Happy System Administrator Appreciation Day

An anonymous reader writes "Today is the 8th annual System Administrator Appreciation Day. It is always the last Friday in July and is the one day that SysAdmins are supposed to get the respect they deserve to be getting the other 364 days of the year. Today is the day that we wish everyone would considering the daunting tasks, small budgets, and ridiculous timelines that many SysAdmins face all year. Please thank them for everything they do for you and for your business. If you think you have a great SysAdmin today would be the day to nominate them for SysAdmin of the Year. 'The idea for System Administrator Day was inspired by a print ad for a Hewlett-Packard laser jet printer. The ad showed lines of employees bringing gifts for the IT guy who made the purchase. System Administrator Appreciation Day has, over the years, garnered support from many organizations."

I Choose Not to Participate

I don't care for this. They get paid for their job. They get a 'thank you' from me and other people. They don't act like my servant, they give me more crap than I give them, they're not here at all hours of the night when I'm coding to help me, they don't care whether I succeed, etc. It's not like they're an administrative assistant (Secretary's Day) to one person who needs to show them some appreciation once a day.

Why do System Administrators get a day? Why not Database Administrators? Why not Systems Architects? Why not Software Developers? All of these people are needed just as much as any of the others to achieve success.

System Administrators must be much different at other companies because I haven't met one that I've particularly thought deserves a whole freaking day devoted to celebrating them.

If you can read this, thank your sysadmin

Yeah, and when do you think the Software Developer who made and maintains the page, the web browser, the web server and the operating systems of both the client and host? Gee, it's not hard to recognize that everyone contributes a vital need to meet a goal. If they didn't, they wouldn't be on the team!

Flamebait, I know ... but I had to get that off my chest.

Re:I Choose Not to Participate

It has been going on for like 8 years and nobody has heard of it so I doubt they are getting much love anyway.

Re:I Choose Not to Participate

Probably because at any place that's not an IT company (and under a thousand people), all of those jobs are the same 1-5 guys.

Re:I Choose Not to Participate

So call it 'Tech Support' day or whatever instead of limiting the name of the day to a subset of the job!

That does seem appropriate, I vote for "geek apprciation day". Shoot, we all deserve it -- now if you'll excuse me, I have to go clean up some luser's mess. Funny how it feels like just another day...

Re:I Choose Not to Participate

I think that may be what they were going for, Sys Admin is only recognized as a subset by those of us in geek departments. I am a Network Admin and I view myself as a sys admin, but I also view our DBA as a sys admin, and same goes with the web dev. Of course I havent worked in a company where there are more than 15 IT people but it has been my experience that when shit hits the fan, the DBA, web dev, app devs and whatnot all are asleep in bed while the "Sys Admins" take the call until the devs and dba's have their morning coffee.

Of course I also view Sys Admins as anyone who is responsible for the system, essentially a support staff for the people that actually do the work. The web dev and DBA at my current job actually handle everything that people touch via a front end or see on the web, my job is to make sure they can get things done.

Re:I Choose Not to Participate

Developers don't need a holiday, they get the opportunity to attend dozens of "developer day" events all over the world. Support staff have their own appreciation day (I can't find a link to what day that is, but our company celebrated it recently). What do IT guys get? Calls at 3AM, ever shrinking budgets, every greater system complexity, and occassionally, if they're lucky, they get a day in a classroom that ends in a test and all they get is a shirt that in many cases I have gotten that actually reads "...and all i got was this lousy t-shirt."

My position is not officially "sys-admin" but I support hundreds of them with my companies backup product and am constantly on remote connections rebuilding servers, diagnosing systems, and personally feel the pain not only of one shop's system troubles, but can attest to the fact that sys admins all over the country have some of the most thankless jobs going. I work 60 hours every week, am wakened frequently from sleep, and spend hours on conference calls with panicking customers, resellers, and site managers. ...and I don't even have to deal with end users!

