System Administrator Appreciation Day

jcookeman writes "Today is System Administrator Appreciation Day: 'a special day, once a year, to acknowledge the worthiness and appreciation of the person occupying the role, especially as it is often this person who really keeps the wheels of your company turning.' Congratulations to all who keep the electrons of our global networks flowing properly!"

Too bad...

[Teddy_Roosevelt]

you're so buried in emergencies you won't be able to enjoy it...

Thanks, administrators!

[ReformedExCon]

I usually take the network administrators for granted and I think that's a testament to the great work that they do. Like the best technology, the best system administrators run so smoothly that you don't even think about them.

I've been lucky in that every company that I've worked at has had very professional and very knowledgeable system administrators. I know there are a lot of system administrators on this site. I'd like to take this opportunity to say Thank you.

I'll be sure to kick the ethernet cable out of the wall and "forget" my password just for them.

Thats just great

[BaudKarma]

So when is Payroll Clerk Appreciation Day, or Staffing Manager Appreciation Day, or Database Administrator Appreciation Day, or appreciation days for any of the other vital positions that keep a company functioning? Why are Sys Admins (and secretaries, I suppose) singled out for their own special day?

Re:Thats just great

[RobotRunAmok]

Why are Sys Admins (and secretaries, I suppose) singled out for their own special day?

Because they are traditionally the touchiest and thinnest-skinned groups within any corporation?

Re:Mmhm. And I'm the Pope.

[Nytewynd]

As a developer this makes sense to me. Sysadmins and developers suck at site design. That's why we hire people to make them pretty, so we can slap the backend on it. (Ha, I said "slap the backend".)

re: we need a service...

[ed.han]

here's the problem, as i see it: don't we have a lot of these days already? boss's day, secretary's day, etc.? i mean, you wanna talk about scope creep, folks, and here we see it w/ days set aside for pretty much everything.

i'm not saying admins, bosses & secretaries don't deserve a special day set aside to recognize the ways in which they're helpful (hopefully!) and are appreciated: they do. what i'm saying is that isn't this really true of everybody, though, regardless of job title of responsibilities?

ed

Relevant UserFriendly strips:

[Roguelazer]

• http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20020726& mode=classic [userfriendly.org]
• http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20030725& mode=classic [userfriendly.org]
• http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20040730& mode=classic [userfriendly.org]
• http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20050729& mode=classic [userfriendly.org]

:-)

Who the {bleep} cares

[FatRatBastard]

Wow, and during the same week as Retired Japaneese Pole Vaulter Appreciation Day. Who'da thunk it.

The only "appreciation day" I give two shits about is pay day. Everything else is touchy-feely, new age pablum.

Re:Thats just great

[lord sibn]

Perhaps you are correct, but I would suggest that you consider one other possibility:

Sysadmins have one of the most thankless jobs in the world.

I only administrate my own home network. If I am at home, I am ON the network. if there are network problems, I am always the first to know.

Yet, I have my own phone line, and as soon as there is any hint of trouble with the network, my phone starts ringing. Maybe sysadmins are a touchy bunch, but you know what? 100% uptime is impossible. And anything less than that makes you the complaint department. It is nice to know that at least one day out of the year, there will be some people who think "ya know, he couldn't have prevented that DDoS attack, but hey, he did what he could to defend against it."

My whole point is that the sysadmin often looks like the bad guy, simply for delivering the messages, and in spite of all his hard work... well, let me put it this way. My ISP (Comcast) works well *most* of the time. Quite coincidentally, I had connectivity problems for ~20 minutes this morning. Did i think "Goddamn those motherfuckers?" You bet your bippies I did. Because I, like anybody else, do not appreciate it when things stop working. On the shoulders of a good administrator lies the weight of the world. He's not perfect. And nobody likes when stuff breaks. And when he fixes it, nobody cares. They're still pissed off that it was broken at all.

So... are we really touchy? maybe. Maybe we just hate it when people click "OK" on every goddamned popup window, javascript dialog window, or banner ad that happens to resemble a windows dialog window (just like my dad), and then act like it is *my* fault for fucking up his machine.

Re:Thats just great

[Shaper_pmp]

Well, possibly because Payroll Clerks or Staffing Managers:

• Aren't responsible for equipment you use all day, every day.
  
• Don't get incoming jobs and have to prioritise them minute-by-minute, or have to face explaining to their bosses why there's a whole office full of people unable to do any work.
  
• Rarely have to work evenings or weekends.
  
• Rarely have to explain hideously complex technical issues to ill-educated managers/directors, then live with the consequences when they overrule your recommendations[2].
  
• Can stuff something up and not bring the whole company down until it's fixed.
  
• Have a vastly less complicated, technically (and mentally) demanding job[1].
  
• Aren't frequently chronically underfunded, overworked and blamed for screwups caused by cheap or old equipment, and, finally...
  
• Aren't blamed, every time when you stuff your computer up because you don't know how to operate the damn thing, and blithely assume no matter how badly it's hosed it'll be fixed and replaced within an hour or two at most.
  

