On Sun, 19 Jul 2015, Joseph Kern wrote:
Well, there is a lot of argument that in the medical field, the system
keeps out good doctors as much as it creates them. Talk to people who learn
medicine outside the US and then move here where their qualifications are
not recognized.
Yes. And? There are a lot of people that go overseas for medical treatment
because it's cheaper and just as good. Free markets at work!
If we change our subject to Lawyers: every single one of them need to pass
the bar exam in every state they wish to practice. What affect does locking
out capable lawyers "because they don't test well" have on the state bar
association? Minimal I think as most people want a Lawyer that can "test
well". ;-)
actually, I think most want lawyers who can talk well.
I think you have as much of a chance to enforce "Ethics and Standards" in
Ssytem Administration as you do in Sales.
I think we are talking about the same things here David. I am not arguing
for or against "Professionalization". But to say that there is no chance in
hell of creating a standard of fundamental instruction or ethical practice
goes back to my original comment, "Man, if you have to ask what jazz is,
you'll never know." If we go down this road, we can quickly say that
"System Administration cannot be taught, System Administrators can only be
born", which is a false statement, and more than a little self-aggrandizing.
:D
I am not saying that system administration cannot be taught, but I am saying
that you don't have to be taught system administration to administer systems.
Of course System Administration can be taught! Of course there is an
implied ethical constraint in designing an organizations information
infrastructure! Have we found the fundamental principles that bind these
things together yet? No. I don't think many people have actually looked.
Where is our Little Schemer[1] for System Administration? This is what I
mean when I say fundamentals; teaching System Administration from first
principles. A verifiable (internally consistent), fundamental (from first
principles), education (free or paid for), and from this logical approach
an ethical system should arise naturally within the constraints of the
system.
I also don't think that we are anywhere close to the point where we know "the
right way" to administer systems. We know many ways to administer systems, all
of which work within a given set of contraints (including the time of the
administrators). We also know that some things don't work well at large scale,
even if they work at smaller scales.
We have lots of people who think they know the one true way to administer
systems, and they frequently disagree with each other.
I like to say that for every technical "never do that" rule that someone states,
there is some place and set of conditions where doing that is going to be
exactly the right thing to do.
Everything that we do is a tradeoff. Even patching is a tradeoff between the
time it takes to patch, the fixes that the patches provide, and the bugs that
the patches may introduce (including revealing existing bugs in applications
that didn't trigger pre-patch). And then there's the new thinking that you never
patch a system, you build a new system from scratch and swap out an existing
system.
As a result, there is no "ten commandments" of patching, the patching policy can
be very different even within one organization.
The most we are able to really do is to list the current set of issues that you
work on balancing when setting policies.
Some of the most damaging things I've seen done are by sysadmins who believe
that there is only one right way of doing things and start doing them that way
in a new job without finding out how the team they are on do things and break
things they didn't know existed.
David Lang
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