[LINK] No more human sysadmins??

[Jan Whitaker]

At 10:18 AM 14/08/2013, Jim Birch wrote:
>Being a sysadmin doesn't have lot to do with it, except perhaps that time
>spent learning to be a sysadmin isn't time spent in the intelligence
>community being indoctrinated with a fortress ethos.

Interesting dilemma, Jim. Company: We want ethical people to protect 
our interests, but not to question whether our interests are ethical. 
That has to cause some cognitive dissonance somewhere. If the company 
leadership is made up of sociopaths, they can deal with their own, 
but will always come down like a ton of bricks on anyone who 
disagrees with them.

As for sysadmins, I think the difference there is that they are in a 
privileged position of access beyond what general employees have. 
Leaders may/do have access to the juicy stuff as a matter of their 
jobs. Sysadmins have access as a side effect of the technology, 
possibly similar to a trusted personal assistant or secretary (are 
there any secretaries left any more?). Except sysadmins have access 
to everything in the company. PAs probably don't.

Then add the layer of professional ethics of having a societal 
responsibility first and it's no wonder that there is conflict.

Back to the proposition of doing away with sysadmins to avoid the 
conflict in the first place. The ethical dilemma is removed in terms 
of access, but not in terms of the system design questions, whose 
interests get attended to first (particularly when it comes to 
commercial interests), the assumption that the Constitution of the US 
means something still over there, and evidence of wrong-doing that 
does need to be exposed somehow (Hoover, McCarthy, Nixon, Reagan, 
Obama(?)). I'm not saying it's a sysadmin's job to do the exposing, 
but it sure would be tempting if the person does have an ethical view 
of the world and a sense of 'greater good' and 'self-sacrifice'.

And then there's the practical: who ya going to call when the system 
starts to fail? It's still going to be human beings. Back to where you started.

Jan



Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
blog: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com

Our truest response to the irrationality of the world is to paint or 
sing or write, for only in such response do we find truth.
~Madeline L'Engle, writer

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