Typical Day
Barney McUnix is the head network administrator for the Fadden-Hancock Financial Services firm. He's been doing this for about thirteen years, holds six certifications, and is pretty good at his job. He has a team of sixteen other guys who work network administration and IT.
That's a decent sized networking team, but honestly, Barney would like to hire a few more. His team works at the firm's headquarters building along with roughly 720 computer-illiterate employees who take turns finding new and inventive ways to break something.
Not that you can blame the employees, really. Even when left alone, computers seem to find ways to break themselves. This is especially true when it comes to new software, an essential but often finicky component of computing. Without software, computers are basically just inert lumps of metal and plastic.
Computers constantly want you to update their software, but often when you do, they still don't work right—and sometimes even act all petulant, like what you gave them wasn't good enough. That's why companies need to keep network admins around; they're the only ones who can tame the beasts.
So anyway, back to Barney. He gets up at 6:00AM so he can be at the office by 7:30AM. It's Monday, and he and most of his team worked over the weekend to update the router tables and install security patches across the network. They'll need to be on hand when the employees start showing up so he can see how the updates function when several hundred users login.
He walks through the front doors of Fadden-Hancock at 7:15AM, and his team finishes arriving by 7:40AM. After a while, it's clear the updates are doing just fine and everyone breathes a small sigh of relief. For about eight seconds. After that, it's just like every other day, with the phone ringing nonstop as people call about computer problems.
Right after lunch, Barney gets a call from the Chief Information Officer (CIO), who asks him to come to her office. It seems she got Barney's request for a network security system overhaul and she wants to talk about it. But the conversation starts off a little more contentious than Barney would've liked.
"Barney, why are you asking for $75,000 for a security overhaul? You just spent all weekend upgrading the network's security."
"Well, no, I didn't," Barney replies, trying to keep a measured tone. "We installed security-related software patches released by Microsoft at the end of last week. What I'm asking for is enough money to replace half our high-traffic routers with the new version from Cisco."
"Why? The ones we have work perfectly fine."
Barney fights to keep a smile on his face. "For the most part, yes, but the new version has double the rule and table list capacity. It's a definite upgrade from our current security posture."
"Is that all they do?"
"No, but the rest of the new capabilities are kind of complicated. I didn't want to bog you down with techno-babble."
"Are you saying I'm stupid?" The CIO has fire in her eyes, and Barney knows he's gone too far. If he wants the money for the upgrades, he's going to have to come up with a more detailed presentation of the costs and benefits involved in getting the new routers.
Barney leaves the meeting without approval for the money, but he's going to re-attack after the quarterly profits are publicized. In the meantime, he has to get back to the IT department.
One of his guys just called and asked for help in reinstalling the baseline operating system for half the accounting department—it seems some of the money managers loaded World of Warcraft and accidentally deleted most of their accounting software. Barney sighs and heads downstairs.
After a few more hours of putting out fires and removing MMORPGs from the company's servers (side-eye in your direction, accounting department), Barney calls it a day and heads home. There's not much awaiting him there besides a microwave dinner and a Netflix documentary, but it's nice not to be fixing other peoples' problems anymore.