SMB vs Enterprise
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@Dashrender said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Carnival-Boy said in SMB vs Enterprise:
They are. They're specialist shelf stackers. They'll be much better than you at stacking shelves because of their practice and experience. Their rate of dropping cans of beans will be much better than yours.
Ok, I can agree with this... but that means specialist != difficult. Specialist = dedicated to only one job, even if easy...
Am I on the right page now?
It absolutely can mean difficult. Do you think Exchange is easy? Exchange admins in enterprises are normally specialist. This is the only task they do all day, every day. I wouldn't call it easy.
Yes, it can mean difficult, but, doesn't have to...
Thanks folks. Cool. I always assumes specialist = always difficult. Rare. Few people have the skills etc... not, can be easy or hard, but, has to be the only thing you focus on.
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@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Dashrender said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Carnival-Boy said in SMB vs Enterprise:
They are. They're specialist shelf stackers. They'll be much better than you at stacking shelves because of their practice and experience. Their rate of dropping cans of beans will be much better than yours.
Ok, I can agree with this... but that means specialist != difficult. Specialist = dedicated to only one job, even if easy...
Am I on the right page now?
It absolutely can mean difficult. Do you think Exchange is easy? Exchange admins in enterprises are normally specialist. This is the only task they do all day, every day. I wouldn't call it easy.
Yes, it can mean difficult, but, doesn't have to...
Thanks folks. Cool. I always assumes specialist = always difficult. Rare. Few people have the skills etc... not, can be easy or hard, but, has to be the only thing you focus on.
There are often broad specialization as well. We have Desktop Specialists on our team. Their only focus is supporting desktops, this can be applications on the desktops, hardware, OS, etc. If it's an application they aren't familiar with it gets escalated to someone that is on my team.
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@coliver said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Dashrender said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Carnival-Boy said in SMB vs Enterprise:
They are. They're specialist shelf stackers. They'll be much better than you at stacking shelves because of their practice and experience. Their rate of dropping cans of beans will be much better than yours.
Ok, I can agree with this... but that means specialist != difficult. Specialist = dedicated to only one job, even if easy...
Am I on the right page now?
It absolutely can mean difficult. Do you think Exchange is easy? Exchange admins in enterprises are normally specialist. This is the only task they do all day, every day. I wouldn't call it easy.
Yes, it can mean difficult, but, doesn't have to...
Thanks folks. Cool. I always assumes specialist = always difficult. Rare. Few people have the skills etc... not, can be easy or hard, but, has to be the only thing you focus on.
There are often broad specialization as well. We have Desktop Specialists on our team. Their only focus is supporting desktops, this can be applications on the desktops, hardware, OS, etc. If it's an application they aren't familiar with it gets escalated to someone that is on my team.
So.... I am a specialist!!! Woop Woop.
I specialise in being a SMB Generalist.
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@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@coliver said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Dashrender said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Carnival-Boy said in SMB vs Enterprise:
They are. They're specialist shelf stackers. They'll be much better than you at stacking shelves because of their practice and experience. Their rate of dropping cans of beans will be much better than yours.
Ok, I can agree with this... but that means specialist != difficult. Specialist = dedicated to only one job, even if easy...
Am I on the right page now?
It absolutely can mean difficult. Do you think Exchange is easy? Exchange admins in enterprises are normally specialist. This is the only task they do all day, every day. I wouldn't call it easy.
Yes, it can mean difficult, but, doesn't have to...
Thanks folks. Cool. I always assumes specialist = always difficult. Rare. Few people have the skills etc... not, can be easy or hard, but, has to be the only thing you focus on.
There are often broad specialization as well. We have Desktop Specialists on our team. Their only focus is supporting desktops, this can be applications on the desktops, hardware, OS, etc. If it's an application they aren't familiar with it gets escalated to someone that is on my team.
So.... I am a specialist!!! Woop Woop.
I specialise in being a SMB Generalist.
