In February, 2002, Steve Traugott, of infrastructures fame, posted an interesting list of misconceptions held by (um) suits about `infrastructure architecture' (but which seemed to extend to system administration in general).

His list is interesting, and we quote it more-or-less in full:

Most of the non-sysadmin folks we've talked with tend to carry some (often conflicting) combination of these misconceptions:

systems administration is a highly evolved and stable field
sysadmin staffs always keep UNIX systems under centralized management (confusing "root ownership" with management)
managing a group of small UNIX machines is the same amount of work as managing one large mainframe
more expensive, high-end systems include their own management software
an operating system is a static thing that rarely changes
sysadmin duties consist mainly of upgrading applications and doing backups
an application developer can administer their own development system, no problem
an operating system is a very straightforward piece of technology which comes pre-installed on the hardware, is therefore like firmware, and doesn't need much maintenance
install the hardware and you're ready for apps
reliability and failover are very difficult to do and are therefore the application's responsibility
systems administration is rarely a critical path item during application rollouts or upgrades
centralized administration software is extremely expensive and complex; only large shops can afford it; development of it requires lots of venture capital, followed by patents to protect the investment (usually includes references to Tivoli TME, CA UniCenter, HP OpenView, and/or BMC Patrol)

Got anything to add?