When someone asks what I do for a living and I tell them I’m a System Administrator, the conversation usually stops. Folks usually think “oh computers” or figure there isn’t really anything to talk about past that point because it’s vague. (Well, I’d like to think it’s because I’m really interesting in other ways, but I digress).
If someone digs a bit further, I have a simple explanation:
A Sysadmin processes an incomprehensible amount of information to reduce the signal noise ratio to a tolerable level in order to communicate effectively with users of computer systems.
Yes, you read that correctly — we work with people more than we work with computer systems. Our primary job is juggling information. Here’s some tidbits of what I juggled in December:
- 30,000+ emails
- 174 Server Outages Notifications (Don’t worry, many planned, all redundant nodes)
- 15 Edge Device Outages (same as above)
- Average of 5 hours daily on the telephone.
- Average of 18 appointments a day
And that’s the tip. Each one of those things spawned next actions for things for me to do. Every single one of those things required some sort of knowledge of completely different esoteric technologies and their intricacies and actually putting the problems and projects into the English language for people.
Many books written on the subject of time management, and there’s even one meant just for Sys Admins (Time Management for System Administrators
In the coming days I’m going to write some of the things I’m doing this year to better manage the flow of information in and out, which is critical for reducing stress and doing this job well.