Upheaval

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Article from ADMIN 61/2021

By Ken Hess

2021: The year of job and location change

Well, 2020 was certainly a wild ride wasn't it? I hope you, your family, and your circle of friends are all safe, employed, and healthy. Even if you are employed, I'm predicting that 2021 will be a year of change for a lot of you and for myself. One significant thing that 2020 taught is that we can work from anywhere. Remote work is possible and should be embraced as the next phase of system administration career mobility.

If you've worked as a system administrator for any length of time, you realize that a well-defined career ladder doesn't really exist. I hope that statement didn't come as a shocking surprise to you. Many of the sys admin jobs I've held over the past 20+ years don't even have a job description attached to them. I can't count the number of job descriptions I've written for myself and other sys admins, only to realize that it was a purely administrative effort. In other words, no one will ever read, refer to, or access the descriptions except to see that they exist. Such is the life of a sys admin. I don't mean to depress you or bemoan a good career choice. My purpose is to let you know that there is hope on the horizon.

Some of us have known for years that remote work is possible and that it's also a valuable asset for employers. Personally, I started working from home two days per week in 2001. My employer at the time insisted that we work remotely so that we could become more mobile and so that the company could possibly downsize their real estate footprint. It worked. Some companies still haven't caught on to the 20-year-old trend of remote work.

The biggest problem with remote work is discipline. Some people don't have the discipline to do it well. It takes getting used to. Really the only differences between remote work and going to an office are the commute and your proximity to other people. I find little value in either. I love working at home, from a hotel room, or from the comfort of a rented condo at the beach. I'm

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