[nycbug-talk] how much is too much?

[Marc Spitzer]

On 12/4/05, George R. <george at sddi.net> wrote:
> Mohan Singh wrote:
> > $work has about 2 dozen employees, all with windows machines. In
> > addition, there are about 40 rack servers running FreeBSD, with a couple
> > of Linux ones in the mix.
> >
> > A single sysadmin (me) has to take care of all the Unix machines (not
> > generally a problem), all the webservers (ditto), work as help support
> > (a big time eater), diagnose Windows issues (a huge time eater), write
> > documentation, and do other office technical work (pretty much support
> > anything that runs on electricty).
> >
> > This is obviously too much work for one person to handle, but how many
> > additional employees would you think are needed? I'm thinking at least
> > one more full time admin, plus another junior admin/help desk person.
> >
> > For those of you who work at similar sized companies, how many IT people
> > do you have on hand?
>
> Hard question to answer. . .
>
> Certainly getting a help desk person would allow you a lot more free
> time.  I would do that first, then reassess. . .
>
> Users tend to hog up a lot of CPU time. . .

Seconded, you need a helpdesk/desktop support guy.  Another thing you
need is a ticketing system, for a few reasons:
1: things do not get dropped, although they may sit in the queue for ever
2: you can generate reports, this is how I spent my week boss
3: makes the case for hiring a relatively cheap desktop admin easier
to show, see 2
4: if you use it correctly builds a knowledge base for you and users to consult
5: keeps track of all you do so that you can ask for raises with more
confidence, this is what I did boss
6: once people get used to putting tickets in you get larger blocks of
time when the phone does not ring.  So you get more done.

we use remedy at work and RT seems very popular also


marc
>
> g
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