The IT men and women

My blog is getting lonely and I invoked the powers of social networking to move things along. I shared this blog's link to my 400-shy Facebook friends, asking (no, begging) them to visit the lonesome blog.

I'm glad I did, because it initiated a running chat with my past colleagues when I used to work in an IT infrastructure group of a multinational company. These guys are Linux and Windows SysAds and one is an IT security guy to boot.

How's that again? In layman's term, these guys take care of the "computers" (servers) and the "programs" (systems) therein that "ordinary people" (end-users) use to do their work, buy their stuff, watch their videos, or even play their games.

Back to my earlier statement: "IT" is information technology or "something related to computers and is kind of geeky". An "infrastructure group" is an even geekier word for a team of people who stare at computer consoles everyday to make sure that the computer systems are always "up" (good thing) and to make them so when they're "down" (bad thing). In a "down" scenario, there could be a lot of cursing usually directed at this "IT infrastructure group" of people. The "SysAds" are systems administrators that are pretty much the object of the cursing, peace.

I hope I really do have the power of words to explain what IT guys do without doing the equivalent of knifing my readers in the brain. Suffice to say that the people who work in the IT industry are in a class of their own. In my opinion, they are of the same class as the men and women who man nuclear submarines.

Really? Wow! How come? Well, come to think of it. Nuclear submariners are technical to their core. So are IT people. The sub guys take their jobs home with them (they live on the subs for months, right?). IT peeps do the same. Sub guys are always on-call 24x7. Guess what? So are IT people. When systems go crazy, sub guys are in alert mode in less than a minute. IT people are at "battle stations" mode in similar situations. When systems screw up, sub guys lose the government tons of money. Ditto IT guys losing their companies money. And when sub guys screw up, they lose their jobs and their heads. Hey, unnerving! So do IT citizens! The only way that IT guys differ from sub guys is that the former don't glow in the dark (look it up, it's a joke).

So these unique breed are patient, tenacious, thrive on pressure, don't mince words (down is down by any name so no need to sugar-coat) and are totally devoted to their calling (anything less and they won't be able to get the system up). They are insomniacs, have perfected the art of gritting their teeth while talking to users, have mastered the science of rolling their eyes when talking to users on the phone, and are experts at biting their tongues to keep from arguing with their bosses (they argue with computers, not bosses).  Oh, and did I say their typing speeds are at ridiculous levels?

And I'm proud to call myself one of them...

Tools of the trade...