As a sysadmin, I used to think in the two goal paradigm. I actually don't any more; if your company has two groups with different goals, particularly in the ear

As a sysadmin, I used to think in the two goal paradigm. I actually don't any more; if your company has two groups with different goals, particularly in the early days, you'll waste time with friction. My goal as a sysadmin is to help the company succeed. I try (and sometimes fail) to assume the same positive intent of my peers in engineering. If we seem to be working in different directions, it's often because there's something one or the other of us doesn't understand. Concrete example: I have often found that my tolerance for midnight crashes is lower than that of the engineer who wrote the code. There appears to be a misalignment. But on further examination, the problem is that the engineer doesn't have the same information I do: she doesn't realize on a gut level the cost of being woken up at 2 AM. Solution: add engineers to the first level on-call rotation. Information is added; goals become more in alignment.