The Future of SysAdmins' Positions 460
prostoalex writes "With automated upgrade tools and self-updating software, will sysadmins be in such high demand that they enjoy today? Lisa Valentine from NewsFactor provides the answer - and it's a definitive yes. Wireless systems and GPS devices are the new area where sysadmins are expected to have some expertise, although lately companies have been upping their demands for more hands-on experience. This opinion seems to corroborate US Department of Labor forecast on system administrator and computer support specialist employment."
Thriving Profession (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:3, Funny)
I always thought that farming was the oldest profession ;-)
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:5, Funny)
I took an AP European History class in my senior year of High School. By the end of the year, we had concluded that the whole of European history could be summed up in two words:
This is not entirely innacurate either. It would seem that the catalyst for every major social, economic, or political change revolved around men wanting sex, men being chauvinists, food, or any combination of those three things.
Unfortunately for the geeks, our profession has not embraced these driving mechanisms, or I'd get a hell of a lot more sex and I wouldn't be eaten these $1.00 frozen dinners from Swanson every night...
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:5, Funny)
And US history is much, much more complex than that?
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:3, Insightful)
Bubba Ho-Tep (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:3, Informative)
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. - Winston Churchill
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:5, Funny)
Long hours, weekends/holidays, on-call, bad pay... I sure feel like a corporate whore.
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:5, Funny)
The 'oldest profession' is actually the shaman, or witch-doctor; prostitutes didn't really come around we stopped wandering around so much, and started staying in one place long enough for commerce and property to become tangible things. The witch doctor, like many sysadmins[1], was often insane, but he helped people to make sense of the world around them, by relating things they couldn't understand to things they could -- he was their interface to the unknown.
Witch-doctors explained disease, thunder, life, death, although they never got the hang of taxes. They were often wrong, not having the tools of science, but their explanations were at least sometimes useful, oftentimes imparted sage advise, and almost always provided comfort to those who sought him for counsel.
As the world has progressed, so has the witch-doctor; in time, they became 'natural philosophers' and scientists. Today, we call them engineers, doctors, teachers, chemists, and programmers; they are the people that help all of the other people manipulate and comprehend the world.
They're also called 'sysadmins'; and I'm happy to consider myself a member. *shakes whale-bone and begins chanting*
[1] Yes, I am one.
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:5, Insightful)
You can bet before we evolved language or shamans some neolithic honey with a single eyebrow and no capacity for language was swapping nookie for food and protection from one of our earliest ancestors.
Sex goes way back and doesn't require a heck of a lot of cultural evolution to have occured.
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:5, Informative)
Level 1: Crack Whore; is paid in drugs
Level 2: Escort Service; is paid in cash, per client.
Level 3: Wife; is paid in security, property, etc, but she also has a golden parachute plan! When she finds a better client, she takes at least 50% of all the shit you own! Sometimes, you still have to pay her a salary (spousal support), just so she can afford to continue her whoring with somebody else!
Thank god Taco sold Slashdot BEFORE he got married... I can just imagine divorce attorneys arguing over the cash value of a first post...
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:4, Interesting)
Now, Joe the stupid user installed some spyware on his computer. Go clean it up and be nice: Joe's a vice-president.
Also, please review the company dress code. You might think yourself a shaman, but some are complaining that you look like one too!
Kind of puts a perspective on things...
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:5, Insightful)
0th = (you) = hunter/gatherer
1st = prostitute
2nd = spying or politics
3rd = shaman
Sort of fits Maslow's pyramid of needs. First you need food, then sex, then safety, then intellectual pursuits. Hunter/gatherer, prostitute/mate, spy/politician, shaman.
The debate on the 2nd is whether you prefer the Old Testament or Reagon as a source
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:5, Funny)
Methinks many sysadmins would switch professions if only the whore houses would have them.
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:5, Funny)
Then of course there are the long weekends where they have to work round the clock to fix an emergency!
Don't forget that everyone is going to expect them to fix problems at home too so their job is extened to the power of N where N = number of employees.
HEY! ...
What a minute! Oooohh.... FWORD!!!!
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:5, Insightful)
No.
They may *bill* that much, but that's not what they take home.
You might be surprised at what your company bills *your* time at.
Also, there's a big difference between "having lots of sex" and "getting fucked a lot." Whores and sysadmins know a lot about the latter.
