March 20, 2010
There’s an exceptionally interesting and well-written post on The Daily WTF titled Up or Out – Solving the IT Turnover Crisis. Edit I feel like I should mention that it’s a couple of years old, too. That doesn’t change the validity of the text.
Spend some time and read the article. Written specifically for programmers, I think a certain amount of it holds true for sysadmins as well. Generally speaking, I don’t think our turnover rate is as high as it might be for developers, but I know a lot of people who always have their eyes on the horizon to see what jobs are coming up.
As for the strategy the author advocates the company take, I can see it working well in the right circumstance. It’s unfortunate (or fortunate, given my hopefully long-term employment) that my company doesn’t take that view. Essentially, Alex suggests that organizations utilize the Cravath Hiring System, specifically implementing the “Up or Out” concept.
Up or Out dictates that you hire in very bright individuals who stay a relatively short time. After three years or so, they should move on from the company, and be considered alumni (as opposed to former employees), or they should be promoted to a higher status within the company. The purpose behind this is to limit the “dead weight” that might otherwise accumulate in people who are just doing enough to get by.
I’m certain that there are a lot of places this could (and does!) get by. My company isn’t one of them. Really, for me at my company, there is only where I am, or out. My immediate superior is the CTO. My pay can increase, but my responsibilities have capped out, I suspect. My junior admin can probably only advance to where I am, if I get hit by a bus (or whatever “out” method is used).
Please don’t think that I’m complaining. I’m not. Far from it, in fact. I consider it a benefit that there’s no political intrigue involved, no ladder to climb, and no shifty dealing or complaining about other people advancing. I can concentrate on doing the job, rather than caring what my title will be next year, or whether I’ll finally get a corner office. I know I won’t, so it’s out of the equation.
On the other hand, you could see it from the perspective that I miss out on certain carrots. Sure, sysadmins in general don’t make “partner” very often, but for certain people, a bigger name plate (or more minions) are big incentives. Someone like that wouldn’t do well in my company. Neither would the deadweight do well, either. We’re small. Less than 20 people total. If one person does’t pull their weight, it slows the rest of us down, like a herd of buffalo. Or brain cells.
No, I (and probably you), have intrinsic motivation. I don’t expect direct rewards (or even outward appreciation, typically) from doing my job. The reward is that my infrastructure works the way it should. Sure, I have certain long term goals, but I can’t accomplish them if I don’t accomplish my short term goals first.
So reading this article made me wonder how other people see sysadmin career advancement? Are you climbing the ladder at your work, or are you climbing the ladder of sysadmin jobs in general? What motivates you to stay (or leave), and how will you know if you’ve “made it” (or if that’s not even your goal).
Me? I stick with a position for as long as it’s interesting and I can keep learning things. I don’t see either of those changing anytime soon here.
Posted in General 
11 Comments »
March 15, 2010
PRESS RELEASE
Discounted fee schedule ends Sunday, March 21st
New Brunswick, NJ, Today 42, 2010 – The Professional IT Community Conference (PICC) early bird registration prices have been extended for one week, in order to assist area administrators who have been hit with the economic downturn. This short term rate reduction ends Sunday, March 21st. Until that time, the price for the two-day conference is $249, or $399 for the conference and training. Special low prices are available for students, as well, with conference and training only $99.
The New Jersey chapter of the League of Professional System Administrators, an organization dedicated to facilitating information exchange pertaining to the field of system administration, extended the reduced rate “early bird” registration, citing their desire to ensure that all area system administrators had a chance to take part in the conference. The significantly reduced pricing schedule has been designed to appeal to administrators from infrastructures of all sizes. The conference will be held Friday, May 7th through Saturday, May 8th at the Hyatt Regency in New Brunswick.
The Professional IT Community Conference is a gathering of people from the diverse IT community in New Jersey to learn, share ideas, and network. The conference will include invited speakers and keynotes, top-notch training sessions that are relevant, useful, and recession-friendly, as well as an “unconference” track where attendees propose and host their own topics.
LOPSA-NJ and the Professional IT Community Conference are dedicated to fostering our local expert community and strengthening tomorrow’s computing infrastructure.
For Media Inquiries:
Matt Simmons
PICC Marketing Chairman
http://www.picconf.org
Email: media@lopsanj.org
Tel: +1 (740) 403-9997
Posted in General No Comments »
March 15, 2010
How fast should your switches be?
Sure, the answer is “as fast as you can get”, but we don’t all have the budget for, say, this beast (chassis sold separately). Lots of us don’t have money for even a 48 port Gb managed switch.
So when deciding on a switch to buy, there are a lot of variables to examine.
First, the hard requirement is the number of nodes we have to connect to the network. Then we have niceties such as management (so that we can configure and monitor them, use VLANs, etc etc), whether or not they’re stackable and all that…but where does speed come in?
Obviously, a 100Mb/s switch costs less than an otherwise equivalent Gb/s switch.
The rule of thumb I’ve been operating by is that the end user switch shouldn’t be the bottleneck. In other words, the users in my offices talk to servers over the WAN. I’m never (not soon, anyway) going to get a GbE WAN link between my sites. Because of that, the 100Mb/s switches we’re using don’t hold us back. We don’t share files between the users directly, so anything bigger would be overkill.
If my users used local servers, though, an increase in switch speed would dramatically improve the response of the server. The quality of experience would improve, and it would be worth upgrading the switch.
What kind of mental calculations do you use when picking a switch? I’m interested in learning if there’s a “right” way, and if not, maybe we can aggregate all the ways we make the decision into some smart ideas…comment below!
Posted in General 8 Comments »
March 14, 2010
Hi All,
I spent some time last night upgrading the blog to the latest versions of Wordpress and plugins. I also added a mobile version of the site, so handheld device users can actuallly use the site now without zooming in.
Also, with the help of Greg over at Reject Reality, I got WP SuperCache working. This will hopefully let the blog take more and more traffic as time goes on, and delay me ordering a new virtual host (I go with the guys at prgmr.com).
Anyway, the point of this post is to ask you to let me know if you notice anything strange. Drop me an email if you see anything weird, or if the mobile site shows up but shouldn’t, or any of that. This is my blog, and I write in it, but you all are the ones who are good enough to read my stuff. The least I could do is make it easily accessible to you.
Thanks for your patience, and thanks for reading!
PS – I’ve added a Google Translate widget to the far right bar. This is the first step in what I hope will be many that enable this blog to be read by non-english speaking people from around the world. Please let me know if you have any questions or problems with it.
Posted in Administrivia 9 Comments »
March 12, 2010
I’ve got another column up at Simple Talk: Sysadmin today. It’s called Unteachable Disaster Recovery Techniques.
This is a true story, and it happened last week. I felt so strongly about it that I wrote the entire entry in one sitting.
Please give it a read through, and remember to rate it using the stars! Thanks!
Posted in General 3 Comments »
March 12, 2010
My company has decided that I need to learn more about administration of the Postgres database…which is to say that I should learn something about it. My knowledge is really pretty scant at the moment.
To that end, they’re sending my boss, my junior admin, and me to PostgreSQL East, a conference held in Philadelphia from March 25-28th. We’re doing the conference thing, plus doing training on Sunday.
Anyone out there attending, too?
Posted in General 3 Comments »
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