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The Days of SysAdmin Numbered?
gmkeegan writes "The Economist is running a story about Sun's new N1 operating system whose purpose is to make today's system administrators redundant. The idea is to virtualize the computer system so that the automated resource management software can add, remove and manage everything dynamically. The article mentions similar efforts by IBM, HP, and Microsoft."
In large server farms you need people their just to change the hard drives frequently. Furthermore, the boxes will still need to be configured, benchmarked, monitored.
This just sounds like the Economist was angling for readers.
Holy s-, it's Jesus!
If MS knows its customers (and they do), they know that the admins are their biggest boosters in corporations. The MS corp relies on its techies to tell it what to do. These techies are wannabe techies who just go MS (the way people used to go IBM).
Suits everyone (suits and MIS drones) fine, since everyone feels comfortable going MS and crucifying every other option that competes with MS (makes them look knowledgeable and valuable). I've experienced this half-wit MIS attitude first-hand.
No, MS is not eliminating their bread and butter. It's not the execs, it's the pushover MIS department which relies on MS for its credentials, credibility, and credit accounts.
Sun has found a sweet spot to attack MS. That sweet spot is MS's Cost Of Ownership.
Best luck to Sun et al..
It seems Sun's software is only making software configuration for a given set of strictly defined tasks easier. Sysadmins also spend a lot of time: 1. installing hardware properly (You think a biz manager would ever bother to put your servers in a nice air-conditioned room with good labelling and tie-wrapped cables? I don't think so.), 2. doing application support, 3. writing scripts that perform special business-specific functions, and 4. installing and configuring weird software packages that won't ever be self-configuring.
So if Sun wants to make certain resources self-configuring, that's great. It'll mean that sysadmins will have a bit more time to do a quality job on their other duties. I don't think too many people are going to lose their jobs.
I had this conversation this morning with a friend:
Me:
Hey, what happens if, on a saturday night, a pipe breaks under your house?
Him:
You call the plumber.
Me:
But isn't that going to be expensive?
Him:
Sure, but you've got to have it fixed. It gets more expensive the longer you wait.
Me:
Ok. Now imagine if the computer system is hooked to the TV, DVD, and stereo system, and the PC craps just before the football game. What do you do?
Him:
You call the computer tech dude.
Me:
But isn't that going to be expensive on a saturday afternoon?
Him:
Well, if I really want to watch the game, I'll pay.
Me:
Excellent!
You see, as more home machines are really becoming servers, sysadmins will be like TV repairmans. So for a while it will be gravy gravy gravy.
Eventually thought the machines will be so cheap that calling the tech dude will cost more than buying a new system...
"Piter, too, is dead."
A sysadm is really a person who interfaces between the computer systems and people who use them. To think that will be replaced by yet another computer is kinda off-base, which I think has been mentioned. There will always be a need for someone to configure, update, and make sure 'he system does what people want'. Of course.. we could just use phones and talk to it.. right... yeah.
Someone else...
.com inflated salaries by making IT a part of developments job function.
I've watched a lot of people get canned here in S.V. who were sysadmins, now scrambing to get jobs wherever they can. There are 3 trends I've seen companies follow when it came to cutting IT costs.
A. Eliminate all the IT personal with
B. Outsource IT
C. Replace IT with cheaper, less expirienced youngsters.
This is mainly a M$ oriented trend though (Yes I admit to being a MS admin) There are a few people I know that are unix oriented people who will never be without a job. Contrary to popular belief, these are not dirty hippies, but people with 4 year CS degree's. When I listen to them talk I feel a bit intimidated because I'm still having trouble grasping pipe/redirects >| in a shell.
Anyways, back on topic though, the article makes no mention of M$ anywhere.. It all mentions datacenters and how there is this huge need to get rid of the playstation junkies taking care of their servers. I think the author has me confused with real die hard sun unix lovers.
Bottom line is this "virtual serverization" (whatever the marketdroid buzzword is, save it) Sun seems out to get rid of all the Solaris admins out there. What surprises me is most solaris admins I know are a lot more compentant than myself, and go way beyond telling someone to reboot their machine.
