What Language for a future Network Admin?

[centip3de]

8-) win.

Bitch, he said both. </3

[tremor77]

I am a Lead System Administrator in a fucked up network environment of just about every possible OS and whacked out software systems that you'll ever see, ever. Here are my thoughts..

1 - Why in god's name would you want to be a network admin? Most of the time we are viewed as glorified helpdesk or IT guys both by management and the rest of the workplace. Generally underpaid and 10000% unappreciated - nevermind the fact that we work our asses off on preventative maintenance to maintain uptimes of 99% or better... then for that short time when there is an outage for one reason or another - all hell's shitstorm rains down on your head!!!!!! Not to mention, you think you're protecting your network from hackers on the outside but the majority of your troubles are going to come from derpheads on the inside.. you spend most of your day writing and rewriting company policies that all your users don't even read and tweaking firewall settings to stop your bosses son from download pronz into the public shares.

2 - Depending on the environment you're in, programming will be less useful than a good knowledge of various scripting languages... in Windows environments, which is mostly likely if your in a standard corporate workplace... BATCH and VB will probably be what you want to know the most to make your daily life less stressful.. you'll find yourself pairing up some startup scripts like this along with using the scheduled task manager to execute things regularly.. one example, I have a script on all workstations to run additional disk cleanups (temp files, histories, cookies) in the overnights, and another one to shut down workstations after 8PM on friday night, because of all the people who leave for the weekend and don't shut off their PC. Stuff like that will be the most handy. Not to mention, I can sit down right now and whip together a .BAT file in about 5 minutes that will bypass most any antivirus in existance, potentially self replicate*, and then simply destroy the machine it's on without any warning to the end user.. wheeee BATCH is fun.

[LostinCyberia]

I understand your problems with being under appreciated and the first to blame when something goes wrong. It's the exact position that I want but something in the general field, rather it be with security or networking. I"m still knee deep in college work, so I haven't made up my mind. What's the average day like for a network admin?

[LoGiCaL__]

I am a Lead System Administrator in a fucked up network environment of just about every possible OS and whacked out software systems that you'll ever see, ever. Here are my thoughts..

1 - Why in god's name would you want to be a network admin? Most of the time we are viewed as glorified helpdesk or IT guys both by management and the rest of the workplace. Generally underpaid and 10000% unappreciated - nevermind the fact that we work our asses off on preventative maintenance to maintain uptimes of 99% or better... then for that short time when there is an outage for one reason or another - all hell's shitstorm rains down on your head!!!!!! Not to mention, you think you're protecting your network from hackers on the outside but the majority of your troubles are going to come from derpheads on the inside.. you spend most of your day writing and rewriting company policies that all your users don't even read and tweaking firewall settings to stop your bosses son from download pronz into the public shares.

There's tremor77, what up? Spot on with that paragraph. However, I feel that most IT/developer work goes un or under appreciated. There's nothing like working your ass off to keep network secure to only have the people who pay you fuck it up and then want to know why their pc's are running slow or won't load windows. You could tell them the truth and risk getting fired or just suck it up and start from the drawing board.

2 - Depending on the environment you're in, programming will be less useful than a good knowledge of various scripting languages... in Windows environments, which is mostly likely if your in a standard corporate workplace... BATCH and VB will probably be what you want to know the most to make your daily life less stressful.. you'll find yourself pairing up some startup scripts like this along with using the scheduled task manager to execute things regularly.. one example, I have a script on all workstations to run additional disk cleanups (temp files, histories, cookies) in the overnights, and another one to shut down workstations after 8PM on friday night, because of all the people who leave for the weekend and don't shut off their PC. Stuff like that will be the most handy. Not to mention, I can sit down right now and whip together a .BAT file in about 5 minutes that will bypass most any antivirus in existance, potentially self replicate*, and then simply destroy the machine it's on without any warning to the end user.. wheeee BATCH is fun.

Batch was very useful at my last job. Works even better with active directory. You could have unique startup scripts run for each user during login. While not the most in depth language it's very versatile and gets shit done in a bind. Even powershell was proving to be useful. That's windows though, for linux, perl and shell scripting will prove to be just as useful if not better in certain situations.