[techtalk] Sorta OT, but still Linux related: Consulting

[Karl-Heinz Zimmer]

On Don, 01 Feb 2001 Mary Gardiner wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 31, 2001 at 07:04:06PM -0500, Kath wrote:
> > This year I'll be graduating high school.  For the past year, I have
> > been sysadmining the linux server and doing a variety of other tasks,
> > including the website (Which includes HTML/PHP/MySQL).
> >
> > Now that I'm gonna be gone, should I ask to be compensated for
> > continuing the maintence on the server and site and any other future
> > servers they might want?
=2E.
> Plan B could be to be paid to train a new sysadmin, and do emergency
> fallback maintainence for a few months. My boyfriend was the second
> sysadmin at a residential college,
=2E.
> The first sysadmin got paid as a teacher/maintainer for a few months.

This sounds good. Another option might be to tell them how much you
did appreciate that interesting work, ask if they liked the way how
you did it, then offer them to train their new sysadmin _for_free_
and propose to get an expressive reference form them showing clearly
how much they enjoyed your contribution to the school as sysadmin.

In my opinion such a reference (if being enthusiastic while still
saying the truth) can be far more worth than some money they would
give you for further assistance - you would get rid of the school job
and could apply for highly qualified positions presenting them a 'proof'
telling that you know enough about Unix based system administration
and that you are able and interested in autodidactically acquiring
new knowledge whenever needed...

This school job could be the start of a really interesting profession
- if you can affort it forget about the money and try to leave in
friendship, taking with you the best reference you can get!  :-)

Karl-Heinz
--=20
Karl-Heinz Zimmer
Senior Software Engineer
Klar=E4lvdalens Datakonsult AB
<mailto:khz at klaralvdalens-datakonsult.se>