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Why Your Sysadmin Hates You
jfruh writes "We've learned many lessons in the fallout from Edward Snowden's whistleblowing and flight to Hong Kong, but here's an important one: Never make your sysadmin mad. Even if your organization isn't running a secret, civil-rights violating surveillance program, you're probably managing to annoy your admins in a number of more pedestrian ways that might still have blowback for you. Learn to stay on their good side by going along with their reasonable requests and being specific with your complaints."
So... it has come to this...
Because he's the BOFH, that's why.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
If a syadmin is abusing their position of power then they need to be removed. That's it. There's no petty revenge or "blowback" to consider.
It's no different to other jobs where people hold a position of power (e.g., police officer, principal, medical doctor, judge, etc). We expect and demand that those people behave professionally and appropriately at all times (even when they don't like you). Just because a computer is involved doesn't excuse a system administrator from being held to the same professional standards.
We've learned many lessons in the fallout from Edward Snowden's whistleblowing and flight to Hong Kong, but here's an important one: Never make your sysadmin mad.
What a silly excuse for linking to (in itself a reasonably good) article on how to relate to sysadmins and IT support in general.
And for those who are not sysadmins: Sysadmins do NOT reveal your company's secrets because some user bypassed the helpdesk system, or run some test code on a production system.
However, nobody should not tolerate that their employer engage in illegal activities. I am not paid to break the law, neither are you. But that is no no way related to being a sysadmin or any other specific position. It is part of being a decent human being.
"You waste your admin's time"
And people hate admins when admins waste their time. Mostly by forcing them to use software or mandatory processes that simply aren't well suited to their problems.
"It forces us to work harder than needed to find a path to get data off the dead system and onto the new system."
That's not caused by a failure to upgrade hardware. That's caused by a failed or non-existent backup strategy.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
If a syadmin is abusing their position of power then they need to be removed. That's it. There's no petty revenge or "blowback" to consider.
It's no different to other jobs where people hold a position of power (e.g., police officer, principal, medical doctor, judge, etc). We expect and demand that those people behave professionally and appropriately at all times (even when they don't like you). Just because a computer is involved doesn't excuse a system administrator from being held to the same professional standards.
Agree 100%, but that doesn't make the point about don't make your sysadmin hate you. It would not be a good idea to make a police officer, principal, medical doctor, or judge hate you. Sure their professional ethics mean that they should put this to one side when dealing with you, and they could get in trouble if they didn't ... but I wouldn't go picking a fight with one just in case
Because he hates himself?
Or probably because you expect a service from the sysadmin which the users manager did not want to pay for?
Or, you know, maybe treat all your employees and coworkers with respect.
"Stop failing the Turing test!" -- Dilbert
From someone who's more of a user than a sysadmin: and what about unreasonable requests and lack of knowledge?
In fact, who defines what constitutes a reasonable request, and what's an abuse of power, however slight or ambiguous that abuse may be (say, banning Facebook: sure, employees shouldn't waste company time, but what about downtime when they are between projects or tasks, and have nothing to do)?
What about cases where the user can simply not elaborate on their problem? For all they know, Word is just "not working right", and they know nothing about DLLs, dependencies, and such, so they can't be more specific, like "xyz.dll somehow got removed, and now module abc in Word is throwing an exception whenever I try to print to a PDF. Could you restore it from a backup?"
Also let's not forget that sysadmins themselves, or most of the IT staff (in a non-technological company, at least), are not making money - they are spending it and drawing it. They are there to make sure the accountants, marketeers, and others who can make money for the company can do their jobs. Indispensable as they are to this, they are a cog in the machine (or a transistor to go higher tech), and one that's not in the engine.
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
He hates anyone that has enough knowledge to question his decisions. Kinda like Religion using Latin to keep their underlings in darkness in the time of the Inquisition.
Or maybe there are just too many who THINK they know more than the sysadmin and who question his work as if they do know more than him.
And those "decisions" are most likely not made by the sysadmin, but by his manager, or your manager or simply they are the result of having to make the best out of limited resources.
If you have a question about a password reset, then it is cheaper to go through the Helpdesk, this is not about arrogance (for most anyway), let the sysadmin solve the tough problems, let him update his hard and software.
You don't ask a brainsurgeon about a pimple.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
I'd like to see those sysadmin having a problem with their checks and being told "no no, you can't talk to anyone in HR or the payroll department directly, are you crazy? Please open a ticket and wait for a reply, an intern will get back to you in 24 hours or less".
We have a system like that. Works quite well, actually, because I do not need to know who exactly in HR or payroll to talk to. Saves me time, saves them time and I get my problems fixed.
I don't see the connection between whistleblowers and sysads. Anybody could blow the whistle on unethical or illegal practices in an organization. I don't think TFA applies to just sysads. The things in TFA are generally showing a lack of respect. All co workers and employees should be treated with respect. Lots of people in an organization can do damage.
That's called predicament. Maybe why he hates himself.
Your other post was great, btw.
Actually the job of the sysadmins is to keep the production systems live and productive. I think you're confusing sysadmins with the helpdesk.
I really wouldn't bother with what I said. It's just a response to the headline. But yeah, if you want to push it, the predicament can cause self-loathing even though it's not the sys-admin's fault.
Your post following is exactly what this thread needed: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3884959&cid=44058295
We have a winner.
Think of a sysadmin as a airplane pilot and stewardess as a helpdesk.
When you're on your flight do you bug a pilot as often as you bug stewardesses? Thought so...
Uh-huh, sounds like the sysadmins were your friends and the corporate policy was your enemy. Many botnets use IRC as their communication channel. That the sysadmins picked this up tells us:
1. They were competent and noticed rogue traffic on/leaving the network.
2. They didn't use packet inspection, so they weren't snooping on you.
3. They didn't assume you'd installed an IRC client on company property.
4. They didn't assume you were talking on IRC while you were meant to be working.
But the sysadmin's time is limited. He also only works XX hours a week. And his day also only has 24 hours. If everyone sees themselves in the right to write to the sysadmin because Firefox is slow, because the password isn't working anymore, because... then the real problems can't get fixed (e.g. a screwed up backup policy left by the previous sysadmin, or a failing front end machine who needs to be transferred to new hardware).
Sure, the user doesn't know why Word isn't working, and he thinks he can just write that guy we met last Christmas party. Turns out, that guy is the Linux guy at the company and he doesn't know either, nor does he care. Now he has to forward that email to the helpdesk himself! If the Help Desk is properly implemented, then going through it is the easiest way for the regular user. Not only it gets him to the right person, but when it does, the right person may already have all the information he needs (because the first level guy asked for a snapshot of the error Word gives).
Indeed, sysadmins are just a cog in the machine. But so is the secretary of the assistant director of whatever. And by screwing up everything, you can't let those cogs perform at their best. You also expect the secretary will tell her boss "You have a meeting at 2 pm with person X in building Y" and not just "you have a meeting today" and wait for his questions "when? where? with whom?" (or the same in reverse when he asks her to put something in the agenda)
Hardly -> sysadmins just realize that 99% of all user problems can be solved by the help-desk, and be done in a more pleasant manner than a sysadmin will do it. A sysadmin's speech and mannerisms are not laden with the fluff language that people consider being polite -> they have a lot of things to accomplish during the day, are perpetually running behind schedule, and tend to interact with people who understand that when a sysadmin says "Do this," there is a "Please" prefixed to it. We've tried it the other way, with people having constant contact with sysadmins, and people bitched incessantly that they weren't communicative enough (a sysadmin knows exactly what he / she is talking about, spending 30 minutes looking for an analogy to explain something to someone who thinks the monitor is the computer is really stressful) or that they weren't servicing them fast enough (sysadmin has a server go down, needs to get it back up; someone complains that the sysadmin wasn't working on their laptop during that time).
