August 21, 2010 at 01:45Admin career through the eyes of an economist
Today I had an interesting argument with our admins, which I decided to share. Moreover, today is Saturday - you need to relax, because the net is thinner below, no technology :) I must say right away - I'm not an admin, but an IT manager, that is, not quite a techie. Actually, I studied as a production economist, which is why I always look at things related to money through the prism of acquired knowledge.
They argued that it was better in terms of career and pleasure: to improve in managing a number of systems or only one, but very deeply. It turned out that neither one nor the other point of view can be completely true. I tell you why ...
Admins in the field participated two. The third listened (very carefully, because he is also worried). The theme for excitement is simple - they are "leaked." In the sense, they transfer outside the company without leaving a choice. To make it clear: our enterprise is part of a large corporation and the “head” decided to centralize IT to the maximum, “forcing” all the IT-workers who are worth it into their newly created enterprise. And already this enterprise will outsource the corporation's businesses to the maximum ...
Participants in the future discussion were victims of this reform. They are being transferred there. Moreover, all this would not have been interesting if one had not turned out to be a corrosive and experienced Windows administrator, and the second - a networker / unixoid.
The position of the Windows admin is simple - it has nowhere to grow, except in depth. He tried all possible areas of application of windservers, built a lot of clustered / virtual / fault-tolerant / with distributed data storage and replication, etc. and other ... The problem is that he basically knows nothing more from technologies. They will transfer to a service company - all that remains is to download the skill further, studying new versions of server and system software coming out in Melkosoft. There is no time left for anything - they will take care of recycling the employee’s working hours there.
The path turns out to be a dead end: if it grew in breadth, collecting new niche knowledge, it wouldn’t give, there’s no time left; delving into polysyllabic clusters, looking for glitches and plugging holes - running in a circle, today one version, tomorrow another - you need to be at the forefront of information, to update knowledge. But as he was a Windows administrator, they will pay so much even today, even after 10 years. In general, this is a mono-profile admin.
Networker stands for multi-station. He can both Windows, and mail servers, and Unixes, and tsiski, and multi-level DMZ to design and build, and BGP rivets on coupled 6500 (who knows, he will understand), and he hastime to read for 24 hours :)
He believes that this is how it should be developed. What's so bad? In the labor market they are looking for one skill. And then you slowly get out and show the desired skill, and about a dozen more to the load. And ask for this upsell a small premium, Well, there is one and a half krata. Where else will they find ten administrators for one and a half salaries instead of one?
In addition, interest can be satisfied endlessly. Today the escalation was raised, tomorrow it was assembled into a cluster, the day after tomorrow I distributed replicas on the DMZ and laid antispam with antiviruses between them ... Complicate the scheme as you want, just to set the appropriate tasks. Tired of twisting the excision - heh, so there is a grid, tsiska. They can be endlessly tuned, polished with rules, monitored, optimized load, and wound routing rules. Tired again? The mood is not so hot? Well, right now let's do the ifobez. We’ll wrap up the spam filter more tightly, re-construct the vlans, close them, chop off the accumulated holes in the outside world in the form of rules on a firewall, and so on ... What a huge field for creativity, eh? First admin squared. Even in a cube, which is already there.
And here, then, the prospect of a transition to a service company. Windows admin groans: again Windows, again AD with politicians. Not only is it boring, but they will definitely save on salaries. After all, you become a replaceable cog. Any Windows administrator can. Well, at a certain level, when it’s already built and you just need to maintain it, update it and give users the right ... What kind of development does the screw have? Only wear thread and require lubrication from time to time ... Moreover, with a certain persistence, each pioneer apiece of bucks will perform the routine work of Windows administration, satisfying his modest needs to cut himself into online games or (if at all a nerd) - use corporate glands as a stand for laboratory works deducted in torrent books in English. And where, one asks, to go? Oh, I don’t want to become a cog.
The networker smiles and frowns at the same time. He smiles with pride: he is cool, he can do a lot right away and all this “a lot” is above average. He has a choice of types of work - more. True, the conditions of the transition are such that you can still choose only one or two adjacent directions. From that and frowns. And you won’t get money for upsell, and you don’t have the freedom toplay as usual ... And it turns out to be a screw, only more universal (as it seems to him).