Here is the dictionary.com definition which I think is a concise definition.
specialist
[spesh-uh-list]Examples Word OriginSee more synonyms on Thesaurus.com
noun
1.
a person who devotes himself or herself to one subject or to one particular branch of a subject or pursuit. -
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@coliver said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Dashrender said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
I'm a generalist too; I don't think that puts me at a disadvantage compared to specialists. Where many specialists would get caught up on a project, I have a range of experience which will get me past that problem.
That is a key point. In enterprise, you take a very small amount of responsibility for specific functions vs doing everything across the board. It's both good and bad, but at the end of the day you'll learn more if you have to do everything. Although you may not master a specific area.
Do you have an example of a specialist role? I'd like to see how they compare to a generalist role...
There are so many examples. Let's just take a look at a windows server admin. There is a team for handling group policy, several builds, server patching, server OS troubleshooting, application support for specific applications (these are the guys troubleshooting with the vendors), package deployment, and more.
You probably do alot more than sever admin in SMB. You're evaluating products, talking vendors, deploying actual physical hardware like racks and servers, configuring network equipment, and many more roles that aren't windows admin related.
I see what you mean, but never assumed that to be specialist.
What did you assume them to be?
Yeah, I am not sure what you were expecting? I am just using a very broad role (windows admin) as an example of how many sub specialist roles you might see in enterprise. I am pretty sure I missed some
Me neither, hence asking
Maybe i'm not a generalist, but just assumed I am. GPOs, Patching, Server Deployments etc, I do all of them... so am I a specialist!? lol
No. A Specialist does 1 or maybe 2 of those roles.
But why? They are easy roles. It is not special at all to be good at 1 or 2 of them. They are easy. I'd guess boring if all you do all day is any particular 1 or 2 of them. Specialist feels like the wrong word.
Yes, you do 1 or 2 of those things, but they are not difficult or special things. You are just solely dedicated to one of them...
A shelve stacker at a supermarket only stacks shelves all day... they are not a specialist. If you just do GPO all day, why are you a specialist...
Because you're specializing in GPO? Literally the definition of the word specialist. GPO is a massive beast with so many options and a vast amount of functionality that SMBs rarely touch even a fraction of it. The same goes for AD, patching, servers, etc... etc...
I see. I thought when applied to jobs it had more meaning. So, I could leave and just focus on only one thing, something easy... like say, installing and restoring from Veeam Endpoint Free. Then I could call myself a specialist...?
I find it odd how you consider these things to be easy. as coliver said - GPO has thousands of options. When dealing with 10's of thousands of machines, having to control a ton of aspects of a machine, GPOs can be daunting.
The same can be said for dealing with backups. There are tons of options and things to be concerned about - did the backup actually grab a usable copy of the database? did logs get pruned correctly? do restores work as expected, and on and on.
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@Dashrender said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@coliver said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Dashrender said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
I'm a generalist too; I don't think that puts me at a disadvantage compared to specialists. Where many specialists would get caught up on a project, I have a range of experience which will get me past that problem.
That is a key point. In enterprise, you take a very small amount of responsibility for specific functions vs doing everything across the board. It's both good and bad, but at the end of the day you'll learn more if you have to do everything. Although you may not master a specific area.
Do you have an example of a specialist role? I'd like to see how they compare to a generalist role...
There are so many examples. Let's just take a look at a windows server admin. There is a team for handling group policy, several builds, server patching, server OS troubleshooting, application support for specific applications (these are the guys troubleshooting with the vendors), package deployment, and more.
You probably do alot more than sever admin in SMB. You're evaluating products, talking vendors, deploying actual physical hardware like racks and servers, configuring network equipment, and many more roles that aren't windows admin related.
I see what you mean, but never assumed that to be specialist.
What did you assume them to be?
