Now that's a question I can't resist commenting on because although I certified in SharePoint development I get about 80% administration tasks by necessity regardless of the type of firm - if they don't have a SharePoint administrator. I see way wacky things because the installation process for SharePoint is in no way automatic or obvious - like the recent discovery of a WFE server set up on the back-end SQL Server and the actual SharePoint server not serving much! Another area that is almost never set up properly is the service accounts - and that's understandable because they have to have groups created in active directory and then correctly permissioned in SQL Server before being assigned to the right applications in SharePoint. Once you do get things set up properly **if you don't let anyone touch it** your OOTB SharePoint install can run happily for a long time without a lot of hands on adminstration. The recommendations for managing its SQL Server are that its instance server SharePoint exclusively and not be directly queried. There's a great DBA article about that here.

As to the metadata, that's something that can be tailored to your org terms when it is set up and then required when content enters a library or list - but that too is an advanced setup task. It is a change of thinking from folder based doc management and way easier when users get the hang of it.