I doubt it will work.
Unfortunately, that happened at my last company..they laid me off (Sr UNIX Admin). I was in charge of their 45 AIX servers. They never went down so they figured I didnt do anything :) When I got laid off a year ago, the NEXT day they had a hardware problem. However, they have a clause where they never rehire people as perms or consultants that were laid off, for whatever reason...so they hired a 2-bit MS Admin to do it. I'm still in contact with some people there, and they tell me they are having problems up the wazoo. And they can't find talented UNIX admins for the price they will pay (VERY LOW!!). So, if you're a talented AIX admin with at least 6 years experience and will work for $40,000 in NYC, let me know, and I'll send them your resume :).
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
B. Outsource IT
C. Replace IT with cheaper, less expirienced youngsters.
I've done a lot of admin work and have seen all of this as well. I've stayed with UNIX and away from MS, and never saw the admin jobs pay more than the jobs requiring equivalent development experience, so I don't see how this saves money. It's sort of like the way they take away office staff so lead engineers and managers have to do all there own faxing and photocopying.
What managers fail to understand is that you hire the experienced guys for their judgement, as well as the specific systems knowledge. I've worked with a lot of young guys who know more about the technology, and I was one of those once.
Outsourcing has its own pitfalls, and going into all of them would be offtopic, but let me suggest that it is only a good idea for tasks that are well understood and have no complexities relating to the specific business you are in (i.e. they are standard services).
(circa 1899) "Who else will keep all of the trains going. People are always going to want to go from New York to Chicago, and nothing'll get you there faster than passenger rail service. People just aren't willing to ride a horse that far anymore."
------------
Actually, of course, there are still trains running from NY to Chicago, but the need for professional engineers of that sort never really recovered from a few technological developments a hundred years ago.
Just because Sysadmins won't be extinct in a few years, doesn't mean more automation won't let twice the work be done by half the people. Isn't that one of the arguments for Linux over Windows anyway: easier system administration. Small shops may still need their one Sysadmin, same as today, but much larger organizations may be able to get by with far fewer IT employees.
If we were, let's say, 50 years ago, you'd have said you couldn't get a job because of the color people (instead of the H1Bs).
The Raven
The Raven
If there's not enough qualified American workers, then why are all the corporations laying off the qualified American workers they have now?
Maybe if they didn't fire all their engineers every time the economy dipped, more people would want to go into the engineering field. I know lots of people who either avoided engineering or left it because of the instability of the profession. If we wanted high-risk jobs, we would have become businesspeople building start-up ventures or something.
Well I have worked with a large number of H-1B people and lets be honest, we are talking about Indians. All but a handfull have had the SAME amount of training and skills that local workers have. Yes it is a pain to get them, BUT once you have them for a year or two they are your slave. Why you ask? Because if they switch companies then the time they spent here doesn't count for their american citz.
To the point that you said they are NOT cheaper. This is not true. I don't believe that you are factoring in all the benifits that an employee gets.
Lastly, I believe that there should be a tax on any software development not done in the U.S.A. (Can't speak for other countries). My point is this. If someone builds a car outside the U.S. and ships it here, there is a heafty tax on it. However someone can imploy near slave labor in India and not have to pay a dime extra in taxes. My big gripe is that most people in the U.S. pay over 60% of their income in taxes (all taxes), Indian developers in India don't "contribute" the U.S. taxbase at all.
The more I learn about science, the more my faith in God increases.
Nathan
Heh. It's actually funny that it's taken Sun this long. Most of the REALLY GOOD admins automate all the mundane stuff already by using scripts / apps that they have built over the years. I mean really - restarting failed processes, handling disk full issues, log pruning and analysis, etc. are all automatable tasks. There is a number of sysadmin related tasks that CAN'T be automated, and that require a significant amount of brain-power to solve. Software can't think - it can only do what it has been programmed to do.
