On 05/02/2011 09:27 AM, Jeroen van Aart wrote:
Jeff Wheeler wrote:
IT managers would do well to understand that a few smart programmers,
who understand how all their tools (web servers, databases,
filesystems, load-balancers, etc.) actually work, can often do more to
I fully agree.
But much to my dismay and surprise I have learned that developers know
very little above and beyond their field of interest, say java
programming. And I bet this is vice versa.
It surprised me because I, perhaps naively, assumed IT workers in
general have a rather broad knowledge because in general they're
interested in many aspects of IT, try to find out as much as possible
and if they do not know something they make an effort learning it.
Also considering many (practical) things just aren't taught in
university, which is to be expected since the idea is to develop an
academic way of thinking.
I work with a bunch of developers, we're a primarily java based
company, but I've got more than enough on my plate trying to keep up
with everything practical as a sysadmin, from networks to hardware to
audit needs, to even start to think about adding in Java skills to my
repertoire! Especially given I'm the only sysadmin here and our
infrastructure needs are quite diverse. I've learned to interpret java
stack traces that get sent to me 24x7 on our critical mailing list so
that I can identify whether is code or infrastructure but that's as far
as I go with java. I don't particularly see that I need to either. I
strive to work with//developers, no 'them vs us' attitudes, no arrogant
"my way or the highway". I can't conceive why anyone would even
consider maintaining those kind of attitudes but unfortunately have seen
them frequently, and it seems so often to be the normal rather than the
abnormal.
Programming is not something I'd consider myself to be any good at.
I'll happily and reasonably competently script stuff in perl, python or
bash for sysadmin purposes, but I'd never make any pretence at it being
'good' and well done scripting. It's just not the way my mind works. I
have my specialisms and they have theirs, more productive use of time is
to work with those who excel at that kind of thing. Here they don't
make assumptions about my end of things, and I don't make assumptions
about theirs. We ask each other questions, and work together to figure
out how best to proceed. Thankfully we're a relatively small enough
operation that management isn't too much of a burden.
Smart IT managers, in my book, work to take advantage of all the
skills that their workers have and provide an efficient framework for
them to work together. What it seems we see more often than not are IT
managers that persist in seeing Sysadmin and Development as 'ops' and
'dev' separately rather than combined, perpetuating the 'them' vs 'us'
attitudes rather than throwing them out for the inefficient, financially
wasteful things they are.
Paul
