Are you worth your weight in certs?

April 28th, 2006 neteng

eWeek has recently put up an interesting article on a recent study of salary growth for certified versus non-certified IT skills.

“Eighteen months ago, it was all about certifications for IT workers as employers stumbled out of the wreckage of an economic recession, looking to start hiring again.

“This is a clear indication that employers are not placing the same emphasis on certification that they once did. Perhaps more to the point, they are finding other qualities of IT professionals more critical to their businesses going forward, and they are willing to pay more for those.”

In the various places that I’ve worked, I’ve yet to find an employer that was willing to bring on a technician based on certifications alone, so this doesn’t necessarily seem like news to me. Maybe during the tech boom of the late nineties, too many companies were burned by the costs of hiring individuals that were not properly trained for a position because they were good at taking tests.

From my observations, I feel that on-the-job experience has greatly honed my real-world troubleshooting skills. But if it wasn’t for the knowledge I had gained through certification studies, I would be unable to think deeper and wider about various technical issues. In my opinion, there’s just no way to be a stand-out engineer or technician without attaining a well-balanced knowledgebase from both experience and book learning.

What are your thoughts on this?

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Cisco 7200 Simulator

April 28th, 2006 neteng

Now this is cool! I can’t wait to see what will become of this. I’m envisioning a fully fledged datacenter all within my laptop… Much thanks to Cisco Blog for bringing this to my attention.

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Time Management for System Administrators - Chapter Ten

April 25th, 2006 neteng

Email Management

This is another one of my favorite chapters because it has helped me deal with the huge influx of email hitting my inbox daily. In general, I’m a bit obsessive-compulsive when it comes to cleaning house (I can’t stand to have a flashing voicemail light on my phone) and Thomas definitely has some great tips on keeping things in order.

Some of the concepts I apply include:

Filters - I love filters. Without the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff, you’re bound to miss a few important items and get bogged down in nonsense. I create separate filters for mailing lists, device alerts, distribution group emails, etc.

Folders - When using filters, I have them store the filtered items into appropriate folders. I also like to create a Holding Pattern folder where I keep items I’m worried I might need in the near future and empty it every 3 months (similar to the paperwork method described by Thomas in an earlier chapter). This way, I can keep a clean inbox and not worry about deletor’s remorse.

Sent Items - I’ve found that even if I have deleted an important email thread, I can find most of the pieces in my Sent Items folder. I never delete anything from here so I’m sure to find what I need a majority of the time.

So what’s your email tip?

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Time Management for System Administrators - Chapter Nine

April 18th, 2006 neteng

Stress Management

A systems administrator without any stress is hardly a sysadmin at all. It just comes with the territory and if you’re not stressed out at some point during your career, you don’t have enough to do!

The most interesting bit that I got out of this chapter was the separation of good stress from bad stress. To quote Thomas:

Positive stress adds anticipation and excitement to our lives, helps us be creative, helps us win a race or an election, or pushes us beyond what we previously thought were our limits. Negative stress is destructive. It causes heart disease, depression and gray hairs. Managing stress is a big part of maintaining good mental health.

I can definitely remember times that I’ve been stressed out while working on a project that required my undivided attention and new skills, but I was driven to learn some new things and have had many positive outcomes as a result.

Concerning negative stress, Thomas cites overload and conflicting directions from management as two of the biggest sources of stress. I would also add coworker conflicts and management expectations to this list as well. The best way to alleviate some of these issues is to ask for help. It’s natural among most sysadmins to want to solve a problem on their own and not require assistance from another, but this is a sure road to disaster and increased stress.

Also - and I agree with Thomas 100% on this - use your vacation time! You might think that ending the year with 2 weeks of surplus vacation will win you Employee of the Year, but it’s more likely to win you Overworked Jerk of the Year. Take your earned breaks and really take them - no Blackberries, no laptops, etc. From personal experience, you should stress to your coworkers that you will be available at your cell phone only in the case of an actual emergency that requires your time. Now emergencies vary from company to company, but you should have a good feeling for what should actually constitute an unwelcome phone call while you’re lounging on the beach.

