Life in the Trenches: a Sysadmin Speaks

Anonymous Coward writes "A senior systems administrator at a big ISP in Australia offers a no-nonsense view about his line of work, the pros and the cons, ths ups and the downs."

Pros and Cons

[Anonymous Coward]

Pros: Cheese Doodles
Cons: Users

Re:problem solving skills?

[SN74S181]

What sorts of problems? Like knowing where the fucking toner cartridges are stored?

Admins are the janitors of IT. If they're lucky they're allowed to write a few perl scripts and run them in a 'production' setting. If they're unlucky, the best they are allowed is to push around little users for power trips. Kinda like the janitor and his floor sweeper. You'd better get out of the way when he goes through with that floor sweeper at 7PM each night...

Re:Crap...

[portwojc]

> Any sysadmin that has to log into a system while on holiday in *India* is a bad one

I wouldn't say that. He probably missed the machines...

Re:problem solving skills?

[bitflip]

I don't see "hands" as a requirement for being a sys admin, mentioned anywhere in the article.

I think hands are a must for the sys admin job, especially if you don't want to be a Jr. Sys Admin and perform backups (with your teeth!) all your life.

I worked for a relatively large institution, in the capacity of a Sys Admin, and I know for a fact that you need some serious hands.

Profound....

[kien]

My favorite bit from the interview:

"I have noticed that until the Internet became popular in the mid-90s it was social death to admit to any interest in computers, and it was certainly not acceptable to talk about them at parties. That's changed now. It's still considered "geeky" but it's not the unforgivable social crime that it once was. You still have to pretend not to know much about computers, but these days it's so you don't waste the entire party solving someone's computer problems for them."

Ye gods, how true! :)

--K.

Re:Crap...

[odaiwai]

He could just have been indulging in a little office politics:

From: Sysadmin
To: Management
Subject: Everything's OK!
Hi,

I just logged in from sunny Goa here to check up on things. Everything's going ok! My well trained junior admins are keeping everything ship-shape.

Must go back to the beach now.

See you in two weeks!
regards,
BOFH

Re:Aptitude!?

[moyix]

No, you missed the part where it says he's a Debian developer. He's actually referring to the software package, "aptitude". Damn useful little tool. Don't know if I would put it above communication skills et al, though...

Re:job ad

[Gilmoure]

I did see one about 5 years ago;

Wanted: Web master. 10 years experience.

Re:What's the deal with these Penguinistas??

[AppyPappy]

When casual dress first started in the business world, every programmer jumped on it. Beards, long hair, unkeptness. I started wearing suits. When asked, I told them "I refuse to conform to the nonconformity".

If I ever got a job as a systems geek, I would go back to suits just to be different. I like different.