Paul Graydon wrote: > Brandon S Allbery KF8NH wrote: > >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >> Hash: SHA1 >> >> On 7/15/10 12:27 , Derek J. Balling wrote: >> >> >>> I think there's certainly that fear. I mean, as I was a junior, I had a >>> mentor who was very understanding about the "junior guy making >>> mistakes"[1], but I've witnessed less understanding sysadmins berate a >>> junior guy for making the problem worse when "the problem was so simple a >>> [pejorative] could have fixed it". >>> >>> >> A senior SA who does something like that should not be "senior". >> >> > Agreed, but it's probably not surprising to any LOPSA member just how > often you come across them. > > Paul Yes, it happens far too often. My first supervisor had a fiery temper that could be triggered by the simplest mistakes, and it was not fun getting blasted for making mistakes when learning something new. I eventually discovered that if I made a mistake and took the problem to him (rather than him tripping across the problem on his own) he was much more amenable to helping me fix it, instead of blowing his top - but it was definitely trial-by-fire in my early days!
Don't do this to people. Be understanding, we all have to learn the ropes. Someone who is learning needs permission to make mistakes. You don't learn if you don't make mistakes (or at least you're not learning as much as you could!). There are different ways that this can be accomplished - not making the junior admin's first job be to work on the most-business-critical system that you own, is a good first step. Encourage the admin to ask questions, and let them know that no question is 'too trivial' or 'beneath you' to answer. There are no stupid questions! Whenever possible, provide a safe (non-business-impacting) environment for the admin to experiment in. For Unix/Linux issues, my favourite is to use virtual machines. I have a couple of lab boxes running VMware that my team uses for 'what if?'. They understand the value of checkpoints and 'groundhog day'. It only takes me a few minutes to trigger the building of new VMs that can be tossed away when no longer needed, and anyone can have root on their machines to try any kind of simulation - my team (who are not sysadmins) are learning a lot about systems administration, debugging, and developing without the shadow of failure being an issue. Encourage success! When the admin does something correctly they need positive feedback - more than they need negative feedback when they fail Praise in public, correct in private. Praise them in front of their manager (if that's not you) and their team! Take any corrective discussions away from others' ears. This is especially true if you are much more senior than they are, but you should even do this if you are at the same level or below the person who is being praised or corrected. You'll be developing a environment of trust, which is essential to good working relationships. - Richard _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