And yes, those sysadmins do run into problems with other departments. Surprise! When they need to call an equipment manufacturer to get some firmware only available by phone call, and need to sit through the various escalations and so on, they feel the pain. It really isn't them purposefully being dicks to you, it really is a limited resource / time thing. Why not stock the help desk with sysadmins, instead of low-level techs? Because it would cost too much.
Everyone wants access to the people who can solve their problems in a few snaps of a finger, or who can remove a lot of the 'unnecessary work' that they are going to encounter. But that means in a company of 200 people at least 20 people dropping by for a 10 minute chat per day. Companies / organizations, who actually pay the sysadmin's salary, want him / her working where they will do the most good for the company; everyone below VP or CEO gets the help desk, everyone above gets the sysadmin. It sucks, and you'll see sysadmins volunteer their time to help out with more trivial problems when they have nothing else on their platter, but that's something of a rarity.
Do you know what sysadmins do? Are they just a better version of tech support so far as you are concerned? Consider a network admin -> to a user, they look like a very highly priced tech support guy; to anyone with any knowledge of tech, that doesn't even begin to describe what they do. They're management. They have purchase power, they plan future designs, they execute those implementations, etc. They report to the IT director, or the CIO, or the CEO. But to the average user, they're just a funny guy with eclectic tastes, who knows the ins and outs of the entire network, and is the guy they want to fix all their problems, personally. A funny guy, who's there at weird hours sometimes...who has access to every room....all emails, voicemails, etc....and which those who actually understand what his / her duties are, tend to avoid getting on their bad-side, even if their professionalism practically guarantees that they'd never do anything in retaliation. A funny guy who usually reports to the IT director, or to the CIO, or the CEO directly.
I am John Hurt.
Mostly fair enough but I don't think they need to be explicitly thanked just for doing their job well (aside from polite "thanks" at the end of conversations)... there are many other roles that are pivotal in a business; payroll gets us paid, safety dept stops accidents, salespeople find revenue streams, lawyers stop us getting sued, etc. I don't walk around the office thanking these people for doing their jobs, even if they are doing a good job. I appreciate that Sysadmins go through a lot of grief and pressure with some projects and issue fixes but that's because computers are a bitch; but they chose that job. I reckon it's because sysadmins generally think they're more important than they actually are... hehe In closing I would say that I sometimes feel bad because Sysadmins and IT staff do often get put down by the rest of the office... people begin to associate them with problems because that's the only time they engage them. I don't think that's going to change unfortunately.
At one job I spent a lot of time trying to circumvent the helpdesk. Did you know that if network policy forbids you to have automated login after a reboot, you can still do it? Just make a script that sets the correct registry keys, and use the feature where you can run scripts on computer shutdown. The network won't have time to overwrite the registry again. Even the power saving settings of the computer were "administrator only", and we had hundreds of PCs displaying flashy screensavers all night long, because the users didn't want to wait for startup in the morning. Rule no 1: if you forbid something, make sure you have a really good explanation why.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
I called the CFO about changing my direct deposit, and he told me to contact the intern and wait 24 hours for a response.
Every other department has similar responses, so why not the IT dept?
Learn to love Alaska
When a sysadmin decides that 3 days of rolling backups is plenty, then yes. I know more than he does. I've known some great system admins, and I've know some completely incompetent ones. The problem is that due to their position, the incompetent ones can hide their incompetence from management for a very long time.
1. You bypass the help desk system, 2. You're vague.
Both are acceptable providing you schedule your problem as lowest priority. If you submit a ticket, you expect the admin to start working in the earnest, soon. If you signal a problem: "My machine sucks, probably not enough RAM and generally old" you signal the admin to consider you in the next round of purchases. If you say "Wifi reach is dodgy", they will adjust the layout of access points with the next upgrade. "My ethernet cable is loose" - next time they do something in your room, they will replace the plug. It's preferable to a full-blown ticket.
3. You abuse your rights, 4. You do not upgrade.
You want to run obsolete system as root? Be my guest. I may even serve you some advices for free. Still, if I shrug and say "I don't know, you're on your own" you're on your own. I can always get you an upgraded system with limited privileges if you grow tired of trying to fix it yourself.
5. You make urgent, last-minute requests
Scheduled. Expect answer within three workdays.
6. You waste your admin's time
Scheduled. Expect answer within three workdays.
7. You test code on production systems:
You broke it, you take the flak. I can fix it for you if you ask really nice.
8. You make personal requests:
Reward appropriately. Don't expect the admin to do your private work for free.
9. You take your admin for granted:
More importantly - if everything works, don't find work for "slacking" admins. If you see an admin who is constantly busy, he's a poor admin, fixing everything constantly. A good admin slacks all day while all their work is done automatically.
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I'd like to see those sysadmin having a problem with their checks and being told "no no, you can't talk to anyone in HR or the payroll department directly, are you crazy?
I think that's the case in lots of big companies? It certainly is where I work, there's a big central HR helpdesk ticket system.
So, you can fix one problem in your area that affects you before the admin team? Great. What does the fix do to the rest of company? How many other people and problems are the admins working on?
Sounds like you can cope with the really simple stuff, but you've not mentioned anything about scaled up problem solving (believe me, most people can solve a simple network or PC issue; scaling it up to deal with heterogenous systems on a large network is another thing entirely).
Okay then, go ahead and tell the sysadmin directly.
But don't be a bitch if he doesn't reply though; he's probably forgotten it amongst the hundreds of simultaneous requests.
Perhaps he should have written it down then, like on a piece of paper.
Perhaps even a form on a computer so the computer can monitor progress.
Now all you have to do is run around the building, trying to track down the sysadmin and tell him your problem that he than puts into a computer form.
The only thing more convenient than that would be if you could just put in the form yourself!
You can; it's called a "ticket".
FWIW, in sufficiently large organizations, HR and payroll use helpdesk and ticket systems as well.
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I worked on both sides of the help-desk in my time.
Being a computer whizz back then, one is asked of members how to do this or do that. One gets 'programming projects', to pretty-print and sort the download docs, and to Y1999 fix proggies. Still. One acquires a reputation from the newtork lads, because while the fixes work, they were not really in accord with the network aims.
On the other side, one gets to see the strange sort of things users do. They look strange, some work and some dont. Network people see boxes as swappable things, not places where users hide things. Some of the things i used to do there (like drop live icons on the user's desktops), sort of horrified them, but it saved a walk, and a good deal of time.
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
Whoah... The sysadmin is the person responsible for making sure the production environment is stable, and for fixing the problems that arise there. They're the ones that know the theory and practice of keeping the big iron running.
If they're not to touch the production environment, then who? And if you say "developers", I'll consider it a marvelous joke.
In your healthcare analogy, sysadmins are the "top consultant" in the specialist area. There's one of them to many technicians; technicians are the eyes and ears (and sometimes extra hands) for the sysadmins.. Those would be more akin to the registrars etc. and Junior Doctors.
The Helpdesk staff would be more akin to the nurses; they can be trusted with a lot, but I certainly wouldn't want them holding the scalpel in surgery on me.
Developers are more like the drug vendors. They do essential work, and they understand how it affects the patient in specifics, but I'd really not trust them to rock up in an operating theater and wield the scalpel.
Why would you contact the CFO with such a trivial issue? They're at the top of the food chain, dealing with more important matters. There should be accountants (lower level employees) to deal with issues such as this. Your best course of action should have been to email one of the lower level employees and CC their direct manager.
The only time I had a sysadmin hate me it was more due to me documenting their dangerous incompetence.
After a security hole was found in our multi-million daily users web application I was given a project to look into other potential security issues with the application. After trying SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and other fun stuff I started to poke into the application server it was running on, and a quick read through the documentation told me how to get diagnostic information from the system- unless it's been disabled as part of the standard installation process. I try it on my dev server, and get the info- not a problem. I try it on the test server and it's the same. I then try the staging server, which should be a copy of the live service, and start to get scared.