(* Simply put, there aren't enough QUALIFIED US workers to satisfy demand. Notice I say qualified. Not 'History Teacher turned MCSE' or 'Accountant turned Flash "Programmer"'. Qualified Software Engineers, Ph.D MEs, Chem-Es, etc. There just aren't enough. *)
And they won't get a CHANCE to be "qualified" if H1B's keep hogging their potential slots. Every techy has to start somewhere.
(* One of the stipulations of H-1B is that there must not exist an equally qualified US candidate, and the H-1B MUST be paid at least 95% of the average wage for the given job in the given market. *)
Stipulations my ass! Nobody ENFORCES them. There are plenty of title and resume manipulation horror stories if you listen around. It is a big shell game.
(* These visas are a serious pain for employers to obtain and administrate. In all the places I've worked that employ H-1Bs, they'd MUCH rather hire and pay for qualified American workers. *)
No, they want indentured servants who have no other choices once they arrive here.
(* Americans that bemoan this need to, for the most part, just go back to school. Knowing SQL server just isn't enough anymore. *)
Companies want *experience*, not certs, and citizens will never get it if H1B's keep popping up to hog openings.
Slam the doors! We don't need them, nor your bull.
Table-ized A.I.
YOUR company may not be abusing the system, but many companies are. One recent example exposed was Bank of America. Not only did they replace lots of IT workers with H-1B people, they even required the replaced domestic workers to stay a few weeks and train their H-1B replacements in order to qualify for the severance package. This is why I refuse to do business with BoA.
What makes you think that H-1B abuses get caught? The government isn't reviewing them. The companies doing the abuse certainly aren't telling. Yet people are being replaced by H-1B workers in both the boom and the bust.
It's the largest corporations that have the H-1B process streamlined where it's no longer a hassle for them.
And going back to school is not the answer. What would you do, get a 2nd CS degree to replace your first? If you go back to school I recommend getting a degree in Salesmanship ... there is a current shortage of good sales people. What high tech businesses want in their employees is experience. Part of the problem where shortages exist is that there is less of a pathway to achieve experience than there has been before. Even during the boom, less experienced and inexperienced people could not find jobs (I know some personally who had this trouble). Another part of the problem is that as technology changes, there are new things to be experienced in, but few experienced people at first. The trouble is, someone with experience in one or two decades of the same kind of technology in the past are shunned because they can't actually list the new technology now, even though they would probably be up to speed in a week or two (so the employer would rather spend 3 months continuing to look and eventually hire someone on H-1B who has very little experience, but is at the bottom of the range of salary to meet H-1B requirements).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Very well said. But my experience with H-1B's has been that they have vastly inflated "experience" in the resumes, and when they are on the job, it's complete OJT. It isn't even a fair competition. Typically, the H-1B's leave an American interviewer scratching their head in confusion because of the language barrier, while an American resident is required to have "excellent communications skills" for any IT job. It's an amazing double standard.
Sun acquired Pirus Networks to help them on a chassis with FibreChannel, iSCSI, and perhaps InfiniBand.2 1423
0 919S0076
http://www.byteandswitch.com/document.asp?doc_id=
Before that they picked up Dolphin Interconnect to help them make a 4x (30 Gigabit/sec) InfiniBand Host Channel Adapter.
Here is an article from an EETimes Network site, CommsDesign with some details.
http://www.commsdesign.com/news/tech_beat/OEG2002
It is definitly interesting stuff. Everyone is trying to do Shared I/O and I/O Virtualization; maybe Sun can get it right.
-- soldack
Great untill someone finds a hole in N1, then who fixes N1?
It won't fix itself. It's ability to fix itself will be the first thing a Cracker disables.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
Actually not exactly a wives tale, but more of a misunderstanding of what is actually happening.
In fields of unskilled labor (agriculture is primary in this), it is very common to hire illegal immegrants for well below minimum, force them to work nearly as slaves, then tell them that you'll turn them in and have them deported if they don't do what you say.
Since unskilled labor can go for a little as ten dollars a day, there is very little chance for a legal resident (citizen or not), to get such a job.
