Happy System Administrator Appreciation Day!

Yes indeed, today is the last Friday in July, making it System Administrator Appreciation Day, that day when you offer a small thanks to the SysAdmin that keeps your systems running while you’re worrying about the apps or the storage or the security.

Seriously, these are people who have to know a little bit of everything IT just so they can do their jobs. Most know how to program, most have decent security chops, most can allocate storage, most know how to create, start, and bounce VMs, and all of them know about systems. But we don’t often take a few seconds to tell them thanks. They’re not hanging over our databases insuring our data integrity like DBAs (another poorly appreciated lot of geniuses) do, but without SysAdmins we wouldn’t need DBAs.

So take a bit of time, tell them thank you, try not to remind them that they’ll be learning a lot more about Cloud Computing than they ever wanted in the next 12-18 months, and offer them a Mountain Dew. Of course they drink Mountain Dew. Maybe diet, but no SysAdmin would be caught drinking some other soda, right? Right?

No matter what else happens, they’ll be there. If your company outsources your entire IT staff, guess who’s going to be turning off the lights for the last time in the datacenter? When something breaks in the middle of the night, guess whom the helpdesk calls first? When things are going astoundingly well, guess whose contribution, though it is foundational to any project, is least recognized while the app and network guys are partying? Yep. The SysAdmin.

So give ‘em a slap on the back, thank ‘em for what they do, and try not to point out that this is likely the last positive feedback they’ll be getting from you until the last week of July next year. ;-)

To our Rockstar F5 Sysadmins that always seem to keep us up and running no matter how crazy things get or how many problems crop up at once, “THANK YOU. Talk to you again soon – like in about twelve months, cool?”