So the last Friday of July has come - System Administrator Day. Of course, there is a small amount of sarcasm in the fact that it takes place on Friday - the day when, in the evening, all the funniest things like a server crash, mail crash, failure of the entire network, and so on mysteriously happen. Nevertheless, there will be a holiday, despite the workload of the period of general remote work, a gradual return to bored and run wild offices and various new infrastructure in the arsenal.
And since it's a holiday, Friday and summer, it's time to relax a little. Today we will answer Yandex's questions - not all of them will answer ours.
Disclaimer. Article written by an employee under the heading "Free Microphone" and did not pass any approvals. The position of the author may or may not coincide with the position of the company.
Why are sysadmins so arrogant?
The work of a system administrator in most cases is setting up a network, users, workstations and software, controlling license cleanliness and information security (from antiviruses and firewalls to monitoring user visits to sites) in small companies. In small (and often medium-sized businesses), the entire IT infrastructure is shifted to their shoulders, including user incidents, business needs, telephony, mail, instant messengers, and the organization of corporate Wi-Fi points. Do you think that I will now write that such a load is already a reason to become arrogant? No.
Admins are not arrogant, admins are angry, tired and annoyed. In the complex, this is very similar to arrogance, especially when he is once again forced to repair the MFP due to a stuck paper clip from a ream of papers and therefore rolls his eyes and swears quietly. And there is also this:
- the manager believes that if pirated software is posted, it means that someone needs it, including him; he prefers to βthink about tomorrowβ about fines;
- employees consider themselves true hackers and therefore manage to catch viruses, burn ports and carry components home;
- the system administrator is forced to have lunch, smoke and go to the toilet with a phone, because for not answering within 3 minutes, an accountant or manager can snitch on the boss;
- everyone thinks that the system administrator is a slacker or, according to the generous version, someone like a computer genie who has to fly into the scene of an accident at the touch of a phone button;
- if the system administrator is associated with development, then the blame for the delayed or overdue release will be shifted to him - it was he who did not prepare the assembly, the test bench, and something else unknown. And no, the gouging of the development department and the evening raid on WoT by testers instead of regression testing of the build has nothing to do with it.
In general, you will be arrogant here. The severity and anger of a system administrator is a defensive reaction of a tired and wound up person. Smile, don't interfere in his work, treat him to something tasty and you will see that he is a good guy. And there you can ask for a comfortable keyboard. This one, white and with high clattering keys.
Why don't sysadmins get paid enough? Why do sysadmins get paid so little? Why do sysadmins get fewer programmers?
This is not a myth: the average office system administrator actually earns less than a developer or programmer of the same level. This is due to the fact that formally the technology stack owned by the system administrator is smaller than the one used by the programmer. In addition, the work of a system administrator often has a lower intellectual load than the work of a programmer. However, this applies only to "general profile" companies. In IT companies, the situation can be completely different; a system administrator can cost much more than a developer.
If you are a system administrator, do not worry about salary, but just learn and grow: system administrators with good knowledge of network technologies, DevOps, DevSecOps and information security specialists outperform even senior developers in salaries.
Why are sysadmins skinny and programmers fat?
Because programmers sit on the fifth point and code for 8-16 hours a day, and system administrators rush to their workplaces all the time, run to servers, work in a cool server room, and you also need to be thin to pull cables in a false ceiling. I'm kidding, of course.
In fact, it all depends on a particular person: a programmer can work out, go on a diet and have dinner with cottage cheese and a banana, and a system administrator can eat delivery from McDonald's and beer for dinner. Then the distribution of weights will be reversed. Therefore, it is better for system administrators who are immersed in monitoring and scripts, and for programmers who sit at a PC for a long time, to follow a few minimum rules:
- walk up the stairs and not use the elevator;
- on weekends, choose active types of walks (biking, swimming, active games);
- take at least 3 breaks for a walk, run up the stairs or warm up;
- do not eat any snacks at the PC, except for vegetables and fruits;
- do not drink sweet soda and energy drinks - choose coffee, different types of tea and tonic plants for all occasions (ginseng, sagaan-dali, ginger);
- eat on time, and not in one sitting before bedtime;
- By the way, about sleep - get enough sleep.
And why? In order not to get diabetes and atherosclerosis, which will ultimately ruin the functioning of the brain and the body as a whole. Finally, physical activity stimulates the supply of oxygen to the brain, and this makes work easier and more productive. So that.
Why don't sysadmins like cacti?
I remember this story almost from the end of the 90s: our institute was automated early, computers were installed in all departments, and each computer had a cactus. Because the cactus, according to the ancient office belief, was supposed to save from radiation and electromagnetic radiation, there were still versions βfrom computer radiationβ and βfrom a computerβ in the world.
System administrators do not like cacti and any other flowers near the working computers of company employees for several reasons:
- when you have to work with a monitor or keyboard, repair an employee's laptop, it's easy to drop and break a pot with a green pet, and this is sad;
- watering flowers leads to an increased risk of watering office equipment, which, unlike cacti and spathiphyllums, does not tolerate water at all and may die;
- earth and dust are also not the best friends of office equipment;
- cacti, spathiphyllums and other anthuriums and zamiokulkas do not protect against radiation and radiation - firstly, there is no radiation there, secondly, modern monitors are absolutely safe, thirdly, there is no scientific evidence or even hypotheses that plants are able to protect against what or radiation.
