You have a greater than 2:1 ratio of sys admins to devs? What is it that you do that requires so many sysadmins? My ASSumption is that your devs are writing such bad code that it takes an army to administer the servers the code lives on. But that's just me being an ass ;) Seriously what gives?
As to your point, we are a small shop too, 4 devs and 1 sysadmin. The developers (of which I am one too) partake in everything from racking servers to setting up databases to setting up production load-balanced Apache instances to writing actual code. I find it's better to have developers who know a little about how everything else works rather than code monkeys who just concentrate on their own little jungle of code and throw it over the wall like feces for others to handle.
We do dedicated/virtulal hosting, so we're not 'typical' sysadmins .
I still don't understand what makes it necessary for you to rack servers? If it's sheer quantity, then you should have enough cash to employ more staff. If it's very occasionally, then why can't the sysadmin handle that?
The only time our devs touch a server is when go to the datacentre to see how everything works.
Like the other guy said, it's easier with two people since they're pretty heavy. We only have about 10 of them, so it's not a constant activity for us.
I have to say though, your attitude towards developers is pretty condescending. As a developer and former homebuilt PC enthusiast I actually enjoy learning about the IT side of things. Likewise, our sysadmin keeps up a good conversation now and then about software development, and scripting languages in particular. The best development shops are those where the devs and admins work as a team and trust each other.
Most servers are easier to put in a rack with two persons. And if you do it only very occasionally, hiring a second admin just for that might be slightly wasteful.
As to your point, we are a small shop too, 4 devs and 1 sysadmin. The developers (of which I am one too) partake in everything from racking servers to setting up databases to setting up production load-balanced Apache instances to writing actual code. I find it's better to have developers who know a little about how everything else works rather than code monkeys who just concentrate on their own little jungle of code and throw it over the wall like feces for others to handle.