I can handle mistakes made by Jr. Sysadmins if they actually learn from it to leave working things alone, henceforth.
My job role in those scenarios is usually to stop some overbearing IT manager from flying off the handle and banning said good, but green, SysAdmin from accessing anything afterward.
Usually that conversation goes like this, “Make him clean up his mistake and draft the apology memo to the company. He won’t do that again. Don’t you write it or start responding to the e-mails, make him own it. You REVIEW it and formally endorse it. Be the boss. Not a panicky user.”
If the Jr. Syadmin is a habitual screw up, and isn’t learning, that’s a different story.
Had to have been the hardest part to learn about being “Senior” but I had great mentors who did the same for me, once or twice.
If you get a really annoying butter-bar who thinks he’s the HMFWIC and wants to flame broil the kid, the way to stop that one is, “How much training for him did you pay for and send him to? Is he qualified to do that part of his job?”
Usually shuts them up, since no place does anything but OJT for IT work anymore.
If they’re really persistent, “You paid more money to teach call center people how to read a script than teaching that guy how to properly operate a system that affects 800 people and has twenty years of complexity built into it.”
