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Realistic Sysadmin Workload for a Company of 30?
An anonymous reader asks: "My company was recently sold to a new owner. Currently I am working as a programmer using a number of languages (Java, C, C#, PHP). I am the only maintainer/developer on a number of important code bases. The new owner wants to add 'Network Administration' to my list of responsibilities. We are moving locations and our infrastructure needs to be rebuilt from scratch. He claims that after being set up (something I am also responsible for) our company IT needs can be met using only 1% of my work week. Our user base will be 30 people, mostly programmers, with a minimum of non-techie staff. I am a professional programmer, but have no real sysadmin/network admin experience. His solution is 'We'll get you a book'. Learning new things is great but, I just want to be a programmer. I'm worried that this network admin responsibility will become my new full time job. Does this 1% statistic hold water?"
Run Away! Run awaaaay!
Why not fork?
It's not clear whether you're expected to be the systems administrator, the network engineer, or the all-purpose all-singing all-dancing IT guy. Let's examine all three scenarios.
We'll suppose you work a 50 hour week. 1% of that is 30 minutes. In the "network engineer" circumstance, that's about enough time -- assuming that you have a very well designed and stable, simple network built on the most reliable hardware available, and you never change anything, just fix it. That won't happen, of course, because you've never done this before and therefore you won't get it exactly right the first time. I won't even mention that your boss is a cheapskate who won't be buying the most reliable hardware anyway. The first time you need to deal with your upstream ISP will chew up 30 minutes. If you ever need to buy replacement hardware, that will take a few weeks' time as well.
Now, as a systems administrator for 30 people, plus maybe five or six servers, you'll blow through your 30 minutes of allotted time every Monday before lunch. Someone needs a password changed. Someone else says "mail isn't working". The sales critter hands you a laptop and says "I spilled beer on it, can you get my files back?" Those are just the incidental time-users. When are you going to upgrade your antispam system? There's an intermittent problem with one of the file servers. Diagnosis may take more than half an hour.
Do I really have to say anything about being the defacto IT shop? No, I didn't think so.
Tell your boss that you want to keep track of your IT hours and be paid for everything over 45 minutes a week at the same rate he would pay an outside contractor. Since he's certain that you'll never go over 30 minutes, this is a great bet for him.
You should start looking for a new job with management that can make more realistic predictions about workloads. Meanwhile, explain to your boss that you heard that your coworker runs a network at home -- maybe he's a better choice?
Too be fair, that 25 minutes should be split up over the course of the week. So 8:00:00 to 8:04:48 every morning should be dedicated to sysadmin work. Depending on the hardware, that's about how long it takes to boot up the computer and log in, so this sysadmin gig sounds really easy!
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