I barely stay sane in my position, and I don't have budget issues or roll-out deadlines. I don't know how you guys do it. I did it years ago when things were simpler and even then it was a suck job. I've also been a programmer before and can definitively say that even under production deadlines, and the stress of problem solving and code testing, being a coder is a hell of a lot easier than being an admin. It also takes (typically) requires less frequent training on new systems and processes (once you know C++ you're good for 10 years), and programming PAYS BETTER. So any of you coders that bitch about how cushy our job is, I say to you, YOU TRY IT! Being a sys admin sucks almost as working for a city government, and yet hundreds of admins I know DO work for cities, ouch.

Re:I Choose Not to Participate

I like my SAs and that is why, as an architect/lead developer I always make my systems easy to build (a single build property, a single build file, and 1 DDL and 1 SQL for those DBAs.)

I don't understand this whole Dev/SA rivalry thing.

I've been in the field ten years and all of the developers respect me and have my respect. During a major project, the entire dev team got a big award/bonus, and the lead went to corporate and said he'd not accept this award/bonus unless I was included. Although not part of the dev team, he claimed I was indispensable in the completion of the project. Personally I didn't want it because I didn't think I contributed too much, no midnight calls or usual craziness with a hectic project. Our devs are stellar, they built a great system and only needed help where the abstraction of the programming language was too far out and they needed to do some server side scripting (crons, cmds, etc).

That said all of the sysadmins I have worked with have had great relations with the devs. I've personally never seen this rivalry in person and wonder if it's either died down, made bigger than it really is or so forth. We all work as teams to common goals, we don't sit there and bicker over bullshit.

They respect that I will be the one who has to answer the phone in the middle of the night, deal with hack attemps (or successes if their code isn't up to snuff) and so forth. I respect that they are the ones that have to deliver to the customer a working system. We work together to get there . . .

Re:I Choose Not to Participate

> System Administrators must be much different at other companies because I haven't met one that I've particularly thought deserves a whole freaking day devoted to celebrating them.

"What was your username again?"

> I Choose Not to Participate (Score: 5, Doomed) by eldavojohn (898314)

Ah, there's your username.

*clickity-click*

rm -rf /usr/staff/eldavojohn
mkdir /usr/staff/eldavojohn
wget http://goatse.cx/hello.jpg [goatse.cx] > /usr/staff/eldavojohn/hello.jpg
chown eldavojohn hello.jpg

"Hello, Human Resources? There's something about one of your employees that you need to know about..."

Re:I Choose Not to Participate

rm -rf /usr/staff/eldavojohn
mkdir /usr/staff/eldavojohn
wget http://goatse.cx/hello.jpg [goatse.cx] > /usr/staff/eldavojohn/hello.jpg
chown eldavojohn hello.jpg

"Hello, Human Resources? There's something about one of your employees that you need to know about..."

and they look at the file to see it's just the output of wget.
you should try this:
wget -O http://goatse.cx/hello.jpg [goatse.cx] > hello.jpg

Heh - missed something else too:

rm -rf /usr/staff/eldavojohn
mkdir /usr/staff/eldavojohn
wget http://goatse.cx/hello.jpg [goatse.cx] > /usr/staff/eldavojohn/hello.jpg
chown eldavojohn hello.jpg

"Hello, Human Resources? There's something about one of your employees that you need to know about..."

and they look at the file to see it's just the output of wget.

...and that /home/eldavojohn is still just fine and chock-full of normal stuff.

I mean, cripes, can we at least avoid tempting fate @ the server by not mucking around in /usr here?

Here... I'll fix it for 'im:

mkdir -p /home/eldavojohn/\!special cd /home/eldavojohn wget -m -nH http://barnyardlovers.com/pix/?N=D [barnyardlovers.com] && chown -R eldavojohn:users /home/eldavojohn/\!special echo "Dear Barnyard Lovers \n I'm having trouble renewing my subscription for next year. Please reply and tell me how I can change my credit card info. \n Thank you,\n eldavojohn" | mail -s "subscription renewal trouble, plz help" [e-mail]

I mean, sheesh...