Flowers in the office are beautiful and pleasing to the eye. Do everything so that they do not stand near computers, printers and in the server room - organize your office space beautifully. The system administrator will thank you and even water the flowers in difficult times.
Why sysadmins don't like tech support?
Because she got it. Joke. Nobody loves their worst past. Joke. Well, in every joke, as you know, there is some truth ...
In general, yes, technical support from a third-party company or your own office is a separate story, which requires fiber optic nerves to participate. If we are talking about technical support for an external company, then the system administrator, as a rule, is annoyed that young supporters do not understand his professional formulations and answer exactly according to the script. It is not often that you can find sensible support from a hoster or ISP, because they βgrindβ and update staff very quickly. Technical support staff are often unable to delve into the problem and help in fact. Well, yes, business processes interfere with a bad supporter.
Their technical support, especially in an IT company, most often annoys with a request to do everything for them: the clientβs node has fallen, the client cannot cope with telephony, the clientβs software has not got up - βVasya, connect, you are an admin!β
To defeat the problem, you just need to delimit the areas of responsibility and work strictly according to requests. Then the clients are full, and the supporters are safe, and eternal glory to the system administrator.
Why don't sysadmins like people?
If you still don't understand, let's continue the conversation. System administrators are communicators by their job needs. They need to work with every colleague and do it within the bounds of decency and culture, otherwise they will be recognized as toxic and sent to job search sites.
They don't like it when people don't consider them human and demand very strange things: fix a car or a phone, wash a coffee machine, "download Photoshop so that it's free for home", issue a key to MS Office for 5 home PCs, set up business processes in CRM, write a "simple application" for automating advertising in Yandex.Direct. If the system administrator suddenly does not want to do this, he, of course, is enemy number one.
They donβt like being put up as their boyfriend and are actively friends with them in order to ask them to clean up the logs of online stores at the end of the month, which took 80% of all traffic and about the same amount of working time. Such friendship offends rather than pleases.
Sysadmins do not tolerate when they are considered idlers, because it is not obvious to office colleagues that in addition to running around the offices and setting up the Internet, the sysadmin is engaged in monitoring the network and devices, working with documents and regulations, user settings, configuring telephony and office software and so on. What little things!
Sysadmins cannot stand it when users pry into their work, comment on actions and lie about the causes of the incident. The system administrator, he is like a doctor - he needs to tell the truth and not interfere. Then the work will be done much faster.
These are the people sysadmins don't like. And they love simple and cool guys in the company very much - and in general the system administrator is the soul of the company, if the company is good. And how many tales they have in store!
Why will sysadmins not be in demand soon?
This, of course, is a lie and a provocation. The profession of a system administrator is changing: it is being automated, becoming more versatile, and affecting related areas. But it doesn't disappear. Moreover, the IT infrastructure is changing a lot now: business is being automated, IoT (Internet of Things) is developing and being implemented, new security technologies, virtual reality, work on loaded systems, etc. are gradually being introduced. And everywhere, absolutely everywhere, engineers and system administrators are needed to manage this fleet of hardware, software and networks.
Certain skills may turn out to be unclaimed, which, for example, are replaced by robots and scripts, but the profession itself will be in demand for a very long time - and, as we could see, the transition to remote work and back clearly demonstrated this to us.
So system administrators will become cooler, stronger and more expensive. In general, don't wait.
Blitz
The tambourine is the talisman of the system administrator. When hitting a tambourine, all problems are solved: from a cable wound around the leg of a chair to working with highly loaded systems. Windows without a tambourine does not work at all.
Mathematics is necessary for every IT specialist. It helps to think logically, consider the system as a whole in engineering, and allows you to solve some network administration problems. In general, a useful thing - I recommend it.
Python is a cool programming language, it can be used to write smart scripts to manage IT infrastructure and work with operating systems (mainly UNIX). And everything that is controlled by a script makes life easier.
Programming is needed for the same purposes. And you can also cut a side project and one day go into development. And also understanding of programming helps to become more familiar with the principles of operation of computers.
Physics - but how the current will shy away! But seriously, elementary knowledge of physics helps to work with networks, with electricity, with insulation, with optics, with communications, etc. For my taste, it's even cooler than mathematics.
SQL is mostly needed by database administrators, but basic knowledge will not bypass the system administrator either: SQL helps to set up and manage backups (you do backups, right?). Again, this is a significant plus in employment and growth prospects.
And this is more of a set of memes - google it
Why do you need to know how sysadmins store passwords? Safely stored.
So the answers to the questions are pretty simple and obvious. Therefore, I wish users to treat sysadmins as real pros and great helpers, not to deceive them and not try to seem like a computer genius.
System administrators can only wish for reliable networks, trouble-free IT infrastructure, not very cunning users who understand bosses in the replacement fund, always cool technical support, stable connections and a cool ticket system.
For the connection and the working script!
By the way, suddenly you are a system administrator (or not) and you have been given the task of finding a cool CRM system. If anything, we introduce our completely remotely for 14 years, so write, call, tell, present and implement honestly, without markups and hidden fees. I answer.
Source: habr.com