I agree, Josh.
On one side, we have our need to define our role for other people (without
confusing the layman)
On the other side, others may have the need to understand our role (even if
it's just smalltalk at a cocktail party)
We know what we want to tell people, but... what do they need to know?
(Venn diagram, anyone?) We don't want to keep talking about our role while
their eyes glaze over and start staring through us at the scene in the
window...
Each of us is going to deliver this information to an audience slightly
differently, but there should be common elements between any two systems
administrators. We have to pay attention to the needs of our audience, and
elaborate as needed.
I think we have a problem where the term "Systems Administrator" has
expanded to include far more roles for "small" organizations that normally
are not included for "large" organizations. And a *nix SA is, in most
cases, using far different tools, than Windows SAs, even though the result
is the same -- systems run the customer-required applications and stay up.
Is it important to say "I'm a Linux System Administator" or "I'm a Windows
System Administrator?" I suppose it depends on who you are talking to, and
whether they would care about the difference.
{Oh, and in large corporations (I can only speak from experience, but if
let's say you're multinational and doing billions in sales), it's rare that
the Systems Administrators are also the Designers. So *some* of us may also
be designing and implementing, but that isn't true for *all* of us.}
Take electricians, for example. They work with electricity. But there are
many different kinds of electricians: Master, Residential, Commercial,
Lineman and probably more. Any of them could probably help you with adding
an extra outlet in your house, but without proper
training/certification/experience available, you wouldn't ask a residential
electrician to do a lineman's job.
By the same token, you wouldn't ask a pure Linux SA to design, implement or
manage a large Windows network. But he/she would probably have no problem
setting up your Windows-based home network for you.
I believe we need to do 3 things to help ourselves out:
- figure out the bare essentials of what people need to be told in order to
understand what we do
- figure out the most common denominator among "System Administrators" --
what do *all* of us have in common?
- keep it simple -- the more jargon we include in the definition, the more
difficult it will be to explain our role to the layman.
For example... one definition might look like this: "A System Administrator
is one who manages computers and/or networks on a continuing basis to
support the needs of the users of those systems. In addition, the SA may
also be responsible for these other roles for their systems: design,
implementation, change control, new technology evaluation, decommissioning,
etc."
An extended definition might include the answer to "What's a system?"
-- "A system is at least a single computer server, on a network used by at
least one person, but can in extreme cases include thousands of computers,
running multiple programs that are used by millions of people."
Mike
--
http://www.lostinthedetails.com
On Wed, Jan 12, 2011 at 12:55 PM, Josh Smift <[email protected]> wrote:
> 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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