Comment Systems Administration Survival Guide (Score 1) 903
I first spent 2 years as a student worker in the MIS department of a community college I was attending. I assisted the computer operator running the mainframe by doing backups, answering phones, etc. He got promoted and I got his job. I held that job for 5 years and took an entry level job as a UNIX Systems Administrator. I got paid peanuts for two years until I read a SAGE salary survey that pointed out this fact. After gently hinting about other job opportunities in the real world I got a HUGE raise (to where I should have been) and stayed another three years. After that I moved on to several dot coms that soon failed. Now I'm unemployed (via a layoff) in a bear job market. All this without a college degree (1/2 way to a B.S. in Physics) or any certifications (MSCE, Solaris Certified Administrator, CNE, etc.).
People who go into Systems Administration (especially UNIX) are of a certain breed. While most everyone else runs away from technology, we eat it for breakfast. Rather than get political we have a tendancy to want to jump in, get our hands dirty and solve the problem now. Unfortunately, companies have learned to unfairly take advantage of this and set up traps that we all too often walk into.
As for myself, all along the way I constantly shot myself in the foot because I fell into the trap of thinking logically about business. Realise this: ALL BUSINESS IS FUNDAMENTALLY EVIL. Not evil by intent. Just so self-serving such that it's actions have far reaching bad consequences for us all. Unless we move to a desert island and learn to be content with the life we can find there, we have to fit in and serve the beast somehow, eh?
So, the best thing you or anyone can do for themselves is to know what you're walking into! Have some standards and force yourself to check the company out periodically. If they aren't up to snuff you need to quietly stay in your job while desperately looking for a better company.
How will you know you've found a better company? To answer this question I sat down with a former Systems Administrator co-worker (also out of work) and came up with a questionnaire. Each question comes from a situation where we took the fall where the company was at fault due to their own cluelessness as to how to properly implement IT. You assign a point value to each question thus declaring the relative importance of each issue to you personally. Then you honestly respond to each question in a comment field. From the response you assign a percent score showing how well the company "got it".
All this is automatically tallied (since the questionnaire is in spreadsheet form) into a percentage score that you can use to compare the prospective company against all of the companies you've worked for. I even put the questions that were likely to be answered before you start working for the company in bold. This way you can get a "heads up" on the company before you leave your old job. In fact, on my questionnaire by how I weighted the questions, about 50% of the "dirt" on a company can be found before even accepting the job offer! If I only had this before I started working for any of the companies I've worked for!
My questionnaire is broken down into these categories and subcategories:
Fiscal status/Corporate profitability outlook
Market
Funding
Maturity
Facilities
Common facilities
Personal facilities
Remote facilities
Miscellaneous
Existing IT implementation
Redundancy/reliability/quality
Facilities
Due diligence
In-house authored documentation
Standardization
Support
Resources to support IT
Budget
Politics
Managerial philosophy/expectations
Technological bias
Fiscal realism
User management
Techies as "super glue"
Managerial style
Mid-level/Senior Techie management
User management
Proactive management
Micromanagement
Miscellaneous
Human Resources
Benefits
Legal
Policies
Miscellaneous
This "Systems Administration Survival Guide" questionnaire is currently at version 2.0 as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. I will email a copy FOR FREE to anyone who wants it. Send your requests here. Don't forget to remove the "removethispart" from the email address. It's an anti-spam measure.
