Rejoice! Sysadmin day is... TODAY. Now get in here and win free stuff Today, this very Friday, is Sysadmin Day. As a system administrator, I'm naturally biased and think every day should be sysadmin day, but it's nice to know we have at least one day a year set aside for some recognition. What is really heartening to see is just how much awareness of the day has grown since its inception. As …
I believe the argument goes along the line of refusing to work stupid hours without it and "we won't hire anyone else who can do it and our penalties for not doing the work are way more than paying you overtime costs". I am sure at some point insanity will prevail and they'll assume they can get it all done offshore to "save money".
In many regions this day is hardly known and sometimes its considered 'cool' to know about it and to make a good impression as an employer.
I do think its important to be very careful in regions where it is better known. Take the article here; "you can enter a competition", however: "you only need to register here..". And that should really lead up to the question: "So what are you going to do with my data?".
In this case marketing, obviously, but it seems to be to a minor degree: "By clicking this button you submit your information to the webinar organizer, who will use it to communicate with you regarding this event and their other services". Obviously this isn't for me, I don't need more spam, thanks.
So keep that in mind as well. Organisations who may appear to acknowledge "sysadmin day" might not simply do so because they feel good about us sysadmins but because they hope to collect a lot of personal information which can then be used for plain old marketing purposes.
From the first article about the webinar:
"None of the personal details used during registration will be retained after we've managed to get the swag out to the winners. I won't be providing the list of information to the vendors in the panel nor will I spam with you annoying marketing spam."
Marketing? Not part of the plan. Not by half. This is about getting vendors to give you things, not about giving your info to vendors.
What day can we celebrate the obstructive and incompetent sysadmins?
The ones who say no
The ones who wait till the last minute then after several prods respond with a no
The ones who sit on all the planning meetings and sign off on design docs then raise objections at the 11th hour
The ones who fail to mention anything about how server A can't see server B due to their shitty network implementation
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