Introduction Organizations that rely on computing resources to carry out their mission have always depended on systems administration and systems administrators. The dramatic increase in the number and size of distributed networks of workstations in recent years has created a tremendous demand for more, and better trained, systems administrators. Understanding of the profession of systems administration on the part of employers, however, has not kept pace with the growth in the number of systems administrators or with the growth in complexity of system administration tasks. Both at sites with a long history of using computing resources and at sites into which computers have only recently been introduced, systems administrators face perception problems that present serious obstacles to their successfully carrying out their duties.
Systems administration is a widely varied task.
In general, systems administrators enable people to exploit computers at a level which gains leverage for the entire organization. Employers frequently fail to understand the background that systems administrators bring to their task. Because systems administration draws on knowledge from many fields, and because it has only recently begun to be taught at a few institutions of higher learning, systems administrators may come from a wide range of academic backgrounds. Although the system of informal education by apprenticeship has been extremely effective in producing skilled systems administrators, it is poorly understood by employers and hiring managers, who tend to focus on credentials to the exclusion of other factors when making personnel decisions. These job classification problems are exacerbated by the scarcity of job descriptions for systems administrators.