(okay, okay - I'll go back to work now...)

/P

Re:I Choose Not to Participate

This is exactly the attitude that causes the GP to have no positive feelings towards sysadmins.
Why would you be petty and vindictive? You have a small amount of power in an artificial system, lose the god complex. If you were to do anything like this you'd more than likely be fired anyways and go back to being your normal self.

Any time I've been tasked as a sysadmin I've made it a point to treat all my users with respect and take the extra moment to explain things if it seemed like the user wanted to know a little more. Those actions gained me real respect and power.
If you want appreciation as a sysadmin start treating the users that you administer with more respect and make sure that their needs are taken care of before they have to ask. If you have a good relationship with your users you'll hear from them regarding things other than problems... like maybe an invite to the bar, or coffee in the morning.
Having a specific day to "appreciate" anything is stupid, if you do a good job and treat people well you will be appreciated every day.

Re:I Choose Not to Participate

I have to agree. Administration is the smallest part of my job, but one of the biggest headaches; dealing with people who think the world revolves around them and the sun shines out of their ass...People who flat lie about systems stability to excuse their poor performance, people who do mindlessly stupid things for no reason at all. Having to execute poor management descisions, reverse them, execute them again.

Even at the upper levels, there is always some moron who makes it through your minions to bother you when you don't need to be bothered.

Re:I Choose Not to Participate

As for those who think its stupid.. Go ahead and think that.. Next time you fuck yourself by rm -rf / or rm -rf ~/ you get what you deserve and your sysadmin should let you know.

And this is why we need a day to remind people to be nice to sysadmins... Lose the god complex and folks will respect you *every* day.

Re:I Choose Not to Participate

If I drop a drink on the floor, the fucking janitor will do his job, and I won't thank him for it.

I think this says more about you than it does about the grandparent. The janitor may be more replaceable than you (or they may not, after all, there are lots of ACs), but they're still human, and a little respect does a lot to improve the quality of their working environment, which in turn improves that of everyone else who works there.

Re:I Choose Not to Participate

Excuse me? If I drop a drink on the floor, the fucking janitor will do his job, and I won't thank him for it.

Man, you're not an Anonymous Coward. You're an Anonymous Jackass troll. Obviously you were never taught respect or manners.

When I'm working late, and the janitor comes in to my cube to empty my trash, I turn around and say, "Thank you," because he's working late, doing a job that nobody else wants to do, and making sure I can get my job done without having to waste time taking out the trash.

Learn to have a little appreciation for the people who do the things you don't want to do for yourself, eh?

Re:I Choose Not to Participate

Around here, we make SAAD a general IS Department event...everyone geeks out and generally enjoys themselves.

For all of the people who are so adamantly opposed to _any_ sort of "day" for technology professionals...meh. People have birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, funerals, etc, and they are all commemorated in some fashion. I think of SAAD as a good occasion to relax for a day and enjoy things. For the rest of the work year, we will all be trudging about dealing with problems, what is the big objection with having ONE day out of the year where we recognize our achievements even if no-one else does. It is a way of building esprit du corps and good feelings across departments.

(as an aside)
So many frackin' people (I find this especially true in the US) are so hell-bent on being unhappy these days. They want to piss in everyone's Cheerios because they can't be happy...why should anyone ELSE be happy? The last I heard, we all have a time-limit on our existence on this planet, why would you want to spend it being frackin' unhappy? Relax a little people! Loosen that knot around your neck and enjoy just being alive for a moment.

*sheesh*

PONA

cmdrTaco, CowboyNeal, Zonk, et all

unlike the parent poster I appreciate the uptime.

Anyway, with a good sysadmin, all the other stuff can be managed to some degree.. just not as pretty. unless you share admin aesthetics.

