I just read Professor Beekums’s Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience blog post, and loved it.
I actually believe that in order to be a great developer, one must know how to tweak, hack and fix the platform He’s working on.
When I was in the army, I encountered manydevelopers that only knew how to open Visual Studio. Once they had issues with a specific installation, hardware or an app - they had no idea what to do.
I think it’s fundamental to know how to fix broken installations & replace hardware parts, feel comfortable with the command line & writesscripts that automate work.
Don’t underestimate or patronize the sysadmin (which often happens) - learn from them. They probably knows a few tricks that would significantly boost your productivity.