After a quick chat with my manager as I wanted to be covered should the system flag me as an attacker I try it on the live service from an external IP address, again the diagnostics appear. I now had our database schema, the network architecture of the live service, and a lot of configuration details. My manager, who'd been watching over my shoulder as they'd become curious now, suggested we test this properly. I used my non-work mobile and called the sysadmin and, using only the details on screen, convinced him I was a database admin from elsewhere in the company working off-site. He was very helpful, I soon had a nicely unofficial SSH tunnel into the network set up for me, a temporary user account on all of the live servers, and root access to the live database with all of our customer details.
Oddly enough the sysadmin didn't think it fair that we'd 'tricked' him, and said that no one would normally see that information and think to do what I'd just done.
Most sysadmins I've worked with have been very good, and the in-department one I'm working with at the moment is absolutely amazing. It's not the case with all sysadmins though, some of them don't need users running random software as root to make things go stupid.
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They just don't serve my interests
Indeed they don't. They serve the interests of the company. You as an individual are not the company nor are you or your department the most imporant part of the company (not even considering whatever reason you may think you have).
nor are they there to help me and my colleagues get the job done.
Indeed they are not. They are there to help you, your colleagues and every other employee in the company get their job done right.
They are there first and foremost to justify their own existence, to increase their presence, and to make their job as easy as possible. Actually helping us is secondary.
Indeed they are. Their performance is judged by cost, just like your own department. You may be in a department that also generates profit but IT departments don't generate profits and are judged primarily by cost. Cost is probably why they calculated supporting your old printer is more expensive than sharing a single printer with outsourced maintenance. Feel free to increase the cost of your own department by giving the IT department money to supply you with a new printer and the additional expenses required to support it.
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In which case, what conclusions can be drawn about those managers who, after ignoring reasonable requests without threats to back them up, respond to a threat to back them up by pre-emptive retribution that will merely cause EVEN MORE reason for the sysadmin to sink the company?
Alpha-Idiots?
I /am/ the sysadmin. I always knew i was bound to hate myself.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
While I don't see connection here between NSA case (leaker were clearly motivated by politics), sysadmin ethics is one of painful topics not a lot of people like to talk about.
First of all, sysadmining can be a very stressful job, and in IT industry it's one of least favorites. It can pay well - if you have good experience and work ethics along with solid recommendations, but getting there sometimes can make you to ask yourself is it worth it. As you mostly work with human beings full time, your social skills matter and if they are not up for task, you will be frustrated and angry at the end of the day. It's definitely not a job for someone who are very vocal about his/her world view. After all, you provide a service for people with very different POVs. My experience tells - be polite and respective, and people will respond same way.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
I'm pretty sure that I could hack together something that could install java patches on a cluster if I had to do it manually over and over again,
so maybe it's not only the java installer that's crappy ?
It's not that nobody should be able to reach them. As an sysadmin role myself at the mo (I've worked in most jobs in IT over the years), it's a case that I've only got time to field a limited set of things. These are the things that change the big picture in the infrastructure, and that's what takes most of my time.
I'd like to be able to help out more with the individual systems, seriously... The techs that get to go out and fix the small problems are the knights in shining armour; they get to fix the smaller mistakes that users get themselves into (oops, I accidentally deleted some files, oh my PC works again now you've fixed it, so on).
The people that do know me are the heads of departments; they filter in requests that make a business sense to them, and request that they be implemented as a technical solution. Things relevant to the business in the wider scope make it to me.
When I took on the role, it had an inordinate amount of calls from users who wanted to short circuit the help desk (no logging means we can't prove we've done the work to the accountants for a start). Everyone's work, to them, is top priority, after all, it's they who are affected. It took a while to get that under control, and even to people who I consider friends in the organisation, if it's one PC that's affected, it really isn't my problem. If a thousand are, it probably is my problem.
To run a company, roles need a frame of reference. Some make the mistake of believing their frame is the whole of everything that is (hint, it's not). The further you work from your core frame, the less effective you are at doing the core work. If you find your strengths are in a different frame, you're in the wrong job, so change that.
Assuming you should be able to go direct to the admin assumes you know the technical impact of the problem you have (in the enterprise wide scope), know exactly how to describe it, how it's impacting every other system, the amount of users affected and a whole host of things (which is a picture that's built up by the Helpdesk and escalates through the technicians). If you've spent time doing that, what have you been doing in your real job? There may be many people with your level of skill also phoning the help desk, and they may have different views and conclusions based on a different geographic/business perspective.
Doing things the right way lets an accurate picture be built. If all 5k+ staff phoned me in a huge incident, I'd neither be able to get a real picture of it, communicate with the people I needed to, nor actually talk to most people. I'd also not be fixing the problem, which is the real kicker.
Incidentally, HR does work that way; it's the only way they can research the query, and give me an accurate answer that lets me work on a factual basis (rather than "Oh, I seem to remember that it's something to do with X. Probably. Bye then."
Only pedophiles, pirates and tax evaders are bad to their sysadmin
Not just this, but personally I want to know what is being done on our PC's, for the simple reason, if it causes another problem (for the user or for the network), if I have the knowledge of what has been done, I can take that into account for the solving of problems.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Yes, I think that was exactly his point.
Users are obsolete.
Users are obsolete.
Users are obsolete.
Obsolete
are
users.
What are users?
Obsolete.
Who is obsolete?
Users.
How would you best describe the relation between users and being obsolete?
The latter being the core characteristics of the former.
Users, obsolete are.
Obsoleteness. Why dost thou plague the users so?
Actually that is exactly what I would expect from HR. I would expect to send mail to a shared mailbox and get a response in a timely manor. I know there is probably only one or two payroll people and expecting them to drop what they are doing and talk to me right now makes no sense. First supposed I did not get my direct deposit Friday. Its Monday morning, what am I going to do get a paper check from them leave the office and take it directly to the bank where it won't clear for a day anyway? No. So it not important it happens right away.
I would attempt to send my request to the correct person to handle it. It is the payroll admins job to handle these things. It is NOT the system admins job to reset a password. Its helpdesk/support desks job to do that. You would not take your payroll issue to the HR director would you? No, you'd take it to the payroll clerk and they would either take care of it or escalate up the HR chain as appropriate. I don't know why in IT its considered appropriate to just grab anyone at all and expect them do something for you.
Then there is the issue of if you asking for you account to be unlocked, or your password to be reset chances are its because YOU screwed up. You failed to remember your password, chose to ignore the 14 days of expiration notices, can't type etc. If my paycheck is deposited its nothing I had anything to do with, it was an oversight by someone else. They are correcting their own mistake, while IT is correcting yours.
Finally in almost every other situation the person has done their homework, with IT this is almost never the case. "I can't get on VPN?" um okay can you get to say google? "No" Well...
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
If you are a sysadmin who hates his job and/or employer and you are worth your salt, you find a new job, leave, and let all the people you know why you left. Leave little notes on the system and in the documentation that lets your successor know why you left. You don't do petty, unethical, and possibly criminal things. People who do that shit are the reason IT people have a bad reputation. Grow the fuck up, assholes. Either suck it and do your job or find a new job, quit, and leave them without stealing or destroying data or creating more problems for them and the person or people who will be replacing you.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Sure, but by then the damage is likely done. And if the environment that pushed the sysadmin to the dark side remains in place, it will happen again and again.
If ONE sysadmin goes bad, it's likely (but not necessarily) his fault and his breach of professionalism. If it keeps happening, then it's the employer's fault and it is the employer who has breached professionalism.
My problem is not just SysAdmins, but the entire IT department.
