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The Future of SysAdmins' Positions
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."
Where sysadmins will always thrive is in the ability to connect people who simply don't have time for all the details involved. It's not The Oldest Profession, but it's going to be the longest running profession someday, methinks.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
How many of those SysAdmins are going to be located in India?
without sysadmins, who'll deal with the "someone stole the post-it with my password on" queries?
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?
Hmmm.
There will always be jobs for persons in IT that are willing to learn new technology as it changes daily. There will always be a job for position "X" as it will change as technology changes.
> An experienced systems administrator
> 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 in 2002 was $67,600. But I guess that's more or less in the ballpark.
The Army reading list
Admins have been forced to "Assume the position" for quite some time.
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.
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.
El riesgo vive siempre!
Yeah. Until something breaks that is.
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.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Even with automated updates and other utilities it still will take someone with some brains to fix problems that are more than just installing the latest patches. Any moron can install a patch.
...just plug the hardware in, switch the power on and step back. The India team will take over from there, thank you.
> 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?
I think the only way to go when you reach the ceiling, in any profession, is to design a smart startup company and own it. So it would be a switch from sysadmin to CEO. You could then sell off that company for big bucks, and then lather, rinse, repeat.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
You get an MBA, you move into management and become the CIO/CTO. Happens all the time.
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.
There is no system that can provide the level of personally tailored abuse that I offer users on our network. Most users are masochists -- they don't just want to be told they're doing something stupid, they want their intelligence to be abuse for it. Honestly. At least that's always been my philosophy...
Correct... You can have all of the automated systems you want, but when something breaks someone has to go fix it. Diagnose the problem, determine the solution and test whether that solution wont screw up the rest of the system.
Hmmm.
Sysadmins will always be needed because technology doesn't stand still. Ten years ago, a sysadmin was responsible for different systems, different technologies, and different processes. Add in wireless, PDAs, GPS, etc. and you see the point - new tech means new things to learn, new responsibilities, and that much more job security.
Unless unforeseen technologies appear over the horizon that are overly complex, this is only a short term thing. ( notice how most new technologies today are simplistic to the end user )
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..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Somebody's got to be to blame. There seem to be folks in every organization who only exist in case something goes wrong in order to take the beating. If you didn't have a sysadmin, who do you scream at if the e-mail server goes down? Who do you accuse of being inefficient when backups hang up a system for an hour or so? Technology continues to get easier to use, but corporations still need someone with responsibility for that technology.
it's an interesting article, and it's dead-on about predections, but i think for the wrong reasons
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
Sysadmin is a glorified plumber. It's basicly the same concept: build and maintain some infratructure that interfaces with humans. You will need a sysadmin about as often as you use a plumber. Plumbers will still get paid better because they might get some brown goo on their arms. Gotta pay someone for that kind of misery.
The mean US household income which is what your average Joe 6 pack makes is about $42,000 a year. If you make $60,000 a year you are about the mean and median US household incomes. There are a lot of educated people making less.
Evolution or ID?
I'm not trying to Microsoft bash, but as long as Microsoft controls the desktop and server market, and as long as there are software vendors that ignore programming guidelines, there will always be a need for admins. I get calls all the time from users trying to figure out how things are supposed to work. I find most problems easy, yet the users are baffled. That, combined with the constant threat of virus, hacker and spyware attacks, makes me confidant I'll be employed for a long time to come. Unless I waste too much time on /.
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.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
This topic comes up every so often. I can honestly say my workload hasn't decreased one bit even with easier to manage systems. Expectations continue to increase and new technologies are implemented. Over the last year or two we've seen a huge surge in wireless deployments, as one example.
My current employer thinks that if it has more than one button or wire that I must fully understand it and must know how to make it work.
The only thing I have going for me like most system administrators is our superhero like quality of being able to pick something up and learn 75% of it in a matter of minutes with little or no documentation.
He refers to me as the company's mad scientist because he thinks I can make anything happen when it comes to computers and electronics in general.
So in certain businesses and around certain people our demand will never go away.
My new title at the office is "Vice-President of Everything Else"
If you didn't have a sysadmin, who do you scream at if the e-mail server goes down? Who do you accuse of being inefficient when backups hang up a system for an hour or so?
Why the guy who chose the software, of course. Since EULAs disclaim liability...
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
just ran out of mod points and something like this shows up.
Mud people?
you probably ment adrift, not afloat?
There! I responded to flamebait.
