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> A junior Sys Admin is somebody new to the career of System Administration.
> It's like a secondary, semi-trainee position to the real Sys Admin. You
> would handle routine day-to-day stuff - adding users, clearing print queues,
> etc. The SA would handle the more technically complicated projects (setting
> up a secure VPN or whatever), while (hopefully) teaching you stuff at the
> same time.
>
> > I was wondering if there was such a position as a Jr. Sys Admin? I hear
> > all the Unix guys tell me that I can make the switch, but this title
> > seems to be an enigma. Has anyone even seen one or know of companies
> > that hire them?
>
> Any company large enough to need more than 1 full time SA - say a company
> with more than 100 users - might split up the positions into Senior &
> Junior SAs.
Or companies with more than one "real" server...(ie non-Intel based.)
A company with more than 100 users has a "help desk" - which is a place
that System Administrators avoid like the plague.
The truth is, job titles are individual to specific companies and mean
whatever they want them to mean at the time they use them.
They ARE the product of Catburt types in HR.
A "Junior" position does NOT normally mean a trainee position, although it
definitely means you get paid less, sometimes much less. It normally means
a position where the job responsibilities and, more importantly, authority,
are severely restricted. However, job expectations are usually that you can
do anything that the Sr. Sys Admin does but "under supervision," not on
your own. (Which means that the Sr. Sys Admin gets fired for letting you
have root privs and typing rm *.*, when he should have been over your
shoulder to prevent it.)
You will also likely discover that a Sr. Sys Admin is more management -- ie
in constant meetings and contract negotiations, while a Jr. Sys Admin is
expected to be writing code all the time. [Unix C programmers tend to be
called System Administrators for some weird reason, while folks who write
Java are called "Webmasters;" or "Scientist" if they write in FORTRAN; and
those who program in COBOL are called "Legacy," etc... Anyone who knows
anything about Oracle, Ingres, SAS, etc is called a DBA (Data Base
Administrator). And if you know what a computer is and also know how to fix
a broken air conditioner or use a mop, you become an "Operations Manager."]
You will discover that very few, if any, high-tech companies have anything
vaguely like a "career path," despite having job descriptions which imply
one. The "career path" ability really only applies to VERY LARGE
organizations where they really do have multiple job slots and a fairly
high staff turnover. There are very, very few companies who can afford to
hire "trainees" today. They are simply not "fat enough" to afford having
an employee who cannot "carry their own weight" from day one. Every "body"
has to be capable of "pulling their fair share of the load" and functioning
at "maximum productivity." It's all a function of companies becoming "lean
and mean" as a function of "down-sizing."
It's sad, but there are a LOT of technical positions out there crying for
bodies, but very, very few (and still decreasing) "trainee" positions.
SAGE - The System Administrators Guild in Usenix, has been trying to define
and promote "System Administration" as a profession - like programming -
for a number of years now. There are (or were, uunet's backbone is down
again, so I can't check right now) a series of "standard" job titles and
descriptions on the SAGE web site.
www.sage.usenix.org/sage
or
www.usenix.org -- and follow the links.
--
www.tru64unix.compaq.com
www.tru64.org
comp.unix.tru64
T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill Senior Systems Administrator
Information Services and Computing (ISC) University of Pennsylvania
Internet: magill@isc.upenn.edu magill@acm.org
http://www.isc-net.upenn.edu/~magill/
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