Confessions of a system administrator: how the family sees my work

The day of the system administrator (or rather, the day of recognition of his merits) is a wonderful occasion to look at yourself from the outside. See yourself and your work through the eyes of loved ones.

The position of "system administrator" sounds very vague. Sysadmins are responsible for a wide range of different devices, from desktops to servers, printers and air conditioners. Therefore, when introducing yourself to another IT specialist, you need to add at least one clarification. For example, "I'm a Linux system administrator." But how likely is it that our non-tech-savvy family members understand exactly what we do?

I thought it was funny to ask my family about it. Just in case, I'm not technically a sysadmin since joining Red Hat. Nevertheless, I devoted 15 years of my life directly to system administration and network technologies. But asking family members what they think the Technical Account Manager does is another story.

What do my loved ones think

I asked my wife about my work. She's known me since the days when I worked on the front line of technical support in the late nineties. Interviewed parents, mother-in-law and father-in-law. Talked to my sister. And at the very end, for the sake of interest, I learned the opinion of the children (kindergarten and fourth grade of the school). At the very end of the article, I will tell you what my relatives described.

Let's start with the wife. We've been together since the early days of my career. She has no technical education, but she knows how to handle a computer better than many. We are about the same age. It is logical to assume that she understands exactly what I do. I asked: "What do you think I did as a sysadmin?"

"Pants sat out!" she blurted out. Hey, take it easy! I work standing at the table. After thinking about a more serious answer for a couple of seconds, she said: “You check your mail, fix all kinds of computer things when they break. Um… well, something like that.”

Computer? Is this even a real word?

Then I decided to talk to her parents, people very close to me. My father is a retired truck driver, and my mother worked in trade all her life. They are both far from technology (and this is quite normal).

My mother-in-law answered me: “You work at the computer all day long.” When I asked her to refine her answer a bit, she said, “I always felt like you were working all day on how to help schools with computers, systems, and security.”

The father-in-law gave a similar answer: "Security and protection of the system in the school to avoid external threats."

Well, not bad answers.

Then I talked to my own parents. Unlike my wife, mother-in-law and father-in-law, they live far away, so I had to email them. Dad used to run a small telephone company. To be honest, he inspired me to choose a profession. I got most of my information about computers as a child from him. He may not be a computer genius, but among his peers he is definitely cool. His answer didn't surprise me: "A sysadmin is the kind of guy who yells 'NO!' when a user is about to do something stupid to a computer or corporate infrastructure."

Fair. Even before retirement, he didn't get along well with his IT guys. “And yes, he is also a brilliant engineer who keeps corporate systems and the network afloat despite user attempts to break everything,” he added at the end.

Not bad, even though his opinion of the role of a sysadmin was shaped by his own experience with the corporation that owned his phone company.

Now mom. She is not good with technology. She understands them better than she thinks, but still, how the technique works is a mystery to her. And she's not going to reveal it. In short, an ordinary user.

She wrote: “Hmm. You create computer programs and manage them."

Reasonable. I don't code often, but for most end users, sysadmins and programmers are the same people.

Let's go to my sister. We have about a year and a half age difference. We grew up under the same roof, so as a child, she could get as much technical knowledge as I did. The sister chose to go into business and deal with health issues. Once we worked together in technical support, so she is on “you” with a computer.

To say that her answer surprised me is to say nothing: “What are you doing as a sysadmin? You are the grease in the gears that keeps everything running smoothly, whether it's network connectivity, email, or any other function a company needs. When a message arrives that something is broken (or users complain about a problem), you are the spirit of the technical department, who is mysteriously always on duty. You are presented as stalking around the office looking for a broken outlet or a damaged drive/server. And you hang a superhero cape on a hook so that there is no static. And also - you are the same inconspicuous bespectacled man who diligently looks through the logs and code in search of a comma, because of which everything broke.

Wow sister! It was great, thanks!

And now the moment you've all been waiting for. What do I do for a living in the eyes of my own children? I spoke to them in turn in my office, so they didn't get any clues from each other or from their elders. Here's what they said.

My youngest daughter goes to kindergarten, so I didn't expect her to imagine what exactly I was doing. "Um, you did what the boss said, and mommy and I came to see daddy." (“Um, you did what your boss said, and me and Mommy came to see my Dada.” is an untranslatable childish play on words).

The eldest daughter is in fourth grade. All her life I worked as a system administrator in the same company. She has been participating in the BSides conference for several years now and attends our local DEFCON as long as it doesn't interfere with her daily routine. She is a smart little girl and she is interested in technology. She even knows how to solder.

And this is what she said: “You worked on computers, and then you messed up something, and something broke, I don’t remember what.”

It is truth too. She remembered how a couple of years ago I accidentally destroyed our Red Hat Virtualization Manager. I had to gradually restore it and return it to service over the course of three months at night.

She then added, “You, uh, also did websites. Tried to hack something or, like, fix something, and then you had to fix your own mistake.”

Lord, did she remember all my mistakes?!

What did I really do

So what did I do anyway? Which of my works were so reverently described by all these people?

I worked at a small liberal arts college. Started as a sysadmin. Then I was promoted to senior sysadmin. In the end, I rose to the rank of HPC systems administrator. The college used to use on-premise before, and I became their guide to the world of virtualization. I designed and built their Red Hat virtualization clusters, worked with Red Hat Satellite to manage several hundred (when I left) RHEL deployments.

At first, I was only responsible for their on-premise email solution, and when the time came, I helped them migrate to a cloud provider. I, along with another administrator, managed most of their server infrastructure. I was also (unofficially) given security responsibilities. And I did everything possible to protect the systems under my control, since we did not have specialized specialists. I automated and scripted a lot. Everything related to the presence of our college on the Internet, ERP, databases and file servers was my job.

Like this. I talked about what my family thinks about my work. And what about you? Do your family and friends understand what you do all day long in front of the computer? Ask them - it can be very interesting!

Congratulations, friends and colleagues. We wish you meek users, understanding accountants and how to relax on the weekends. Do you remember that working hard on a Friday night is a bad omen? 🙂

Source: habr.com