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:5, Insightful)
After all, being forced to type in paragraphs of complete gibberish is better than being able to click a checkbox. Your penis size, er, sysadmin skills depend on how many words you type a minute when you administer a network.
Applying absolutist views to every situation is a copout.
Yes, it is better. (Score:4, Insightful)
How do you script a clicky-clicky solution?
How do you document it?
If you dare document it, will it be unambigious?
With CLI you get all that and more, so it is not a phallic contest but simply the truth and why a UNIX/Linux admin can administer more machines per head than a poor Windows sod.
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:5, Funny)
I imagine 15 years from now the users will have desktops that look like todays videogames (because today's gamers will be wirking--most of them) and sysadmins will still be writing wicked scripts from the, you guessed it, command prompt.
There's a reason why it's called the command prompt: it's where you issue commands. And that's what sysadmins do.
As var as voice commands go: It'll only work when good AI is available. Imagine writing code with voice only: Oh, semicolon, no, backspace, ok, space, ah shit, no, backspace, colon, onpen paren, no, backspace, open squiggly, ok, quote, damn!, backspace, double-quote, good, a, comma, no, backspace, not "A comma", a, ok, then comman, b, ok, comma...
I would imagine some people would map easy to remember words to often used keystroke commands:
frig: delete line
fuck: backspace
cool: newline
talk about needing privacy to program.
Command line is FUNdamental (Score:3, Insightful)
The command line is fundamental, primitive. It's the simplest way to drive the system. Sure, voice controls and stuff may happen, GUIs will get better, and maybe we'll find a way to do it with mouse gestures and data gloves. Maybe most administration will be done with those tools.
But way down deep, spitefully neglected, the command line will still be there. For some systems, 'reformat and reinstall,' won't be an acceptable answer when the fancy stuff fails.
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:3, Insightful)
Computers are even dumber about processing words than your average (or even WAY below average) kid at the Mcdodos. Computers have no capacity to learn on the fly. (Well at least in any timescale appreciable to the operator.) A simple command would require a ton of confirmations to ensur
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, let's talk about scripts rather than command lines. Most admins use scripts, they don't sit and type all day just to do the same the next day.
And there is the power of the command line. The loop. Even if your brush is only small, if you put it in a loop and get the computer to wave it about your stadium then you can sit back, wait a few minutes and the job is done.
With the GUI you have to grab the little brush with the mouse pointer and drag it all over the stadium.
The command line is a programming language. Language scales infinitely better than pictures, because languages have control structures like loops and conditions, while pictures don't.
That's why scripting will never go away; the same reason programming will never go away. It's them most powerful interface to the operation of a computer (in the hands of the knowledgable).
GUIs are mediocre interfaces to that power, designed for use by those who lack the knowledge.
I'm not saying GUIs are not useful. In cases where constant feedback is required as your job progresses, such as creative work, GUIs are very good. But they fall down when it comes to "do this, a thousand times" kinds of jobs.
If for no other reason - the corporate scapegoat (Score:5, Interesting)
The Snowden Syndrome (Score:3, Funny)
If you've never read "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller, there is a character named Snowden. He's a kid who gets shot in a B-25 in WW2. The bombadier (Yossarian) goes back to help him, and when he unzips his jacket, Snowden's guts spill out onto the floor.
Snowden can't see them, so Yossarian tells him he's going to be alright. He continues to say it until Snowden is dead.
That is the Security Manager's position to a tee. Their dead
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed
they're basically janitorial staff
That's just trolling and entirely unfair.
I gave the engineering department local admin rights on their PCs before they even asked for it, all I insited on was a 10 minute workstation lockout policy since they love to wander away from their desks.
However here is a story detailing the problem you mentioned:
Role Fragmentation [softwarereality.com]
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:5, Insightful)
[asbestos suit=ON]
When it comes to securing the network, uptime for people in profit centers, due diligence on things like privacy, data retention, legal compliance, and the ability of the sales team to SELL STUFF for profit...
developers ARE just another category of end user.
Profit centers, legal issues, company reputation, shareholders, etc, ALL come before the latest internal Java widget or database enhancement. Sorry, but unless you're developing your company's new flagship product, you'll need to get down off that high horse.
[asbestos suit=OFF]
Oh please. (Score:4, Insightful)
SAs normally have a carrier path either laterally (we can become programmers if we want to fro example, we know the resources involved in any IT project which allows to use them more effectively when programming, many programmers just don't understnad how their little script wonder is exhausting all the memory on a given machine) or vertically (toward management, since "having the keys of the kingdom", a position most janitors only dream about, puts you in touch with project managers, business managers, etc. Most code which opens posibilities of progression, code monkeys just code and go home).
