Us admins are really good at measuring systems. (Well, we’re probably not, but we tell ourselves that we are.) We have all these pretty dashboards and counters to tell us exactly what’s going on with a system at any moment in time.
But we usually measure our career with our salary.
That’s putting the cart before the horse because salary only changes after the fact – after we’ve done amazing things, told management, and convinced them we’re worth more money. But what metric do we use to convince ’em?
Uptime doesn’t work because so many factors are outside of our control, like the company’s willingness to buy quality gear or warranties. Lines of code or features shipped might work for developers, but they don’t work for admins.
So what are we supposed to use?