Re: certification

[Stephen Potter <spp@psasolar.psa.pencom.com>]

Lightning flashed, thunder crashed and pomeranz@netcom.com (Hal Pomeranz) whisp
ered:
| Stephen is talking about System Administration in a relatively narrow
| scope.  Here we have the classic "buy stuff and plug it in" type of
| job.  Certainly there's a lot of Sys Admin work in this area and the
| "stuff" that you're plugging in can get extremely complicated
| (redundant disks, silicon storage, fault-tolerant systems, yada yada
| yada).

I think you've narrowed the scope a little more than I meant to.  I do far
more than "buy stuff and plug it in."  I also design, integrate,
troubleshoot, do a bit of systems programming.  However, the specific
example was not what I think would normally be considered SA work.  It is
development work.

| However, I've always viewed "System Administration" as encompassing
| not only the pure system stuff that Stephen does, but also networking
| (including routers, terminal servers, switches-- all the CCIE stuff),
| security (building firewalls, setting up proxies), systems programming
| (writing new tools and complete software systems), systems
| integration, software development, and so forth.  A lot of people
| disagree with me.  What's the truth?

Yes, yes, yes, yes (no), yes, no, and so forth.  An SA is not a developer.
I don't know why we keep perpetrating this myth.  Yes, an SA may write some
form of system tool, but I would not expect an SA to be responsible for
writing (for example) new MUAs or web browsers or anything like that.  That
is the job of a developer.

Going back to the specific example that was given earlier, an SAs
responsibility would be in setting up the web server, installing the PGP
software, even fine tuning the OS for better performance.  The actual
program that was being talked about should be written by a developer.  It
is an application, not a systems programming situation.  The SA may also
serve as a point of information on systems security.

| time my job title has included "System Admin", "Network Operations",
| "Network Engineer", "Software Developer", "Director", etc.  At all

Been there, done that, haven't had that title, wouldn't have that title,
sounds like you're out of the technical arena now, etc.

| advocates.  Look at the description of "Senior"-- there's a lot of
| "extras" there including programming, system architecture design, and
| the ability to give effective presentations.  I would tend to agree.

As would I.  All of these extras grown out (naturally) of the appropriate
responsibilities.  In order to manage a large site, you must be able to
design the site (for growth), you must be able to give presentations to
higher level management for funding, etc.  You probably will need to be
able to do some form of programming to automate your tasks, to give you
time to do other tasks.

However, note that the programming is limited to: 
    Ability to program in an administrative language (Tk, Perl, a shell),
    to port C programs from one platform to another, and to write small C
    programs. (quoted from the webpage, as I don't have the full book handy
	http://www.usenix.org/sage/jobs/jobs-descriptions.html#Senior)

Nowhere does it talk about being able to be a software engineer/software
developer/whatever.  Those are not appropriate skills to require for an
SA.  Again, I agree with the people who have said, "Knowledge is Good", but
you must also agree with me that just because that is, it isn't enough to
make it a mandatory skill for an SA.

-spp