Although automation has helped the sysadmin role, it can never really replace it. Why? "Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity." As long as humans can muck up systems they will. Just yesterday, sysadmins has the rescue a user's desktop due to worms and viruses. These worms and viruses were quite old. We have AntiVirus and automated WindowsUpdate in our network. So how did the user get infected. Everytime, WindowsUpdate popped up to install a new update, she always clicked Cancel. Apparently her "time was too valuable" for updates.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The US Census Bureau by the numbers for 2002..
mean (average) income was $57,852 and the median (the point where the population is divided in half exactly) income was $42,409. This is for households.
The average is skewed because it is the total amount made divided by the total number of people. The filthy rich throw the meaning of this off. The number to look at in this case is the medain. So $60 a year isn't bad. That's actually middle class in the US.
Evolution or ID?
Dude, it's Yahoo.com and the US gov't. I think they can handle the load. What next, local mirrors of a Google cache?
"In a 32-bit world, you're a 2-bit user. You've got your own newsgroup, alt.total.loser." -Weird Al
With automated upgrade tools and self-updating software, will sysadmins be in such high demand that they enjoy today?
Nope. This should have been made obvious when Visual Basic and Access caused all programmers to lose their jobs.
Do you have ESP?
I'm looking forward to riding the next bubble.
I can't wait for the next flood from the certification mills.
Anyone remember the commercial, "I was making $8 an hour as a roofer, and thanks to 'insert name' I'm making $70K a year.
Of course sysadmins are going to be in strong demand. Automated systems can only do so much, someone has to fix things when they break down, and the workload keeps increasing.
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.
"But actually trying to use m4 as a general-purpose langage would be deeply perverse" --ESR
The problem for some is becomming a sys admin. Most sys admin want years of hands-on, but to get years of hand-on you first have to get a sys admin job, but to get the job, you first need years of hands-on . . .
When something goes wrong, Management will still want somebody to blame. It's hard to ask the autoupdate process why something didn't work as advertised. Not only are SysAdmins the ones who keep things running, they are also the ones who have to accept responsibility for when things break. Without SysAdmins, who will explain things to Management using terms they understand?
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.
You have to remember that sysadmins and support professions only have one purpose...which is to put ourselves out of a job. The goal ultimately is to have no issues that need our attention. That's why we fix so many. Thankfully, companies continue to produce software that need our attention. Thank you Microsoft, Novell, IBM Talisma.
http://jayceecorder.blogspot.com
How many secretaries and attorneys know how to setup a mail server? How many of them know what the hell an MX record is? These are things that can be book-learned so MAYBE someday all doctors, secretaries and attorneys will know all this stuff - or the software will do it for them.
What about the stuff that is not "book-learnable"; like keeping on top of the black-hat community or knowing what the virus-du-jour is?
This stuff requires constant learning and adaptation. Much like law or medicine, these professions require constant learning and most guys that own networks, don't have time to run them correctly - that's why they hire guys like me.
-ted
The phrase "Go away or I shall replace you with a very small shell script" is no longer a joke...
There is no mod option "-1: Disagree" for a reason. "Overrated" is not an acceptable substitute. Post something instead.
what will change, i believe, is the status that sysadmins now hold. i believe that they will either become part of the company in a larger sense (that is, as an engineer or tech with sysadmin on the side) or that they will become like car mechanics, someone you call in when things break.
call me naive, but i do think that systems will get more stable. i mean, even windows is much more stable than it used to be. and, if this is the case, system crashes will be less frequent, as will software/hardware upgrades, and emerging technologies will become easier to install. thus, the need for a full-time sysadmin will decrease, even with emerging technology.
of course, i'm talking out of my ass. i've never been a sysadmin, so feel free to correct anything that i've said that is totally wrong or anything (which i'm sure is plenty) that i've forgotten about what a sysadmin does.
-ninjaneer
With automated upgrade tools and self-updating software, will sysadmins be in such high demand that they enjoy today"
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.
but what will the hours be? And what about all of people with the skills willing to work for little or nothing in exchange for some experience? The boom for this career is over and will not return. It is just another job; long hours, little pay, little recognition. Welcome to the 21st century!
As a proper computer scientists and electrical engineers (not electricians). It should be our duty to make simplier systems.
So WTF do we have sooooo many languages and hoops to jump through just to do stuff.
Can't we all just get along with out having to interface C++, C#, J++, Java, JavaScript, HTML, VB, BASIC, Perl, ADA, Active X, Lisp, Python, Flash, assembler and whatever database cr*p left.
Not to mention DirectX and OpenGL.
One language per Job area!
(Where job area is a LOOSE term like webpages, games, databases, etc. for all the numbnuts which say this can't do that!)
As an engineer solving natures puzzles, I often wonder why comp sci like making things more complicated (and unstable) for themselves. In the future I hope for more standardisation.
