Management Perception of System Administration

Fri Feb 22 09:29:46 PST 2002

Last night Paul Evans spoke at the Bay LISA meeting on lessons 
learned at Webvan during the period of 1999-2000.  Actually, he 
presented a few insights and then opened the floor for public 
discussion.  In his well-thought-out presentation he drew parallels 
between the public political and business climate and that of the 
individual companies participating in the dot-com bubble, and then 
he got down to the specifics of incidents at Webvan itself.  Although 
some of the observations were contradictory, anyone who was reading 
business magazines at the time would remember that the times 
themselves were contradictory.  

What came out for me was the disconnect between what Paul called the 
"operational management," or the managers who were responsible for 
the day-to-day business, and the "strategic management," or the 
president and the board of directors.  It appeared that the 
operational management was unable to communicate to the strategic 
management the common business sense that they had acquired through 
their prior experience.  Is this true, or is it simplification?  

I tend to think that the missteps along the way were shared by all, 
that the miscommunication occurred on both sides of the arbitrary 
fence.  We heard an example of non-redundant production equipment in 
a mission-critical application failing, without spares on hand.  
Many of the system administrators in the audience saw this as a red 
flag, while Paul seemed to think that this was a necessary evil due 
to the budgetary constraints of the earlier, less extravagant, 
incarnation of Webvan.  Paul also seemed to blame new, more ambitious 
management for ignoring this warning and deciding to roll out its 
services in numerous markets before the concept was proven in the 
first market.  However, a contractor in the audience indicated that 
Paul's team had done exactly the same thing by ignoring the 
implications of an earlier failure on the same mission-critical 
application.  

I don't think there's a disconnect between operational management and 
strategic management.  I've seen the scramble for safety and the 
fear of being blamed in the rank-and-file, as well as in the 
boardroom.  I have observed how managers, both of operations and of 
research and development, have side-stepped critical issues because 
they did not want their names associated with an obvious problem.  I 
have seen how corporate politics works at all levels to subvert 
corporate profitability.  I once thought this was a phenomenon 
reserved for old companies, but the Webvan presentation showed me 
that it can happen anywhere, that it is more a phenomenon of society 
than of one company or another.  

Paul made a very strong point that the only real way for system 
administrators to apply their personal experience to board-level 
decisions is to climb into the board and participate.  He mentioned 
the suit phenomenon, where employees can be promoted into management 
because of their appearance.  I'd like to keep in mind that I have 
only one chance to make a first impression, and that the suit, or at 
least a business-casual appearance, must be maintained continuously.  

I would like to point out, however, that it is often corporate 
expectations that provide the social pressure for technicians and 
engineers to "dress down."  Managers don't want to be confused into 
thinking that their line employees are also managers.  That doesn't 
fit into their mindset.  Yes, in their minds there is a class 
distinction between "management" and "labor," and while engineers, 
programmers, and system administrators are not typically unionized, 
managers tend to think of them as labor.  System administrators will 
not find changing management perception an overnight project.   
Engineers have been trying to change this perception for a hundred 
years, and as far as I can tell they have made no progress at all.  

--David R. Dull
  ddull at ieee.org
  http://home.netcom.com/~qkstart