People with such an attitude are likely young, with parents who grew up before the U.S. shipped all or nearly all its manufacturing overseas.
Since immigrants (not H1B visa immigrants, and often not legal) often work for much less than resident labor, many see this as a detrimental impact on the job market.
In actual fact, it depends greatly on the area. In some areas, illegals are paid with a starting wage of 7-10 dollars/hour. Many employers would much rather hire legal labor (it saves trouble later), but legal labor costs more.
In other areas (such as where I live), some employers prefer illegal labor. They can get it for nothing. People who want to work, are tuned down, because some cheap bastard would rather pay $1.00/hr instad of $5.15/hr (minimum wage).
Since the person you replied to is likely coming out of an environment similar to mine, he likely has similar misconceptions about immigrant labor.
The charges he makes are all tragically true. Just not of the H1B specifically. In many nontechnical fields, however, some areas have a significant problem that needs to be addressed.
Qualified residents are unable to find work because immigrants can be hired for well below what is legal, and they don't say anyting for fear of being deported.
... I spent 8 months job hunting after my company shut down their facility here. I finally did get a job, but I had to take a 20% pay cut, and the benefits are almost non-existent.
The market value of the programmer sky-rocketed through the boom, and then plunged again through the crash. Despite our own individual ideas of what we are worth, you are only worth what someone is prepared to pay. You made the same mistake as my (highly talented and skilled) friend made... wanting only to continue 'upwards' when the ground had dropped suddenly from under your feet. Which is natural enough.
Their meaning of qualified is that you have to have 3 (or more) years of job experience using the exact tools and programming environment that they are using.
That's what a company *always* wants. They were only prepared to take a risk on those less qualified before because during the boom skilled personnel were scarce on the ground. There is oft a big difference between what a company wants and what they are finally prepared to accept.
Pity the worker who spent their work time doing their job instead of looking for the latest technologies so they could pad their resume.
Some of us consider keeping up with the latest technology being part of our job. I could counter that maybe you should have been more forward-sighted.
It's very simple. Companies don't want to train people, because the less you know, the less mobile you are.
It's probably more complex than that. A balancing act of training you up to be as effective as you can be in your role, without making you so skilled as to be an attractive target for headhunters.
You seem to take a very 'establishment' view of the tech market. I'm not saying anything in your post is wrong, it's just that currently we techies don't have any trade union or assured rights. You have to sell yourself and your skills (or carefully pick new ones to learn) in a competative market. And one of the tough rules is that in a free market a lot of the toughest competition comes from abroad.
Don't feel sorry for yourself, just pick yourself up off the ground and keep building up that skillset for the next boom. I bet even with your 20% paycut you are still on way more than the national average.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Shrinking job markets are funny until your career disappears.
Ayn Rand's philosophy isn't so palatable when the only job available in twenty years is washing floors at a McDonald's -- maybe. That job could be automated too.
With jobs being exported overseas, a radical administration gutting unions, job security, medicare, and free schools with such glee, where the hell is anyone supposed to make a living?
Not everyone has an "in" into Harvard or MIT. And most of the top, top management jobs are practically royalty anyway -- for the ultimate example of that, look in the White House. A dumb frat boy who goofed off until he was forty, a National Guard deserter, who ran every company he touched into the ground, who had only six years of public service to his name, got appointed President by his father's friends into his job.
This ain't an idle point. Meritocracy can only go so far when business management, in the name of profit, is dilligently nuking all the jobs they can, and erasing the safety nets for those who can't get hired anymore. The shareholders are happy (until the bubble bursts), but in the end we have an unemployed workforce contrasting with the enormously wealthy executives who canned them.
Where's the software that will get rid of the parasites at the top who pass out the pain? Somehow I doubt that innovative tech will ever see the light of day.
Damnit, sometimes I feel like going communist. With heroes like this, what the hell is the difference?
Hmmm... I took several Sun courses some 8 or 9 years ago, and if memory serves, 500:1 was the system:admin ratio they were claiming for Solaris 2.4...
-ZK-