I'm a software developer (actually, supervisor of a software development team) at a large multinational that isn't explicitly a software development company. Most people on our network require access to deal with Microsoft Office, our SAP system and a few random databases of stuff with web front ends. Because this is what 'most' employees need, our IT can be strongly against requests that go outside of this.
For doing my job (writing software), I require a Windows system with Administrator rights. This would not be allowed on our corporate network due to policy rules (okay, I get this) so I am a part of a separate network for doing this. However, in order to read my email, I ALSO have to have a computer on our corporate network. One extra box sitting on my desk purely for reading and replying to email. I could use our webmail, but it's pretty cumbersome. When I asked if they could set up IMAP access so I could get rid of the pointless extra box on my desk, the answer was that IMAP is a security hole and for policy reasons, they won't do so.
A part of my job is writing software for mobile devices. In order to test on real devices, I need wireless access. Policy states that no wireless device can be set up other than by IT. IT refuses to touch anything on my separate network; but STILL enforced the policy that if I set up wireless, I'd be getting a very stern talking to by the HR department. Eventually it got sorted, but not before management stepped in due to project delays caused by me and my team only being able to do real device testing AT HOME...
When I decided that my team needed better mouses and keyboards since I myself was noticing some hand strain, I put an order in to our system. Management approved the purchase and it was all fine. IT then blocked it saying that they supply our standard equipment from Dell and we shouldn't be ordering IT equipment separately. It was only after several days of arguing back and forth that they let the purchase order go through on grounds that since it's for my 'separate network' it's not counted as "IT equipment". That also means though that my development PC has a nice mouse and keyboard; but the one I use for email still has a really crappy thing supplied by our IT department and can never change.
I don't have so much to truly complain about, since I do get what I want/need eventually, but from my point of view, they do get in the way of us doing our jobs far more than they help. And I do understand their reasoning - we're a special case and they do a fine job for the other 99% of the company who don't have our requirements. I just wish they'd be a bit more open to working with us instead of actively fighting against us at every turn.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
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For some reason some sysadmin think they're really special and no one should be able to reach them - go via helpdesk, etc.
I'd like to see those sysadmin having a problem with their checks and being told "no no, you can't talk to anyone in HR or the payroll department directly, are you crazy? Please open a ticket and wait for a reply, an intern will get back to you in 24 hours or less".
Actually, If I had a problem with my paycheck not arriving I would email the Accounts / HR department with my line manager copied in. I would WANT that in writing immediately and want it to be recorded. If I had to go via a web ticket thats fine, I would just make sure I also emailed my manager so he was aware of it.
That is why emailing a helpdesk is a good idea, it gets your query recorded and lets the helpdesk manager see what type of requests he gets to see where to prioritise resources. I know it means you have to actually try and sum the problem up in a descriptive manner and that takes time, but that is also a good thing since it forces you to think about the problem you are experiencing and whether it is of your own making.
I dont read
It's really about the appropriate allocation of resources and the avoidance of waste. If person A makes $100,000 a year and person B makes $35,000 a year you have a significant cost savings from having person B perform a given task. This logic is why we have Secretaries and teams at work sites are typically composed of a mix of experience and skill levels.
It's a little bit like asking a master mechanic to change your oil, they are perfectly capable of doing the job, but you should really have the high school drop out at Jiffy Lube do the work. Take your 'paycheck' example as it is a good one to make the point. If the sys-admin has a problem with their paycheck they should be calling the HR helpdesk instead of going directly to the supervisor.
Remember a sys-admin spends their day trying to properly allocate and utilize resources. When your bypassing the helpdesk your wasting the most important resource a sys-admin has - their own time.
How about why we hate them! As an experienced Admin I can comment on both sides of the issue. Lets start with the Admin looking at the user:
User:
1) Usually describes the wrong issue in a ticket.
2) Asks for things that don't make sense / are impossible.
3) Wants to configure / install software that they have no idea how it works.
3) Blames the Admin when an update broke Office and Windows.
4) Wants 0 down time even when the down time is needed.
5) Doesn't want to wait when they need a hardware of software fix.
6) Assumes we know everything about every piece of software, like Soildworks.
6) Thinks Windows / Mac are the only operating systems and that everything needs a GUI.
7) Breaks the Preforce and doesn't know why.
Users can be very frustrating and very annoying to work with, a fair amount of users have no idea what they need / want 1/2 the time and don't really know what to ask for. However a good Admin already knows that and is more then willing / ready to clearly explain what they need / want from them. A good Admin won't talk down to a user and won't expect a user to operate at the Admin level.
Lets examine a bad Admin, the kind a user HATES to work with because the Admin is unreasonable / has a complex!
Admin:
1) Can't explain anything properly and acts like the bees knees.
2) Imposes policies that make no sense and refuses to buge on them.
3) Wont entertain user requests that aren't needs, such as making a VM for a user to "play" around in.
4) Won't ask the users what they need!
5) Doesn't listen to managers in meetings when important updates are coming out for software!
5) Thinks that downtime is a right and they don't have to explain it.
6) Hijacks network resources at an unreasonable level slowing the users down with out explaining it before hand.
7) Wont allow discussion between the IT Department and the Users.
8) Won't allow exceptions, even when the exception makes sense and is accepted by managers.
Bad Admin's are more at fault then bad users. I hate when bad Admin's complain about users when in fact the root cause of the user being an asshole is because of the Admin. Your an Admin not a god, you don't have some amazing power that can't be taken away, your a man of the people and not the mayor of awesome town. Face it a bad Admin is more at fault then a bad User and from my experience there are more bad Admins then users. NEVER lie to user when you're an Admin, I've seen so many cases where the Admin will tell a bold face lie and just move on. If you can lie to a user then a user can lie to you and you need to accept it.
I think this submission needs to be flipped, I think the bad Admin should be looked at and not the users, a good Admin will instill trust and corporation between the users and the IT Department, a bad Admin will close the connection and leave both parties upset and ready to leave.
Because I'm just mean.
Do you get upset when the CEO isn't interested in discussing if you can take half a day on Tuesday? Would you even consider asking him rather than asking your manager?
I mean, these are the guys who, six years ago, when I fired up an IRC client, called me to tell me my PC was botted.
Was this work related? Otherwise you are damn lucky they did not go straight to your line manager and mention something about non-approved software on their network.
I had a situation a few years ago where someone in my office was running bittorrent to download music at work. I or my manager noticed excessive bandwidth use that was interfering with other people doing work related stuff and I had to investigate. Eventually I found out what was going on and quietly approached the guy in question to explain to him why it had to stop immediately. My manager was happy it was resolved and the problem went away. The sales guy finished his probation and all worked well.
If I went via my manager about it he would have immediately raised it with the guy in questions line manager (he worked in sales) who probably would have gone ape shit and fired him. My friendly talk was far more effective. I was a little vague about how much I knew about what he was using bittorrent for because it was easier than admitting I knew he was breaking the law from our offices.
I dont read
ROFL
This guy expects the police behave professionally and appropriately at all times
That article is exceptionally well written and insightful.
Why did you contact the sysadmin to put paper in the laser printer?
More likely, he hates people who DON'T have enough knowledge but question anyway.
That does make me wonder if he's not the sort of authoritarian human tornado who thinks the sysadmin is being "unprofessional" and "insubordinate" when he won't roll back one of those Java security updates that broke the boss' MineCraft game.
Unless, of course he thinks 3 days will have to do because the CFO won't stand for buying enough tapes to do 4 days worth.
