System Admin's Unit of Production?

RailGunSally writes "I am a (strictly technical) member of a large *nix systems admin team at a Fortune 150. Our new IT Management Overlord is a hardcore bean-counter from hell. We in the trenches have been tasked with providing 'metrics' on absolutely everything from system utilization to paper clip recycling. Of course, measuring productivity is right up there at the top of the list. We're stumped as to a definition of the basic unit of productivity for a *nix admin. There is a school of thought in our group that holds that if the PHBs are simple enough to want to operate purely from pie charts and spreadsheets, then we should just graph some output from /dev/random and have done with it. I personally love the idea, but I feel the need for due diligence, so I put the question to the Slashdot community: How does one reasonably quantify admin productivity?"

Number of Cases

[Esion Modnar]

of Jolt Cola consumed.

The only reason you need...

[Ice Wewe]

to know [xkcd.com]

Easy

[Bloater]

Write a kernel module to log the number of keystrokes.

Units

[ettlz]

How does one reasonably quantify admin productivity?

In admons.

Re:Unit of production

[thomas.galvin]

The best sys admins are the ones you never notice.

If the productive workers in a company never see or need to talk to a sys admin it's been a productive day for the admins.

Bingo. So here's what you do:

Leave for a week.

When you get back, after you've managed to suppress the fires and riots, fight your way to Mr. Bean's office, talk him down off of his desk, get him to put away the spear, and tell him "that's why you keep us around." If he wants it quantified, write it up as "Number of Cannibal Insurrections Suppressed Per Week (Estimated)."

Wasted Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Just make a Pie Chart and have 66% of the pie say "Time Wasted figuring out how productive we are."

Re:Hey, dumba$$

[markdavis]

He is a *nix sysadmin... there are no regular patch THURSDAYS *OR* TUESDAYS!

Re:Easy

[TubeSteak]

Why worry? If you've got enough time to post stories to Slashdot you're clearly very efficient.

So what you're saying is that he should use /. posts per day as a measure of efficiency?

I wonder how much he'd have to post to get a bigger Christmas bonus.

Re:Easy

[megaditto]

Get back to work before they outsource you to a perl script.

Re:Firemen

[NMerriam]

How does one measure a firemans performance?

Books burned per hour?

Re:Your sig

[mustafap]

>you just saved two full weeks of your live by passing 'that guy.'

What? Since when is going fast a time machine?* It just means you got some where quicker, and could start being an asshole to someone at your destination earlier.

* Ignoring special relativity.

Re:The hammer priciple.

[D-Cypell]

I worked at one Fortune 500 company where everybody in the dept had Double E's.

Excellent. Tell me, how is Mr Hefner?

Re:The hammer priciple.

[somersault]

I'm thinking you could get pretty impressive stats for all three by playing Team Fortress all day!

Functionally stable

[TapeCutter]

"How many tickets were not opened in the first place because things just work."

"Functionally stable": A euphemisim meaning your project/system is going nowhere and getting nothing.

Re:The sysadmin's job ...

[infonography]

Hmm, thats true lets see now.

clickityclickityclickityclickityclickityclickitycl ickityclickityclickityclickity

su username

clickityclickityclickityclickityclickityclickitycl ickityclickity

not there.... hmmm

clickityclickityclickityclickityclickityclickitycl ickityclickityclickityclickityclickityclickityclic kityclickityclickityclickityclickityclickityclicki tyclickityclickityclickity

launch gimp, batch job import, crop

clickityclickityclickityclickityclickityclickitycl ickityclickity

copy rename alter datestamp chown

clickityclickityclickityclickityclickityclickitycl ickityclickityclickityclickityclickityclickityclic kityclickityclickityclickityclickityclickityclicki tyclickityclickityclickity

hmmm ok found it tsk tsk tsk, and he seems like such a nice young man. .......

Cows???? oh good lord

clickityclickityclickityclickityclickityclickitycl ickityclickityclickityclickity

mail "my vacation photos" all

/ tip of the hat to the BOFH

Re:Number of Cases

[lukas84]

I currently work in a small business, and our CEO just cut all hw maintenance contracts because we didn't have any major hw problems in the past.

I can already see were this will lead...

Re:The Barbrady Effect

[Nefarious Wheel]

...reading the latest management fad like Sigma 7 or some other such...

The Sigma 7 was an excellent computer in it's day. It was the first computer to have a hardware priority interrupt, invented by Max Palevsky.

I think you might mean "Six Sigma" which is slightly less old.