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System Admin's Unit of Production?
RailGunSally writes "I am a (strictly technical) member of a large *nix systems admin team at a Fortune 150. Our new IT Management Overlord is a hardcore bean-counter from hell. We in the trenches have been tasked with providing 'metrics' on absolutely everything from system utilization to paper clip recycling. Of course, measuring productivity is right up there at the top of the list. We're stumped as to a definition of the basic unit of productivity for a *nix admin. There is a school of thought in our group that holds that if the PHBs are simple enough to want to operate purely from pie charts and spreadsheets, then we should just graph some output from /dev/random and have done with it. I personally love the idea, but I feel the need for due diligence, so I put the question to the Slashdot community: How does one reasonably quantify admin productivity?"
Why worry? If you've got enough time to post stories to Slashdot you're clearly very efficient.
Photos.
Since we're already talking about your sig and we'll all get modded into Off-Topic Hell...
The longest leg of my commute to work is 16 miles. The speed limit for this entire leg is 65mph. The vehicle I drive has cruise control so, barring accidents or those annoying people who team up to go 45mph in both lanes side by side for six miles, I have ample opportunity to test these kinds of theories.
In short, given no obstacles, I have noticed a difference of nearly five minutes between 80mph and 65mph for the duration of that leg. My high-school level math tells me that this should be impossible; at 65mph the trip should take about 14 mins 45 secs. At 80mph it should take exactly 12 mins, for a difference of just under three minutes. Where did the other two minutes go?
My speedometer gear is in the transfer case of my vehicle, so it is measuring the rotation speed of the rear drive shaft and not the rotation speed of the wheels, so perhaps that has something to do with it; i.e. maybe I'm going faster than I think I am.
Needless to say, this has kept me up nights (not really, but it IS annoying).