As you might have noticed, a couple weeks ago Google had a Gmail outage. For some, this outage might have had a direct impact to their ability to conduct business, email their friends, lookup information from their inbox, etc. But, for a select few this outage’s impact was drastically different and possibly far more disruptive.
To understand what I’m talking about, you have to first understand the nature of the job that information technology (IT) workers have. In most cases, it’s a very strange mix between a general business interpreter, 24/7 emergency services responder, and social welfare provider. As such, and oddly enough, people in this industry are an eclectic mix that can range from English Literature majors, PhD’s holders in computer science, to the more than common individual that just wandered into this profession. However, regardless of our backgrounds, IT workers are all bound by one common thing, the nature of our jobs.
Unfortunately, every day the world is growing more and more hyper-connected and technology driven. This means that people and businesses are now more than ever dependent on aspects of IT to keep things in motion. So when things break, and they do often break. The 24/7 emergency services responder aspect of an IT job kicks in, so much so that this is what I term as a life definer.
Hence the title of this posting, “Married to Information Technology”. In many respects, when you work in IT, you become married to the job. However, in most cases this is not a happy marriage. At best, this marriage is very one-sided, stressful, and “almost” abusive in nature. But, what is even sadder is the impact that our jobs have on our friends, family, kids, wives, husbands, etc.
This impact on others is what I’m referring to when I talked about a select few having a drastically different experience with the Gmail outage. Oddly enough, this impact from my job never really occurred to me. After all, until recently I was not the person being impacted in this manner. Instead, I was always the person running towards the fire, hose in hand, ready to fix the problem. However, in this case, I was not the firefighter. Instead, I was the person making the hot tea, taking care of the dog, picking up the house, and providing the moral support.
This time the tables were flipped… and now I understand.
So… next time a service outage occurs and you cannot access your email, view your favorite site, or post that blog entry. Instead of becoming irate, stop and give pause about how the outage impacts others. Think about all of the missed birthdays, soccer practices, anniversaries, etc. And, just maybe things will not seem so bad.
If you like this, check out some other posts from Tyson:
- Would I trust you, if everyone else trusted you?
- Here is a good question: Is scripting programming or just systems administration?
- PowerShell boy and the case of the missing cmdlets!
- Fun with PowerShell 2.0 Eventing!
- Creating a custom 404 page to handle link redirection for ASP.NET web applications
- Microsoft Discontinues Support for Windows 3.X (as an embedded system)
- My quest for SSH within PowerShell revisited!
Or if you want, you can also check out some of Tyson’s latest publications:
- Windows PowerShell Unleashed (2nd Edition)
- Windows Server 2008 Unleashed (Yes, I did help on this book)
Lastly, visit the Microsoft Subnet for more news, blogs, and opinions from around the Internet. Or, sign up for the bi-weekly Microsoft newsletter. (Click on News/Microsoft News Alert)