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:4, Interesting)
Just because you work on the HR system, doesn't mean to get to see everyone's salaries. Your test (development) database is filled with bogus data.
Then, there's a whole seperate department that actually moves your code into production.
It's not always that the sysadmins are power-hungry assholes, sometimes this stuff comes from *way* above.
Re:Just in case the server crashes and burns... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Thriving Profession (Score:3, Insightful)
oh yes, there's still a need (Score:4, Funny)
Re:oh yes, there's still a need (Score:3, Insightful)
That reminds me of a funny one that happened to me. I visited our sysadmin. He gave me a phone number on a post-it. I got done with the phone number and was ready to toss the post-it when I noticed a login and password were written on the back. This was a classic case of a password on a post-it stuck to a computer. It was on the back to hide the password. A sysadmin in a rush to provide a note, grabbed th
Yeah, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
ala... this paragraph...:
"Many large organizations silo the systems-administration skill set, explains Phillips, and systems administrators at these companies tend to remain focused on very specific systems-administration skills and job responsibilities."
On a serious note though, I do have a question. The article mentioned that after a few years most college graduates have already achieved sysadmin status, but after that, where do you go from there? The article mentions that the salary tops out at the "mid- to upper-$60,000 range.", and that doesn't sound like a whole lot to me (especially this day in age). Of course there is always becoming a section head, manager, or director... but that often times requires a more downplayed "hand-on" experience as others below you would be doing most of the work. For someone that wants to remain on the technical side of things rather than the business side, where do you go?
MBA (Score:5, Interesting)
I wish there were a day I didn't have to be the sysadmin at my jobs. Unfortunately I am the default admin because I have the most experience and it's also why I got hired (as a systems developer).
I admin my own machines as well and the primary reason I like OS X over Linux and Windows is the Software Update. I am evaluating migrating my Linux servers running qmail/oracle/tomcat-apache to OS X Server with postfix/sybase/tomcat-apache.
Re:MBA (Score:3, Insightful)
OK, and what then for the other 90%-99% of the admin staff?
Average Salary (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
The notion that you career as a programmer or technical specialist is going to plateau before you hit your 30's is scary, but often true.
You can make more money in sales, consulting or management. But there are tradeoffs. If you want to be a high-dollar consultant or salesman, the travel can really kill a marriage. If you become a management dork, you essentially abandon your technical career.
The "where do you go?" question is something facing all middle-class people. Over the last 40 years, the purchasing power of the average person has eroded sharply.
My grandfather raised a family of six on one blue-collar income, and managed to own a nice home in NYC, a summer house upstate, and always had two cars. Good luck doing that today.
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only is straw a fire hazard, but your home will be infested with rodents.
How do you get an earth sheltered, passive solar home anyway?
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Second, the earth sheltering is only on three sides, leaving the southern exposure open for solar heating. Intelligent design permits free heating and cooling year round. The earth surrounding the house is 52 degrees year round, so A/C is used min
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:5, Informative)
Back to school, for ECE. It will kinda suck to be an undergrad all over again, but I'd like to think that I have a bit more focus this time around.
Being a systems administrator is neat with regard to some things; there's a lot of equipment I wouldn't have ordinarily gotten my hands on, a lot of problems I wouldn't have ordinarily confronted. But there's not much thinking to the job and I feel a little starved for a challenge...
Where you go next (Score:5, Insightful)
No, really; as an independant contractor.
One of the interesting things about working as a defense contrator is that there is work everywhere in the world at present; doesn't matter where, we've got an investment, and that investment involves computers somewhere along the line. (Yes, even in Kuala Lumpor - even when it's disguised as France.)
Where there are computers there will be admins - there must always be admins - if only for the same reasons that there are doctors, lawyers, mechanics, and others of our ilk. On the whole it's stuff that reasonable people could figure out and generally take care of on their own. Sometimes they'd need a specialist for a particularly hairy problem. However, one of the defining traits of life is that people don't have time to be generalists -- we're a highly specialized society (even if some of those specialties are along the lines of the service industries). Admins exist to take care of what people can't or won't, and in theory to do a better job than they could without training.
