A Sysadmin for Sysadmins?

crazyharry asks: "I have recently been hired to be a system administrator to a bunch of system administrators. Aside from my personal experience, which is probably biased, I would like to know from the disproportionately large number of IT people here: if you, as a system administrator, were forced to have a system administrator, what would you expect of that role? How would you want your business machines (not the ones you admin, but your daily use machines) managed, if they were not up to this point? This is a mixed environment (Windows, Mac, and Linux/Unix), so feel free to assume I've already heard the 'leave me the FSCK alone' comments. What other issues are probably going to crop up, if you have been in a similar situation?"

Comments

2 types

[drDugan]

in my experience, there are 2 completely differnt types of sys admins:

- ones who think computers are their clients
- ones who think people are their clients

both have their plusses and minuses. it seems that some people fit one camp - other people fit into the other camp, and they don't easily change. personally I prefer the sys admins who focus on the people first, and get the computers to meet their needs. I'd make sure in your case you know the expectations of the people who you work for and work with and see if you fit their expectations.

I would guess from your post, and the fact you wanted input from a large group of people on /. you are more the "people first type"

Good luck!

So, do you LIKE herding cats?

[wcrowe]

You're in for a tough job. This is bound to be even worse than managing a group of programmers.

Simple.

[Telastyn]

Don't enforce; Provide.