[ale] Philosophical question

[J.M. Taylor]

Jerald,

It really depends on what you want, you know?  If you live and breathe 
unix and go home and do *nixy things for fun and really need to run the 
show, you might find yourself really unhappy and looking soon despite the 
money.

If you're comfortable working with the admins of the boxen (have you met 
them? Are they reasonable?) and confining your urges to be r00t to your 
home life, then you might be perfectly happy herding applications.  

Just IMHO, right now the stability of the employment is more important 
than the cash being thrown at you, since jobs still aren't growing on 
trees.  

I just took a somewhat junior level applications development position 
that ostensibly has no sys admin involved, after years of being 
sys/network admin and lead developer.  It was a hard adjustment at first, 
in a new environment that I didn't set up and know inside out, with other  
people calling the shots.  Now I have begun to really enjoy being able to work  
quietly and productively without a zillion emergencies, and being able to  
put that work down at 5pm and go home to a life. I might even get to 
take a vacation next year, which is something that I could never do as 
an admin.  And I work closely with the sys admins who are happy to have a  
developer who really cares about security and application performance.  
So, sometimes it works out, but it's not easy to give up that control.

Good luck with it. 

jenn

On Tue, 10 Feb 2004, Jerald Sheets wrote:

> Hey folks.  
> 
> Philosophical question for you...
> 
> If you were offered 40% more a year to do the work of an applications
> admin (i.e. no root access), would you take it?
> 
> i told a recruiter that money wasn't really important in the relo I'm
> trying to accomplish and then he came back with a high enough number i
> can't ignore him. 
> 
> so that's the question, would *you* give up root access for a pile of
> cash?
> 
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Jenn Taylor
Systems Analyst, CIS
Armstrong Atlantic State University
912.921.5980
taylorje at mail.armstrong.edu