Post #129,302
12/6/03 3:20:15 PM
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Discussion fodder: Are Admins Evil?
[link|http://www.softwarereality.com/lifecycle/role_fragmentation.jsp|http://www.softwarer...fragmentation.jsp]
What do the propellorheads and BOFHly types here think?
[My take: he's a whiny young kid who didn't get root on the production database server, or something]
Peter
[link|http://www.debian.org|Shill For Hire]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Blog]
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Post #129,304
12/6/03 3:58:57 PM
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He is whining a bit
He is whining a bit, but I certainly feel his pain.
I've seen more then one project grind to a halt for a day or more because an admin was the only one who had authority to change or fix something and couldn't be found. This is doubly frustrating when you know what needs to be fixed and the admin doesn't so you end up telling him step by step what to do.
I've lost more then a week of work because the backup system had been down for over a month, and the admins didn't bother to tell anyone till a development server hard drive crashed.
I've had to work with source control so unstable that the developers kept seperate copies of their work on their machines to fix the source control when it decided to roll back days of work for no reason.
I think what he is missing though is that admins do often have good reasons for doing things that get in the programmers way. The admin who programmed the virus scanner to check everything multiple times per day was probably responding to a stupid programmer who couldn't be convinced to stop installing random crap on his computer.
It's one of those cases where there needs to be a balance, and I've worked at companies where it went to far in both directions. I've worked places where programmers regularly brought down the system because they had rights to change things on production severs and used them to experiment.
I've also worked places where none of the programmers had any admin rights to the development systems and had to put in tech support requests to do things like change the server settings, create new project files and even change the system time on a computer.
Jay
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Post #129,309
12/6/03 4:39:08 PM
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Well...
He is a whiner.
I don't think he has ever been in an Enterprise that does stuff right.
Things don't happen like that all the time, everywhere.
Get on with life, deal with it...
If thing like the CVS wasn;t submitted pproper to a network server he sholud have been dealt with harshly... not really anyone's fault except his own...
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
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Post #129,312
12/6/03 5:33:25 PM
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A key point was:
What is often overlooked, but is absolutely critical, is that developers are the clients of administrators. At least it is in successful development shops. And a development shop is the context here. System and DB administrators should support the development environment. Much like the janitor keeping the building temperature and humidity reasonable and the place clean. That is not to say that the developers do not need to be coordinated and disciplined in what they do. The larger the team the more important coordination and disciple are. It's the developer's team leaders and management that needs to focus on keeping this in place. You certainly can't have "free agents, doing their thing". Alex
"Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves." -- Eric Hoffer
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Post #129,333
12/6/03 8:09:00 PM
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nappy filler
walks around with a load in his drawers and wondering where the smell came from.
example
wonders why he doesnt have admin rights on his machine when he admits downloading some undelete stuff off the net and didnt know the OS has had that capability since dos 5.0
solution? Isolate all dev boxes from the internet, no access no virii no email so the little bastards can work instead of corresponding with dating engines.
The rest of his article deals with trying to operate with admins as stupid as he is.
thanx,
bill
"You're just like me streak. You never left the free-fire zone.You think aspirins and meetings and cold showers are going to clean out your head. What you want is God's permission to paint the trees with the bad guys. That wont happen big mon." Clete
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
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Post #129,449
12/7/03 3:56:26 PM
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I can see both sides
First of all in any larger group, communication overheads tend to scale faster than useful work does. This is old news, The Mythical Man-Month and all that. Process is meant to limit the amount of random communication you need, at the cost of annoying overhead, all of the time. Add a few incompetents to the mix, and you get continuous frustration.
Furthermore the frustration gets worse when people have to make decisions based on mistrust of others. I've been there, having to deal with a developer who could not be trusted to not mess up production. Having to walk the balance between limiting him enough to not do major damage while still letting him get enough done to be useful was very frustrating for both sides. And I'm very sure that he blamed me in spades for the irritations in his life.
On the flip side, there must be a balance. Developers really need a development environment under their control. Firewall it off. Scan it for obvious problems. Create backups as requested. But don't be a bottleneck. For a random instance, if they are using a persistent server technology (eg mod_perl), then they need to be able to restart it at will. Otherwise the administrator becomes a key step in the edit/compile/run cycle. Which is something that needs to be as fast as possible.
