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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
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.
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...
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.
The point is that they are almost always the first and only person to get yelled at when something goes out, but the circumstances for this are almost always also completely out of their control.
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.
If there is someone in your company, who is in a position that management can not show is making the company money, then the problem is that said person should not be in the company, or optionally you have incompetent managment.
You may think that most IT staff in a non-technological company is not making money, but someone along the line did something you are unable to. They looked at the ability of each individual that you think is 'making money' for the company, and evaluated whether that person would be able to make more than the cost of the additional support person if a support person was hired, and what the expected return on investment in that person would be before they even opened that position for a manager.
_Every_ person working at a company is expected to contribute to the company's botom line. If they are in a position that doesn't contribute in some way or another, they don't belong.
And if you continue to treat your IT staff as if they don't belong to the company, because you are incompetent enough that you don't understand how vital your IT department is to your company, you are contributing to the sense that your IT staff doesn't belong, and you should expect that your IT staff will recognize that, and treat you like the enemy of your company that you are treating them as. And if you are in upper management and are treating your IT staff this way, you should expect no loyalty from anyone in your IT staff.
And in your example, the user does know more than 'Word is just not working right.' they know that when they attempt to print a PDF, Word does something unexpected. (put up a dialog with strange content, closes, makes the screen start doing odd things...) In most cases the fact that the user can only say 'Word is not working right' means that an IT tech has to come to the desk the user is at, or possibly gain remote access through an internally approved remote desktop support platform, and find out exactly what the user is doing that causes the problem to happen.
As for Facebook or other social sites, it's very rare that your IT department has specified those decisions. Almost everyone in your IT department knows full well that social websites, news sites, and e-mail sites on the web are almost invariable safer for your computer than the internal e-mail system and very likely the intranet environment that you have in house. In almost every case, the reason that your corporate policies marke these resources off limits has to do with the perception of the people making policy with respect to what they expect that employees will be doing on these sites, and how that will affect performance. In some companies there may be liability issues as well related to the possibility that internal information may end up becoming generally available on the internet, which can open the company to liability for privacy issues through insider trading issues and worse.
You never know...
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.
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.
404 Not Found: No such file or resource as '.sig'
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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I /am/ the sysadmin. I always knew i was bound to hate myself.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
I think that may be the first time I have seen "reasonable request" and "sysadmin" in the same sentence.
The sysadmins I encounter are invariably anything but reasonable. Aloof, patronizing, condescending... all of those. Most have a very narrow specialization niche and absolutely no social skills or business experience.
I have seen them reduce naive users to tears and effectively discourage any user from making a request of any kind.
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."
Well then you need to get out more...
I am a systems administrator. While I am an introvert (so I don't favor large social gatherings), I do actually have both CS and business degrees and have a broad specialization. I've also never intentionally reduced anyone to tears...
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
Yes, I think that was exactly his point.
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
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
The introvert who doesn't favor large social gatherings is telling someone to get out more.
True sysadmin logic! Do as I say, not as I do.
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.
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.
I have a simple solution: Follow me around for a day (and a night).
Watch what happens when two people, either of whom could fire both of us, issue demands that are diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive.
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.
Watch when the workaholic engineer expects us to be there around the clock for everything from new machines to coffee runs as he compulsively works his 72-hour shifts.
Watch when we spend six hours fixing a machine somebody botched horribly because we told them to push button A then button B then button C, but they pushed button B then button A then button C. For the third time.
Watch when Mr. Hot Temper screams at us for 15 minutes because the network is down, even though not only are we not permitted to do anything with the network, we're not even allowed into the wiring closet.
Watch how we're never thanked for anything, but we're informed on a regular basis as to what people think our mothers did for a living.
I could go on, but rest assured, you'll want your own job back.
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
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.
You are IT just at another section... try working WITH the rest of the team.
Nope - officially Software Development in my organisation belongs to "Service and Support", which is the division responsible for providing service to our customers for our products. The "IT Department" is strictly an internal department - they don't deal with our customers; but rather are responsible for taking care of IT systems within the organisation.
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.
I understand that and accept that. I accept when there are things that for policy reasons are not possible, even if they'd make my life easier. Things like the policy against putting corporate documents on USB keys - we're not allowed to do it, so I don't. My complaint isn't that the policies exist, but that's there's no way to get to the appropriate people to talk to in order to have a say in defining such policies in order to let me do my job. I'd happily explain the reasons for my needs to them, along with HR, legal and the bloody gardener if he cares. But they don't want to listen - the extra work involved for them is potentially significant and we're only a tiny department in a huge organisation that is otherwise quite happy with the job they're doing. The fact that we're business critical, despite being small, only ever factors in to it when senior management get involved to (yet again) explain to the IT department that we should get what we need to do our jobs.
Honestly, if I didn't have senior management on my side, I would've just given up on this gig a long time ago.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
I've also never intentionally reduced anyone to tears...
With a little effort, you'll get there. Not to worry.
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
That's not the fault of the end user, but of whoever designed the system (which I realize may not be you). Don't design a software or hardware package that's so easy to inadvertently break!
Thanks, I'll pass your feedback on to procurement to forward to the vendor that they chose without consulting us.
Funny, those don't appear in the document you linked. Section 225 is the last in title II.