But in fact, if we discard inclinations, personal preferences, take purely career growth and monetization of skills - what is better? In the dude by a gamer or a skilled craftsman?
Networker is a product of our post-Soviet reality. He has enough character to get beyond one specialization, but this is only because the business saves on it guys. Because our business is small. When you are large, transnational, there is already so much money that you can buy specialized wear-resistant screws. For example, if you are Intel, you can, as in a joke, buy McAffee (Intel gender (tired): guys, I need a better antivirus, please buy ... Subordinates (in a few hours): everything is ready, boss, we bought McAffee. Gendir (interested): and which version? ... Subordinates (surprised): version?). Laughter, laughter, and “role-playing” games with staff our business cannot afford. In the sense, to hire a person for only one function, winning in quality, predictability and stability of the result.
Everything is simple here. In those markets where there is sufficient money, there is no competition - full state control. Where the soup is thin, but there is a competitive environment - there is no scale, because try to stick around outside your region, the colonels have their own children there and also want to eat.
How are the competitive environment, free market, big business and admin network connected? Very simple. Right now there will be a brief economic picture, nervous not to read.
A competitive environment provides several companies that are growing. A free market provides maximum access to resources for growth. When there are a lot of companies on the market and they are already crowded (extensive growth due to the development of virgin lands is over), they begin to survive the weaker ones or just have them. They need additional resources (technology, reaction speed, the ability to quickly change business processes, i.e. adaptation), that is, they need a foundation - IT. Here our networker is best suited - it is very inexpensive, does a lot of different things, but not always with high quality. But armor and weapons appear quickly, and this is what business needs ...
Fighting competitors requires resources for all these weapons, and the source for their acquisition is still the same - feeding from the market. Business owners pump marketing, pulling more and more money from the market on the same products. Sooner or later, by cunning or truth, but there are several large players on the market, with a total market share of more than 50% and several dozen small ones, so that they dampen the inept economic policy of the government in general and the world market in particular. Large ones divide the field into shares and begin to feed quietly from it (for example, banks and PPSOs; there IT, by the way, is the most developed).
During its growth, krupnyak improved and increased its weapons (IT). The history of transforming a business from small to large is usually straightforward: a successful start - building a branch network - buying up small competitors in the regions to the limits of the feeding area - the survival of those who have not sold out - everything, you're in the bones. This scheme produces a bunch of local network administrators and gives a lot of creative orgasms to our main network administrator, who started it all - he is building an increasingly large IT machine, which is very cool.
But time comes and the business becomes large and large. Nowhere to grow, you have to make a profit. This means that in business they begin to count money, that is, to optimize costs as much as possible. Not only that, the main and "branch" wonderful networkers are already physically unable to pull development, and even more so, the maintenance of this entire high-tech machine, so they turn out to be expensive. After all, they still do one or two things (at least they know how to do a thousand). These are especially important (or interesting) things. The others have long been hired “cogs” admins, and if you're lucky, then ITSM has been implemented, and the benefits from these investments have been received. An army has been created and its control technology has been introduced.
As you know, the army is expensive. Small firms cannot afford such an army, because they can always be held for testicles and fed leftovers from the table ... True, the little thing lives in a very competitive environment and, competing with opponents, can greatly exceed monsters in efficiency. Well, that’s good for them: a trifle wants money, so you need to keep track of who starts stirring up the water there and why, and if the type of weaponry you find is useful, buy a growingstartup with roots. Well this is something I went deeper. We drove through.
So, as I said above - the networker is a product of our imperfect market. Where to go to him? In our country - only where competition has not yet generated monsters and there is a demand for station wagons. In large monsters, he will inevitably have to choose: either specialization, which will be enough strength, or management (insisting on subordinates and licking the heads), that is, not IT at all.
Vindoadmin can also successfully integrate into a "liquid" environment (on Windows it is quite possible to build a medium and even (sic!) Large business, but it is very laborious at times) and even preserve the dignity. He will have something to lay on the table to the employer. True, this is until the appetites of the business grow and it (inevitably) moves to a centralized management model. On that great day, the Windows Admin will become a cog and nothing more. He can only sell the most developed skill to a krupnyak; moreover, this skill will have to be sharpened almost daily, otherwise the price of a head drops sharply.
