Fear and Loathing in Systems Administration

DevOps doesn’t matter. I will talk about ways that Systems / Operations teams can have a better quality of life, while providing better service, and developing better relationships with their companies, all while invoking the “D” word a minimum of times.

When a SysAdmin says “DevOps doesn’t work”, they’re reacting to a cultural heritage of decades of unpleasant experiences. Historically they have been outnumbered, overridden, and have been given responsibilities without the authority to match. Their reactions to their circumstances can often make them seem surly, or even uncooperative.

“DevOps” is a red herring. Focusing on it is overlooking the real problem: mismanagement. Thankfully this is a fixable problem.

In this talk I show how to make your ops, devops, or any technical team more successful and less frustrated.

I’ll discuss:

• the history of poor relations among teams
• why authority must go hand in hand with responsibility
• how understaffing impacts the team, product, company, and users

By the end of this talk, you’ll know the warning signs of an unhealthy team (such as constant firefighting) and how to start improving the situation for everyone involved.

Not much in the way of technical requirements. A confidence monitor for speaker notes is very helpful. HDMI or Thunderbolt3 can be easily accomodated.

I’m the best person to speak on the subject because I wrote the article for SysAdvent2015, and that went pretty well, and I’ve suffered amount of Fear and Loathing in my career.