Yeah, I am not sure what you were expecting? I am just using a very broad role (windows admin) as an example of how many sub specialist roles you might see in enterprise. I am pretty sure I missed some
Me neither, hence asking
Maybe i'm not a generalist, but just assumed I am. GPOs, Patching, Server Deployments etc, I do all of them... so am I a specialist!? lol
No. A Specialist does 1 or maybe 2 of those roles.
But why? They are easy roles. It is not special at all to be good at 1 or 2 of them. They are easy. I'd guess boring if all you do all day is any particular 1 or 2 of them. Specialist feels like the wrong word.
Yes, you do 1 or 2 of those things, but they are not difficult or special things. You are just solely dedicated to one of them...
A shelve stacker at a supermarket only stacks shelves all day... they are not a specialist. If you just do GPO all day, why are you a specialist...
Because you're specializing in GPO? Literally the definition of the word specialist. GPO is a massive beast with so many options and a vast amount of functionality that SMBs rarely touch even a fraction of it. The same goes for AD, patching, servers, etc... etc...
I see. I thought when applied to jobs it had more meaning. So, I could leave and just focus on only one thing, something easy... like say, installing and restoring from Veeam Endpoint Free. Then I could call myself a specialist...?
I find it odd how you consider these things to be easy. as coliver said - GPO has thousands of options. When dealing with 10's of thousands of machines, having to control a ton of aspects of a machine, GPOs can be daunting.
The same can be said for dealing with backups. There are tons of options and things to be concerned about - did the backup actually grab a usable copy of the database? did logs get pruned correctly? do restores work as expected, and on and on.
Yes, agree somewhat - but I don't consider them to be extremely difficult. Everything has things to be concerned about. The questions on the backup for example, yes - concerns, no - not difficult.
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@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
I've only worked SMB. I'd like to try Enterprise some day but worry everything would be too impersonal. With SMB, some of them have been like a family. Real nice. I've worked some that were truly nasty though - I'd go SMB, but move until the right SMB is found.
I think you'll find this is unlikely. In my experience they have been roughly equal with slightly more personal in the enterprise. Not that the CEO asks you over to his house for a BBQ, but your more immediate team is closer to you.
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@Dashrender said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@coliver said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Dashrender said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
I'm a generalist too; I don't think that puts me at a disadvantage compared to specialists. Where many specialists would get caught up on a project, I have a range of experience which will get me past that problem.
That is a key point. In enterprise, you take a very small amount of responsibility for specific functions vs doing everything across the board. It's both good and bad, but at the end of the day you'll learn more if you have to do everything. Although you may not master a specific area.
Do you have an example of a specialist role? I'd like to see how they compare to a generalist role...
There are so many examples. Let's just take a look at a windows server admin. There is a team for handling group policy, several builds, server patching, server OS troubleshooting, application support for specific applications (these are the guys troubleshooting with the vendors), package deployment, and more.
You probably do alot more than sever admin in SMB. You're evaluating products, talking vendors, deploying actual physical hardware like racks and servers, configuring network equipment, and many more roles that aren't windows admin related.
I see what you mean, but never assumed that to be specialist.
What did you assume them to be?
Yeah, I am not sure what you were expecting? I am just using a very broad role (windows admin) as an example of how many sub specialist roles you might see in enterprise. I am pretty sure I missed some
Me neither, hence asking
Maybe i'm not a generalist, but just assumed I am. GPOs, Patching, Server Deployments etc, I do all of them... so am I a specialist!? lol
No. A Specialist does 1 or maybe 2 of those roles.
But why? They are easy roles. It is not special at all to be good at 1 or 2 of them. They are easy. I'd guess boring if all you do all day is any particular 1 or 2 of them. Specialist feels like the wrong word.
Yes, you do 1 or 2 of those things, but they are not difficult or special things. You are just solely dedicated to one of them...
A shelve stacker at a supermarket only stacks shelves all day... they are not a specialist. If you just do GPO all day, why are you a specialist...
