Today is our day. July 25, 2014 marks the 15th annual System Administrator Appreciation Day. On this day we pause and take a moment to forget the impossible tasks, nonexistent budgets, and often unrealistic timelines to say thank you to those people who keeps everything working — system administrators.
So much of what has become a part of everyday life, from doing our jobs, to playing games online, shopping, and connecting with friends and family around the world is only possible due in large part to the tireless efforts of the system administrators who are in the trenches every hour of every day of the year keeping the tubes clear and the packets flowing. The fact that technology has become so common place in our lives, and more often than not “just works” has afforded us the luxury of forgetting (or not evening knowing) the immense infrastructure complexity which the system administrator works with to deliver the services we have come to rely on.
SysAdmin Appreciation Day started 15 years ago thanks to Ted Kekatos. According to Wikipedia, “Kekatos was inspired to create the special day by a Hewlett-Packard magazine advertisement in which a system administrator is presented with flowers and fruit-baskets by grateful co-workers as thanks for installing new printers. Kekatos had just installed several of the same model printers at his workplace.” Ever since then, SysAdmin Appreciation Day has been celebrated on the last Friday in July.
At Pythian, I have the privilege of being part of the Enterprise Infrastructure Services group. We are a SysAdmin dream team of the best of the best, from around the globe. Day in and day out, our team is responsible for countless servers, networks, and services that millions of people use every day.
To all my colleagues and to anyone who considers themselves a SysAdmin, regardless of which flavour – thank you, and know that you are truly doing work that matters.
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Hear hear, Chris. Managing systems is often a thankless task, in part because the better you are at doing it well, the more invisible you become. Days like this help us to remember that a lot of hard work, creativity and intelligence goes into creating those outcomes for the systems entrusted to us.