Sage Managers Mailing List

[octelb.octel.com">richard]

ANNOUNCING ANNOUNCING ANNOUNCING ANNOUNCING ANNOUNCING

This is to announce the creation of - at the very least a mailing list called
sage-managers. After 4 weeks of mailings, I will incorporate most 
of the following -in a distilled fashion into an info sheet.

The purpose is to discuss the issues around management AND system administration.

This includes:
   .I am an administrator -how do I make my boss aware
	of the real issues when he's a basic dork who couldn't
	spell adminestrutor right twice in a row.

   .How does a technical person work for a non-technical manager.

   .What makes managers tick and how can I get them to
    tick for me.
 
   .System administration is not a recognized "profession" but
    it is challenging and much more technically intensive than simple
    coding -how can I open my boss's eyes to how important and
    challenging the work is.

   .I need a manager to help me talk to another manager about
	the real problems he will face. My boss won't beleive me, but may
	listen to a disinterested 3rd party.
  
   .Why aren't managers seemingly interested in crucial issues that can
	affect the productivity of their whole engineering staff.

   .etc

Basic ground rules ---
  1. I am not interested in the gory details of war stories of how big bad
	 management likes to eat pore little administrators. I am interested in
	 what people are doing to get managers to listen to the issues.

  2. I am interested in collecting a set of issues that administrators have with
     management, categorizing them, and then in a working group -or whatever
	 developing approaches to addressing those issues.

  3. I am interested in developing the Rob Kolstead survey information into something
	 that can be selectively presented to management as truly representative of
	 "our industry". I don't completely know what this means yet, but I have
	 seen the herding instinct work well in managers --( "Oh charly has
	 5 administrators -well we better have 5 of them thar things too ...)
	
  4. I would like to develop a network of support. This is different than a support
     group in that all snivelers and whiners can find the door right now. I am purely
	 interested in what will work to get a "china white" pipeline of information
	 travelling between administrators and management. I am not interested in
	 just data, but information which means that there is something 
	 beyond factoids in what is being passed around between people. Part
	 of what we have to do is find out what that something else is and nurture it.

  5. I would like us to discuss issues of presentation of information upward and
     outward. Ie we can all talk to each other in enough of a shorthand to exclude
	 many many bright and interested people from the discussions. I would like us to
	 look at how to present information so as to include people not exclude them
	 (Stop that snickering in the back row there ...)

Last -I am open to what else we should do beyond this that fosters our ability
to work hand in hand with management so that we become a team and not a group of
co-dependent ninnies -hanging onto each other but never truly supporting each other.

Oh yes - The last system I truly hands on administered was System III. I was
OS manager at Onyx, Dorado (for a teensy bit), and then Software and network
development Manager at Arete, Arix -Third Party and services manager at
Arete, a consultant for innumerable years -primarily in process automation
(IE a PE in control systems engineering - not a wayward MIS director).

Currently I am manager of Development Engineering Services
at Octel, where my administrators threaten to sew my elbows to my hands if I try
to do anything that resembles real administration ever again.... And so it goes.

To join the list mail to MajordomoUSENIX.org

in the BODY ofthe message say

subscribe sage-managers
	 
	 Until then....
	 Richard Karasik