This is doubly or triply true for the government and military. More amusing still is if you're doing defense work that requires a clearance. If you can find someone to sponsor you, and if you can pass the investigation (takes a semi boring life, or lots of honesty), by all means do. Most people who go for a clearance won't get one - or will eventually have it revoked.
Law of supply and demand, friends:
High demand + automatically limited supply = higher cost for the goods in question. (i.e., higher salary.)
Get your Top Secret and you've basically written your meal ticket for life; just lay off committing felony crimes and you're probably good to go.
$60,000? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Jobs (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There will always be job (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm young and missed out on the boom! but am wondering what the problem is? Just because companys aren't willing to pay ridiculus salaries to anyone that can turn on a computer any more does that mean that we are under paid now? I'm ready for when most IT workers lose the attitude of super genius because they can install a modem (who uses a modem?). Yes, we are far above the average user in knowledge but its not because we are super intelligent but most
Salary estimates seem a bit low... (Score:5, Informative)
> can expect to earn a salary in the
> US$50,000 to mid- to upper-$60,000 range.
Hm, the _average_ in the SAGE survey [sage.org] in 2002 was $67,600. But I guess that's more or less in the ballpark.
Re:Salary estimates seem a bit low... (Score:3, Informative)
I don't like to randomly pick arguments with others passing comments but I completely disagree with that as a vision of what makes a good system administrator.
Certainly one of the tricky problems I solve involve technologies that were around in an applicable form in *'92* let alone '82. If they are problems that get to
I thought (Score:5, Funny)
Admins have been forced to "Assume the position" for quite some time.
Experience (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is fine for currently employed sysadmins, or more specifically currently employed sysadmins that have the rare opportunity to do research and put their hands on new technologies in addition to their day-to-day tasks. However, the majority of us (my experience, no empirical evidence) is that most of us are hired to do a specific task, or hired to handle a certain area. Then 90% of our time is eating up just keeping the walls from falling down, making it difficult to get up to speed on new technologies.
How are we supposed to get this high-demand experience if we're either busy doing our jobs or still looking (or both)? They don't exactly teach sysadmin in school, you know.
Re:Experience (Score:5, Insightful)
If 90% of your time is spent fighting fires, there's something fundamentally wrong with the way the systems are set up or you're chronically understaffed. Now, I can scale *myself* from 100 to 1000 systems with little additional effort on my behalf once they are set up.
"They don't exactly teach sysadmin in school, you know."
True, you have to teach yourself. http://www.infrastructures.org/
Sysadmins shouldn't be required at all. (Score:5, Insightful)
In general I see my job to automate everything I can. Repetitive work is what computers are good at, get them to do it for you. The sysadmin will still be required to oversee it.
There will always be a place for sysadmins (Score:4, Insightful)
Definitely yes (Score:5, Funny)
*sigh* (Score:4, Interesting)
He's right, but only for the short term (Score:3, Interesting)
In time, things become either 'user managed' or 'self managing' ( and cheap enough to throw away when it breaks ) and most of the need of a real admin ( or service tech, programmer, etc ) goes out the window
Sure there will be a few left, but most techies will be in the soup line. Especially the older ones with experience that costs a lot.
Face it, the IT industry is going to pot, if you work in it. If you are user, its booming.. Cheaper stuff, and less expensive support needed..
Re:He's right, but only for the short term (Score:3, Informative)
*whack*
The problem with things that are 'user-managed' is that it follows the classic path of the tragedy of the commons. Users tend to look at the systems and networks they use as infinite sources of storage, memory, and processing power, and when things break down because of this overuse, they have no way to fix things on their own.
The place I work is a great example of this -- our salespeople h
interesting, and right for the wrong reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
sure, a lot of what we used to do is automated (as the article points out, software installs, etc.), but a lot of what we do is purely psychological
i doubt there is PHB anywhere that is so braindead to think that his human sys admin slave (who can receive a page at 3 am) can be replaced by a machine
nobody is so daft as to imagine that our work is anything but intellectual... they watch as at work, at front of the machine, and they know that what we are doing is no different that auto mechanics or detectiving or archaelogy... analytic problem solving employing a specific skill-set, and there's no machine that can do that, and upper management (thank god) knows it
until they invent a computer that can drive down to the co-lo in the wee hours and apply critical thought to packet-sniffer, humans will always be sys admins, and the article doesn't touch this part of it
I've been hearing this for 10 years (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as system complexity continues to grow.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Looks like Miss Valentine here missed a crucial reason - increasing software complexity and bloat. Wireless/GPS and other cutting technology is all fine and dandy, but even traditional systems (read OS's, Source Control, Systems Software, Clusters) have been getting more and more bloated, complex and difficult to manage over the past few years.
