Joe McDonagh <[email protected]> writes: > I don't really see what the point of hiring a networking guy is if you > plan on kicking up your networking skills? > > It seems like you should just hire a guy who knows networking better > than you and invest in upping your skills in other areas, maybe management.
Have you ever been managed by someone who is completely non-technical? Have you ever tried to hire and manage someone whos skillset is completely outside of your own? I mean, sure, if you are management, managing people who know more than you do is your job. However, if you don't know /anything/ about what they are doing, you are relying on blind trust. I mean, I need an accountant, right? Of course, I am going to get an accountant who knows more than I do about accounting. But, I am in a /much/ better position if I know a little bit about accounting than if I know nothing; really, the more I know, the better chance I will be able to identify the right accountant to hire, and the better chance I'll be able to get that accountant to do what I want. Now, of course, if I'm managing a hosting company, I probably don't want to spend a lot of time learning accounting. I'm probably better off relying on trust and references, etc... than primarily relying on learning accounting myself. (I probably want to do that some, though.) But, if my job was to manage accountants? then I'd probably be best off spending a whole lot of time learning accounting.) I know it is often said that if the people who work for you aren't better than you are, you aren't doing your job (as a manager) and certainly, for the generalized manager who manages several types of employees, this is the case. But really, the more you know about a particular specialty, the better people you will be able to get. This is /especially/ important when managing a more focused group. If your job is primarily to manage SysAdmins, you probably should be an expert SysAdmin... and in that case, sometimes it makes sense to hire less experienced people and train. My personal standard for hiring sysadmins is not "are they better than I am" because I can't afford those people. My standards is "Is there a chance they will be better than I am in at least one category within X months, if I train them?" So, i guess the question is "how central is managing network admins to your job" - If that's all you do, really, you should spend a lot of effort learning their craft. it will help a lot. If managing network folk is for you like managing accountants is for me, something that is important but not central to your job, you probably want to put less effort into learning networking, but still, knowing the basics will help you a lot. _______________________________________________ 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/
