Comment Re:Production enviroments (Score 1) 500
Some of the comments here remind me of a post on a woodworking board a few months back. Essentially, the poster was lamenting because he had to fire a guy because he couldn't afford to keep him... Not because of the economy, but because the guy was an absolutely inflexible perfectionist. He'd spend $300 worth of time on what should have been a $60 job... The guy was a hell of a woodworker, at home in his own shop, but just couldn't adapt to a production environment.
This isn't about Windows vs. Unix. This is about admins not understanding their job is to get production rolling again, not to satisfy their obsessive need to understand every problem or their need to satisfy their ego. ("I'm a UNIX admin dammit, I refuse to use habits that make me look like a Windows admin" or it's equivalent is a refrain modded up again and again here on Slashdot.) If a reboot or a re-imaging fixes the problem, that's the right solution. If it doesn't, *then* you dig deeper.
The trouble is that the job of "get production rolling again" is not really an System Administration problem. That job is as an "System Operator", from old 70s and 80s parlance. Many people who are labeled "Administrators" are administrators in name only, and in practice do not have the actual authority to actually make decisions which are a core part of being an administrator ("systems" or otherwise). The fact that most people with this title don't realize this, and demand the authority, makes it hard for them and for the rest of us.