On Thu, Jun 13, 2013 at 03:02:08PM +1000, Pidgorny, Slav (GEUS) wrote:
And what exactly is the dilemma - to be effective or ineffective, or cheap or not?
the dilemma - more of an irony, really - is that a good sysadmin often looks like they're not doing anything, because they're not panicing, and their systems don't fall over all the time. the irony is that a sysadmin is only noticed when something goes wrong. if you do your job well so that things don't go wrong, some bean-counter will start to think you're not needed. they won't discover they were wrong until six months or so after you're no longer around to do all the little preventative maintainence things that stop tiny problems from cascasing into gigantic problems. and even then, they won't see the connection. the irony is that the crappier you are, the more it gets noticed how hard you're working (because you're working stupid rather than working smart), and the more valuable you seem to people who have no real idea what it is that sysadmins actually do, anyway. since these people control the paychecks, doing a quietly good job can be detrimental to your continuing employment...so make the effort to make sure that someone - your direct boss at least - has some idea of what it is that you do. a corollary to this is that while the really difficult things you do (the ones you're personally very proud of having achieved) probably won't get noticed at all, you will get lavishly praised for the most trivial, easy, no-brainer things that you can do without breaking a sweat. there's no point in explaining how trivial the latter is because they'll think you're being modest...and as for explaining how difficult the former was, they just won't/can't get it. learn to accept this, you can't fix it - it's just something weird that non-geeks do. one of their many quirks and foibles. all of this is inherent to the nature of the job. craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au> BOFH excuse #102: Power company testing new voltage spike (creation) equipment