Hi, Thoughtful post. Thanks.
On 13 December 2011 15:55, Mark McCullough <[email protected]> wrote: > Some of the perceived dislike of system administrators, says my > non-technical spouse, is that it means things have broken when > you see them. That means the user is likely to already be frustrated. I don't entirely agree with this part, though. There's far more to SA roles than break/fix, or we'd have no sanity left. The end users don't know that, though, and so sometimes you need to tell them, using a frame of reference that makes sense to their work. IME making an effort to actively reach out and engage with stakeholders makes a big difference to perception. You stop being just the guy whose phone number they have on a post-it note stuck on their monitor bezel, and become an ally, a person that they _know_ cares about their stuff. The next challenge is to do this at a team level so that they don't always ping you directly, and again reach out and make sure the stakeholders know that there's a team there. It can be hard for some people to stop thinking in terms of individual humans, especially when they find one that they like working with. I guess we're wired that way... John _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