As software developers continue to add more and more features/bugs to systems, the amount of effort required to keep the system up and running grows exponentially. I know a slew of companies which have admins/groups dedicated to simply keep Source Control systems running smoothly so actual software developers can get some work done. So to summarize...until we can come up with truly self maintaining/repairing software/hardware, people will be required to administer/manage those systems.
Still Needed... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, duh! (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't unlike a fighter pilot who has too much to think about. Innovations like a heads-up-display and fly-by-wire don't make their job easier -- it just allows for more things to get done.
The complexity of a typical corporate network is absolutely mind boggling, and it is completely unrealistic to suppose that automated systems are going to 'self heal'. Someone has to understand what's going on and how to add and modify things.
Catch 22 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Catch 22 (Score:3, Insightful)
And hey, they dont have any tech guys. What in the world were they planning on doing? So guess what? Now I'm a systems administrator. Its on my resume, and I'm IN!
author is high (Score:3, Funny)
Newfound time? This is the time that is now available because there are no more worms or viruses and/or Windows has become impervious to them. Check.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do you need Admins? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh brother. Alright, let's look at the history of cars:
Before ~1970: cars had: engine, manual transmission, radiator, distributor, carborator, master cylinder.
Everything was mechanical (excluding battery / ignition system). So, you took your car to a garage, the person who worked on the viechle was a mechanic. These guys were skilled at knowing how moving parts all worked together to make your car go.
After ~1990: cars have: engine, auto transmission, radiator, automatic distribution system, fuel injection, anti-lock breaking system, power steering...there's a lot more things that are electronically controled and regulated. But guess what? These things still break. We still have mechanics, because there are still a lot of things that are mechanical, but there are also "technicians" (and most mechanics have to be technicians as well) that know how to fix electronics. Even if the "systems" are more reliable than before, they still break. But at the same time, my radiator worked exactly like radiators 50 years ago.
Add more "systems" to computers, it's just more "systems" that admins have to administer to when they break.
As long as there is Windows... (Score:3, Funny)
Who needs sysadmins? (Score:4, Funny)
CONNECT
sure there's a glithIUEY#$ now and again, but for the most part, things run very smoot83Y(*$@Y#$NO CARRIER
Things are getting more complicated, not less (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been doing this shit for 14 years, and in that time, even with GUIs and Plug-and-Play, and DHCP, and all the other niceties, in sum total, the complexity I face has increased year over year, not decreased.
Of course, the technology has gotten easier to install and maintain, but there's a lot more of it now, and it has infiltrated all aspects of the business world to where it really is counted on more than it once was.
I just didn't see that level of dependency 14 years ago.
where is this booming trade? (Score:5, Informative)
Things aren't so peachy keen here in sys admin land
Oh... I'm a Sysadmin and I'm Okay! (Score:5, Funny)
I never really wanted to be a scientist.
I wanted to be...a...a SYSADMIN!
[system engineer choir and shift supervisor enter, music strikes up]
Oh, I'm a sysadmin and I'm OK,
I grep all night and I chown all day.
[choir]
He's a sysadmin and he's OK,
He greps all night and he chowns all day.
I ping the nodes, I do PM,
I awk and perl and sed.
I've got a Star Wars lunchbox,
And Tron sheets on my bed!
[choir]
He pings the nodes, he does PM,
He awks and perls and seds.
He's got a Star Wars lunchbox,
And Tron sheets on his bed!
I ping the nodes, I change the rates,
I fork the processes.
I wish that all my lusers
would catch some rare disease!
[choir, growing slightly uncomfortable]
He pings the nodes, he changes rates,
He forks the processes.
He wishes all his lusers
would catch some rare disease!
[choir brightens as they repeat chorus]
I ping the nodes, I lock the
I post
[choir]
He pings the nodes, he locks the
[shift supervisor, in tears]
Oh Bevis! And I thought you were so dedicated.
(quoted from Martin Martin "I wish to register a complaint about this system" Booda)
I question this news (Score:3, Insightful)
While there may be demand and a decent marketplace for sysadmins, there sure as hell isn't interest in the field for the kids entering post-secondary.
