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Life in the Trenches: a Sysadmin Speaks
Anonymous Coward writes "A senior systems administrator at a big ISP in Australia offers
a no-nonsense view about his line of work, the pros and the cons, ths ups and the downs."
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You're being a little harsh, methinks. For a start, he didn't say he was logging in to fix anything; he may just have been keeping an eye on the system. Irrespective of the number of minions one has, this can only be a good thing.
Having said that, logging in from a cyber cafe? Speaking as a former sysadmin of one of those self-same cafes, this made me shudder. Even if he's using something secure, I've often found keystroke loggers on machines (amongst other stuff), and he's risking some serious compromising.
"strong experienced based opinions" is crap
That's your strong, experience-based opinion, is it?
What qualities do you rate as essential for a good sysadmin?
In rough order of importance:
Aptitude.
...
Is it just me, or is that a somewhat circular choice for first on the list? What IS aptitude, but the qualities essential for the purpose?
I also fully agree that when you're on vacation, if your underlings can't keep the ship together, you're not doing a very good job.
What he doesn't hit on very well in his preachy missive is the importance of diplomacy. I work in a big enough operation that I don't even deal with the end-customers, we have an application support team for that. This means that (a) the problems are reduced, since I only have to worry about a handful of real "users" who can damage the systems and (b) the problems are greater, because those guys are vastly better at really kicking the legs out from under my boxes! So it's mightily important to always touch base with the application support teams, and keep a continuous stream of communication up. It's easy to lose that, especially in a giant operation, especially when your specialty is copping an attitude.
And finally: Why do so many sysadmins dedicate their lives to looking like freaks? Find a shower, a razor, a comb, and use them, people!
What's your biggest complaint about the profession?
I don't have much to complain about
HUH!? I'm gonna go out on a limb here using my expereince and the people I know and say this is the exception and not the norm... Is this guy for real? Every sysadmin professional I know complains about the users, the hours, the pay and their job security. And what's this Telecommuniting BS? 70% of the time he was able to stay at home? Am I missing something here? This does NOT sound like the average Sysadmin Job I've come to know. Most employers are too damn anal for that to occure, even if you could effectively...
Jeez... I must be missing something here... Talk about a raw deal...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
> After all, the admin isn't just responsible for the machines, he is also the primary interface
> between the machines and the people.
In larger installations users usually don't contact sysadmins directly. Instead, they call a "helpdesk" person who uses uses tools (mostly written by the sysadmins) to fix routine issues. Unresolvable issues are escalated upto the sysadmin.
It's usually like this with ISPs (where the sysadmin mentioned in this article works). Users (i.e. subscribers) calling about technical issues usually speak to a tech-support/helpdesk person; and not a system administator.
It's like the paper MCSE's and other similar cert holders. They were good at memorizing answers, some were good at memorizing the books they read, but real world situation never seem to match the books. These people don't know how to think on their feet. They don't know how to combined the things they've read to address a real problem.
These people tend to make good admins creating accounts, setting permissions, things that involve following the rules. The SA's good at problem sovling tend to get boring with rote work like this and make simple mistakes. But the paper-cert people are good at learning and following procedures.
The trouble is the good SysAdmin usually like their work and not interested in becoming managers. The paper-cert people its their only way to make more money so you get these idiots trying to manage creative people. Not good.