I was a psych minor, I don't think you know what an introvert means if that is your definition...
"The common modern perception is that introverts tend to be more reserved and less outspoken in groups. They often take pleasure in solitary activities such as reading, writing, using computers, hiking and fishing. The archetypal artist, writer, sculptor, engineer, composer and inventor are all highly introverted. An introvert is likely to enjoy time spent alone and find less reward in time spent with large groups of people, though he or she may enjoy interactions with close friends. Trust is usually an issue of significance: a virtue of utmost importance to an introvert is choosing a worthy companion. They prefer to concentrate on a single activity at a time and like to observe situations before they participate, especially observed in developing children and adolescents. They are more analytical before speaking. Introverts are easily overwhelmed by too much stimulation from social gatherings and engagement, introversion having even been defined by some in terms of a preference for a quiet, more minimally stimulating environment."
I don't recall anything in that modern definition as relating to 'expressing feelings' or 'sharing'.
we are all invisible unless we choose otherwise
The "while you are here buy me a pony" requests instead of going through channels does that to people if they don't have a thick enough skin. The games people play to try to get stuff directly from you that they have to get approval from their management to have can get on your nerves if you take it too seriously, which could mean snapping at the next poor sod that just isn't quite sure what they want.
The number of "have you got a free screen I can take home for the kids" requests at often inconvenient times almost made me forget that you have to be polite (even if they wake you up with it) or it backfires later on. It would be so easy to become like the situation described above.
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.
If there weren't good parts of the job, we wouldn't do it. And the majority of users aren't lusers. There are some who we'd lay down in traffic for, because they understand our jobs are hard and thank us for what we do for them, not just by saying thank you but by making their requests clearly, giving us reasonable notive if the work is non-trivial, giving us reasonable time to do the work, and only calling something an emergency when it really is.
A lot of he time we just happen to be the one they blow off steam to when something out of their control makes their already bad day worse. I could have handled the 15-minute screamer several different ways. I could have stopped him after 15 seconds and told him how to file a ticket, except that he already had, both with me, and with the networking people. I could have told him to lower his voice or he'd be picking up his teeth with broken fingers. I could have turned my back on him mid-rant. What I did do was realize that this was nothing personal, let him scream himself out, then went back to waiting with everybody else for the network people to get the network running again.
Oh and to add to your Sysadmin 101 bullet points:
Make them want to file tickets by responding quickly and then using the ticketing system to communicate your progress in a timely fashion. Make sure the ticketing system is DEAD EASY to use--with ours, users never had to do anything more than send mail to help@oursite.ourcompany.com. Unless your job requires that you take requests over the phone or in person, don't.
Always remember what my wife, also a sysadmin, says: "Our job is to make the users productive, not to make them happy." Make them happy as much as you can (which is most of the time), but not at the expense of making them, or others, less productive.
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.
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.
I don't recall anything in that modern definition as relating to 'expressing feelings' or 'sharing'.
You insensitive clod.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
He posted that while using Lynx while ssh'ed in as root!
The horror!
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Did you sleep through your schooling?
Everyone I know that went through any type of CS program minored in psych.
We work with hardware and software, the psych was there to help of think of the feelings of others.
Luckily I spent my psych time reading B.O.F.H. that's where my people skills came from.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Heh, all that reminds me, one time I sent an email compliment to an HR lady, something simple like, "nice event," and she forwarded it to the rest of the HR department and was profusely appreciative.
Sometimes it's amazing how easy it is to get along with these service people just by complimenting them once or twice.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Anyone who decided his best move is to scream at me, is going to find themselves unemployed in short order. I am on extremely good terms with the head of HR. :)
Here is my suggested response to a screamer. Tell them calmly that you will not put up with such behaviour from anyone. Turn, walk away and report them to HR, or their boss. Most companies will not tolerate such behaviour.
If you do not get a good response, or the person screaming at you is untouchable (CEO, head of HR), I would strongly recommend beginning your job search immediately, because it will not get any better.
There are better companies out there, I know. I started each day at my previous job looking at my desk and saying "F**k I hate this place."
My current job, I am the IT department. Management respects my opinions, I have been brought up in front of the entire company and thanked for my work by the CEO, and CFO. I work with a group of fantastic people.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
I've worked for at least a dozen companies so far in my carrier
Damn, that is a big boat.
After all the engineers looked at the psych departments ratio (1/ratio of the engineering school) and choose psych as our 'liberal arts focus area' the psych department asked the engineering department to stop.
We were blowing the curve for the first 3 psych courses, scaring off actual psych majors and treating the classes as dating pools. We had not yet learned to not stick our dicks into crazy (they don't get any crazier then psych majors).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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".
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.
Carriers generally are http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercarrier. The Nimitz class carriers are the largest US carrier to date http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/nimitz/. They displace somewhere around 70,000 long tons of water. They carry 82 aircraft, not to mention fuel, missiles, other ordinance. Even with all that they still have room for 6000 personnel. Take out the planes and ordinance you could probably cram 7000+ people in a Nimitz. The average number of employees a company has is roughly 16 http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/279843.html. If we assume that every company on this aircraft carrier employed 100 individuals then there would be room for 700 companies. So yes, he most likely worked for a dozen companies on that one carrier alone.
Whenever a player quits EVE to go play WoW, the Average IQ of both games increase.