Automation driving us out of jobs (Score:3, Insightful)
Increasing complexity means these kinds of tools allow us get our jobs done. Without them we'd be buried in work, with them we can deal with the 1001 jobs that can't be automated.
Now, admins writing scripts to replace other people... that's a different matter.
Whaaa? (Score:3, Funny)
Yes, that wonderful all-knowing all-seeing demiurge that M$ fanboys claim is the fault of the user!
Offshoring? (Score:3, Interesting)
Bill said you don't need a sysadmin (Score:3, Insightful)
put in once by the bosses PFY and nevert touched again.
make no wonder there's a massive proliferation of malware.....
IMHO
Your computer systems are like a car and should be be regularly maintained/serviced like a car or they will let you down..
What was your username again? (Score:3, Funny)
Admins will be needed for centuries... (Score:3, Interesting)
For the last years anyone at the front line of techsupport, network and system administration has seen how the user "community" gets dumbier and dumbier. Recently we had a very good laugh after one guy bought an Internet account, not having a computer anywhere...
Soom we will see Internet reaching consumer electronics and mobile phones... When this comes up, things will be even worser...
However, if sysadmins will think this is a good prospect for a "new" boom and good salaries... Well, sorry people. Most of the sysadmin mass will be also dumb lusers with shiny suits and mostly empty pockets. Frankly, the wholescale tendency is to turn us into a Paleontogical exhibit. No one will succeed on this, but the "market" environment created by Microsoft will still prevail for years. No matter the policy "sysadmins wouldn't be needed", they will be in place, mostly as janitors, mechanics and tubing rats...
This will keep on until something wakes up everyone... And people die or highly suffer with it...
Then... Well... It is hard to predict what may happen on a "day after"... But maybe we will see better times... Or maybe we will see something much worser...
Until then, there will be a few pockets of Digital Life where some hardskin sysadmins, developers and hackers will keep going on serious stuff...
Is there any question? (Score:3, Insightful)
Short of AI, I don't see sysadmins ever going away, or even decreasing.
Market forces and the labor pool... (Score:5, Insightful)
because the skillsets in demand are always shifting, and because HR people really want to check off boxes in their application interviews, you get obsolete very fast. As you move into your 30s and 40s and beyond, your skill set is NOT like a lawyer's or doctor's. Their experiences over time make them stronger and stronger, and more valuable to society. You become LESS so. While a lawyer needs to learn about new laws and changes to the system, the rate of change doesn't invalidate what they already know.
Our company just laid off 10 people who were 50-ish COBOL programmers and IBM sysadmins. These people were very good at what they did, but they were no longer needed. They now start sliding DOWN the chain, taking jobs in their fields for LESS money. No matter how smart you think you are, there are college grads who will fight you for your job and take half your pay.
A previous poster compared sysadmins to auto mechanics. That was a good analogy, but he didn't follow it through. What happened to the mechanic industry in the 80s and 90s? They stagnated or dropped, as existing mechanics found it harder and harder to adapt to all the new technology, the demographic shift in average mechanic age fell.
I don't mean to be doom and gloom here, but for those who won't go into management or strike out and become busines owners, the future is this: you MUST stay on top of all emerging technologies and keep certifying and run along the treadmill, or you WILL get replaced by somebody younger. Whatever guru status you think you enjoy, and however many times your manager calls you his "goto guy", that status changes OVERNIGHT.
You should look at the sysadmin field like playing MLB in your 20s and early 30s. It's great to make it there, and it helps you make money you wouldn't have otherwise made - but eventually you will be replaced by somebody better and faster and cheaper. You need a plan to do something outside the field after 40.
Quick aside, I looked at some job ads in the last few weeks. I think HR people haven't figured out that some of these ads are stupid, and the economy is picking up and they can't cherry pick quite so much. I saw an ad that the company wanted you to have 10+ of systems integration experience, consulting experience, have technical certifications like RHCE and know shell, programming in C++, Java and be a certified disaster recovery specialist - AND - you know, in your spare time, ALSO be a CPA. That's right, a CPA!
Now maybe I just don't know enough smart people, but so far I have yet to meet a CPA that is also a programmer, much less a highly experienced sysadmin. I don't even know any that can SPELL UNIX. I would REALLY love to meet the applicant that gets that job.
