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Life in the Trenches: a Sysadmin Speaks

Posted by michael on from the they-can-speak? dept.

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."

2 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Crap... by rde · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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?

  2. Sysadmins are different all over by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I have to agree with some other posters that maybe the over-the-top attitude ("strong experience-based opininos") is a little annoying. Having dealt with my share of jerk-sysadmins over the years, and then rising to Sr. Sysadmin on my own, I don't lord a sh*tty attitude over everybody. I sometimes feel the exception in that regard.

    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!