Now I'm starting to understand Dilbert.

Greenbean

http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/259/

I wasn't sure whether to throw this into Humour or Work. The article is basically about a softly quietly approach to being a system administrator. On the whole its not that bad, though it does seem slightly scewed. Its the comments that you've really gotta note. I've quoted a few classic comments:

"By the time you lose your adolescent psychic armour shielding (the I-know- everything-and-you're-an-idiot thought process mother nature gave you to help you keep from committing suicide because you're socially clueless and can't get the chicks...), you had damn well better have some maturity and coping skills."

"Why become a sysadmin at all, other than to feed some inner need for attention? There is very low sense of satisfaction once you realize that you,
the sysadmin, will often not get the training, travel, benefits, including pay, or a role that others positions receive, while you will get all the pressure, negative comments, and unbudgeted problems on the planet. You are a cost center, not a profit center. Simply realizing "It is not you" doesn't help when you are the one waken at 2:00am, or spending your weekends redoing systems or networks that were never done right because "there was not enough time or money"."

"See, the working world is a big food chain. The farther up it you climb, you'll find bigger (and more)predators at every rung, along with a bunch of little, agile predators climbing their way up behind them. As an employee in a big company, you're usually subject to having all those above you and all those below you making you wish you weren't there. However, there is a well known solution to this: You can beat this problem by being either 1) Smarter than the rest or 2) Tougher than the rest or 3) Posessing powerful maxial/rectal massage skills (able to kiss a geometric-growth array of butt). I think we can all probably guess how your Boss got to where he is on the ladder..."

"And if nothing else works, try to become a "sub" for a cute girl who wants to be an S&M dominatrix. At least you'll be able to learn to associate abuse with getting a woody. This might help you in your future career path, or at least you'll make lots of new "friends" who'll be honest, caring and open about wanting to abuse you. 9 out of 10 Sadists prefer Windows to Linux, by the way."

"Read the article and loved it. Realizing it will not alwys fit everyone's world, was about to print it out and hang it for the SysAdmins here when I noticed one glaring issue....

The article does an excellent job at not stereo-typing the "user" that always comes to the Admin. You refer to them as a 'person', 'they', 'them', but never indicating who 'they' might be, until the section about giving them something to do, and suddenly... your end user becomes a "her"."

Hobbes

It fails to point out the luser who comes up to you asking you to fix a printer that says "out of paper" for the n'th time.

Or the "I didn't like how the machine was set up so I deleted loads of stuff, and now it doesn't work anymore".

Or the "What do you mean I have to delete something? I'm only taking up 80GB in powerpoint attachments (most duplicated)".



[This message has been edited by Hobbes (edited 16-06-2001).]