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