The problem is that admins provide somewhat less visible value.
A programmer can create in a afternoon a feature that can be sold for a 100K+ dollars. And get the credit, glory and chicks. Or at least part of the credit.
To value properly admin you have to have had your ass pulled out of the fire from a good one a couple of times. Which comes with experience.
The classic adage is: A CEO walks around the office floor and notices how wonderfully clean the place is. This CEO is all about efficiency, so he trots into his office and phones up the CFO. He asks how much is spent on cleaning, suprised at the cost decimates the cleaning budget.
In a brief email to the board, boasting of another hard day's work making the company leaner and faster he says: "The office is already squeaky clean, why would we need cleaners?"
But no one notices that. Like the power company, people only notice good Operations when they cease to be good Operations (e.g. something fails). The poles-and-wires company for my area in Texas wanted a rate increase to improve certain older power substations' reliability against high heat (something that never happens in Texas) because they had come dangerously close to dropping offline during the heat wave of 2011. People complained mightily about another $0.98/month because "it's worked fine, why do you need more money?"
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The problem is that admins provide somewhat less visible value.
A programmer can create in a afternoon a feature that can be sold for a 100K+ dollars. And get the credit, glory and chicks. Or at least part of the credit.
To value properly admin you have to have had your ass pulled out of the fire from a good one a couple of times. Which comes with experience.
The biggest problem is that when you have a good admin, things will run smoothly, but few will attribute that to his work.
The classic adage is: A CEO walks around the office floor and notices how wonderfully clean the place is. This CEO is all about efficiency, so he trots into his office and phones up the CFO. He asks how much is spent on cleaning, suprised at the cost decimates the cleaning budget.
In a brief email to the board, boasting of another hard day's work making the company leaner and faster he says: "The office is already squeaky clean, why would we need cleaners?"
Yeah, there's a common sysadmin joke about how if the CEO knows you exist, you aren't doing your job.
Sorry, accidental down vote on phone.
What if your ops guy pushed in a week's span, a particular tech that resulted in saving you $1.5-2.5 million over a period of four years?
Not valuable my ass.
But no one notices that. Like the power company, people only notice good Operations when they cease to be good Operations (e.g. something fails). The poles-and-wires company for my area in Texas wanted a rate increase to improve certain older power substations' reliability against high heat (something that never happens in Texas) because they had come dangerously close to dropping offline during the heat wave of 2011. People complained mightily about another $0.98/month because "it's worked fine, why do you need more money?"