Who am I?
So I've been a systems administrator in varying capacities for ten years. Things got really serious in 1999 when I became the main Linux guy for an ISP, and went on from there into a small and medium business consulting/outsourced IT dept style business, on into a startup (yucky!), then to a large local government, then a large telco/ISP, and now a small/medium internet infrastructure company. I've worked on a range of operating systems in a number of different environments, but I ended up specialising heavily on Linux, obtaining an RHCE in 2003 and using it to leverage myself into big business.
Except as of a few weeks ago, I'm not a Systems Administrator anymore. I've been promoted to production support manager at my current workplace, and on reflection I better write down some of my knowledge and attitudes fast, before I forget it all. I've also been hiring them lately, so the quality of applicants - and the qualities I look for - have been on my mind.
What is a Systems Administrator?
A sysadmin is a guy who makes servers work. These days that means helping management choose equipment and software, getting the equipment and software working together and maintaining it thereafter.
Servers form the core of a business's information technology. They store all your data, the send your email all over the world and receive it, they keep track of your Internet sessions and phone calls, your credit card transactions and your driver's license, your medical bills, everything you ever bought or sold, every transaction you made or action you took that there is any kind of electronic record for has touched on servers. To see this website you've contacted at least one webserver, and to find it you probably brushed on dozens.
Servers are the computers you never see because they're locked (literally behind palm-locks and thumb scanners) in deafeningly loud air conditioned humidity-controlled dust-free rooms the size of football fields or tennis courts called 'Data Centres' nowadays, humming away and cheerfully helping you perform every part of modern life.
A sysadmin's daily job typically comprises installing new servers, managing access to servers, backing up all that data, backing all that data up some more, updating and upgrading software on servers, decommissioning old servers and migrating data around. It means figuring out how to get the functionality his business or organisation needs, finding the most reliable and cost effective means of achieving it, convincing the business to adopt it and making it work thereafter.
Good systems administrators in good companies spend the bulk of their time preventing bad things from happening and finding new ways for IT to improve their organization's efficiency. Bad systems administrators or good ones in bad companies spend the bulk of their time fixing problems that come up - usually the same problems over and over again.
What does is take to be a good systems administrator?
Here's where I want to focus today's article. These are the qualities I believe make a good SA - not things you can learn like experience or qualifications, but the intrinsic qualities you arrive on the scene with. I'll deal with experience and qualifications in another article - this one will focus on the things you can't learn - you either got it or you don't.
1. Intelligence
All of the best sysadmins I've worked with were smart, and all of the bad ones were varying flavours of idiots. It's that simple - intelligence is the most important trait. Computers are complex and server systems are the most complex of all. If you don't think you're smart, now is a good time to give up on this career.
2. Interest in computers
Fact of life #2 is that geeks make the best sysadmins. If you're not interested in computers then you're going to quickly fall behind the guys who go home and play with their eight computers there. You aren't going to learn about new technology as quickly and you're not going to work as hard at the weird little technical problems as the nerds, and you just aren't going to care as much if the backups seem to take longer every day.
Nerds think about computers all the time, and their intense interest means they don't miss the tiny clues and warning signs that let a good sysadmin stop trouble before it becomes a problem.
Most importantly, being interested in computers means that nerds learn about them more quickly. They'll go home and play with the new technologies that interest them, they'll mess around with them in their lunch breaks and if they're doing personal web surfing it's more likely to be a technical site than something irrelevant.
I've worked with a lot of different sysadmins in my time - and in my experience the ones who had no interest in computers outside of work could obtain competency in the field but no more. Their knowledge and skills always paled in comparison to the Nerds.
3. People Skills
I know - this is going to sound weird - but the fact is that computers have absolutely no purpose whatsoever without people. If you don't understand people and aren't interested in them at all, you're going to suck at systems administration. All your brains and nerd knowledge mean nothing if you're totally incapable of matching the technology to the needs of the people and the organisation around you.
To a degree, you can learn this one. But if you aren't interested - for the love of god go do something else. Science or something, I don't know.
Believe it or not, that's it. If you've got those three traits - or you have two and a half and are still building the third - you can one day be an SA. If not, give it a miss - the field is already full of mediocre bozos. One thing you don't need is a penis - I've only worked with one female sysadmin in all that time, but she was one of the best.
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