Quote o' the week: Ive got my skillet right here, buddy
Perusing some cable-porn on /r/sysadmin, I found this piece of wisdom:
It's a two-pronged issue: Developers don't usually have the skillets or interests required for system administration.
That was part of a couple of insightful posts by sylver_dragon and tuba_man about the costs of using developers instead of sysadmins for system administration.
> Developers are not sysadmins
This is one of my biggest complaints about the blanket term "IT". I have dealt with too many managers who don't understand that there really is (or should be) a separation between Systems Administration and Software Development. Usually, you get a developer acting as admin when either role is (at least) a full time job. The end result is usually that the little things on the sysadmin side suffer. Cable routing is treated as, "fuck it, good enough." Documentation is usually not maintained, regular log checking doesn't happen, etc. It's not that the developer can't do it, it's just that he doesn't have time.
Exactly. Not only does he not have the time, but in a lot of ways, it prevents the developer (and the project or company as a whole) from operating most effectively. It's a two-pronged issue: Developers don't usually have the skillets or interests required for system administration. Application developers can work a lot better when they have solid systems to code on and deploy to. So a developer doing sysadmin work solely because he has to is in many cases shooting himself in the foot.
In my instance at least, our company's two developers work a hell of a lot better when they don't have to worry about systems or infrastructure. Since hiring me on, we've had more code output, higher quality code output, more uptime, better response times, and less customer complaints.
I, personally, keep my skillet with me at all times.