Because you're specializing in GPO? Literally the definition of the word specialist. GPO is a massive beast with so many options and a vast amount of functionality that SMBs rarely touch even a fraction of it. The same goes for AD, patching, servers, etc... etc...
I see. I thought when applied to jobs it had more meaning. So, I could leave and just focus on only one thing, something easy... like say, installing and restoring from Veeam Endpoint Free. Then I could call myself a specialist...?
I find it odd how you consider these things to be easy. as coliver said - GPO has thousands of options. When dealing with 10's of thousands of machines, having to control a ton of aspects of a machine, GPOs can be daunting.
The same can be said for dealing with backups. There are tons of options and things to be concerned about - did the backup actually grab a usable copy of the database? did logs get pruned correctly? do restores work as expected, and on and on.
It's more about repeatable processes and efficiency. The bean can analogy in this thread was a good one.
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Keep in mind that many organizations have to have policies, standards, and processes in place in each area to meet a certain industry standard. For example meeting NIST or ISO standards could never been done by a team of generalists. It is just impossible. Out of necessity generalists would become specialists.
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@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
I'm a generalist too; I don't think that puts me at a disadvantage compared to specialists. Where many specialists would get caught up on a project, I have a range of experience which will get me past that problem.
That is a key point. In enterprise, you take a very small amount of responsibility for specific functions vs doing everything across the board. It's both good and bad, but at the end of the day you'll learn more if you have to do everything. Although you may not master a specific area.
That might be true, but from what I've seen and what the market suggests, I think you actually learn more in the enterprise. For lots of reasons. One is mentorship and training. Growing skills is generally a huge focus. Two is time, you are rarely pushed to the point that you don't have time to learn stuff. Three is focus, you aren't spending your time doing things once and forgetting them, you tend to do things you actually learn from more often. Four, it's rare to outsource anything related to your job to an outsider whereas in the SMB it's common for even the most basic job responsibilities to not be done internally.
Look at SW, you have thousands of generalists in the SMB who, while doing tons of things, never seem to learn about the things they just did. Just because they are responsible for a wide variety of things doesn't mean that, on average, they learn any of them and what they do learn is often really wrong.
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@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
I'm a generalist too; I don't think that puts me at a disadvantage compared to specialists. Where many specialists would get caught up on a project, I have a range of experience which will get me past that problem.
That is a key point. In enterprise, you take a very small amount of responsibility for specific functions vs doing everything across the board. It's both good and bad, but at the end of the day you'll learn more if you have to do everything. Although you may not master a specific area.
Do you have an example of a specialist role? I'd like to see how they compare to a generalist role...
http://www.smbitjournal.com/2017/01/standard-areas-discipline-within/
All IT areas are specialists. There is only one generalist role... generalist. In the SMB the majority of people feel embarrassed for some reason by titles that imply that they do lots of things so often choose a task that they don't do often and claim that specialist title and use it or use a non-IT title like manager or director so you hear people in the SMB calling themselves things like "network admin" all the time even though they don't do that role and often aren't even aware of what a real role with that name would entail.
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@Breffni-Potter said in SMB vs Enterprise:
I've lost count of how many specialists there are who are having a harder time finding work than the generalists.
20+ years doing absolutely nothing but Microsoft Exchange? In a world of Office 365 and Google Apps, your options are limited.
Except.... any specialist can be a generalist. Generalist roles almost never rule out people who have specialized, so a twenty year Exchange Admin can move into generalist easily, but a generalist will struggle to move into an Exchange speciality. Specialists have the benefit of having something to look for with jobs and sell themselves on. Even jobs that are going away, like Exchange, being an Exchange admin still gives you the benefit of job searching based on someone looking for that experience. Generalists suffer from having no titles or job descriptions that both parties can agree define the same thing. Companies don't know that they want to hire a generalist and generalists normally don't realize that they are generalists.
