AM == Aaron McCaleb <[email protected]>
AM> Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2011 11:42:28 -0600
AM>
AM> If a person tells you, "I'm a stone mason", you have a pretty good
AM> understanding of what they do.
Actually, I have no idea what exactly a modern stone mason does. Carve
stone? Build it into walls? Design buildings made of stone? Could be all
kinds of things. I understand that it involves working with rocks, but I
couldn't tell you what specific activities a stone mason does with those
rocks all day every day.
...much like, I think, a stone mason knows that a sysadmin's job involves
working with rocks, but couldn't tell you what specific activities the
sysadmin does with those computers all day every day.
AM> If a person tells you "I'm in management", you have a pretty good idea
AM> of what they do, because everyone has interacted with a manager...not
AM> so true of a system administrator.
Sure, but different managers do all sorts of different things, from
supervising dozens of factory workers, to mentoring individuals one on
one, to having executive responsibility for an organization of hundreds of
thousands of people, to leading a team of three sysadmins, to doing
project management without any supervisory responsibilities at all.
AM> Where does that put us? Maybe system administrators don't have a
AM> problem. Maybe "computer systems" need to form their own organization
AM> to ensure they are better represented. (Skynet, anyone?)
Heh. But I'm still not sure that sysadmins have a problem. Among other
things, if your average layperson can't tell the difference between a
programmer, a web designer, and a sysadmin, this is presumably just as bad
(or as not-bad) for the programmer and the web designer. How much does
this really matter? What would be better if sysadmins, programmers, web
designers, etc, were instantly distinguishable from one another by the
average layperson?
-Josh ([email protected])
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