On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 7:06 AM, Udhay Shankar N <[email protected]> wrote: > "We've all heard the "herding cats" analogy with regard to managing > programmers. Managing sysadmins is like leading a neighborhood gang of > neurotic pumas on jet-powered hoverbikes with nasty smack habits and > opposable thumbs. Oh, and as a manager you're a neurotic junkie puma > too, only they cut your thumbs off and whereas all the other pumas get > to drive around on their badass hoverbikes and fire chainguns at the > marketing department, YOU have to drive a maroon AMC Gremlin behind them > and hand out Band-Aids and smile a lot, when all you're REALLY thinking > about is how to get one of them to let you borrow his hoverbike for a > few minutes so you can show those fools how it's DONE. This is because > managers are usually people who proved that they were handy with a > chaingun and were thus rewarded by having their thumbs cut off and their > weapons handed to some punk college hire."
Amateur. I find that a healthy sense of terror helps keep sysadmins in line. It also helps if they don't think of you as the manager but as the BOFH keeping an eye on them. -- b