Didn't really make me hate them but would have been nice if they had a bit of forethought: I worked at a research lab. People would wait till the week they were left to say "wait what do I need to do to take my data with me?". They'd invariably show up on Wednesday with a brand new 1TB drive and say "I can't download this in time before I leave can you do it and my lab will mail it to me?" I'd then find out that they have about 800GB of data that is archived on tape and my day is spent hunting down 3 year old archives restoring them and babysitting rsync. All this could have been avoided if they just bought a external drive when they started and kept their own backup copies all along. Or at least when they months ago were applying for postdocs or whatever said hey I'm going to need my data.
but somehow in most companies financial department is treated with extra care. somehow. maybe because they are exposed to quite a lot of sensitive, internal information. ;)
just because money (wages etc) is involved...
Rich
You are IT just at another section... try working WITH the rest of the team. You do realize that IT policy managers are the police of the corporation along with the safety manager, HR, legal, etc. They exist to keep employees from breaking the law and doing serious harm to the company. They work for the corporation, not you.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Downward, not across.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
While the manager who purchased it the garbage, against the sysadmin's advice, gets to go skiing/boating/drinking etc.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Disgruntled sysadmins may do many things, many of them poorly thought out or likely to result in bad consequences. But they don't hole up in a hotel room in Hong Kong and publish dirt on the NSA spying program because their users are annoying.
More to the point, if someone is willing to throw the rest of their life away on whistleblowing, then their motivation goes way beyond poor job satisfaction, and a less frustrating work environment is not going to dissuade them.
In what way?
You haven't spoken to an HR department lately have you. Recently I had to file a ticket and then get into an email war with a gumby in India(?) after they shorted my paycheck. Why, pray tell, did they short my paycheck? Because they thought working 4 10 hour days was unauthorized overtime. It finally took the intervention of two managers to convince payroll that the overtime laws in the US were different than those in whatever 3rd world country with pretensions of greatness the person was from.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
The users wouldn't have an actual clue.
"The sysadmin wouldn't fix my cell phone!"
"The sysadmin wouldn't help me with my email problem, even though he was obviously not doing anything other than staring at the back of the servers."
"The sysadmin was rude to me, just because I asked him to fix the copier. Why do we even have this number above the copier?"
"The sysadmin wouldn't help me with my virus problem on my home computer. How hard can that be?"
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Exactly this.
Snowden wasn't the first one to say those things. And he won't be the last.
Go look up Thomas Drake, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
sysadmins are hired for thier ability to interact with systems, which are logical systems. helpdesk techs are hired for thier ability to interact with users, not logical systems. some of us can do both, many worked up from helpdesk, but the primary concern is still the systems they administer and hopefully management will set policies to keep those systems efficient.
An I.T. motto in the hands of an idiot is a dangerous thing...
I am told by a doctor friend that the police almost never give tickets to doctors because they don't want blowback from a doctor if they are ever on the operating table.
Sounds smart to me.
That is like blaming the accountant for the accounting policies. The sysadmin implement what management decide. If you do not like it, talk to your manager.
"I was just following orders" is a poor argument. If the sysadmin or the accountant is aware that there is a problem that requires management authorization then they have a duty to bring it to the attention of management. The users have a similar obligation but if the problem involves IT or accounting, those departments are the first place to bring the issue up. You go to management once you get some sort of consensus recommendation on a course of action. Furthermore those departments would be rightfully pissed off if someone tried to do an end run around them.
Furthermore, a great many policies are not decided by management but by the IT staff. They may have management's backing but management typically does not have the time to make every decision themselves. If IT tells them that a policy change is a good idea, odds are good management will listen. If a user makes the same request about IT, the first question any good manager should have is whether IT is on board with the proposal.
Flawed analogy. It would be like having a paycheck problem and going to the head of HR and not the minions on the payroll department first.
The helpdesk is there to filter the work that needs to get to the next tiers. Most users do not know what tier their work is on. Call help desk and if it is important a good help desk will get the admin involved asap. The help desk is trained to gather info that the users often do not have to make our lives easier. They are a vital part of the troubleshooting process.
Call me directly and I'll tell you to call the help desk (unless it just so happens that the words that came out of your mouth seem like a truely dire problem). The help desk has scripts, tools, and knowledge to decide if a) I'm the guy you should be routed to, b) they can fix the problem, or c) what I need to know to fix the problem.
If I didn't have anything better to do I'd fire the helpdesk and just answer the phone myself.
and the competent ones seem lazy and useless because the systems stay running day after day, night after night and you don't SEE them doing anything
What is the difference between a sysadmin and a terrorist ? With terrorists one can negotiate...
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
When the sysadmin is deciding how long to keep backups there is a lot more wrong then you knowing more than he does. That should be a business decision made by the company as a whole with consulting to legal.
I would never make such a decision. I'd ask my CIO to get a policy written with my input on the matter taking into consideration.
Get back to work or the auditors will see you're abusing company resources posting irrelevant opinions on Slashdot, and I'll be forced to restrict http access for all users.
Funny, those don't appear in the document you linked. Section 225 is the last in title II.
This has always worked for me.
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
My company has this type of system and it is quite nice. No paperwork gets misplaced and there is a status on your ticket. Yet our help desk still gets drive by's.
No good deed goes unpunished.
How exactly do accountants and marketeers make money for the company?
Both are cost centers very much like IT. In fact there is only one job (sales) that is not a cost center in any company. However that does not mean they contribute nothing to helping the company make money.
The job of marketing is the creation and maintenance of the perceptions of the relationship between potential and current customers and the company as well as its products. Marketing differs from sales because marketing is only indirectly concerned with the actual generation of sales. Without a positive perception of the company and its products, customers are unlikely to purchase anything unless they have no alternative. Done properly the return on investment for marketing can be and is measured. The effect of good marketing can be seen on the bottom line. You put $X into marketing and sales change by $Y is a key task for any marketing department. Sometimes the relationship between $X and $Y is easy to determine and sometimes it is more difficult.
As for accounting I can speak to that directly since I am an accountant. Accounting is a lot more than just paying the bills and depositing payments received. Accountants are intimately involved in quoting new business, cost reduction activities, production and budget planning, purchasing and more. Profitability comes from revenue minus costs. If you don't understand your costs, you are highly unlikely to be profitable. Accountants job is the help the company understand their costs and thus understand whether and how they are making money. Without accounting the company is quite literally operating blind.
And more so than accounting, IT can also be a differentiator even in non-tech firms.
Spoken well and truly like someone who knows nothing about accounting. Accounting (like IT) can be a very significant differentiator for companies that do it well and I can tell you from first hand experience that many do their accounting quite badly and it hurts them in ways that are easily measured. Efficient accounting operations can help the company win business they would not otherwise and to keep costs low. That is one of the biggest possible differentiators there is.
We have an old printer in the office, and it consumes about 400 pages a week. We'd like to replace it, but the IT policy, enacted without our consultation or representation, is to not supply printers, as the photocopiers in the hallway (contracted to an outside company) can do that, at the price of 10 cents a page (a percentage going to IT), with, of course, locked feed trays and sporadic maintenance.
Sounds like the problem isn't bad sysadmins, the problem is a screwed-up "internal accounting" system that creates incentives for departments to basically wage financial war with one another.
Why should I even listen to those asses?
Because they are hired by the company that you work for to manage the network that they own, and like it or not, you use.
If you haven't presented a case to your supervisor for an alternate printing arrangement, perhaps you should do so. If you have, and it was overturned, either suck it up or quit.
If I went via my manager about it he would have immediately raised it with the guy in questions line manager (he worked in sales) who probably would have gone ape shit and fired him.
Was he a good salesman? If so, then I seriously doubt they would have fired him, or done anything at all. Sales can get away with murder as long as they produce.
The irony...it hurts.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
I'd like to see those sysadmin having a problem with their checks and being told "no no, you can't talk to anyone in HR or the payroll department directly, are you crazy? Please open a ticket and wait for a reply, an intern will get back to you in 24 hours or less".
