*There is absolutely *no* cohesion to our profession. There are, in essence, maybe a couple thousand administrators who are part of a profession, and tens or hundreds of thousands of people doing a job, that just so happens to be the same job the profession does. * Spot on Matt.
*How do you convert those people? * You don't. You present the objective business case that professionals, or those that treat it like a profession are preferable to those who don't. The market will adjust. *How do you make them aware, and offer them something of value, and convince them to join you? * What caused engineers to be so highly vetted? Liability and Governance. To crib a note from Bruce Schneier, we are living in the feudal age of information, with little to no central control or oversight. Controls will increase over time as liability increases. Governance will act as model to implement these Controls. Devops and ITSM and BYOD are just three different corporate cultural view points. Devops is the viewpoint of engineering, ITSM is the viewpoint of business unit managers, BYOD is the viewpoint of the staff workers. Devops (let's work together!), ITSM (let's work better!), BYOD (let's work faster!). These corporate cultures do not speak the same language, and may not even share the same goals. Someone will step in and institute stronger controls, mostly this will come from a centralization of services (i.e. moving into the cloud) into larger companies that can afford to be picky about hiring sysadmin and developers that work smarter and with a greater sense of professionalism. On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 10:18 PM, Pat Wilson <[email protected]> wrote: > Ah, what's old is new again… > > There was for a while a recommended reading list on lopsa.org somewhere, > and a project to maintain it. Not quite sure when that got lost. But yes, > the idea that LOPSA could (and should) be providing "best practice" > knowledge, in whatever form, to draw folks to the organization is a good > one; the devil is in the details. Who, for example, manages the list? > > The problem is *not* that LOPSA has tried to "unionize" sysadmins, but > that we are all our own special flowers, and (at least when I was on the > Board, of either LOPSA or SAGE) are overly optimistic about reaching > consensus, yet unwilling to move forward as an organization without it. > > I'll go back to lurking now. > > --paw > > > On Jul 1, 2013, at 2:03 PM, Matt Simmons <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > Hi Will, > > > > Thanks for the kind words. > > > > I really like the idea of a LOPSA-recommended reading list (and I think > that, as an organization, LOPSA can recommend other things, too). The act > costs us almost nothing, and the difficulty is minimal, particularly when > the work is delegated. > > > > Good ideas. > > > > --Matt > > > > > > > > On Mon, Jul 1, 2013 at 4:50 PM, Will Dennis <[email protected]> > wrote: > > Thoughtful response (as usual) Matt… > > > > You said: > > "If there are 100,000 IT administrators on the internet active enough to > ask and answer a question on Server Fault, where are they? Do they know > that LOPSA exists and don't care or aren't interested or don't feel like we > offer anything? Or are they completely unaware of us? How do we find out > the answer to that question? How do you reach these thousands and thousands > of people that we are trying to represent?" > > > > I keep thinking that LOPSA would do well to generate (or at least > promulgate if someone else generates) a BoK ("best practices") for the > profession, along with a certain amount of freely-available training (and > maybe extending training material for members.) This would give LOPSA a > powerful reason for being, and folks a good reason for joining (in order to > get the extended training materials, as well as the other benefits.) Then, > once there is something worth joining up for like this, then do some > advertising on the relevant sysadmin-ny sites. There will always be a > certain amount of folks in the profession who just don't care, to whom > their job is just a day job to be done with as little thinking effort as > possible. Can't worry about attracting those people. But maybe if LOPSA can > be seen by IT management as a professional organization that has a powerful > methodology to improve IT results, then maybe managers would become LOPSA > advocates to their people in their org's, much like some of my managers > have recommended AMA courses, Dale Carnegie classes, etc. to staffs I've > been a part of. > > > > About who would generate the BoK/training - there's already good books > out there on the DevOps front ("The Phoenix Project", "Continuous > Delivery", "Visible Ops Handbook", etc.) that LOPSA could put on a > "recommended reading" list, but I'm not sure what's already out there for > the nitty-gritty stuff that would take newb admins and train them up "the > right way" (like what I think Ops School is trying to work on.) Come to > think of it though, I think every sysadmin should get/read "The Practice of > System and Network Administration" by our own Tom Limoncelli et al, which I > like to refer to as "the Bible of our profession" (YMMV) - LOPSA should put > that book on the reading list as well. > > > > -Will > > > > > > > > -- > > LITTLE GIRL: But which cookie will you eat FIRST? > > COOKIE MONSTER: Me think you have misconception of cookie-eating process. > > _______________________________________________ > > 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/ > > > _______________________________________________ > 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/ > > -- Joseph A Kern [email protected]
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