In general, on the one hand, if the business grows, the likelihood of purchasing “vignettes” grows, while the “multi-tool” decreases. On the other hand, the complexity of the systems serviced by the “cogs” grows with the growth of the business and more and more becomes an infinitely interesting field of knowledge.
So it turns out that you can be a monoexpert, and a “Swiss knife” is also good. And what do you think?
They argued that it was better in terms of career and pleasure: to improve in managing a number of systems or only one, but very deeply. It turned out that neither one nor the other point of view can be completely true. I tell you why ...
Given
Admins in the field participated two. The third listened (very carefully, because he is also worried). The theme for excitement is simple - they are "leaked." In the sense, they transfer outside the company without leaving a choice. To make it clear: our enterprise is part of a large corporation and the “head” decided to centralize IT to the maximum, “forcing” all the IT-workers who are worth it into their newly created enterprise. And already this enterprise will outsource the corporation's businesses to the maximum ...
Participants in the future discussion were victims of this reform. They are being transferred there. Moreover, all this would not have been interesting if one had not turned out to be a corrosive and experienced Windows administrator, and the second - a networker / unixoid.
Border conditions
The position of the Windows admin is simple - it has nowhere to grow, except in depth. He tried all possible areas of application of windservers, built a lot of clustered / virtual / fault-tolerant / with distributed data storage and replication, etc. and other ... The problem is that he basically knows nothing more from technologies. They will transfer to a service company - all that remains is to download the skill further, studying new versions of server and system software coming out in Melkosoft. There is no time left for anything - they will take care of recycling the employee’s working hours there.
The path turns out to be a dead end: if it grew in breadth, collecting new niche knowledge, it wouldn’t give, there’s no time left; delving into polysyllabic clusters, looking for glitches and plugging holes - running in a circle, today one version, tomorrow another - you need to be at the forefront of information, to update knowledge. But as he was a Windows administrator, they will pay so much even today, even after 10 years. In general, this is a mono-profile admin.
Networker stands for multi-station. He can both Windows, and mail servers, and Unixes, and tsiski, and multi-level DMZ to design and build, and BGP rivets on coupled 6500 (who knows, he will understand), and he has
He believes that this is how it should be developed. What's so bad? In the labor market they are looking for one skill. And then you slowly get out and show the desired skill, and about a dozen more to the load. And ask for this upsell a small premium, Well, there is one and a half krata. Where else will they find ten administrators for one and a half salaries instead of one?
In addition, interest can be satisfied endlessly. Today the escalation was raised, tomorrow it was assembled into a cluster, the day after tomorrow I distributed replicas on the DMZ and laid antispam with antiviruses between them ... Complicate the scheme as you want, just to set the appropriate tasks. Tired of twisting the excision - heh, so there is a grid, tsiska. They can be endlessly tuned, polished with rules, monitored, optimized load, and wound routing rules. Tired again? The mood is not so hot? Well, right now let's do the ifobez. We’ll wrap up the spam filter more tightly, re-construct the vlans, close them, chop off the accumulated holes in the outside world in the form of rules on a firewall, and so on ... What a huge field for creativity, eh? First admin squared. Even in a cube, which is already there.
Answer options
And here, then, the prospect of a transition to a service company. Windows admin groans: again Windows, again AD with politicians. Not only is it boring, but they will definitely save on salaries. After all, you become a replaceable cog. Any Windows administrator can. Well, at a certain level, when it’s already built and you just need to maintain it, update it and give users the right ... What kind of development does the screw have? Only wear thread and require lubrication from time to time ... Moreover, with a certain persistence, each pioneer apiece of bucks will perform the routine work of Windows administration, satisfying his modest needs to cut himself into online games or (if at all a nerd) - use corporate glands as a stand for laboratory works deducted in torrent books in English. And where, one asks, to go? Oh, I don’t want to become a cog.
The networker smiles and frowns at the same time. He smiles with pride: he is cool, he can do a lot right away and all this “a lot” is above average. He has a choice of types of work - more. True, the conditions of the transition are such that you can still choose only one or two adjacent directions. From that and frowns. And you won’t get money for upsell, and you don’t have the freedom to
Choosing the Right Solution
But in fact, if we discard inclinations, personal preferences, take purely career growth and monetization of skills - what is better? In the dude by a gamer or a skilled craftsman?