Most of the places I have worked at had this exact setup, usually because payroll/HR was in a completely different state, thousands of miles away. (They would let the managers do the initial interviewing/hiring, but all other HR-related stuff had to be done over the phone)
Or maybe there are just too many who THINK they know more than the sysadmin and who question his work as if they do know more than him.
I have people all the time request assistance to fix something only to be told by them I am doing it wrong once I start working on it. I suspect they just wanted to argue with somebody so they called IT.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
Seriously.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
After working under a complete moron that was great with people and project management but had the technical skills of my mom (not good), I have to disagree. I am currently the head IT manager at my new job but I still think that the system administrator or whatever you call the top level IT person should do a perfect job or get replaced. A technician making a mistake is an annoyance but a system admin buying 500 refurbished, off-lease HP desktops that had a failure rate of around 75% in the first year is a LITTLE BIT more major. Everyone should be ready to report their IT boss' incompetence to the owner/CEO/whatever if it's deserved and hopefully they get replaced.
You can always put them in jail on trumped up charges when they make a manager's new squeeze cry by yelling at them when you catch them removing the hard drive of the head of IT security's PC.
City police and office politics are a bad mix, especially if the Mayor wants a photo opportunity at the jail "saving the day" and getting the passwords.
I've been doing system support, at many different organizational levels, for over 20 years. In that time I've held every IT support job from help-desk to director. It's my belief that the better a person is at their job, the more likely it is they're a cynical prick (myself included). The problem comes from the fact that a good sysadmin has to look for, understand and mitigate every possibility for problems. Over time it forces you into a "glass half empty" perspective on just about everything business related. It takes a concerted effort to keep that same cynicism creeping into personal interactions. It's my job to make sure there are no surprises so I'll do everything in my power to map out risk. That means if there's a business reason for your request I'll do everything in my power to help you but I'll not put my neck on the line for you. If it's between bending the rules to help you get wifi or me keeping my job and feeding my family you're not going to get that wifi.
Sincerely,
Cynical Prick
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
Had a sysadm once, send him an email, a few minutes later, boom, done!
After a couple of years he was promoted, and out of IT. The replacement, messages entered a black hole where you'd have to follow up and pester. You knew the first message was going to be ignored and was just the beginning of a tedius dance.
Before IT people beak off, "Oh, I'm supposed to drop everyhing and help you?" realize it was taking care of little issues instantaneously that made the first guy get glowing reviews.
So, yes, do the opposite of triage. Put laborious things on hold and service quick easy ones. You won't be slowed terribly and will look some 600-800 times better (est.)
If a big server is down, that's one thing, but regular day-to-day? Fix the quick problems quickly.
To those who still feel feisty and wanna argue, enjoy your long stay as a lackey. You've been shown the way.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
To put it more bluntly, 200 "minor issues that can wait" because you're restaging a machine is 200 irritated people. The guy waiting for a restage isn't gonna be pissed it it takes 2 extra hours
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
So who sets up the production environment at your work place? The developers? OK, that might work, if they have systems administration experience.
Let me bring some perspective to your analogy; Allowing a systems administrator access to the production environment is like giving the scalpel to god.
Is there any network connection between the two boxes you use?
If so, have you considered trying RDP (mstsc, etc) from one to the other? Add a second monitor to the good machine if that help. It's what I do to run dual OS's without having to use multiple keyboards/mice, and you can't really even tell that my second monitor is actually running stuff on another machine.
Well, yes, but my experience is that even if I've never screamed at an admin, nor informed them of their mothers' extramarital activities, the majority seem to make it their duty to keep me from doing my job anyway.
In fact, for some (I'm looking at the fucktard duo administering the MQ server,) the nicer you are and more willing to explain why you need a queue for the application already approved by anyone who had a legitimate say, the more they'll abuse that and your time by MAKING you have to explain for weeks or get nothing from them. The guys who do tell them to STFU and do their own job, now those get what they asked for.
Now I have sympathy for admins, and understand that other people shit on their day. But WTH does it solve to in turn have them shit on MY day and my coworkers' day?
If X bullied admin Y, and Y bullies innocent bystander Z in turn, what did it solve, other than make an extra person unhappy? And how does the former even excuse the latter, anyway? Much less make it right. Two wrongs don't make a right.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The missing item no. 10 from TFA.
The article is nothing more than a snippy gripe list. Yes, it's fun to think sysadmins should be revered because they wield great power over business internals at a very low level but whining about not getting enough kudos, or being snippy with people, or explaining to someone why their request is a "waste of time" is just being an ass. If someone is being unreasonable and demanding something you know is wrong, talk to your manager and let him/her decide what to do. Nice thing about being an admin is you don't need to make decisions which are outside the policies. You can dump the accountability in the lap of people who are paid to do that job.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
If an employee cannot even convince his/her own manager it is a case worth pursuing, then why should IT bother with it?
I am a manager. I have a staff of about a dozen people that report to me. If one of my employees needs to involve IT for some aspect of their work then they should do that without wasting my time needlessly. If their request could or would impact something beyond their ability to do their own work then sure, come to me first. I expect them to know when something might have external ramifications. I'm fine if they consult me when they are unsure about something but I really do not want them wasting my time (or anyone elses) on issues where I would just have to refer them to IT anyway. I hired smart competent people and I expect them to be able to interact with other parts of our business without asking for permission first. If they need my involvement to make something complicated (and necessary) happen I'm happy to oblige. If I didn't trust them to make reasonable requests and handle issues with IT themselves then I hired the wrong person.
I think the parent was trying to say that if the user can't get to google or any website, then his VPN would not be able to connect. I have my users try abc.com when they can't connect remotely.
I.T. isn't there to make a profit, it's a cost centre that's there provide what's needed for others to make a profit. The more other sections need expensive stuff from it the more it becomes a "money sink hole". The other things you've described happen when I.T. becomes too isolated. However in large places I.T. is rarely able to spend at the whim of every junior employee so if it doesn't go through somebody high enough up the ladder to have a budget for more than a single paper clip you can forget about it - but that's company policy at work and not I.T.
A lot of the "I.T. won't buy me a pony" bullshit is because a company expects managers to decide if the junior staff get a pony or not, and when they don't get one they decide to make an end run around their management and try to get it from I.T. When they don't get the pony on the sly it is seen as the fault of those evil I.T. people stopping them from doing their work and not the real problem - getting stuck trying to do an end run around company policy.
Nothing like pissing in someone's Wheaties with logic and common sense. I need to stop it if I want to get ahead.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Ding ding ding.....we have a winner!
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Hating everyone is my default state. To be fair, it has very little to do with computers and a lot to do with generalized, willfull ignorance and stupidity (Journalists hold a special, very dark and awful place in my heart), but it wouldn't be any different if I was a CEO, a construction worker, or god forbid, a lawyer.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I've been on both sides of the pond. In some cases your SysAdmin is also the network guy, DBA, Network Security, and sometimes even a bit of a dev all in one role. In others all of the above and more can be separated.
[using the masculine for convenience's sake, but I have worked with some notable female sysadmins]
First point: Like most employee's, a SysAdmin's loyalty should not be to you, but to the company. A lot of people don't get that, and see IT as a roadblock, especially when it comes to security stuff. No, often he's not trying to be a dick by preventing you from doing connecting to your home VPN or setting up a wifi hotspot for your tablet - even if it would make your life a lot easier - he's trying to prevent a security issue.
Second point: Don't get mad at the IT guy for enforcing policy. For example, one person mentioned being tied to a particular vendor for hardware. That policy was likely set by somebody else, but there are reasons. There may be RFP issues for hardware, accounting issues, or they may have just had the common problem with dozens of departments going wild-west with hardware purchases ending up with a lot of incompatible crap.
Third point: Don't be a jerk with the above. If the problem is a policy, work on getting the policy changed, not circumventing it or venting at the IT guy enforcing it.
