cjsha's A2K profile and what it means

I've been puzzled at the time cjsha spends on A2K. His publicly posted A2K profile states that he works as a UNIX System Administration. Maybe he posts on A2K during his airplane travel or in his office at work on the company's time. Cjsha recently posted that he installed the first lens on the Hubble space telescope, which I found interesting because the first lens was a failure.

I thought the desired requirements for his job were interesting given cjsha's posting style on A2K. I assume he is a Senior Administrator so that's the only job description I've posted below. ---BBB

UNIX SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION:

General System Administration Overview

Classification of Systems:

Small sites have 1 - 10 machines, all running the same OS. Usually the administrator of a small site has only about 20 users. Usually there is only one administrator for a small site.

Medium sites have up to 100 machines, and may be running up to 3 different OSs. The administrator usually has about 100 users. Medium sites may have more that one administrator, either specializing in different operating systems or sharing general system administrator duties.

Large sites have over 100 computers, multiple operating systems, and over 100 users. At a large site, there will be a hierarchy of administration, with the lead or senior System Administrator responsible for all of the systems and assigning duties to one or more assistant administrators.
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System Administration Skills:

System administration skills can be classified in four general levels. The links below discuss the required skills, desired skills, and responsibilities of each of those levels. Following the levels are some general thoughts on system administration in general.

Senior System Administrator:

Required Skills

Strong inter-personal and communication skills; capable of writing proposals and papers, acting as a vendor liaison, making presentations to customer/client audiences or making professional presentations, work closely with upper management.

Ability to solve problems quickly and completely.

Ability to identify tasks which should be automated and then write tools to automate them.

Solid understanding of the Unix based operations system: understands paging and swapping, interprocess communication, devices and device drivers, can perform system analysis and tuning.

Ability to program in at least one, preferably two administrative languages, (shell, Perl, Tk) and port C programs from one platform to another, write small C programs.

Solid understanding of networking/distributed computing environments, understanding the principals of routing, client/server programming, and the design of consistent network-wide filesystems.


Required Background:

More than 5 years of previous system administration experience.

Desirable:

A degree in CS or a related field. Advanced degree preferred.
Extensive programming experience in an applicable language.
Publications within the field of system administration.

Appropriate Responsibilities:

Design/implement complex local and wide-area networks of machines.

Manages a large site or network.

Works under general direction of senior management.

Establishes/recommends policies and procedures for system use and services.

Provides the technical lead and/or supervision for system administrators, system programmers, or others.

Has purchasing authority and responsibility for purchase justification.
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Finally, some important thoughts for system Administrators:

Never do something you can't undo.

Always check the backups, never assume they are working. Make sure you can restore from them, too.

Write down what you did, even if you know you will never forget it, you will.

If you do it more than once, write a script.

Get to know your users before there is a problem, then when there is, they will know who you are and maybe have a little understanding.

Remember you are performing a service for your users, you don't own the system, you just get to play with it.

Check your backups.

Never stop learning, there is always something you should know to make your job easier and your system more stable and secure.

Check your backups, again.