Did You Thank Your SysAdmin Today?

In honor of today’s 15^th annual System Administrator Appreciation Day, also known as SysAdmin Day, we have revealed the findings from the latest version of our annual Red Shirt Survey. The results highlight that IT network professionals are working harder than ever, but are still feeling underappreciated - and they suffer from a general lack of respect within their organization.

More than 250 SysAdmins in the U.S. took our survey over the first 9 days of this month. Results show us that SysAdmins aren't looking for grand gestures. Just a genuine "thank you" will usually do. Or just reboot your machine before hitting the panic button to alert IT. Here are some interesting highlights from the SysAdmin survey:

• When we asked what would make them happier at work, more than 42 percent would like more appreciation for his or her hard work from colleagues (aka users), up five percent over last year’s survey. Just over a third (36 percent) would like users to reboot their machines before asking for help.
• SysAdmins also feel like they are spending way too much time reacting to problems on their IT networks. One out of every two SysAdmins (50 percent) spends between 40-60 percent of their time reacting to network or user problems, an increase of more than 10 percent from last year. Nearly one in six (17 percent) indicated that they spend a whopping 60-80 percent of their time dealing with frustrations on their networks.
• We found that more than a third (36 percent) of SysAdmins simply want the recognition of having a tough job, nearly double from last year’s survey, while 34 percent would like x-ray vision to figure out the source of a problem on a network, up six percent from last year. And if that’s not possible, half of them would just be happy with users chilling out on the streaming.
• One in two SysAdmins (50 percent) noted that video platforms like YouTube or Vimeo are the biggest culprits when it comes to bandwidth hoarding.

We hope these findings will lead to more appreciation for the dedicated SysAdmins and other IT pros who work day and night to keep our networks and applications humming along. These IT heroes work hard to equip their colleagues with the technology and support they need to innovate, collaborate and do their jobs. That is a lot of pressure to work under.

So when you see one of your SysAdmin colleagues today - or any day for that matter - a simple ‘thank you for everything you do’ will go a long way.