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“Have you tried turning it off and on again?” – This pop-culture quote from the British comedy series “The IT Crowd” has shaped the image of system administrators like nearly no other. Many associate it with the cliché of grumpy tech nerds in the basement. But the reality is very different. The people who keep our digital infrastructure running perform highly complex work—technically, organizationally, and socially. Mannat Kaur from the Max Planck Institute for Informatics in Saarbrücken, Germany, researches this multifaceted activity and highlights security-relevant aspects that have so far received little attention.
Press release for "System Administrator Appreciation Day" on Friday, July 25, 2025.
The working conditions of system administrators are paradoxical. On one hand, their work is extremely important, as virtually all organizations—up to entire societies—now depend on stable IT systems. On the other hand, when “sysadmins” do their job well, their work becomes invisible, because who thinks of them when everything is running smoothly?
“In research, there consequently is a predominance of studies on the technical side of system administration, such as the tools used or how certain systems should be implemented. It was important to me to make the human and the circumstances under which they operate these systems visible as security-relevant factors,” says Mannat Kaur, a postdoctoral researcher in the Internet Architecture department led by Director Anja Feldmann at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics.
Kaur studies the role of people within socio-technical systems, focusing on coordination—both among individuals and between people and technology—in the context of IT work. Their approach is interdisciplinary, drawing not only from computer science but also from the social sciences, psychology, and safety science. They apply both qualitative and quantitative research methods and integrate feminist research principles.
In interviews and focus groups, the research showed: social negotiation is central to sysadmin work—both within the team and with users. Added to this is care work, which includes maintaining technical systems as well as, for example, providing emotional support to colleagues in exceptional situations, such as data loss. These social and caregiving aspects are often marginalized due to being considered “feminine”, meaning they are often not seen as “real work,” despite being crucial. This lack of recognition leads to overwork and overwhelm. “Sysadmins need to work in a highly coordinated way, communicate, support users, negotiate with service providers. All of that is essential and comes on top of the technical tasks such as configurations, maintenance, data backup, updates, and so on,” says Kaur. Especially during the pandemic, the communication workload increased significantly.
“We had participants in our studies who said it’s easy to fall into the trap of spending an entire week just supporting others—and then ending up with nothing tangible to show for it. This lack of recognition, combined with overwork and emotional exhaustion, can lead to mistakes that jeopardize the system’s security,” explains Mannat Kaur.
Especially affected: women and non-binary sysadmins. They experience a double invisibility—on the one hand through the nature of their work as already described, and on the other hand through structural inequalities in a men-dominated industry, where they have to prove themselves even more in order to be perceived as equally competent.
Kaur’s key insight: A fair and inclusive work environment based on trust, communication, and recognition promotes system security. From this, the following recommendations are derived, especially for leaders and organizations:
• Recognize and value the social, informal and care components of sysadmin work
• Make visible the tensions between sysadmin tasks and rigid hierarchies
• Trust in the expertise of sysadmins – especially in hierarchical organizations
• Create a supportive, blame-free and learning-friendly work culture
• Promote inclusion by acknowledging existing disadvantages (men-dominated field)
Editor:
Philipp Zapf-Schramm
Max Planck Institute for Informatics
Tel: +49 681 9325 5409
Email: pzs@mpi-inf.mpg.de
Dr. Mannat Kaur (they/them)
Max Planck Institute for Informatics
Email: mkaur@mpi-inf.mpg.de
Kaur, M. (2023). Towards Safe and Just Work Environments for System Administrators: A Qualitative Sociotechnical Investigation into System Administration. [Dissertation (TU Delft), Delft University of Technology]. https://doi.org/10.4233/uuid:cb598569-af98-4cef-8115-9939fa5ed256
Mannat Kaur, Harshini Sri Ramulu, Yasemin Acar, and Tobias Fiebig. 2023. "Oh yes! over-preparing for meetings is my jam :)": The Gendered Experiences of System Administrators. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 7, CSCW1, Article 141 (April 2023), 38 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3579617
Mannat Kaur, Simon Parkin, Marijn Janssen, and Tobias Fiebig. 2022. "I needed to solve their overwhelmness": How System Administration Work was Affected by COVID-19. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 6, CSCW2, Article 390 (November 2022), 30 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3555115
https://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/departments/inet/people/mannat-kaur Mannat Kaur's website.
https://www.mpi-inf.mpg.de/departments/inet Website of the Internet Architecture department
Mannat Kaur, Postdoctoral Researcher in the Internet Architecture Department.
Source: Philipp Zapf-Schramm
Copyright: MPI für Informatik
Mannat Kaur, Postdoctoral Researcher in the Internet Architecture Department.
Source: Philipp Zapf-Schramm
Copyright: MPI für Informatik
Criteria of this press release:
Journalists
Information technology, Social studies
transregional, national
Research results
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Mannat Kaur, Postdoctoral Researcher in the Internet Architecture Department.
Source: Philipp Zapf-Schramm
Copyright: MPI für Informatik
Mannat Kaur, Postdoctoral Researcher in the Internet Architecture Department.
Source: Philipp Zapf-Schramm
Copyright: MPI für Informatik
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