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@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
I'm a generalist too; I don't think that puts me at a disadvantage compared to specialists. Where many specialists would get caught up on a project, I have a range of experience which will get me past that problem.
That is a key point. In enterprise, you take a very small amount of responsibility for specific functions vs doing everything across the board. It's both good and bad, but at the end of the day you'll learn more if you have to do everything. Although you may not master a specific area.
Do you have an example of a specialist role? I'd like to see how they compare to a generalist role...
There are so many examples. Let's just take a look at a windows server admin. There is a team for handling group policy, several builds, server patching, server OS troubleshooting, application support for specific applications (these are the guys troubleshooting with the vendors), package deployment, and more.
You probably do alot more than sever admin in SMB. You're evaluating products, talking vendors, deploying actual physical hardware like racks and servers, configuring network equipment, and many more roles that aren't windows admin related.
I see what you mean, but never assumed that to be specialist.
Windows Server Admin is one of the most well known specialities. It's actually a sub-speciality. A base speciality would be System Admin. Windows System Admin is inside of that speciality. But anyone you meet (literally anyone) in the SMB who uses this term isn't a specialist, they are a generalist co-opting the term. If you are doing purchasing, hardware support, desktop work, end users support, even often hypervisor support... you have left the speciality. Sure, even with specialists that are truly dedicated they will need to do something that isn't directly Windows System Administration from time to time, but it is exceptionally rare and basically always in the support of that role.
Also important to note that Windows System Admin and Windows System Engineer are two different specialities. Generalists normally merge these two together and have no idea that they are discrete in the enterprise space.
We are doing a demonstration on the separation of duties for this at MangoCon this year.
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@Dashrender said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
I'm a generalist too; I don't think that puts me at a disadvantage compared to specialists. Where many specialists would get caught up on a project, I have a range of experience which will get me past that problem.
That is a key point. In enterprise, you take a very small amount of responsibility for specific functions vs doing everything across the board. It's both good and bad, but at the end of the day you'll learn more if you have to do everything. Although you may not master a specific area.
Do you have an example of a specialist role? I'd like to see how they compare to a generalist role...
There are so many examples. Let's just take a look at a windows server admin. There is a team for handling group policy, several builds, server patching, server OS troubleshooting, application support for specific applications (these are the guys troubleshooting with the vendors), package deployment, and more.
You probably do alot more than sever admin in SMB. You're evaluating products, talking vendors, deploying actual physical hardware like racks and servers, configuring network equipment, and many more roles that aren't windows admin related.
I see what you mean, but never assumed that to be specialist.
What did you assume them to be?
As Scott said - the biggest company that I personally worked at wasn't F1000 at the time, So we definitely didn't see that level of separation in Windows admin roles, or any other system. Our AIX team was 2 people for over 100 servers (I wasn't that involved, it could have been over 500 for all I know), and they handled everything on those boxes, setup, tear down, building storage LUNs, etc. But I definitely considered them AIX specialists. They didn't touch the network side of things other than plugging an IP address into their systems.
Sounds like at a minimum your admin and engineering teams were merged. Which makes sense as we'd consider that company to have been SME at the time.
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@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Dashrender said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
I'm a generalist too; I don't think that puts me at a disadvantage compared to specialists. Where many specialists would get caught up on a project, I have a range of experience which will get me past that problem.
That is a key point. In enterprise, you take a very small amount of responsibility for specific functions vs doing everything across the board. It's both good and bad, but at the end of the day you'll learn more if you have to do everything. Although you may not master a specific area.
Do you have an example of a specialist role? I'd like to see how they compare to a generalist role...
There are so many examples. Let's just take a look at a windows server admin. There is a team for handling group policy, several builds, server patching, server OS troubleshooting, application support for specific applications (these are the guys troubleshooting with the vendors), package deployment, and more.
You probably do alot more than sever admin in SMB. You're evaluating products, talking vendors, deploying actual physical hardware like racks and servers, configuring network equipment, and many more roles that aren't windows admin related.