Remember, the job of an administrator is not to have a cleanly administered environment with everything locked down solid. You are not the reason that the computers are there, and your internal priorities do not drive the business. Rather your job is to make sure that other people can do their work. Yes, they will whine over everything that you need to do. But listen carefully. Sure, most of the whining that you hear is meaningless bitching and moaning. But some of it is feedback that you need to hear about where you are drawing the lines incorrectly.
Good administrators learn to tell the difference, and react appropriately. Unfortunately most administrators are incompetent. (And this differs from any other category of worker..?) :-(
Cheers,
Ben
"good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not"
- [link|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html|Stefano Mazzocchi]
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Post #129,536
12/7/03 10:13:39 PM
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I heard that Ben...
I am not incompetent!!!!
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
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Post #129,562
12/8/03 1:38:42 AM
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Why do you assume...?
That when I am talking about most administrators, I am thinking of you in particular? :-P
Cheers,
Ben
"good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not"
- [link|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html|Stefano Mazzocchi]
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Post #129,564
12/8/03 1:54:12 AM
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Re: I can see both sides
If you give a programming team an inch, one of them will become acquisitive and want a mile - so I started them off with a mile and drew a line. The line was - no OS installs without my approval. No dual boots without my approval.
Lo and behold, one day I walk in and everyone has Windows 95 beta installed. The machines were all messed up beyond use and they all had to be initialized.
Only a few programmers need to be assembled in order to find one who is thoughtless and self-centered enough to break clearly established rules. The irony is, they are perfectly capable of managing themselves, but end up needing the most management through immaturity and carelessness.
-drl
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Post #129,765
12/8/03 8:43:40 PM
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That isn't a mile
When I started, my first task was the install the operating system of my choice on a machine that was handed to me. Something pretty Unix-like was mandated because I had to get our full development environment up and running. Dual boot is not suggested, but at some point I'll probably install vmware...
Out of curiousity, what reason was given by the programmers for installing Windows 95? While breaking everything is pretty bad, if the software that they were developing actually had to run on Windows 95, then they are justified in wanting an install around.
I'm remembering a situation years ago where I had constant issues with administrators who didn't want me to have Access 2.0 installed when my job was specifically developing Access applications that had to be able to run at other sites on Windows 3.1. When silly sysadmins came in direct conflict with my job description and my manager's direct orders, the sysadmins lost. (OTOH I did manage to convince the sysadmins that this was a justified change on my part...)
Cheers,
Ben
"good ideas and bad code build communities, the other three combinations do not"
- [link|http://archives.real-time.com/pipermail/cocoon-devel/2000-October/003023.html|Stefano Mazzocchi]
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Post #129,776
12/8/03 11:17:36 PM
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Re: That isn't a mile
Certainly they were justified, and I had a workable plan for dual booting the machines in such a way that they weren't ruined (our whole operation ran on Windows for Workgroups with UNIX back end). I'm real easy and not at all a control freak, but I have reasons for doing things. This one programmer was just a sloppy fat asshole and he lorded it over the others. His ass got REAMED for his stunt, which was fun.
-drl
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Post #129,538
12/7/03 10:15:28 PM
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You know YOU are evil, but pure?
Young kid?
Ha: [link|http://www.javelinsoft.com/RobinSharp.jsp|http://www.javelinso...om/RobinSharp.jsp]
I think not.
As far as your take on it, you show the pure admin side.
For me, Yes and No.
Depends on the quality of developers VS the quality
of the admins VS the guarantee that EVERYONE screws
up sooner or later. So the more harm the screwup can
cause, the more checkpoints need to be in place.
I also read the full /. comments to get many viewpoints.
I share a LOT of them.
I was the developer / DBA / admin. Then we hired
more programmers, so I was the developer / admin, but
adminning for more people.
And the occasional idiot programmer made my life
hell. Since it takes 6 months to fire someone
(unless they take a crap on the boss' desk), this
mean locking down the environment.
Or shaming them. I changed one guy's home directory
to read only, and setup a symlink to his working
directory, and called it "ASSHOLE". Ahh, the good
old days when you can get away with that behaviour.