Networker is a product of our post-Soviet reality. He has enough character to get beyond one specialization, but this is only because the business saves on it guys. Because our business is small. When you are large, transnational, there is already so much money that you can buy specialized wear-resistant screws. For example, if you are Intel, you can, as in a joke, buy McAffee (Intel gender (tired): guys, I need a better antivirus, please buy ... Subordinates (in a few hours): everything is ready, boss, we bought McAffee. Gendir (interested): and which version? ... Subordinates (surprised): version?). Laughter, laughter, and “role-playing” games with staff our business cannot afford. In the sense, to hire a person for only one function, winning in quality, predictability and stability of the result.
Everything is simple here. In those markets where there is sufficient money, there is no competition - full state control. Where the soup is thin, but there is a competitive environment - there is no scale, because try to stick around outside your region, the colonels have their own children there and also want to eat.
How are the competitive environment, free market, big business and admin network connected? Very simple. Right now there will be a brief economic picture, nervous not to read.
A competitive environment provides several companies that are growing. A free market provides maximum access to resources for growth. When there are a lot of companies on the market and they are already crowded (extensive growth due to the development of virgin lands is over), they begin to survive the weaker ones or just have them. They need additional resources (technology, reaction speed, the ability to quickly change business processes, i.e. adaptation), that is, they need a foundation - IT. Here our networker is best suited - it is very inexpensive, does a lot of different things, but not always with high quality. But armor and weapons appear quickly, and this is what business needs ...
Fighting competitors requires resources for all these weapons, and the source for their acquisition is still the same - feeding from the market. Business owners pump marketing, pulling more and more money from the market on the same products. Sooner or later, by cunning or truth, but there are several large players on the market, with a total market share of more than 50% and several dozen small ones, so that they dampen the inept economic policy of the government in general and the world market in particular. Large ones divide the field into shares and begin to feed quietly from it (for example, banks and PPSOs; there IT, by the way, is the most developed).
During its growth, krupnyak improved and increased its weapons (IT). The history of transforming a business from small to large is usually straightforward: a successful start - building a branch network - buying up small competitors in the regions to the limits of the feeding area - the survival of those who have not sold out - everything, you're in the bones. This scheme produces a bunch of local network administrators and gives a lot of creative orgasms to our main network administrator, who started it all - he is building an increasingly large IT machine, which is very cool.
But time comes and the business becomes large and large. Nowhere to grow, you have to make a profit. This means that in business they begin to count money, that is, to optimize costs as much as possible. Not only that, the main and "branch" wonderful networkers are already physically unable to pull development, and even more so, the maintenance of this entire high-tech machine, so they turn out to be expensive. After all, they still do one or two things (at least they know how to do a thousand). These are especially important (or interesting) things. The others have long been hired “cogs” admins, and if you're lucky, then ITSM has been implemented, and the benefits from these investments have been received. An army has been created and its control technology has been introduced.
As you know, the army is expensive. Small firms cannot afford such an army, because they can always be held for testicles and fed leftovers from the table ... True, the little thing lives in a very competitive environment and, competing with opponents, can greatly exceed monsters in efficiency. Well, that’s good for them: a trifle wants money, so you need to keep track of who starts stirring up the water there and why, and if the type of weaponry you find is useful, buy a growing
Subsets of solutions => one set?
So, as I said above - the networker is a product of our imperfect market. Where to go to him? In our country - only where competition has not yet generated monsters and there is a demand for station wagons. In large monsters, he will inevitably have to choose: either specialization, which will be enough strength, or management (insisting on subordinates and licking the heads), that is, not IT at all.
Vindoadmin can also successfully integrate into a "liquid" environment (on Windows it is quite possible to build a medium and even (sic!) Large business, but it is very laborious at times) and even preserve the dignity. He will have something to lay on the table to the employer. True, this is until the appetites of the business grow and it (inevitably) moves to a centralized management model. On that great day, the Windows Admin will become a cog and nothing more. He can only sell the most developed skill to a krupnyak; moreover, this skill will have to be sharpened almost daily, otherwise the price of a head drops sharply.
In general, on the one hand, if the business grows, the likelihood of purchasing “vignettes” grows, while the “multi-tool” decreases. On the other hand, the complexity of the systems serviced by the “cogs” grows with the growth of the business and more and more becomes an infinitely interesting field of knowledge.
So it turns out that you can be a monoexpert, and a “Swiss knife” is also good. And what do you think?