Re: [OPINION] Best place in the US for NetAdmins

[William Herrin <bill () herrin us>]

On Sat, Jul 26, 2014 at 7:04 AM, Rich Kulawiec <rsk () gsp org> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 05:35:45PM -0700, Scott Weeks wrote:
> > One day, hopefully, telecommuting really takes off [...]
>
> It often strikes me as incredibly ironic that companies which *would
> not exist* were it not for the Internet are among the most resistant
> to the simple, obvious concept that telecommuting allows them to hire
> the best and brightest regardless of geography.

Hi Rich,

It's hard to manage telecommuters. Any manager can see whether or not
you're at your desk, but gauging your work output and assessing
whether it's happening at an appropriate rate is actually pretty
challenging.

This is especially true of systems administration where the ideal
output of your efforts is that nothing is observed to have happened --
you prevented all problems from escalating to where they became
visible. So not only does your manager have to be really good at
management, he has to understand your work well enough to assess the
quality and quantity of your results too.

In other words, you may be asking more of your manager than you're
willing to ask of yourself. Generally speaking, you're more valuable
to a company if that equation is the other way around.

Regards,
Bill Herrin


-- 
William Herrin ................ herrin () dirtside com  bill () herrin us
Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>
Can I solve your unusual networking challenges?