On Sun, Nov 10, 2013 at 9:26 PM, Edward D'Azzo-Caisser <
[email protected]> wrote:
>
> When I look at our community, I see people concerned about system
> administrators being knowledgeable and qualified. I see it whenever someone
> asks for help in IRC and elsewhere, whenever someone volunteers to mentor a
> protege and whenever the subject of the profession or education as a whole
> comes up. Why not make "knowledgeable and competent" system administrators
> the central goal and look at what we need to accomplish this? I think a
> base body of knowledge is important for the ideal administrator. A code of
> ethics is also important, so is continued education and a number of other
> factors. Let's assume there are a few more out there, too. Now, assume
> someone tries to start their career right and achieve all of these goals.
> How do they know where to begin? If they make some headway, how do they
> know they're on the right track? When they're done, how do they know
> they've succeeded? That's where I think you should direct this endeavor.
>
This is more in line with why I'm interested in professionalization - to
ensure that systems administrators are practicing their trade in accordance
with recognized best practices, in an ethical manner, and have the training
and ongoing educational support to do so. I personally am less interested
in the licensing and competition restriction aspects that mark some
professions (although I would want to see the day that totally unqualified
people can't BS their way into a sysadmin job, and cause their hiring
organization to suffer as a result.)
One of the definitions of professionalization that I think is simple and
achievable is the one from the L. Cox paper (dissertation) from 2010, which
states three attributes:
1) a [recognized / accepted] Body of Knowledge - this has been started by
some community members (Halprin and Tsalolikhin) but is only an outline of
an best practices audit checklist / normative literature list respectively;
I think that the meat of a BOK will come out of the higher-ed institutions
that are offering / working towards a 2/4-year degree in systems
administration/operations, since they need this for their curriculum (also
the open-source OpsSchool movement is producing instructional material as
well, not sure if any higher-ed institutions have/will adopt this.)
2) A Code of Ethics - LOPSA and USENIX/LISA already has an agreed-upon
CoE, so this exists already.
3) A Professional Organization with a growing set of published papers and
best practices - We seem to have two professional organizations: LISA (nee
SAGE, the USENIX SIG) and LOPSA. LISA does have a set of published papers
("Short Topics" books, and the annual LISA conference proceedings) but not
sure that anyone is promulgating a set of best practices at this point. (As
far as a "best practices" set goes, I like Limoncelli et al's book "The
Practice of System and Network Administration", and would like to see this
endorsed by LOPSA/LISA.)
There is much work to be done in this area, but over time with people's
effort, is think the above is doable,and would form the basis for folks who
want to be known as a professional systems admin/operations practitioner.
Thanks,
Will
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