An interesting management/personal challenge
When I have a complex problem that needs to be solved and I don't know how to do it, or don't know how to explain it easily, and my team members don't know how to do it, my tendency is to take the problem on myself and solve it. Lately there have been a number of server admin challenges that I've just taken on myself whether I'd actually dealt with a similar issue before in my life or not because 1) I have no full-time tech support on staff at the moment (Lost the last guy 3 weeks ago when he went back home suddenly to South Africa. We're hiring!) and 2) the developers all have a ton of work on their plates that I don't want to take them away from.
Well, today I need to push through something that should have been done my first week at this company. I'm only pissed at myself for letting it slide so long. We need a development server that is actually like our live server, as opposed to the patched up mess that we have right now. OK, so that patched up mess is my fault. When I realized I wasn't going to get what I want easily, I compromised and grabbed a desktop machine and just did what I could with it, waved a wand over it and said, "Poof! It's a development server!" Before that, this company had been developing directly to live.
With no revision control.
*shiver*
Problem is, like I said before, we've got no full-time tech support on staff at the moment. We have some consultants who babysit our live servers, but they can't help me on this. We have my daughter who is coming in a few hours after school a few times a week to deal with the basic running around and keeping people's desktop computers running. But she can't help me on this. So, I assigned the FNG, a new immigrant from Argentina here in the country for three week who started working with us on Sunday, to build me a new server. I told him where to find the pizza server that the previous tech manager scrounged up for me for the purpose, and handed him a DVD with Centos on it.
Now we have a clean server with the same Linux distro as our live servers, but he can't get it connected to the network. I want to go over there and do it for him. Instead, I passed him some URL's to look up references. Right now I am going to run off and eat some spaghetti. I am NOT going to do this for him. I am not, not, not. I hired him because he's a smart and competent programmer. Systems administration might be different from programming, but if he can learn one, he can learn the other. He will succeed. I will sit back and let him.
*deep breath*
Well, today I need to push through something that should have been done my first week at this company. I'm only pissed at myself for letting it slide so long. We need a development server that is actually like our live server, as opposed to the patched up mess that we have right now. OK, so that patched up mess is my fault. When I realized I wasn't going to get what I want easily, I compromised and grabbed a desktop machine and just did what I could with it, waved a wand over it and said, "Poof! It's a development server!" Before that, this company had been developing directly to live.
With no revision control.
*shiver*
Problem is, like I said before, we've got no full-time tech support on staff at the moment. We have some consultants who babysit our live servers, but they can't help me on this. We have my daughter who is coming in a few hours after school a few times a week to deal with the basic running around and keeping people's desktop computers running. But she can't help me on this. So, I assigned the FNG, a new immigrant from Argentina here in the country for three week who started working with us on Sunday, to build me a new server. I told him where to find the pizza server that the previous tech manager scrounged up for me for the purpose, and handed him a DVD with Centos on it.
Now we have a clean server with the same Linux distro as our live servers, but he can't get it connected to the network. I want to go over there and do it for him. Instead, I passed him some URL's to look up references. Right now I am going to run off and eat some spaghetti. I am NOT going to do this for him. I am not, not, not. I hired him because he's a smart and competent programmer. Systems administration might be different from programming, but if he can learn one, he can learn the other. He will succeed. I will sit back and let him.
*deep breath*