[Cialug] system admin job

[Renegade Muskrat]

In two weeks i am leaving my current position. I work at Cowles Library 
at Drake University. The search committee is going to start looking for 
a replacement soon, so i thought i'd give this group a heads-up in case 
anyone is interested. I'll have more details once the search committee 
gets further along in the process, but for now i can give the info 
below about the position. If you aren't interested, please delete the 
message now.

About the job:

I am the system administrator of the library. I maintain about 100 
Windows PCs and 30 OS X Macs. Most of the machines are in public labs 
and thus are easy to manage with imaging software. About 30 machines 
are used by faculty and staff and are a bit more customized. I also 
maintain the server room, which consists of 1 Solaris machine, 2 
Windows servers, and a handful of Linux and OpenBSD servers. I spend my 
time doing light programming, helping faculty and staff with questions, 
and learning how to improve the infrastructure. Most of my projects are 
self-chosen and i have a lot of freedom to do what i want. I try to 
spend as much time as possible doing system administration on the 
various Unix-like machines but do have to spend a bit on the Windows 
machines. There is a small amount of Active Directory administration 
involved. The Macs mostly take care of themselves, but i try to update 
the software on them every 2 years or so. I also advocate the use of 
open source when possible and do a bit of occasional research into open 
source ways to do things. Web development used to be part of the job, 
but we hired a web developer in January and since then my web duties 
have mostly been system administration tasks on the web server 
(reconfiguring Apache when the web developer wants it to do more, for 
instance).

I would say the job is challenging in that there is a broad array of 
tasks. But for anyone with some Linux or Unix experience who is willing 
to get their hands dirty with Windows administration, it isn't too bad. 
Over time i've been finding programs and writing scripts to make the 
Windows machines behave more like Unix, so even Windows stuff isn't as 
bad as it used to be. We have been talking as a long-term strategy 
thinning out the Windows machines and replacing them with Macs. All the 
security and anti-virus stuff you have to do to a Windows machine to 
keep it secure in a lab environment is rather obscene.

Also, if you want to run Linux on your own workstation, that is a 
possibility. I've been doing it since i was hired. The library uses 
Linux in the server room. Linux (specifically, the Linux Terminal 
Server Project distribution) is also used to run the public card 
catalog terminals (what people use to look up books and journal 
articles).

Also, whoever is hired will be able to ask me questions fairly easily 
if you don't understand how things are set up currently. I'll still be 
on Drake campus, just over in the Dial Center (for those of you 
familiar with Drake). I'm also leaving behind a folder of documentation 
that i've written that describes in detail (some would say excruciating 
detail) how servers and desktop computers are configured.

About the benefits:

Salary: they will probably offer a new person somewhere in the upper 
$30s or low $40s. I started 4 years ago at $38k but now make about $3k 
more. Drake's standard work week is 37.5 hours. I never have to work 
overtime. On rare occasions (maybe 3-4 times per year) i'll have to go 
in for half an hour on a weekend or evening to fix something critical 
that broke, but when that happens i just leave early the next work day. 
Standard work day is 8:00-16:30 with an hour for lunch. But if that 
doesn't work, they are flexible. Many people start earlier or later 
than 8:00 for instance (there's one person who starts at 6:30 <shudder> 
but then leaves around 15:00).

Vacation: 22 days per year (2 of those days are labelled "personal 
days" but they are the same thing). National holidays and the week 
between Christmas and New Year's Day are also given as paid time off. 
Holidays don't count as part of the 20 days of vacation, so with them 
included you end up getting more like 30 to 35 days vacation per year.

It is a university job, with all else that implies. Namely, you don't 
get very good raises (some years the raise is less than inflation) and 
the raises aren't usually based on performance. The upside to a 
university job (beyond the short work week and the excessive vacation 
time) is an excellent benefits package including good medical and 
dental (when i visit the dentist every 6 months i just wave to the 
receptionist on the way out; it costs me nothing; doctor's visits only 
cost me $15; prescriptions are also about $10 for anything). There is 
also automatic life insurance and a good retirement plan that Drake 
pays into separate from regular salary. The best benefit (to me anyway) 
is free classes: you can take 8 credits per semester free of charge. 
That works out to 2 or 3 classes. I usually take 2. Juggling work plus 
3 classes would be a bit stressful.

Also, my manager is awesome. He does a great job of shielding me from 
all sorts of nuisances. I rarely have to go to meetings, and usually 
they are useful instead of boring stuff that some management types 
like. Most of the time i am left to complete projects as i see fit. In 
a typical day i'll split my time between 2 or 3 long-term projects 
(switching when i hit a problem that requires thought or when i get 
bored of working on one particular thing) and dealing with daily system 
administration tasks and answering the occasional questions from the 
staff. I don't have to deal with the student population all that often; 
probably on average 5 minutes per day.


Well, that's all i can think of off the top of my head related to the 
position. I'll post more details later with a link to the official job 
listing, which probably won't be nearly as descriptive as this ramble 
was.
                                                -- Dan
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             "I'm still sane on three planets and two moons."
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       Daniel Ramaley                  3118 Cottage Grove Ave Apt 8
       dramaley at spatulacity dot cx        Des Moines, Iowa 50311
       http://www.spatulacity.cx/                    (515) 271-5233
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