practice

Doi: 10.1145/1897816.1897837

Article development led by queue.acm.org

By cHRistinA LeAR
system
Administration
soft skills

are perceived by their colleagues, how they prioritize their workloads, how they follow through, the first impressions they make on their colleagues, and poor communication skills are all pieces of the puzzle. The conflict is often exaggerated in an engineering environment where technology-savvy employees have different needs and expectations of their computing environment.

Attitude. One of the greatest causes of conflict is the attitude that SAs present to their colleagues. SAs are sometimes perceived as unfriendly, unhelpful, or slow to respond. How people perceive you is directly related to the attitude you project.

The number-one attitude problem among SAs is a blatant disrespect for the people they are hired to support. End users are not “lusers” or “pests with requests.” Often a change of vocabulary helps. Refer to these end users as colleagues5 or customers. 4 This terminology is a reminder that SAs and end users are on the same team and that SAs are in a service industry, supporting the needs of the end users.

Beware, however, of thinking “the customer is always right.” Part of an SA’s job is to (politely) say no when appropriate. Remember that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Teach your colleagues how to do things themselves, provide documentation, and make sure they do not need to ask time and time again how to do something. It is also the responsibility of an SA to politely reject requests that are against policy. As a general rule, if you are comfortable with colleagues performing certain tasks (for example, they can’t break anything and it’s not against policy), then you should enable those colleagues to do it themselves.

Another attitude problem that SAs can develop is avoiding colleagues who bring them nothing but complaints or problems. You need to think of each problem as a challenge to solve and a way to demonstrate your expertise. Be glad that someone found

How can system administrators reduce stress
and conflict in the workplace?

s Ys TeM adMinis TraTion Can be both stressful and rewarding. Stress generally comes from outside factors such as conflict between system administrators (SAs) and their colleagues, a lack of resources, a high-interrupt environment, conflicting priorities, and SAs being held responsible for failures outside their control.

What can SAs and their managers do to alleviate the stress? There are some well-known interpersonal and time-management techniques that can help, but these can be forgotten in times of crisis or just through force of habit. The purpose of this article is to restate these maxims and remind readers of these important soft skills, particularly as they apply to SAs.

Conflicts with colleagues. SAs often feel their efforts are not appreciated and their department is the butt of jokes or a source of frustration for the rest of the company. The sources of these conflicts can be varied. The attitude that the SAs project and how they