Last one: Don't burn out the nice guys. It's a tendency in any department to find the nice guy (most helpful, fastest service, whatever) and then bombard him with requests because he's mostly likely to grant them in a timely manner. That increases his stress, which may result in him not being a nice guy for very long.
First hint: This one is for the SysAdmins. Also don't be a jerk. The worse answer you can give is "No" with no qualifier. There are cases where that may be valid (where there's a perfectly well-known policy or somebody is making the same mistake for the 10th time), but a lot of the issues with SysAdmins don't come down to what they're doing, but how they're doing it. Be polite. Be patient.
"Unplug your laptop right now!" is a not nearly so constructive as "we don't allow personal machines on our network/domain because of the risk of infection on our more-vulnerable internal network as we can't verify your antivirus or the integrity of your machine."
Try suggesting alternatives "If you need to take work home, did you know that you can request a company laptop that's preconfigured with VPN access and proper security software?" (and try to get them a machine that works).
Second hint: Try and let somebody else be a hard-ass when it's their job to be so. I've got a generally good repore with my co-workers. I have had to deal with people doing dumb things such as sharing passwords for high-level accounts, attempting to install non-vetting software, etc. If somebody didn't listen to the reasons against doing so ("remember when Bob installed that software that infected the entire shared network drive with a trojan and screwed up everyone's work"), then rather than being vindictive and a jerk, I passed it up the chain to somebody whose job was to deal with such things, usually a manager. Managers are actually pretty good when it comes to dealing with people who are jeopardizing the company (unless they're the ones doing so).
Third hint: Don't be seen taking personal liberties. Yeah, you're the IT guy, you know your shit. You (hopefully) know how to secure your wifi access point and your computer. It doesn't mean you should be doing all the stuff that you tell other people not to do. More especially, you shouldn't be *seen* doing stuff that you tell other people not to do. Sometimes the biggest security risk is the guy arrogant guy with the keys to the castle and a superiority complex.
Last one: For Sysadmins and non-sysadmins. Show appreciation. If a Sysadmin is helpful, let him know you appreciate it. If a client/user is pleasant to deal with, you should let it be known every so often. A little sincere appreciation goes a long way.
He doesn't hate the knowledgeable ones, he's just filled with anxiety in their presence.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Developers don't get access to production systems unless when troubleshooting a problem. And even then, the access is short and very limited. No way to change the code on the production system.
If a bug is found, developers correct the bug in development, push to QA to test and make sure it's fixing the problem, then production deploys it using tried and true procedures to make sure the new system comes up and the old system is available in case the fix breaks something else.
My general rule is, if you aren't getting paged when a system breaks, you don't get root access. (Which is not to say you automatically get it if you do get paged such as the app support folks, but by default you aren't getting it.)
[John]
Shit better not happen!
If a syadmin is abusing their position of power then they need to be removed.
Aye, but how do you know when they're abusing their position of power? Tread lightly out there.
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
My favorite is the web server (yeah, the one that powers the company website) that needs reset once or twice a week.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1997-08-28/
Sanity is the trademark of a weak mind. -- Mark Harrold
Far be it for me to discourage politeness or considerate behavior towards admins, but the last thing we need is more of fear-mongering of our profession. We should be ashamed of being feared and search out ways to combat that attitude, not gleefully celebrating it and looking for ways to leverage that fear to our personal advantage, becoming little e-terrorists.
The sort of traits that we sysadmins should be emphasizing and popularizing to employers and the public at large are our ethical grounding, our sense of duty and responsibility, the breadth and depth of our knowledge, and our ability to translate end user requests into clear and actionable technical goals. We should be the ultimate technical confidants and friends of those we work with and for, not the necessary evils that they tolerate at their own risk. We should recognize the great responsibility that comes with our roles' great power, and act accordingly.
This whole notion of "fear us, for we drive the bus" that permeates our culture is corrosive, immature, damaging, and actually quite disgusting. I recognize and appreciate the humor of Simon Travaglia's BOFH, but too many of us seem to take those works not as fantastic parody but instead as some sort of literal example, a self-help manual for geeks.
This leads to keyboard jockeys becoming quite like those police officers who lose sight of their roles as responsible civil servants, lost amidst the power of badges and guns and sirens and legal authority. As anyone who has ever had to deal with one of those bad apples knows well, just one such experience can tarnish the reputation of a whole profession, indeed a whole class of people, and make the road much harder for all the rest who are just trying to do their jobs faithfully and well.
Well really it needs to be considered both ways. It's a little like saying, "If a bear is going around attacking people, we should kill it." Still, that doesn't make it less fair to say, "Don't go around poking at wild bears."
If you don't trust your IT support people, fire them. I would suggest that trust is even more important than competence in many cases. Still, be nice to your sysadmin.
It only works well if they are actually responsive to it.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You are confusing systems administration with operations.
Sysadmins take care of the internally facing pieces of a company's technological infrastructure. They control the workstations, the intranet, manage e-mail systems, and, yes, often offer help to users. This should be clear from just about every other item listed in the article. Operations takes care of the externally facing pieces of a company's technological infrastructure. Operations runs the production environment, or, better, manages the production environment in such a way as to make it safe and easy for developers to control their own bits of it.
If a syadmin is abusing their position of power then they need to be removed. That's it. There's no petty revenge or "blowback" to consider.
It's no different to other jobs where people hold a position of power (e.g., police officer, principal, medical doctor, judge, etc). We expect and demand that those people behave professionally and appropriately at all times (even when they don't like you). Just because a computer is involved doesn't excuse a system administrator from being held to the same professional standards.
There's a difference between abusing power and being fair to all users. If one department or individual continually makes "emergency" last minute requests that they could have made weeks or even months ago, then making everyone else wait while you service the "emergency" request is unfair. So it's not abusing power if a sysadmin team refuses to scramble around to accommodate unreasonable last minute requests. A former manager was fond of responding to those requests with "Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on our part".
The same goes with other users that complain that the "internet is down" when what they really mean is "The online gambling site I use is unreachable". Or the people that complain that their system is too slow and we say "Yeah, you need more RAM for that application, ask your manager to submit a purchase request for more", yet they still keep complaining to IT when IT doesn't have the budget to provide hardware upgrades. It's unfair to other users that work within the system to make them wait while we service requests from "problem users".
you just gotta love the qualification he used âoeintentionallyâoe. lol
IT Admins Group: Where you decide the content
Learn to stay on their good side by going along with their reasonable requests and being specific with your complaints.
And if they're not reasonable? It happens.
I am no longer a sysadmin, but I know many, and I listen now to the complainers who complain about their sysadmins, programmers, etc.
I often hear complaints about how stuff doesn't work right, or doesn't do what they want. Their complaints often boil down to 'There ought to be..."
No, there ought not be. Stuff works the way it is built. If it was built wrong and works wrong, that's a fix. If it was built for a task, and you don't like the task, or you don't like the results, well, that's a design problem. Design of the process, not necessarily the tools.
We just had this discussion yesterday about a process that requires us to resolve issues in a limited number of ways. the complaints from others (with much less experience than some of us have) devolved into the complaint that our system should allow for options that don't exist in the systems that are the source of the data we deliver. Put differently, they want our users to see data that they cannot see elsewhere, and in fact is not delivered elsewhere. Despite pointing out that our system merely delivers data, and does so according to the rules of the data owners, they persisted in complaining that our users want this, and it would solve problems.
In this instance, it would solve the problem of users changing things in other systems, and expecting them to stay the same elsewhere. I did not bother to continue to discussion into the realm of our legal constraints. We are a highly regulated business, and what they wanted to do would eventually violate multiple laws. Not understanding that our own internal controls were the first limit, however, made me feel like legality would be similarly lost on them.