Ok, I'm over-egging it slightly, but offhand I can't think of many other occupations where every essential system the company uses is under your purview and where one mistake can hose whole sections of the company and lose man-weeks of working time.

Sysadmins probably have the least-recognised job in the company - when they're doing their jobs well you never even notice they're there, and the only time you notice their existence is when something goes wrong. And when it does all the blame generally falls on the sysadmin for not preventing it (no matter how stupid, unlikely or unforeseeable "it" is).

I should probably point out I haven't done a lot of sysadminning for several years, but I remember vividly the irritation caused by idiot managers and clueless users ("Yeah. Uh, I deleted my Program Files directory, and when I ran Excel it had an error, and it mentioned Windows, so I deleted my Windows folder, and now it keeps on giving errors... Oh, and I have a presentation to finish for 16:00").

I also remember the incredibly frustrating attitude many users seemed to have - that you were there solely for their convenience, rather than to maintain the system that keeps the entire company running.

Sysadmins, I salute you.

Footnotes:

[1] Obviously this depends on the size and complexity of the network (and how well you've got it set up), but in general I think "sysadminning" is harder than (say) "accounts", in terms of diversity of skills required and sheer amount of time you have to spend teaching yourself new things every week.

[2] Although everyone who's ever worked in an office appreciates it, there's a reason Dilbert works in IT. Whether it's because the underlings' jobs are so obscurely technical, or because IT just attracts managers who are fuckwits, the PHB-quotient in IT is easily ten times any other discipline in the company.

No, because

[Sycraft-fu]

They are one of the groups that if they do their jobs really well, you don't tend to notice, you only notice when they screw up, or when they are gone (janitors are the same way). I mean if the developers do a great job and create a great product, it gets noticed, if the marketing guys come up with a way to market things that increases sales, it gets noticed. However if the network and servers are running perfectly smoothly for a year, peopel just get accustomed to everything working properly and don't notice. They don't notice until something goes wrong, then they are angry.

So it's just a nice way to remember the people that make it easy and efficient to do your job. Now maybe yours don't, but if you work in an environment where the servers are reliable, systems work smoothly, etc, then you have sysadmins who are doing their job well.

Re:Thats just great

[Malc]

So when are the appreciation days for CEOs, Parking Enforcement Officers, documentation writers, municipal works engineers, etc, etc, etc. Where do you draw the line, or decide who gets an appreciation day? Is the world so full of groups of pathetic people that they need this kind of attention? Or has everybody become so self-absorbed and selfish that they need to reminded of others? Or perhaps it's just self-important people trying to promote themselves and have their egos stroked. Personally I endeavour to appreciate everybody and be nice and considerate to all around me. If we all make more of an effort to think of others than these appreciation days are irrelevant.

Re:Thats just great

[Willis Wasabi]

Being one I won't guess at whether sysadmins are considered thin-skinned or not.

However, your opinion that secretaries are touchy and thin-skinned only shows that your concept of "secretary" comes from 60s sitcoms. Get real. A secretary is the person you go to when you actually want something done. Not talked about endlessly in meetings or pointed to some large bureaucratic process, but just done, now. They certainly have thicker skins than developers.

Re:Thats just great

[jim_redwagon]

Actually, my understanding of those who complain the most about sys admins are the ones who don't know what you do. PHB-types would be my guess. I hope anyone with 1/2 a sense of computers understand how hard it is to do what you do. Those people who complain and hit OK for a free iPod? They deserve all the crap that happens to them and their computers.

In short, i hope all of you admins out there know that the people like (most of) us here, know what you go through and appreciate it.

Now, can you open port 8080 for me?

Re:Thanks, administrators!

[dotgain]

If you've got such a chip on your shoulder, it's probably because you suck as an SA. You complain about people opening attachements and getting infected - why didn't you stop them? It's their fault you let them get a virus in the incoming mail? No, it's yours.

You want thanks more than one day a year? Get over yourself. While I understand how important your job is to you (I'm an SA, and it's important to me), don't expect anyone to think less of themselves in your wake. You have a special skill that your company needs, but so does nearly everyone else there.

Today it is just as important for those system admins that feel "hated" and "blamed" to take a step back and look at what they're doing. For most of the time, most of my users have _loved_ me as an SA, because I'm calm, not condescending, and actually try and find ways to help people, not jargon to confuse them with.

To those SAs that to do a great job and regularly get approached by staff because they're approachable, well done and enjoy your day.

Me, I work at a fisheries where only a small fraction of the staff are users anyway. So I get no animosity because nobody sees me get in their way, and the office staff appreciate me because I find ways to make them do their job more easily and with less error.

That's why I deserve to be appreciated. Not because I have the root p/w, not because I can potentially fuck your wages up, not because I can delete all your email.

Re:Thats just great

[legirons]

"So when is Database Administrator Appreciation Day?"

Uhh, every time they get paid $500 for a day's work?