I wanted to set a good example for my team by doing some of the dirty work, so when I wasn't supervising the manufacturers' reps and consultants, I was hauling servers, assembling racks, and crawling around connecting power cords and cables. We worked long and hard; we even pulled an all-nighter. (Boy, all that pizza and Red Bull brought back fond college memories--anyone out there remember Jolt?)
The new data center will require periodic upgrades and maintenance, of course, so the gig's not entirely over, but I'm ready to move on to the next major challenge. I have some projects to pitch to my CIO, and I'm sure he has some in store for me as well. Now I just have to figure out how to balance the high-priority (read: urgent) jobs with the IT team's day-to-day work. Spending all that "quality time" with my staff was a great bonding experience--I just wouldn't want to do it again anytime soon.
--Hunter Metatek is an enterprise IT director with 15 years' experience in network engineering and management. The events chronicled in this column are based in fact -- only the names are fiction. Write to the author at [email protected].
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