Comment reality checks (Score 4) 246
As another in the countless horde of the "been there, done that, probably going to do it again" types, I feel that the only wisdom I can add to this is a little reality check:
You are not curing cancer.
You are not saving the world from mass destruction
go home.
Too often, I find that we sysadmins shoot ourselves in the foot by trying too hard to meet a user's requests. We get a project request, bust our ass to complete the project in record time, and please the user community immensely. This is all fine and good until we get another project request, and now we're expected to complete it in record time as well because "you did it once before, why can't you do it again?" Usually, in the first instance, it was not necessary for us to complete our project so quickly. Our users would have probably been happy if it was finished a week or two later, but we delivered if only to demonstrate that we could. But then we've doomed ourselves, because now the user expects miracles to happen; s/he actually makes plans based on the fact that miracles occur on a regular basis. And we chastise them for their naivete, even if we set them up for it in the first place by working hard when we really shouldn't.
Why do we work so hard? Part of it is to keep the high-paying job, but it's mostly because we take some sort of masochistic pride in burning the midnight oil longer than anyone else; working on some component that has been deemed mission critical by someone who has grown too lazy to know how to conduct business with an abacus. And we call this martyr syndrome professionalism.
But in the end, for most of us who work for corporate or academic institutions, what have we accomplished when we finally go home? Some people can receive an e-mail about "How to make $$$$ FAST" in ten seconds instead of ten minutes. Some people can make more money in less time. Some people never notice that anything changed. Their lives go on.
I'm not saying that we should be fat and lazy, but we shouldn't be burning ourselves out when we don't have to. Yes, there will always be projects and network outages and an ever-increasing pile of work that we need to tunnel out of, but no it doesn't have to all be done today. Any project that requires any sort of planning should be done without anticipating anything like overtime. If overtime is required, it has to be for a good reason. Too often, we bitch about having unreasonable project deliverable dates, but that's usually because we just don't know well enough to push back.
You are not curing cancer.
You are not saving the world from mass destruction
go home.
Too often, I find that we sysadmins shoot ourselves in the foot by trying too hard to meet a user's requests. We get a project request, bust our ass to complete the project in record time, and please the user community immensely. This is all fine and good until we get another project request, and now we're expected to complete it in record time as well because "you did it once before, why can't you do it again?" Usually, in the first instance, it was not necessary for us to complete our project so quickly. Our users would have probably been happy if it was finished a week or two later, but we delivered if only to demonstrate that we could. But then we've doomed ourselves, because now the user expects miracles to happen; s/he actually makes plans based on the fact that miracles occur on a regular basis. And we chastise them for their naivete, even if we set them up for it in the first place by working hard when we really shouldn't.
Why do we work so hard? Part of it is to keep the high-paying job, but it's mostly because we take some sort of masochistic pride in burning the midnight oil longer than anyone else; working on some component that has been deemed mission critical by someone who has grown too lazy to know how to conduct business with an abacus. And we call this martyr syndrome professionalism.
But in the end, for most of us who work for corporate or academic institutions, what have we accomplished when we finally go home? Some people can receive an e-mail about "How to make $$$$ FAST" in ten seconds instead of ten minutes. Some people can make more money in less time. Some people never notice that anything changed. Their lives go on.
I'm not saying that we should be fat and lazy, but we shouldn't be burning ourselves out when we don't have to. Yes, there will always be projects and network outages and an ever-increasing pile of work that we need to tunnel out of, but no it doesn't have to all be done today. Any project that requires any sort of planning should be done without anticipating anything like overtime. If overtime is required, it has to be for a good reason. Too often, we bitch about having unreasonable project deliverable dates, but that's usually because we just don't know well enough to push back.