Wearing the admin hat is easy, wearing it well is a total pain in the rear.

Noticing a master is the trick

Anyway, thank you slashdot admins for a rock solid site.

Storm

Re:Why?

Blah blah.

Nice to see the trolls out in force.

Sysadmin is a pretty general term these days, but I fall into that category on a number of critical systems. It means that I perform maintenance, upgrades, patches. Means I check the logs on a daily basis, run down obscure errors. I do backup restores, to make sure the guy who is in charge of the backups is doing his job correctly.

If nothing ever goes wrong, then no one knows I exist. Something explodes, and I work Friday night to Monday at 2:00am getting everything back up, and no one even knows that there was a problem on Monday. Then I go on vacation, and something breaks and they call support, and support fixes it and bills them 25,000 dollars because they decided "per incident" support was enough for anyone, and the support guys take a day to fix a problem I could fix in an hour.

So yea, I love it when people who are completely helpless when my systems go down tell me I don't do anything special. I love sitting around at the company meetings where some jerkoff who made 10,000 dollars over his sales goal gets employee of the month, while my jury-rigged failover backup that I put together out of spare parts, which kept the whole company running for 5 days, goes completely unrecognized.

If it weren't for people like me, you'd be using a typewriter and a can phone [indiana.edu].

Re:Why?

Looks like you have run into some real dicks in sysadmin's clothing. The sysadmins where I work actually - hold on - HELP PEOPLE. It's true, I swear!

Seriously, you can find assholes in any profession. If your sysadmins are dickheads, you need to let HR know about it and find some new ones because there are a lot of good ones out there who love the job, like to help people, and have tons of knowledge and experience to share.

Now let's all hug.

Another one?

Really now, does every profession need it's own appreciation day?

Re:Another one?

Only those that feel their profession is tougher than everybody else's and/or feel their profession is underappreciated otherwise.

Re:Another one?

Really now, does every profession need it's own appreciation day?

Yes. I call mine Pay Day. It comes 26 times a year.

No problem.

We just asked the system admin guys to roll out the image we stored from last year's celebration. I mean, why fuss when you have a backup? Of course, we had to have them apply all of the interim patches before we could go live with the party. MAN those guys are grumpy - and this is their Special Day!

oxymoron

Happy SAAD.

In other news...

A hitherto unknown virus has been reportedly bringing down Exchange Server and SQL Server based networks in Europe and Asia...

Who cares

I have worked as a systems administrator my entire professional career (12 years or so), and I couldn't care less about this day.

What is the point of these artificial job-appreciation-days? If someone appreciates me or my work, I would prefer to hear it when they feel like it rather than get a mug or something lame (not that I ever have, no one is aware of this momentous day anywhere I've ever worked, thank god!). Whatever happened to honest sentiment?

10 simple rules to show your appreciation

1. Remember your password
2. Fix your printer yourself.
3. If you get the message "Critical System Updates Available", don't ignore it. Take the updates.
4. Don't get your laptop stolen.
5. Use sudo, not root.
6. If it was working yesterday, something changed. Fess up.
7. Check to make sure its plugged in.
8. RTFM
9. Don't open that .exe your nice new stranger friend sent you.
10. If its 4:55 pm, let it go. It can wait until Monday.

Full disclosure - I work for Hyperic, http://www.hyperic.com/ [hyperic.com], and submitted this story which got beat by the one you are now reading... it was in a blog post Javier Soltero made this morning: http://www.hyperic.com/blog/hyperic/2007/07/27/hap py-national-sys-admin-appreciation-day/ [hyperic.com]

Just a fun conversation about all the stupid things admins have to put up with from their users. I know there's more out there!!! Bring it on ./!

Re:10 simple rules to show your appreciation

7. Check to make sure its plugged in.

7.a. plug it back in
7.b. stop fucking unplugging it

Send them an eCard!

Happy System Administrator Appreciation Day [informationweek.com].

Too late!