Now I'd get canned for doing something like that.
He originally was going to complain to HR but then
decided to wear it as a badge of honor. When he
documented the project, it included the instructions
for "CDing into ASSHOLE". Project manager was PISSED.
Sometimes even the really good ones make a stupid
mistake. I have a really smart guy working with
us. He's the maintainer of the Perl ADO library.
And he did the equivelant of "chown -R oracle:dba /".
Very unhappy Solaris box.
Or what about the time my boss hit the wrong key
after using the up arrow too many times, and deleted
all the Oracle data files.
Very unhappy Oracle instance.
Or the time I had setup a fibre-chanel SAN, and
mistakenly reallocated the disk that a production
server was using to a development system. Both
had access. On the development side, I did a newfs.
The production database / call center was VERY
unhappy.
So we grew a bit more, and hired an admin. He wasn't
bad, he wasn't that good, he was OK. And I still had
all the passwords, so he did not slow me down.
We grew some more, and there were a couple of turnovers
on the sysadmin side. One left for a better job, one was
insane and was fired (scary time). We also hired a DBA so
relieve my burden on that side as the databases grew.
I finally hired a really smart admin but he's a bit young
and inexperienced on the business side, and tends to
overreact when things don't go his way. I figured after
about a year of working with me, he'd mature on the business
side and then he'd own the Unix systems, along with a #2
admin.
This was the time-frame of my SAN screwup. This poor SOB
worked about 40 hours straight along with the DBA and 2
programmers to fix my mistake. Trial by fire.
We had a re-org, and the equipment / admins started reporting
to the IS director, who was a MF bigot. He ignored the Unix
Oracle side, which got pretty bad in about a year.
Which meant the young admin got no real guidance, other
than what I could provide in terms of surviving his boss.
It also meant that the developers lost root / dba access,
which was usually the right thing. Except for me, of
course. I maintained root access on 2 boxes which were
my primary systems. Certain other developers got root/dba
on certain other boxes, but it is on a case by case basis.
Our new IS directory has a much broader viewpoint, which
means we get better service, but sometime it still when we
research problems I would like full access, but I don't want
the responsibility.
I know sometimes the admins play ping pong with the developers,
such as mandating desktop Linux security fixes but then not
supporting them when the update fails. A couple of emails later,
and all of a sudden they do Linux desktop support.
I know I had a large impact on the job longevity of certain
people in my company, so I probably get better service than
most. I also don't mind being an asshole and complaining up
the chain of command very quickly.
On the other hand, my requests are rarely trivial. When
I say a certain server is slow, I include the fact the
load average is low, that free memory is high, that CPU
utlization is low, top shows almost no usage, and network
lag for other systems on the same backbone subnet is fine.
This means a real problem with the server that I can't
figure out, so I need some help NOW. As this point, the
sysadmin had better NOT dismiss the problem as a whining
user.
Bottom line: If you are a pure admin, and were never a
programmer, you probably think the guy's all wrong. If
you are a programmer, and never had to admin, you probably
think the guy's all right. If you are / were both, you
KNOW he's partially right. But his is the pure coder viewpoint,
which discounts the level of damage most semi-competent people
can do, so most people MUST be restricted. A small subset can
have more power, but it is a tough call.
Sooner or later, I will have no root passwords. And if I lose
more than 30 minutes because of this, I'll whine to my boss.
If I lose more than an hour, I'll whine to the IS director.
Another hour, I'll then email the CTO. Depending on the severity
of my problem, I just may go into the server room and reboot
the Solaris box with a CD and hack out the root password. But
since that might be a fireable offense I better have damn good
reason.
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Post #129,542
12/7/03 10:33:31 PM
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ROFL!!!!
I would really like to work in your company as an admin, having done both things. It would be a blast. I would enjoy going to work every day. I'd get fun toys. I'd get a dark room. I'd probably even get to do some framing and programming. Heaven. Lucky SOB!