I see what you mean, but never assumed that to be specialist.
What did you assume them to be?
As Scott said - the biggest company that I personally worked at wasn't F1000 at the time, So we definitely didn't see that level of separation in Windows admin roles, or any other system. Our AIX team was 2 people for over 100 servers (I wasn't that involved, it could have been over 500 for all I know), and they handled everything on those boxes, setup, tear down, building storage LUNs, etc. But I definitely considered them AIX specialists. They didn't touch the network side of things other than plugging an IP address into their systems.
AIX is so reliable, you could probably get away with zero! lol.
That's generally true. For a normal company of 5,000 people, you'd expect zero staffers for AIX. AIX isn't even supposed to reboot and the hardware is all crazy RAS stuff. A single admin should be able to handle quite a lot.
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@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Breffni-Potter said in SMB vs Enterprise:
I've lost count of how many specialists there are who are having a harder time finding work than the generalists.
20+ years doing absolutely nothing but Microsoft Exchange? In a world of Office 365 and Google Apps, your options are limited.
Absolutely. Of course vendor agnostic specialists are usually in better shape. However, even vendor agnostic specializations like cyber security that have a high demand in enterprise may not have many SMB options. As SMB needs to have a generalist. All in all, there are more generalist jobs available.
I'm not sure that that last bit is true. The number of SMBs actually hiring IT people isn't all that high and dropping. It only takes a few generalists to oversee many SMBs and countless SOHOs. And if you look in SW, most of those people are either bench primarily with just a little IT in their day, or are buyers, not doers, and we can't really consider them IT but moreso administration (in the secretarial sense - kind of like a purchaser.) They don't do the IT, they just coordinate buying it. Nothing wrong with that, but that's not an IT generalist, it's more of a secretarial specialist. Certainly not all, just saying that the percentage of SMBs that actually bring on people to be IT or do IT isn't nearly as high as it seems.
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@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
GPO... Building Servers... Patching... I see these as pretty simple things as a generalist. I cant imagine a team of people needed for any particular one of those just to focus on that one thing (Mind, I've not worked enterprise). Those people would surely do a range of tasks, not just GPO all day. To say - 'I'm a specialist in GPOs' sounds like a really limited job. Even with 1000 servers or workstations or more. It would be boring, and GPOs is mostly easy (for example). Especially once you have setup a test environment.
Unless you are the elite of the elite and working with tools like Ansible, it's uncommon for Windows Admins to get beyond about 30 servers per admin in production. Can you get higher density? Of course. But typically, you cannot. I've worked in a lot of environments in many countries and this is about where the standard barrier is (assuming they need full time operations, if they can be brought down anything outside of 9-5 then this number might climb to 45 or 50 pretty easily.)
Once you get much higher, it's hard to watch over them, do installations, check on performance, and so forth.
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@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Dashrender said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
I'm a generalist too; I don't think that puts me at a disadvantage compared to specialists. Where many specialists would get caught up on a project, I have a range of experience which will get me past that problem.
That is a key point. In enterprise, you take a very small amount of responsibility for specific functions vs doing everything across the board. It's both good and bad, but at the end of the day you'll learn more if you have to do everything. Although you may not master a specific area.
Do you have an example of a specialist role? I'd like to see how they compare to a generalist role...
There are so many examples. Let's just take a look at a windows server admin. There is a team for handling group policy, several builds, server patching, server OS troubleshooting, application support for specific applications (these are the guys troubleshooting with the vendors), package deployment, and more.
You probably do alot more than sever admin in SMB. You're evaluating products, talking vendors, deploying actual physical hardware like racks and servers, configuring network equipment, and many more roles that aren't windows admin related.
I see what you mean, but never assumed that to be specialist.
What did you assume them to be?