Not a troll just pointing out the KISS principle Keep It Simple Stupid (unless u r a sysadmin)
There will be a need for sysadmins...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
To make an analogy, someone has to know how to add in case the power on all the calculators goes out.
stuff |
Check his history, its his MO - only mirror stories that are from akamai (sp) and other sources.
Notice that he and his cronies have never mirrored any small sites that actually need the help.
Why? Because they don't use a load balancing/caching service.
They aren't his mirrors, they are akamai's and others' resources he is using to get karma for trolling.
Mods please mod that bitch (gp) down.
We got rid of all of our sysa&%$#IU@Hm years ago... we have no$&Y@U problems to speak of in our net84(*#&$@.. .NO CARRIER
CONNECT
sure there's a glithIUEY#$ now and again, but for the most part, things run very smoot83Y(*$@Y#$NO CARRIER
I used to worry about this, but I don't any more.
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.
As a systems admin with 5 years experience currently working on a helpdesk to make ends meet, I'd like to ask, where is this glut of jobs that the poster implies is out there? I know in the Toronto area, there are quite a few out of work sys admins and any job I find gets 100's of applications.
...
Things aren't so peachy keen here in sys admin land
We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
[spoken]
/home partition and umount. .gifs of my boss's daughter from his own account!
/home partition and umounts??
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)
and fully supports suse/fedora/mandrake. go novell! if you haven't used it , its an X11 app that runs as root (asks for password) and updates your RPM based system for you. you can even automate it. great fun.
When was the last time you saw a "labor saving" technology really save labor? It's not that there aren't such things, but, rather, that when true efficiency-boosting technologies come along, no one sits back and says, "Great - - more time to rest." Or, "Great, we can let some people go." Instead, expectations for greater productivity arise. One is expected to accomplish more with the resources at hand. Good companies don't let knowledgable people go. They push them for the greatest productivity they can achieve. I, for one, am not worried.
It's only funny until someone gets hurt. Then, it's hilarious.
If sysadmins are/will always be in high demand, why did Humber College (biggest tech college in Ontario) just fold its Information Technology Studies department, orphaning all its current students? Why is own Bachelor of Applied Computing program at the University of Guelph-Humber barely able to generate enough interest to get half of a full class admissions for 2004-2005 academic year?
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.
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
Haven't sys-admins always spent half their time automating things? When vendors didn't supply automated patch tools, we made our own. When our companies wouldn't buy backup or monitoring tools, we made little makeshift ones ourselves.
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.
is gradual deskilling of system administration with a commensurate fall in pay and status. Which is about right really; today's admin is usually little more than a glorified caretaker or mechanic. Both caretaker and mechanic are respectable and reasonably renumerated jobs, but they aren't on the same tier as the professions and frankly, neither should systems administration be either.
automated upgrade tools and self-updating software
Yes, that wonderful all-knowing all-seeing demiurge that M$ fanboys claim is the fault of the user!
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
> If you like stability, try accounting.
I totally agree. There isn't much room for lateral changes to the global variance of accounting. Even though accounting changes to adapt new law, the system itself will never change; it's a matter of governments acquiring more and more money from corporations, and citizens. The laws don't have that much room to deform. Whereas technology has infinite room to deform, over time.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
What about offshoring? It's a big concern for others in the tech fields, but doesn't seem to get mentioned that much in sysadmin discussions. Yet, I worked for five months as a sysadmin for a ~10-machine development environment in Toronto, Canada, and never left Austin, Texas. I just had a physical resource I could call there and say, "Go reset this box," or "On Saturday morning, we're going to replace so-and-so ethernet controller." So, I'm not India or Russia, but I did a pretty good job maintaining an environment from a thousand miles away...
and look what a sorry state most Windows installations are like.
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..
and also HOW you live. With some lifestyle changes and a change of domicile, you can live quite well on 60 grand I would think. There's a big world out there beyond the top ten ridiculously expensive to live in US mega urban areas. And with the ability to telecommute to work, well, seems like it's a good deal to me.
Got to face facts, these big corporations could care less who they hire,or where they hire them, as long as the work gets done, and for the cheapest, hence all the outsourcing. It's not going away any time soon, so adapt to it or suffer would be the most prudent course to take.
*clickety-clik* you have lots of space now.
Comparing an Xserve to an equal x86 product is about on par nowadays, even considering the software. The key factor is that support is included & cheap for the Xserve while it's probably plenty extra for something "esoteric" like Debian. Lots of vendors won't "by default" support a machine that is running unsupported software.
I suspect I must differ.
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.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
In the contaxt of another article everyone would be saying it's just more proof of the man making it look like we need to import more foreign workers
One of the many things I hate. thingsihate.org
Yes, the sysadmin job could be a thing of the past. All it would take is for big companies to open up in india offering to host your entire network of x% less.