-drl
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Post #129,570
12/8/03 3:22:45 AM
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Age is nothing to do with it :)
And watch the Jobs forum for an announcement from me that might just put me on the other side of the fence ;)
Peter
[link|http://www.debian.org|Shill For Hire]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Blog]
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Post #129,747
12/8/03 6:37:39 PM
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Some are, some aren't
"However, there are a large number of DBAs who don't understand databases. Their position of authority comes only from them holding onto the database permissions. Any thought of creating or altering a table on even the most prototype of system is firmly resisted. Before you can create a table, it must pass the unwritten naming standards convention. Table names must be upper or lowercase, abbreviated so that they are unreadable and match the mainframe naming conventions of a maximum of 8 characters."
I've met more than a few of these. They don't understand objects and do nothing but object to every little thing when presented with a schema designed to map to an object model.
Having arrived at my new job today and dealing with the machine people - I'd like to point out that I was given a crappy generic laptop with 512M of memory - about 800MHz and expected to run JBuilder, Tomcat, TogetherJ, ClearCase, and the app (a travel portal) simultaneously. The average click response time is about a second and the admins insist the machine is adequate. Right. Where did you learn capacity planning again?
I'd say that over the course of my career its been about 70/30 clueless obstuctionists/proactively helpful admins.
"I believe that many of the systems we build today in Java would be better built in Smalltalk and Gemstone."
-- Martin Fowler, JAOO 2003
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Post #129,810
12/9/03 9:36:56 AM
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70/30? Lucky guy
I think the problem is that pretty much every job description is filled by about the same proportion. If you actually are one of the 30% of sysadmins, you spend half your time trying to accommodate the needs of the 30% of programmers, half trying to minimize the damage caused by the 70% of the programmers, and the other half trying to keep the 70% of sysadmins out of your way.
More seriously, no matter what your job is, if you're actually good at it you become used to dealing with people who aren't good at theirs. Trying to curcumvent their ostructions then becomes a natural reaction. Recognizing that you're actually dealing with one of the good ones and letting them be in charge of their own domain is difficult. Recognizing when you're being one of the 70% is even harder.
===
Implicitly condoning stupidity since 2001.
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Post #129,817
12/9/03 10:03:29 AM
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A-Freakin-Men, me droog!
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
[insert witty saying here]
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Post #129,829
12/9/03 11:32:13 AM
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Re: 70/30? Lucky guy
The real point here:
Some admins understand that the system is not an end-in-itself, that the work it does is the end - and that means accomodating the developers even when it hurts - and...
Some programmers understand they are part of a whole and don't abuse privileges for the sake of tinkerfutzing, rather, stick to their duties - and...
Some people have seen it from both ends and so make the best admins.
-drl
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Post #129,865
12/9/03 2:03:48 PM
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Not always...
I have never and will never do development in an Enterprise setting. (
I just understand. I give the rights to the people that needs them... a little at a time. Until they screw up, I get more and more comfortable with giving them the perms.
Now once they screw up, no matter how small(or large)... I take the chance to help them fix the problem and go over why they made the mistake and why it is a mistake/problem. Depending on the person, if all goes well, they learn and are better for the issue and I continue to trust them. If the don't learn... well some things will have to be re-earned.
It goes without saying, you take advantage of the situation... when you are trusted... it won't be pretty. And it'll be a long time erasing that black mark.
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey
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Post #129,956
12/9/03 10:17:15 PM
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Think I'd rather work for you
.. but with Barry's salary (and his new rumpus/romper? Big Room) :-\ufffd
Lunch time: string quartets from the local college.
It's periodically been suggested, of course - - but, imagine how synergistic might be a Coalition of the er Able, from zIWE ---
And yes: profitable, without being obsessed/depraved along the route to {ugh} {urp}
InCorporation!
Why.. just putting the Gryge's Compleat Disassembly of the Billy-Corp's Nefarious History up on the teleprompter - maybe at Esalen or other fair-weather locale, selling Seminar tickets to the genuinely Anxious-to-become Clueful: alone, might put a [1]Porsche in a few garages
(and maybe a Portia, able to be afforded at last, on other plates).
And that kinda pizzazz is just re the essayists about here; can't imagine what anti-chaos might be wreaked across the country - via a few techno manifestos :-0
Ho. Ho. Whoah.
..OK: some moving would be involved :(
[1] the yearning-to-Be are oft well heeled, since they had to be pretty smart in the first place: for realizin they didn't know shit! really.. while still havin garnered a Big Office, along the way. And stuff.
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