I've never blogged before, so this will be a new experience for me.
Professionally, I'm a Unix/Linux Systems Administrator with many years of experience. I dabble in most flavors of Linux, but my preference at this time is Debian and its derivatives. I'm currently typing this on a workstation that is running Ubuntu 13.10 Desktop 64-bit.
How does one become a Linux Systems Administrator? Almost always by accident. You start playing with Linux to see what all the hype is about. Then you dig deeper so you can do more and more. Then the people where you work begin to see you as the "guru" when it comes to all things Linux. You're answering questions left and right, most of which you have to go Google to find answers for, all the while learning and becoming more and more proficient. Then your company decides to try out this "Linux Thing" and hears you are the Lord Of All Things Linux, and offers you the chance to set up a server and administer it, all while continuing to do your "real job" of course. Before you know it, you are setting up more servers as the company sees profits rising (from lack of licensing fees) and downtime decreasing (from Linux's failure to crash every other day), and the company makes riding herd on these boxes your full time job.
It's like a dream come true! You get to play all day with the latest stuff, and they PAY you for it!!
Careful what you wish for. After a while you begin to realize that being the only SysAdmin at a company means you wear a lot of hats, and it begins taking more time than you have in a day. You are the security chief, the web server administrator, the mail server administrator, you're riding herd on Samba file servers and print servers. You start to notice that they expect you to know everything about anything that has ever been near a computer. When the power goes out and comes back up, they expect you to reset all the clocks on all the microwaves, because "you're good with techie stuff" (not that you weren't already resetting all the microwave clocks; being a geek you just can't handle seeing that clock being incorrect!)
In the beginning, you're like a dry sponge, absorbing knowledge like you've been dying of thirst. After several years you reach a point of saturation, and you begin wondering if you shouldn't have started this in the first place. To stay on top of your game, the learning is endless, you'll grow weary of dealing with script kiddies and hackers, you'll sometimes have days where you are tired of supporting users who never seem to make any effort to figure out for themselves what is wrong before calling you. It sometimes feels overwhelming, and you begin wondering what it would be like to be a forest ranger, out in the middle of the wilderness with no network signal and no cell phone signal. Perhaps riding a horse in Montana in the middle of a huge ranch, keeping cattle safe. Almost anything that has nothing to do with technology.
The problem is that you are too good at what you do, you still enjoy it on most days, you're still learning new things every day that keep the job exciting, and you've reached a salary level that you cannot match in any other field without investing a decade in training and experience. You know you'll be a SysAdmin until you retire, and you need to adjust your mindset to see all the positive in your job, like helping people and keeping servers safe and secure.
Whenever I reach a place where I've allowed the negative to creep into my mind instead of focussing on the positive, I think of an episode of "The Jetsons" I saw as a kid. George Jetson is complaining to his wife about how hard his day was at work, sitting at his desk pushing buttons. At the time, I thought George was a whiner and should enjoy such an easy job, instead of having to dig ditches, or some other back breaking work. Now I realize I have become George Jetson. All I do all day is push buttons, and then I have the audacity to whine about it. Granted, the stress level is more draining than the button pushing, but you understand my point. We SysAdmins have a pretty decent way of making a living, even though many of us that have been doing it for more than a decade reach a point where they hate it, and would do almost anything else if they could earn a decent income.
You've just got to keep focusing on the positive, and ignore the negative. That job on the horse in Montana has it's own problems, the winters are ridiculously cold (I know, I lived there for 11 years), and it can get lonely out there with only the cattle for company. Every job will have a negative aspect and a positive aspect. What you focus on is what you experience. I focus on the positive, and I have come to thoroughly enjoy my profession, even after many years of doing this.
I think that's more than enough for my first blog posting. I welcome feedback, especially from other SysAdmins.
Have a great day!
Benny Helms
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