Re: [SAGE] Tests for Systems Administrator interviews.

[David Wolfskill <david@catwhisker.org>]

>To: Robert Brockway <robert@timetraveller.org>
>Cc: sage-members@usenix.org, maddog@shamet.sub1.dsl.verizon.net
>Subject: Re: [SAGE] Tests for Systems Administrator interviews. 
>Date: Tue, 24 Aug 2004 10:41:55 -0400
>From: Jon maddog Hall <maddog@li.org>
>Sender: owner-sage-members@usenix.org

>On one plane I might agree with you, and you are certainly welcome to select
>to your expectations, but if you extend your thoughts to covering all of what
>people need in "systems administration" today, you would be hard pressed to
>find them in one person.

I agree with that perspective, especially when I'm looking at "position
available" ads for UNIX sysadmins, but one of the requirements is
proficiency with (say) Windows NT.  As someone who considers using such
systems in a network to be about as desirable as building a house with
timbers pre-infested with dry rot, I find that both annoying and
offensive.

>...

>I remember one time advising my boss at Bell Labs that an average MVS system
>needed four systems administrators:

>	o one for MVS itself
>	o one for CICS
>	o one for VSAM
>	o one for VTAM

>and heaven help us if we got VM/CMS and TSO (although why anyone would want
>TSO when they had VM/CMS is beyond me).

Well, TSO ("Time Share Option") was part of MVS, not VM (or VM/CMS) --
though you could run MVS (and TSO) under VM.  And TSO wasn't really
optional, at least during the 1982 - 1993 period that I was an MVS
sysprog.  And I'd quibble a bit with the breakdown above, but the numbers
are about right.

>If you don't buy the security issue, than what about database?  Does your one
>systems administrator know how to:

>	o tune all of these different operating systems?
>	o set up security on all of them?
>	o set up, populate, back up and tune your Oracle databases?
>	o leap the tallest building in a single bound?

Indeed -- that's another thing I'm finding in the ads: they want an
expert in high-availability UNIX systems, who also happens to have had
several years' experience being an Oracle DBA, for example.

Peace,
david
-- 
David H. Wolfskill				david@catwhisker.org
Evidence of curmudgeonliness:  becoming irritated with the usage of the
word "speed" in contexts referring to quantification of network
performance, as opposed to "bandwidth" or "latency."