What the Future Holds... (Score:5, Informative)
Sysadmin jobs for smart people who know a wide range of systems will still be around. However, expect some changes, including the following:
Back in the day, systems were extremely complex and needed an army of people to look after the basic functionality. Now that's changing...sysadmins will be around, but adaptation is required.
The other thing that I see happening is formation of a common set of procedures. Civil engineers rarely design faulty bridges, airports, train stations, etc. The reason is that they use tested methods, and "new cool stuff" goes through complete peer review before becoming generally accepted. Systems people, OTOH, build stuff that routinely crashes and fails to work as advertised. Once companies get out of the "outsource everything and pay the absolute minimum for the work" phase, I think it will be time to form a real governing body similar to the professional engineering organizations.
Re:What the Future Holds... (Score:3, Insightful)
Back in the day? What gets MSCE's into trouble is that systems ARE that complicated, and will continue to be that complicated, and that their training was inadaquate for managing all but the simplest Windows network.
Last I checked a decent admin had to have a working knowledge of TCP/IP, routing, and the myriad supp
Economic statistics in the US resemble the USSR (Score:5, Insightful)
Increasingly we are seeing the executive branch (e.g., the departments that report to the President) either not publish statistics or publish misleading or partial statistics. This is true for many departments that previously prided themselves on non-partisanship.
The job forecasts and market outlook for programmers and software engineers did not mention anything about outsourcing. Could this be because outsourcing is a senstive political topic that the current administration is vulnerable on? I found it odd reading that job growth for programmers would be about the same as job growth overall, without any mention of why such tepid job prospects were being forecast. In fact, I found nothing about low wage competition for "knowledge worker" jobs.
Then there is the issue of job catagories. Apparently the job prospects for "software engineers" were bright, while those for programmers were mediocre.
I have never worked in an environment where someone did design and someone else implemented this design in software. Yes I've had customers provide a broad outline of what they wanted, sometimes in terms of system components, but the engineering of large software systems is closely tied to their implementation. So as far as I'm concerned the division between "programmer" and "software engineer" does not exist. In fact some of the problems encountered in offshore outsourcing involve the attempt to separate software engineering from programming. Those contracting for low wage programming must provide detailed documentation that describes exactly what they want and how they want it done. Even then sometimes the software that is delivered is not adequate.
Who sets up the automated software? (Score:3, Insightful)
Whatever happens, the sysadmin will still be necessary.
Re:Yes but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hard to add new hardware to a box if you can't touch it.
Re:Yes but... (Score:5, Insightful)
For the other (Sun systems), I did all the network stuff, and visited the remote site about once every 3-6 months. It was a new system, and we occasionaly re-worked the network for the first couple of years. We also did a couple of hardware swaps ourselves because we were able to, there would have been no reason not to have Sun do it.
There is no reason why a skilled admin in the United States, India, China, Brazil, or wherever cannot maintain a remote site anywhere in the world with the appropriate support structure. 99% of what a sys admin does has nothing to do with hardware itself.
If you find that you are having to constantly touch hardware, then I would look at whatever hardware vendor you are using and get a different one.
Or get a girlfriend.....
Re:Yes but... (Score:3, Informative)
It's cheaper to fly the four Indians in five times a year
It's the business... (Score:5, Interesting)
Recently, I had a conversation with my boss about my job and the jobs of my peers. He admitted something--technically, even though our systems are so complex, all of our jobs could be outsourced to India. He said this unabashedly, without blinking an eye. "But," he said, "the value and knowledge you have about our industry and knowing how to leverage our systems to generate revenue is worth more to us than shipping your jobs overseas to cut costs."
Yes, many sysadmin positions could be sent to Banaglore at the drop of a hat, but the truth is that in many environments the additional day-to-day knowledge of how a business works will keep jobs around. Like a fellow poster also mentioned, there is a certain degree of laying on hands that some companies will never lose, which will also keep sysadmins around.
not really (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Yes but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why? If I want to reboot our server I ssh in and tell it to reboot - if I can't ssh in because networking on the box has died then I log i through the serial console. If power needs cycled you log in to the UPS - most big UPS boxes have a network connection for that - and power cycle the machine. Networking to the office is dead? Then you call your supplier and ask them to restore networking within 4 hours or whatever your SLA demands. Still need access to the box, the use a modem and dial in using POTS.
Physical access to a box cna be convenient, but other than for replacing hardware it's rarely necessary. Replacing ahrdware is something that's easy to outsource to other local companies too - now that's a market