[geeks] Mac definitions

[Michael Parson]

On Mon, 11 Jul 2011, Andrew Jones wrote:

> On 07/10/2011 05:43 PM, Michael Parson wrote:
>
>> Take your average AIX, Solaris, or AIX admin and drop them in any of
>> the others out there, and they will stumble a bit at first, but will
>> probably eventally figure out how to re-ip the box and give it a new
>> default gateway, probably while logged into it over a serial line or
>> ssh.
>>
>> Too many that have only used Linux won't understand why 'ls' doesn't
>> color code their files for them, if they've even seen a terminal
>> prompt.
>
>
> Michael, your generalization is probably true -- in 2011, your average
> legacy UNIX administrator is probably a pretty flexible fellow -- but
> I don't think your rationale holds up.
>
> It seems like all early 20th century houses are pretty good quality.
> By and large, they are "built right," with obvious care and attention
> to detail.  Did people just care more back then? Hell no.

I think that's nostalgia kicking in, kinda like people saying that cars
are not built like they used to be.  Personally, I don't want to live in
a house that has iron water pipes and electrical system installed before
there were any decent codes.

For the cars example, I don't think much more needs to be said than to 
watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJrXViFfMGk

(head-on crash test between a 1959 Chevy and a 2009 Chevy)

> It's just that most of the cheap and charmless $200 specials fell in,
> got demolished, or got remodeled.  We have a selection problem: the
> survivors mostly come from the best-built subset of that era.
>
> It's much the same with people.  If you walk into an all-HPUX legacy
> shop, you will still find a few systems administrators who would throw
> up their hands as soon as they discover that "lanscan" is missing.

Sure, and there are AIX admins who get lost if they don't have smitty.
I'll just put a lot of money on there being more people out there
calling themselves Linux admins that are lost w/o a GNOME GUI than there
are HP people lost w/o lanscan.

> In the places rolling out Linux at full speed, those mediocrities
> are seeing their jobs evaporate.  Only the best legacy specialists
> survive: the smartest, the most experienced, and the most adaptable.

I'm still not convinced about that.  I think the old unix shops were
set up when there were fewer unix deployments overall, and there was a
higher barrier to entry, it took smarter and more talented people to get
things up and running.  The dot-com days flooded the market with people
that were passing themselves off as systems admins, and it seems that a
lot of them are still out there, doing piss-poor jobs of running their
shops.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone that went something along
the lines of, "Oh, our email is down again, I'm sure Steve will get it
back online again soon, he's super smart, I just don't know what we
would do without him."  You probe a little bit and find that this is how
things go on a daily basis, they just think that core systems going down
is normal business, and doesn't everyone's company work this way?

I used to be shocked at this attitude.  Not any more.  Now, it doesn't
even surprise me.

These days, there are multiple orders of magnitude more installs, and
the pointy-clicky interfaces have made it easier for a bulk of the work
to be accomplished by lower-talent people.

After being a sysadmin for 15 years and now working in customer support,
I now have to talk to what passes for sysadmins these days.  It's scary.

I don't think managers know what a real sysadmin looks like any more.

-- 
Michael Parson
mparson at bl.org
Austin, TX
KF5LGQ