I don't think anyone should enter this biz without expecting to spend some of their life fixing shit at 2am, but you can't really call yourself a good sysadmin until you have learned to control the number of calls you get.
Whenever I have done callout I used to get considerably less calls than anyone else on rota because they knew that if I get a dud call - the person calling will get an earful of abuse and pay for it. I'm a great believer in Karma - fuck back as much as you've been fucked.
Every company wants 24x7 support on the cheap, it is your duty to the brotherhood (and Sister Mary) to lead them to the light.
Now I'm a manager and my staff get
1) a flat rate for the week
2) a per hour callout rate
3) beauty sleep next day if the call came in after 2300 hrs - hey I don't want an ugly, miserable, useful for nothing techie haunting the cubicals
4) leased line to their home after 6 months of being on call
If you can't get paid in cash the manybe your managers can get creative with comp schemes - free Ultra Sparcs, extra training (I bet you don't get training either do you?) etc
What will Cobalt gain from Sun:
1) Cobalt support sucks big time, in Europe it is NON-existant. A saleman trying to flog these things said they didn't have European support, if they go wrong you can get a return in a week or so ! Cobalt management needs a good kick up the ass.
Now Sun support is patchy in places (like SoCal where they use Kodak engineers) but if you've ever been stuck at 2am with a problem you can always get support and their European logisitics operation is one of the best in the entire business. It's not unusual to get advanced replacements on site within 2 hours, well before the hardware engineer arrives. Cobalt will benefit from Sun's experience of logistics and support that takes years to get right.
2) Cobalt saleman knock on your door with two pieces of paper - a price list (look they are cheap) and a glossy brochure (look they are a cooool bluuue). Laying off Cobalt's direct salesforce will save COBT money - these things should sell through the channel and off the page.
3) Strategy - where do COBT go alone? Different colour boxes, even cheaper boxes, or do they have the ability to start a mid-range server program - I think not.
Cobalt stuck a GUI onto a Linux PC and painted it a pretty colour. They are great boxes if all you want to do is host a simple website and set up some POP boxes. They made hosting a web site for people without Unix experience easy, the end user doesn't know or care about whether it runs Linux or Solaris, or BSD. That was Cobalt's genius, what do they do next alone?
As it happens I don't believe Sun will screw Cobalt, I think Cobalt will benefit. Yes they screwed up x86 - I believe they have learned from that. Sun want to do the end to end game, same as Cisco, which is why Cobalt made sense to Sun. Sun own the Unix datacentre, next aquisition set top boxes and every server in between.
Take the Sun shares, your Grandchildren will thank you one day.
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I don't think anyone should enter this biz without expecting to spend some of their life fixing shit at 2am, but you can't really call yourself a good sysadmin until you have learned to control the number of calls you get.
Whenever I have done callout I used to get considerably less calls than anyone else on rota because they knew that if I get a dud call - the person calling will get an earful of abuse and pay for it. I'm a great believer in Karma - fuck back as much as you've been fucked.
Every company wants 24x7 support on the cheap, it is your duty to the brotherhood (and Sister Mary) to lead them to the light.
Now I'm a manager and my staff get
1) a flat rate for the week
2) a per hour callout rate
3) beauty sleep next day if the call came in after 2300 hrs - hey I don't want an ugly, miserable, useful for nothing techie haunting the cubicals
4) leased line to their home after 6 months of being on call
If you can't get paid in cash the manybe your managers can get creative with comp schemes - free Ultra Sparcs, extra training (I bet you don't get training either do you?) etc
What will Cobalt gain from Sun: 1) Cobalt support sucks big time, in Europe it is NON-existant. A saleman trying to flog these things said they didn't have European support, if they go wrong you can get a return in a week or so ! Cobalt management needs a good kick up the ass. Now Sun support is patchy in places (like SoCal where they use Kodak engineers) but if you've ever been stuck at 2am with a problem you can always get support and their European logisitics operation is one of the best in the entire business. It's not unusual to get advanced replacements on site within 2 hours, well before the hardware engineer arrives. Cobalt will benefit from Sun's experience of logistics and support that takes years to get right. 2) Cobalt saleman knock on your door with two pieces of paper - a price list (look they are cheap) and a glossy brochure (look they are a cooool bluuue). Laying off Cobalt's direct salesforce will save COBT money - these things should sell through the channel and off the page. 3) Strategy - where do COBT go alone? Different colour boxes, even cheaper boxes, or do they have the ability to start a mid-range server program - I think not. Cobalt stuck a GUI onto a Linux PC and painted it a pretty colour. They are great boxes if all you want to do is host a simple website and set up some POP boxes. They made hosting a web site for people without Unix experience easy, the end user doesn't know or care about whether it runs Linux or Solaris, or BSD. That was Cobalt's genius, what do they do next alone? As it happens I don't believe Sun will screw Cobalt, I think Cobalt will benefit. Yes they screwed up x86 - I believe they have learned from that. Sun want to do the end to end game, same as Cisco, which is why Cobalt made sense to Sun. Sun own the Unix datacentre, next aquisition set top boxes and every server in between. Take the Sun shares, your Grandchildren will thank you one day.