Happy System Administrator Appreciation Day

An anonymous reader writes "Today is the 8th annual System Administrator Appreciation Day. It is always the last Friday in July and is the one day that SysAdmins are supposed to get the respect they deserve to be getting the other 364 days of the year. Today is the day that we wish everyone would considering the daunting tasks, small budgets, and ridiculous timelines that many SysAdmins face all year. Please thank them for everything they do for you and for your business. If you think you have a great SysAdmin today would be the day to nominate them for SysAdmin of the Year. 'The idea for System Administrator Day was inspired by a print ad for a Hewlett-Packard laser jet printer. The ad showed lines of employees bringing gifts for the IT guy who made the purchase. System Administrator Appreciation Day has, over the years, garnered support from many organizations."

Comments

Re:I Choose Not to Participate

[uglydog]

I totally agree! The same goes for how people are always going on about the soldiers 'n shit. Like we don't pay them or they were drafted or something.

Personally, I don't care much for sysadmins...

[jkrise]

I was a sysadmin myself for several years... '96 to 2006. Not very satisfying, after a while. Mircrosoft is largely to blame for this. After Windows 2000 and Active Directory (Craptive Directory would be a better name), every CEO felt sysadmins are redundant, and even fools could administer Windows servers. The company hired MCSEs who hadn't a clue about real IT life.. and I was forced to quit in 2002.

With Exchange 5.5, Win2K3 server and Sharepoint, things became an unending nightmare for sysadmins... the ads and promotions are not related to reality, even slightly. Migrating Active Directory from Win2K to Win2K3 server was a nightmare, and the procedure ran for 100s of pages... smoke coming through the sysadmins ears just reading the bunch.

I just gave up that life eventually.... moved to my hometown last year... the pay is slightly less, but I'm very satisfied and content with this new job. No longer a sysadmin, I use my experience to build real systems - I've completed Helpdesk (real sophisticated one), Asset management (for PCs, software, Furniture and Office space) and Attendance management so far. Payroll, CRM and centralised identity management systems will follow. The whole lot is built around open Source systems from OneOrZero, vTiger, TimeTrex etc.

Life away from being a sysadmin is so much rewarding and fulfilling... no more sleepless nights wondering what new patch and auto update has in store for the network! That thankless, mundane, meaningless job - which really adds nothing to the company's bottom line - is best left to sysadmins.