It's 6pm here in the UK. Meh.

Silly US centric (that'll get some debate going!) Slashdot.

if the internet is a series of tubes

then system administrators are plumbers 2.0

so as long as you guys can keep your asscrack hidden as you do your work, then you can have your own day

The System Administrator Song

By Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie:

http://www.deadtroll.com/index2.html?/sysadmin/ind ex.html~content [deadtroll.com]

Dan.

...and, so?

Today is the day that we wish everyone would considering the daunting tasks, small budgets, and ridiculous timelines that many SysAdmins face all year.

...and this is unlike the work that most other working adults face because?

And what's with the cheesy HP plug? (Does anyone still really buy HP printers?)

I'm glad SAAD is on a Friday...

...so for the first time this week, I can drink away my day and not have to be at work hungover the next day. Happy SAAD.

free tshrit!

http://www.sysadminoftheyear.com/ [sysadminoftheyear.com]

Oh, and remember: next Friday...

is Hawaiian shirt day. So, you know, if you want to, go ahead and wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans.

I'd like to

But I don't speak Hindi.

experts-exchange

I guess experts-exchange.com took SAAD off. I haven't been able to use the site all day.

Thank me, you and other sysadmins and it'ers of

the other related fields that goes into sysadmining from time to time.

thank us, you and others for making things work as they should.

Huh?

Happy System Administrator Appreciation Day

This is such a stupid celebration. Like anyone has ever seen a Happy System Administrator.

Oh, wait. I see how you meant that. Uhhh... Happy Sys Admin day to you too. (Ah crap - there goes my beeper.) DAMMIT!

Appreciation?

If it wasn't for all of these #$(&%% users, we'd have a really smooth running operation here!

I really do appreciate myself!!!

I thank me for selecting dual-core, dual-monitor, 2 GB RAM desktops and laptops for all of my staff. I thank me for keeping my cell phone on all times of the day and night, in case one of the hot college aides is in the mood for a booty call. I thank me for keeping technical services vendors and central IT honest, by constantly calling them on all of their bullsh!t. Most importantly, I thank me for being the pioneer in my large government agency, who went against what that the CIO wanted in terms of running Microsoft servers and databases and instead running Linux, Apache, Tomcat, Axis, and JBoss (Oracle is my DB)...our uptime, reliability, and performance are the best in the agency. When I submitted a request for a server with 64GB of RAM for my huge-mongous database, the CTO said "but Windows can only address 16 GB of RAM...oh yeah, you're running Linux." Damn right I am!!!

Re:

The appreciation is paying their $150 per hour invoice.

parsing error...

I had a little trouble parsing the article title, at first:

• (Happy System Administrator) Appreciation Day is NOT the same as:

• Happy (System Administrator) Appreciation Day.

Maybe more System Administrators would be happy if we appreciated them more?

Hey, I know! Let's have a Happy System Administrator Appreciat... Ummm... Oh. Darn.

<grin>

The barbarians didn't notice

...So, the gf and I took ourselves out for Thai. Thankfully, the local Thai place has some of the best food and service you can get for a $12 lunch. Maybe we should go home early too. After all, these systems run themselves.

Free lunch :)

We (the UNIX sysadmin team where I work) were treated to Mongolian barbeque [wikipedia.org] for lunch. (In keeping harmony with the irony of the day, it's neither Mongolian nor barbeque - nevertheless, it's good eating). Between this & the Simpsons movie premiering, it's turning out to be a good day!

Happier now that I'm a developer

I spent about 10 years as a SysAdmin. But since I did a fair amount of scripting in that job, and found it the most enjoyable part, I was finally able to get out of it and do nearly full-time development.

Who cares? Well I just mention it since I think I'm fairly objective in comparing how the two are valued in the company. Since this isn't primarily an IT company neither fare well, but I have to say that SysAdmins seem to be at the bottom of the barrel. For whatever reason the work they do, the dollars and behinds they save, are rarely appreciated. I've always found it very odd.