Another excellent point made by Thomas is that being away from the office allows you to see just how well your documentation and coverage is put together. The stronger that these problem areas are, the less you’ll be bothered.

I also find that physical exercise is a fantastic outlet for built up stress and it also has the benefit of just being a damn good idea for your health. I like to lift weights, run, jump rode, ride a bike, etc. All of these things are good for your muscles and cardiovascular system and you’d be a smart person to take up a regular exercise regimen as soon as possible. I’ve found some great insights on the misc.fitness.weights newsgroup, so I recommend you stop by and read a little bit when you have time.

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Hunter S. Thompson - Hell’s Angels

April 14th, 2006 neteng

Going off the beaten track for a minute, I thought I’d talk a bit about a book I recently finished. Work has been crazy on top of moving into a new office, so I’m looking to avoid anything work-related for the moment! I promise to return back to the regularly scheduled program soon.

So I’ve recently finished reading this book and it was the first of anything I’ve ever read that was written by Thompson as well as anything based on motorcycle gangs. I’m not the biggest fan of journalistic writing but Thompson’s style really held my interest throughout the whole book. The book takes the reader through the origins of the gang (good ol’ Berdoo (San Bernardino), California; pretty close to my hometown), it’s affable leader in Sonny Barger and various stories. You don’t hear much these days about the going-ons of motorcycle gangs - though it’s a topic for one of my favorite 90s action-cheez flicks - but they appeared to be quite the phenomenon back in the 50s and 60s. The largest chunk of the book focuses on a run they took up at Bass Lake, nestled against the Sierra Mountains. Alarms were surrounded all across California for an otherwise uneventful party. It really emphasized the level of fear that had taken hold of much of law enforcement and local townsfolk. Other parts that I found interesting discussed how they were tied in with some of the other American subculture heroes of the time, notably Alan Ginsberg and Ken Kessey. The Angels were actually highly revered by these Beatnik superstars until the romanticism wore off and the Berkley crowd saw the true colors of the Hell’s Angels; via punches and kicks at their Vietnam protest rallies.

Thompson does a fantastic job of laying down the different shades of what it meant to be a Hell’s Angel and he made a noble attempt to set the story straight on what the Hell’s Angels were really like. He let it be known that they were neither saints nor the murderous horde that the media oftentimes made them out to be.

At the end of the book, Thompson talks about how he took a bit of a beating from the boys during his final contact with them. Later interviews with Sonny Barger paint a bit of a different picture as to what really happened, so it’s hard to say what the truth of the matter was. I wouldn’t put it past a journalist such as Thompson to knowingly push certain buttons and instigate something so he could add some flair to his story, and admittedly, it did.

I don’t know if any of my readers have an interest at all in this topic, and my initial interest was simply a passing “…could be good”, but I’m glad I read the book.

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Time Management for System Administrators - Chapter Eight

April 4th, 2006 neteng

Prioritization

Some days, I have no problem deciding what tasks can wait and what needs to be done with the utmost urgency. I’ve slowly discovered those days are few and far between. Most of the time I am left scratching my head, erasing a ‘B’ when it should really be an ‘A’ and so on. What’s a sysadmin to do? The amount of time spent worrying over the priority of certain tasks could be better spent actually doing said tasks.

One of my favorite bits of advice from this chapter (and Thomas’ book in general) is about ordering your to-do items by customer expectations and perceptions. You may be working on the cure for cancer, but if a customer just wants his email problems fixed, you’re going to find yourself in hot water for not paying him due attention.

Also be sure to get advice from your manager on what he perceives to be pressing issues. This can go a long way towards making him, and therefore yourself, look like a star employee in upper management’s eyes. Be sure to keep checking in with your boss too. I’ve found myself spearheading efforts towards a certain project only to speak with my manager and find out that it’s been reprioritized and a new problem has taken precedence.

Here’s a great little matrix in Thomas’ book that has really helped me out:

This should enable you to step back and look at the bigger picture. You’ll be surprised at just how much you find yourself focusing on tasks that have minimal professional rewards.

Does anyone else have a system of they use to assist them in prioritizing?

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