One of the great things about my new job is that labor is divided among a much larger crew than I'm accustomed to. This means I get to do more of the sort work I like and less of the sort I don't.
In my old job, there were basically two and-a-half SysAdmins running the whole show. And since I was the front man, most requests got funneled through me. So I was pretty much dealing with everything.
In my new job, on the other hand, I am one member of a much larger team that deals with a whole wide range of technologies — from SANs to fibre connections to video playback devices. In some respects my job description is fairly generalized. All the SysAdmins on the team essentially share the same set of responsibilities, but as usually happens, each of us has our unique talents and proclivities, and since our team is comprised of a bunch of people, we each have a chance to specialize to some extent as well. We each get to focus more on stuff we're good at — which is to say, stuff we like — and worry less about stuff we don't like.
Case in point: last week we got a new printer. Not only did I have nothing to do with spec-ing, purchasing or installing the printer, I wasn't even aware of the fact that we'd gotten one until the part of the crew that installs printers had installed the damn thing.
People in my old job all knew how much I hate printers. I truly despise them. I despise the hardware — it's large, cumbersome, ugly and resource intensive. I despise the software — the drivers are always a pain to find and install (especially Epson's) and the bundled software is ugly and unintuitive. I even despise the act of printing itself, which is often problematic, wasteful and eco-unfriendly, particularly when dealing with inkjet technology. Prints themselves I find generally useless as they're not searchable. And, of course, troubleshooting printer problems is a nightmare that's usually best dealt with by simply getting a new printer.
In the past it was my job to deal with every aspect of any printer purchase and installation. Needless to say, It was one of my least favorite duties. So to never have to deal with any aspect of the printer pipeline is a dream come true. When I saw the guys setting up a printer I almost laughed out loud when I realized that I'd had nothing to do with it.
Well, I did have to add the printer to the lab systems. But that's the best part. And that was it.
Back to building servers. Fantastic.