I'm not complaining, esp. as I'm really no longer involved in it. But I do think it's sort of foolish for companies to hold them in so little esteem..........

Tis not easy

I don't know about you guys, but as a UNIX admin I'm on call 1 out of 4 weeks, work frequently on Saturday and Sunday nights during maintenance windows so as to not bother anyone who might be working with those machines and have to work holidays if the systems go down, have frequent upgrade and maintenance cycles, etc. It's not an easy job when an entire organization is breathing down your neck to get things working as quickly as possible. Some appreciation is indeed welcome. I know some devs have to work on the deadline and all, but generally speaking they don't seem to have as much pressure (I'm generalizing; I'm sure there are lazier admins and weird-working-hours programmers too).

Happy System Administrator Day

It ain't workin' for me. Been looking all over for a happy system administrator so I can appreciate him, but I haven't found one yet. Not one.

Another ironic indicator...

of how the balance of power has shifted:

I click da linky to read TFA and am greeted with:

The Site You Are Trying To Access Is Prohibited

Category of Blocked URL: "Entertainment/Recreation/Hobbies;Humor"

How the mighty have fallen.

The people who complain about System Administrator

Either:

A) Have a crappy System Administrator who doesn't care
B) Are the type of user who writes crappy code and blames the system when it doesn't run, spreads bad rumors about IT when they don't get their 36-inch monitors, and screams at IT enforces policies which no one else has a problem following.

I'm gonna guess... B.

Well, I'm dating one

So said sysadmin gets a favorite band's CD, a card, a office cube toy, and a cutesy thing. It's usually something like that. I hope they don't read this, actually, until I actually do it. Beyond that, though, if we had one at our office, I'd do something nice too, beyond the usual stuff year round, because it's another way you can help someone stay motivated to commit more than just the required to their job, by making them want to do it.

Would have been good to know this morning

Today was a living hell for me. I really wish someone could have posted this before my morning slashdot run so I could rub it in my lUsers faces.

I never knew

I had a day, figures I find out at the end of it....

A thank-you on SysAdmin Day

There must be a fine for failing to be cranky or cynical about this.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/17908 [networkworld.com]

10 years in, and still no appreciation

So here are a few things to remember, as to why IT / SysAdmin / NetAdmin / Desktop support people should be appreciated:

1) At 2am, I have to answer my phone - only job in the company where the expectations don't end when you leave the office. Don't believe me, call your CEO at 2am and not get fired.

2) Service windows are in the middle of the night, and we are expected to do our major work at that time. Taking down the email server during business hours is not acceptable to anyone. But we still have to be in the office from 8:30-5, so why don't you figure out how many hours of OT you work. Thats right, we're "exempt" so no matter how many hours it takes, we don't get paid.

3) IT cannot be a line budgeted item. If we need something, waiting until the next years budget to get it isn't an option - no one asks you to band-aide you TPS reports. Technology and requirements constantly change, and new tech comes out all the time. Never mind we don't get $$ per each new hire for expanding our server infrastructure.

4) Complain about a $150 per hour bill rate? Try figuring out the cost to a business for a server outage. How about a network outage? 100 people at $25 per hour salary = $2,500 per hour of outage. Which is cheaper? Pay my rate, you don't pay for my education time, purchases of new hardware or software, or endless hours like spending the weekend setting up a SAN at home.

5) Never mind about the home computer questions you come and ask us about - we're here to help all your technology needs. Yes, its not work related, but damned if you don't ask us during work hours. And we have to keep current and remember that you have a wireless network with XXXXXXX WPA password. No one else is expected to keep such detailed records on you.

6) Developers, come on - you can do your job from anywhere. As long as you come in for meetings, you may have a better environment at home, and you will be more productive when you don't have others walk up and distract you. IT types have to be there to hold a users hand, and plug in the mouse that got unplugged somehow.