each other or whatever it is orgs like this do when they run out of competent staff.

Right now, I sort of have a gig like this, but it's a bit more informal, everyone having entered this with eyes open. I told them up front I have zero idea what I'm doing (front end dev), but they seemed alright with that, and I'm picking it up, albeit slowly (NgRx, that is). For my part, I wanted to learn this stuff anyway; functional programming has always been a giant blank spot in my know-how. It's not like my boss dropped down from heaven and said "Add these features to this strange codebase you've never seen before without talking to the developer" then disappeared.

What you DON'T want to try to do, if it blows up (or seems to be), is some Hail Mary hack-in-somehow-and-try-to-save-the-day. If the update doesn't work and you weren't given the login, you have an eminently reasonable excuse for why you could not save the day.

On the other hand, if you somehow mess with things in a desperate attempt to fix it, and somehow make matters worse, you could be considered to have made a mistake.

Either way, if things blow up, you will have to go to your boss's boss and explain that you don't know how to fix it and don't have a login to attempt to do it even if you did. You will want to do this calmly and professionally, not going out of your way to make anyone else look worse (not that this would be necessary anyway, from the sound of it), but being clear about the actual situation.

Your boss apparently thinks this update is trivial, and will require nothing of you. Perhaps he is right. If he is not, then if you have not been prepared to troubleshoot you could easily make things worse, so be plain and clear about your inability to fix something you haven't been briefed on. They will have to either get hold of your boss, or else call the company who makes the software, and perhaps in that case they may be able to walk you through what to do. If not, don't pretend to knowledge you don't have.

Have a good weekend, you have done what you can do by voicing concern.

Here's a personal story that might help: many years ago in the beginning of my career I was assigned to install a software client on various machines (about 50 workstations), using a CD. It was a Friday, worked until late but had to leave to continue next day (Saturday!!). When I arrived I noticed the CD was cracked. Either me or the cleaners accidentally put something on it. I then called the IT admin (who was on a holiday) and told him the CD was cracked, I needed another one. He said we didn't have it. I then called the software supplier (Sybase Inc) to ask about a replacement media. Obviously we had the licence, it was just a matter of getting the binaries, right? Wrong, they said we had to purchase a new licence. I then tought I should pay for it since I felt responsible for the damage. The price was really high (can't remember, something like x thousand dollars - I would have to work for many years to pay that with my junior salary). I tried finding people around and on the internet with the same software version so I could clone their CD but there were too many minor releases and none matched the same as our licence. This is Monday already and I had no choice but tell the boss what happened (over the phone). She asked how much it was, I told her. After the longest 5 seconds of silence she said "OK, it was not your fault, we should have made backups. And we were outdated anyway, it was time to upgrade, please tell the finance I authorise the purchase and tell them to invoice us". Phew! Many lessons learned on that weekend.

Even if you have a login, if they've only given you that and nothing else, then you cannot reasonably be expected to complete the update on a Friday with no oversight and no support from a team.

So don't, if it seems prudent not to. Another commenter mentioned that hopefully you're in a US timezone since that means you'll have the rest of the day to figure things out.

So start figuring - compile a text document with links to information about the upgrade process. Cross-reference this with what you know about how the current system operates. Do a solid hour's worth of research and try to determine how the process will go. Identify potential pitfalls: are you going to get stuck behind a prompt for additional credentials, or asked for a license key that you don't have? If the upgrade process fails catastrophically, what's your easiest route to restoring from backup? Is there something you can take snapshots of, as an insurance policy?

Call the vendor (hopefully your org has an active support contract) and level with them: you're a support guy too, you're out of your depth (or so you think, anyway) and you need a sanity check and some advice. Perhaps you have internal team members who could help in similar ways (probably not, since you're asking here).

If it seems too risky, I just wouldn't do it. Type up a nice note about the research you did, and how you foresee the process being executed. Then notate why you're uncomfortable hitting the big red button, and what you'd need in order to more forward.

Then, update your ticket with that note, place it on next week's schedule, go home, and enjoy your weekend.

Best of luck.

If I may add, when your peers (or managers) take some time off and hand over work to you, write a hand-over document. Always. It's crucial for smooth handovers.

- Task to handover

- Description

- Actions at stake

- Target / Desired Outcome

- Timelines

If you missed an action / task that isn't in that document, then it's really not your fault.

It's also strange that you haven't been involved in calls with the vendor or any of the planning meetings that should have been going on over the last few months. See if you can find out what the actual plan for the upgrade is.

Maybe there isn't one. This could be a seat of the pants operation and you could be about to walk into a total clusterfuck. That said, DO NOT LEAVE! There are no repercussions for you, the intern. You could walk over and pull the plug out mid install and it'd still be your bosses fault for leaving an intern in full charge of anything more important than the spare coffee maker. You have a ringside seat to a fantastic learning opportunity here - you cannot lose. Enjoy the ride, keep a diary, use your head, do your best. Best case: you're a savior (enjoy the $5 Arbees gift voucher). Worst case: the upgrade is delayed by a week, your lazy boss gets canned, and everyone else views you with a mixture of sympathy and respect and you get onto a new team.

Above all else: If your boss knowingly left a junior employee to do something with 0 training or guidance, any fuckups are on the boss. Don't beat yourself up about it, life will happen and you will get through it.

1. proven familiarity with the process,

2. thorough instructions, and

3. an on-call that is available and familiar with the intern's specific push.

That said: maybe these upgrades are always straight forward. Maybe your boss plans to be available in case something goes wrong (despite not being on site). Maybe he's treating this as a sort of final interview for your internship before suggesting a full-time offer. Maybe there's a safety net underneath you that your boss knows about but you don't, since operating with poise under pressure is an important thing to test for in an IT candidate.

I suggest you proceed with poise. Prior to the upgrade, ensure that you have documentation about the process, any other necessary information, etc. It is your job to make sure you have what you need! Also make sure that you have a point of contact who will be on-call during the upgrade process (this should be your boss). During the upgrade, immediately escalate any issues to that on-call.

Finally, prior to your boss leaving, let him know that you are happy to take on this task but want to make sure that there's a full time employee ready in the wings in case something goes wrong because you do not have a long history with this product and because the product is so mission-critical to the company.

As others have said raise concerns with your boss/their boss. But if you have concerns do something to lower that risk and discuss options with higher ups.

Maybe send a casual email. "Hey Bob, enjoy your vacation! No rush, but how are we maintaining this upcoming Epicor upgrade going forward? As you know I have no training and login information to the new system, but am excited to learn whatever is needed to help the company. If you have any suggestions or advice on good resources to learn this system, please let me know anytime."

It'll be your bosses screwup, not yours, if something goes wrong.