[rescue] Small servers (was Re: WTT: 1.5G of PC2700 for 1G of PC100)

[Shannon Hendrix]

On May 6, 2008, at 12:06 , Robert Darlington wrote:

> I personally feel a CS grad would make a great
> secretary or technical writer for procedures based texts, but not a
> sysadmin.

Well, I'm comp-sci and do a better job with admin than most of the  
admins I have met.  I frequently have to do my own admin work if I  
want anything to work right.

A good computer science degree is a superset of what you need for  
being a good system administrator.  It's mostly a matter of do you  
want to be an admin, or would you rather stick to more traditional  
comp-sci jobs.

It is more efficient in many cases to separate those jobs, but only if  
each side is competent and understands the needs of the other.

Most sysadmins I've worked with who just had vocational training are  
terrible.  They might really know the material they were taught, but  
have a really hard time when you get away from that.  Worse, it is  
impossible to explain to them why some of their decisions are a  
disaster for the software and running it efficiently.

Certainly an admin can self-teach themselves that knowledge, but the  
point is they do need to do so somehow, in order to be effective  
machine managers.  All of the good admins I've met went well above  
just vocational training, or they consulted the comp-sci guys as needed.

The ones who don't absolutely suck to work with unless the work is easy.




-- 
Shannon Hendrix
shannon at widomaker.com