Hug Your Network Engineer Day
Do you even know who they are? What they look like? How incredibly hard they work FOR YOU day in and day out? Sure, I?m in the users? faces every day and I don?t let them forget who I am & what I do, but what about the silent force that is The Networking Boys?
One of our key servers took a shit this week and had the Networking Boys pulling in double\triple shifts. Through no fault of their own, they inherited and saved a situation that could have been really nasty. You?ll never really know how nasty because you aren?t supposed to. They hold your, more times than not, fragile career in their hands and at any moment it may slip away faster that than fat royalty check you signed up for. A competent network engineer saves your ass more than you?ll ever know. That?s their job. They prepare for moments such as these, come battling into the trenches full force and often receive little credit, let alone thanks. They are the Man Behind The Curtain. A collective beast, if you will. Many individuals working in harmony to make sure your day was not a complete waste.
If you have a competent Network staff, appreciate them, thank them for what they do in your name. They may not bring the cash in, but I?ll be damned if they don?t keep it there. So the next time you want to be a Mr. I Know Networking Man and comment on the ?spiked switch? or your slow porn download, think twice. The Networking Boys have your back covered at all times and work damn hard to make sure you stay productive, so don?t fuck around. After all, they know your daily internet habits.
Comments
So why'd the server poop?
Posted by: vince | November 6, 2003 11:18 PM
While I certainly appreciate the grunts doing all the hard work, let's not forget that the higher-ups in the group are the ones who brought us the mandated single point of failure.... And the ones responsible for having a server that is so fragile that it endangers our careers when it takes a hit...
And, unfortunately, those same higher-ups are the ones who really hold all our careers in their hands. Scary thought, eh?
That of course leads to the question - what happened? Why is IT not sharing that information? And can it happen again?
Posted by: groby | November 7, 2003 6:52 AM
You know, I really think you get so much flak from users because most of us have had to work with some pretty bad IT people in the past. From what I've heard, you are the exception, not the rule.
I guess that's why you were the shiney tiara?
Posted by: crowdpleazr | November 7, 2003 8:25 AM
how about "WEAR the SHINY tiara"
damned spellchecker autofix, ruined me for life
Posted by: crowdpleazr | November 7, 2003 8:27 AM
Ya'll realize the answers to those questions were sent out not only by myself, but some of my co-workers, right? But I know, I know, ya'll want the technical specifics, right? I wish I could give them to you, but all I know at the moment is that it was a bug in the OS. I didn't have time today to find out more, but I do know this, groby, it will not happen again. Something else will, it's inevitable. That's technology. I thought we were informative enough...you didn't?
crowdpleazr...I do love my tiara, but seriously, I just try to do my job. I fuck up plenty, hopefully nobody notices when I do :) IT folk have a pretty bad rap universally, but I realize it comes with the territory. Hopefully we will overcome that in time.
Posted by: Princess | November 7, 2003 10:03 PM
Just for the record, I'd say that about half that bad rap comes from bad upper management of IT, not IT itself. For instance, I know of a certain company who's WEP was turned off so anyone walking into the office could connect a laptop with no problem, mostly because a certain owner didn't like dealing with WEP.....until a decent human from a nearby office made a visit to say they were accidentally connecting to the network all the time.
Posted by: crowdpleazr | November 8, 2003 3:47 PM
I've had good experiences with IT departments before. I thought IT at Microsoft was pretty good. Then again, I was a lowly intern, so maybe I never had to deal with the Dark Side of IT over there.
Posted by: vince | November 11, 2003 2:16 PM