Yeah, I am not sure what you were expecting? I am just using a very broad role (windows admin) as an example of how many sub specialist roles you might see in enterprise. I am pretty sure I missed some
Me neither, hence asking
Maybe i'm not a generalist, but just assumed I am. GPOs, Patching, Server Deployments etc, I do all of them... so am I a specialist!? lol
No, generalists do all the things that specialists do. You work in the SMB right? Then there is no chance you are a specialists. It's not "do you do these things" it's "do you also do these other things." You are only a specialist if these are the ONLY things that you do.
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@scottalanmiller said in SMB vs Enterprise:
Unless you are the elite of the elite and working with tools like Ansible, it's uncommon for Windows Admins to get beyond about 30 servers per admin in production.
That's ~where we are right now actually, slightly higher.
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@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Dashrender said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@IRJ said in SMB vs Enterprise:
@Jimmy9008 said in SMB vs Enterprise:
I'm a generalist too; I don't think that puts me at a disadvantage compared to specialists. Where many specialists would get caught up on a project, I have a range of experience which will get me past that problem.
That is a key point. In enterprise, you take a very small amount of responsibility for specific functions vs doing everything across the board. It's both good and bad, but at the end of the day you'll learn more if you have to do everything. Although you may not master a specific area.
Do you have an example of a specialist role? I'd like to see how they compare to a generalist role...
There are so many examples. Let's just take a look at a windows server admin. There is a team for handling group policy, several builds, server patching, server OS troubleshooting, application support for specific applications (these are the guys troubleshooting with the vendors), package deployment, and more.
You probably do alot more than sever admin in SMB. You're evaluating products, talking vendors, deploying actual physical hardware like racks and servers, configuring network equipment, and many more roles that aren't windows admin related.
I see what you mean, but never assumed that to be specialist.
What did you assume them to be?
As Scott said - the biggest company that I personally worked at wasn't F1000 at the time, So we definitely didn't see that level of separation in Windows admin roles, or any other system. Our AIX team was 2 people for over 100 servers (I wasn't that involved, it could have been over 500 for all I know), and they handled everything on those boxes, setup, tear down, building storage LUNs, etc. But I definitely considered them AIX specialists. They didn't touch the network side of things other than plugging an IP address into their systems.
GPO... Building Servers... Patching... I see these as pretty simple things as a generalist. I cant imagine a team of people needed for any particular one of those just to focus on that one thing (Mind, I've not worked enterprise). Those people would surely do a range of tasks, not just GPO all day. To say - 'I'm a specialist in GPOs' sounds like a really limited job. Even with 1000 servers or workstations or more. It would be boring, and GPOs is mostly easy (for example). Especially once you have setup a test environment.
I always assumed specialist = totally difficult task, hence being a great skill. Not specialist = I just do GPO only all day in a team of people doing GPO all day, but cant do anything else like patching as I don't know (limiting).
Its like a builder. I can hire a builder to build me an extension. Many builders can build me that extension. When the builder finds asbestos stopping the work, they call in specialists to clear it out who have skills and knowledge, and the equipment, to deal with the dangerous material (the difficult, skilled part) an average generalist builder wouldn't have.
I'm not sure, probably wrong. Juts haven't worked in that environment.
The reason enterprise organizations do this is because they understand the value of repeatable processes within an organization. In SMB it is difficult to have the time to focus on best practices for every single role you do. For example are you trained in vendor risk assessments? Are you asking the right questions and filling out a risk registry with possible risks? No. You are probably just have a chat, using your best judgment, and nothing gets documented. When you leave no one knows why that vendor was chosen or what weaknesses the vendor may have? Are they financially stable, etc?
Yes, specialists tend to do things really quickly. As a Linux specialist, I was able to oversee 600 of the most critical production systems directly and was the escalation path for over 10,000. That's 600 machines on which I did every live production task that there was, and we deployed hundreds of new applications every week and did full DR testing every six months. We deployed new systems every few days. We decom'd old ones every few weeks.
Systems take a bit of work once you have any number of them.