If you wonder why sysadmins sometimes consider your requests ludicrous, consider you may not have an ogre for a sysadmin. They may be protecting you from yourself. Or they may know the 'why' you have not yet considered.
And if you can define your request as 'There oughta...', be prepared for the bit NO. No, there doesn't oughta.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Okay, so maybe BasilBrush had a point after all...
(see sig)
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
I don't really understand this rift that seems to exist between IT and its customers
I've bolded the rift above. When managers start referring to IT like it's a separate internal company, then the feeling that users/admins are coworkers who should be respected goes away.
Two hundred minor issues, unless they're all the same issue and are scriptable, is not two hours lost, it's several days, especially with ticket documentation et al (if they're scriptable, it might be far less than two hours). Sometimes two hundred people have to be left angry temporarily because if the server isn't finished being restaged, thousands of people could be angry when the server doesn't get back on line on schedule.
The sytem must keep working, at all cost. If what you are doing could affect that goal, probably will take it as something bad.
As sysadmin I resent when i got ordered to do something that will hurt the systems i administer in a "wrong" way (specially if there is a right, but dismissed without knowledge, way, to do the same with no or minimal impact), is not about the power that you have as sysadmin, but the responsibility.
Yeah well if a sysadmin tells me not to make police officers hate me, I'll take the advice.
If a sysadmin tells me not to make sysadmins hate me, I'll take it as self-serving BS if it's not an overt threat. The lesson from the Edward Snowden case is "don't piss off your sysadmin" says a sysadmin. Sysadmins need to get over themselves. They're commodity-grade workers at the end of the day.
A more interesting article would be "Why users hate sysadmins". Then the sysadmins around here might learn something.
Threat, friendly advice, you be the judge. "Commodity-grade" workers or not, you rely on them to be able to do your job. Do you piss off waiters before they bring your food? You shouldn't.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
That goes for anything. Nothing works if people do not do their job. Including HR and IT.
That is why there are measurements in place to ensure that requests are handled in a timely manner.
They 'own' it in the sense that they are responsible for it.
Plug the printer into a USB port. Presto: they don't 'own' it.
You have to do what you have to do when facing a 'preventer of information services'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Because the worthless control freak idiot has the only key and thinks that makes him 'un-fireable'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
In general, programmers working with a specific server _will_ know it better then the digital janitor.
There are exceptions. e.g. about 1% of DBAs actually are more then glorified backup script admins.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
*cough*
(You are being equally idiotic.)
When developing a product, one should attempt to anticipate points of failure, and incorporate failsafes and safety systems into the design to make it fail gracefully, instead of spectacularly. For example, if the function you just made deals with input from an outside module in the form of a pointer, it is simply prudent to sanity check the inputs when that function fires to ensure that it hasn't been fed a null pointer. If designing an electrical system that absolutely, positively must have the polarity right on the power feed, (say, it has high voltages and lytic capacitors involved), then make the power connector physically impossible to get flipped over.
These are simple things that are clearly aparent on design time, and can be incorporated on the beta of the project.
Dealing with unforseeable situations, like "use on systems with both MesaGL and vendor proprietary openGL libraries installed causes erronious and unpredictable behavior" (because the proprietary driver does a SneakyDumbTrick() that is completely off spec, and is part of the vendor's secret sauce, and expects only its own libraries installed and expects such nonstandard behaviors from other parts of the opengl implementation, which the standards compliant mesa lib just doesn't do, causing [crazy_shit] to happen when the proprietary lib calls part of the mesa lib for service, due to the heterogenous install), that kind of thing simply can't really be predicted, because the developer/engineer can't read minds, and know in advance what kinds of shennanigans can happen there. As such, it can only be dealt with after it has happened before.
"Ditzy soccermom drives off with pump handle still in tank" is the former kind of problem. "Aluminum bearing races, coupled with steel ball bearings, and bearing lubricant under high vibrational environments with lots of ambient particulate matter in the environment leads to rapid deterioration of bearing race as particulates accumulate in lubricant, erode the race, and cause runaway deterioration, enhanced by chatter from the vibration" on a bearing that was designed for a clean and sealed environment and for minimal weight with low noise is the latter.
If you try to think of every possible thing that can ever possibly go wrong, and design your systems that way, you are not a very good engineer. Likewise, if you put your head in the ground, and ignore the fact that the product will be used in ways and environments other than the perfectly ideal conditions for operation, and end up making a very fragile product, you likewise aren't a very good engineer.
The secret sauce is dealing with all the low hanging fruit on the potential problems sides of things, and then responding to real world deployments in an iterative manner later. Realworld deployments may have you finding your software running in a configuration you would never have even dreamed of, and may in fact, be very frequently employed that way, because of other silly requirements of the real world. That's where iterative design changes come in.
Gas&Go Gladdys at the gaspump is a low hanging fruit. So are things like gas cutoffs on furnaces, and the like. A furnace that doesn't check that the pilot light is lit using a thermocoupler is simply poorly designed. The engineer should have dealt with that low hanging fruit before houses started blowing up. Etc. Low hanging fruit are things that are clearly obvious at design time.
Arguing "you have to think of *EVERYTHING!*" will end up with your product having so many failsafes in it that is prohibitively expensive to build (either has lots of expensive physical parts that should never actually activate during normal use, and are there only to deal with a hypothetical problem that in practice, never happens, or has more input sanity check code than the function itself, and suffers performance bottlenecks looking for exceptions that never actually happen in practice.). Arguing "No its an iterative process exclusively!" M
If a Manager is abusing their position of power then they need to be removed. That's it. There's no petty revenge or "blowback" to consider.
See how far you get with that one.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
you want room 12A, Just along the corridor.
I have a simple solution: Follow me around for a day (and a night).
Watch when the new guy gets ignored by his team members and forgets that Google exists so he comes to us expecting days of basic training on how to do his job.
Never answer a question directly. Require your Padawan to ALWAYS ASK THE DUCK before they bother you. If the duck can't answer the question, then it is okay to ask you. If you don't know the answer, then YOU need to ask the duck. Learn this lesson, you must.
Yeah, right.
And Presto, the printer wasn't connected to the USB port because the driver conflicts with something else on the machine and now the user can't work at all.
Guess who will get the blame for that one, not the person connected stuff to the computer without permission.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Yeah well if a sysadmin tells me not to make police officers hate me, I'll take the advice.
If a sysadmin tells me not to make sysadmins hate me, I'll take it as self-serving BS if it's not an overt threat.
So what if a police officer tells you not to make police officers hate you? Same self serving BS? Don't make anyone hate you seems to be a good idea to me.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Give me one real world example of a printer driver breaking something? Not even HP does that (anymore). Also it was an old proven printer.
In any case fuck em. If they did their job users wouldn't have to end run them for something as simple as a printer. Given the scenario presented above the IT dweebs have no-one to blame but themselves if their network is peppered with inkjets and other junk.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/office/en-US/6fad3461-49cb-4f53-913b-7b8dbfaa8c75/office-2013-crashing-after-printing-to-hp-laser-printers
There you go.
This is the sig that says NI (again)
Your sysadmin hates you because he is a sysadmin in the same way that your cat hates you because he is a cat.
"Dude, pounds are so metric, fuck that." - Noah
brilliant. you got it.
When I took on the role, it had an inordinate amount of calls from users who wanted to short circuit the help desk (no logging means we can't prove we've done the work to the accountants for a start).
Interestingly, I've had more savvy users call with a problem to get things started, then offer to open a case so we get credit for work done. My job doesn't really work like that, though I appreciate the offer.
A lot of work goes through unofficial channels when a user thinks that the question is so minor it doesn't merit a case. Some of the most problematic, frustrating, and time-consuming issues I've ever gotten have have started with a private question that starts with: "This is probably isn't worth a case and I might be overthinking things.. am I crazy for thinking situation XYZ isn't working quite right?"