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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."
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.
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