On Thu, 26 Feb 2015, Chris Manly wrote:
From: Adam Compton <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Subject: Re: [lopsa-discuss] What is a System Administrator
In light of a number of very inclusive responses like this one, I think it
might be fruitful to also ask the negative case: what is a System
Administrator not?
I think for me, sysadmin is a constellation of affiliated tasks that is most
distinctly characterized by:
1) Managing technology on behalf of a user (or set of users) so that the user
can focus on the "day job." We make tech work, and specifically we make it
work for people who are trying to get things done and for whom managing tech
would be a distraction from their primary work, rather than the focus of their
primary work.
2) Taking on aspects of other technical specialities, but generally not
developing deep specialization in those tasks. We may well write programs to
accomplish sysadmin, but programming is not the primary focus of our job. We
may engineer networks, or write business cases, or manage projects, or do
reporting, or user support, or any number of other things, but it tends to me
more of a jack-of-all-trades role than deep specialization in one topic.
So by that token, I'd say that in general a sysadmin isn't building technology
for technology's sake (although we've all had our moments of doing some clever
hacking for fun, I'd suspect), but rather building/supporting technology for a
purpose. And I'd also a sysadmin doesn't go as deep into any one field as
someone who's role is to specialize in that field.
A System Administrator is not building products that customers use. They put
together the systems to support the product, and may do things like build mail
servers that the customers login to, but they aren't writing the code for things
that are sold to customers (barring minor exceptions in customizing opensource
code to work better as a part of what is being sold)
In tiny companies, a person may wear many hats and be the Sales team and the
SysAdmin team and the Finance team (or the entire C*O team), but wearing the
SysAdmin hat, the job all revolves around making things work and keeping them
working. If you are implementing new features that the users are going to see
directly, it's probably not SysAdmin work.
David Lang
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