Yeah, but not every application requires a dual-Opteron server. Filservers need to be disk- and ram-heavy, but require little CPU, for example; the X-serves don't have a good cost-to-benefits ratio for the $1K rackmount range, and if you've got a small company with limited resoures, a $600 Dell will do just as well as a fileserver.
On top of that, there are a lot more third-party applications (for servers) designed to run on the x86 architecture; things like virus scanners, VMware and/or Crossover Wine for the odd Windows application, and such.
Apple support is good, but for the price of the hardware, you can get just-as-good support from Dell (on the hardware), and there's a huge Linux community who has been using Debian in production environments for some time. You just can't beat experience, and I've noted that I get better information from community-based support (sunmanagers) than I do from commercial support (Sun), simply because the community guys actually use the things they troubleshoot.
Again, not knocking the X-serve, but they are more expensive (come on, it's Apple) than comparable x86 boxen.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
I lather, rinse, repeat right now. That's why they gave me my own office with a door.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
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.
--Chag
> I lather, rinse, repeat right now. That's why they gave me my own office with a door.
Yeah but if you don't shower at all, you'll get an office faster!
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
As a modern day witch-doctor I find that speaking the sacred word "reboot" works wonders.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
- Security People
- Network Idiots
- DBAs
- "Capacity Planning"
- Windows SysAdmins
- UNIX SysAdmins
Before you flame me, I have worked (more 12+ years total, companies large and small) as both a unix sysadmin and a DBA, but I tried to actually help people get their jobs done rather than be a pompous blowhard asshole as I have found other sysadmins and DBAs to be when I was in other roles.Serious, I think these positions suffer under the same illusions that management people do - things like that they are smarter than everyone else, that they are well liked and/or respected and that they are truly helpful to other employees in acheiving the goals of the business. Instead, I find most of their time is spend consumed with their own self-importance and policing everyone to make sure that their draconian policies are followed, whether they make sense or not.
For instance, I have yet to ever see a network person at any company I have worked for help actually solve a problem whether it is one that they created or not, and since no one else has the sniffers or router passwords, no one but them could ever gather the evidence needed to prove that it was their fuck up.
The sound over the phone of furious typing and then "Try it now" is a smoking gun.
I'd be interested in people's experiences with sysadmins good or bad and whether you think they had/have the same understanding of their own reputation as other employees do or not. I read that in Japan they have companies that will do a detailed evaluation of an employee by surveying their co-worker and that these evals are pretty raw and upfront. If anyone knows more about this practice, maybe they could shed some light - I tried google but can't find anything.
"will sysadmins be in such high demand that they enjoy today?"
bwahhahahahaahahahaahahahaha
hehehehehehehehehehehe
wooohoooohooooooo
thats the funniest bit of text ive seen in years!
thanks for a good laugh Lisa!
Man, you got up on the WRONG side!! Sounds like when you were a sysadmin you probably weren't all that good at it.
Most net admins I knew were good at what they did and made things work fine. I guess your opinion is that if accountants and bean counters had sniffers and router passwords, then perhaps THEY could all fix their own stuff? Is that what you're saying?
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
Try the government and/or the military.
:)
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.
"Monkeys barter nookie for food."
My wife is a lousy cook so obviously this isn't true for all humans.
Systems Administration is still a pretty complex and ill-understood skilled profession, at least in the *nix-world. It's a mistake to try to outsource this to the lowest bidder, and that mistake will be apparent. We might all have to get laid off first, but eventually things will be forced to turn around. Big unix environments simply can't be run without skilled administrators, and none of the tools available today change that. They might obviate the need for hoards of "operators", but you still need the skilled "administrators" who might be better called systems engineers and architects.
11*43+456^2
I call this "The Snowden Syndrome," and it's true for Security managers, too.
:-)
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 already, it's just that nobody has shown them their guts spilled out all over the floor yet.
Your scapegoat sysadmin is in the same position.
Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
fuck, damn, shit, "You piece of crap!", "goddamn it!", "What the hell!?", argh!: backspace
Finally!, "Thank god": EOF, save file
Why not just have the manager in charge of that group take responsi...oh yah, I get your point
Say, one sysadmin was overlooking 100 computers (say, including a few servers, several client machines, one big iron and several more or less exotic devices). About 50% users needed help - and one in ten employees had a computer. ...dubious... growth of reliablity.
Now thanks to the computers getting easier to maintain only 5% of users need help. But meantime the company bought something like 1000 computers, every employee has one, and the admin still needs to pay attention to 50 boxes on average, only not out of 100 but out of 1000. More computers=more failures which counter-ballances the
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
... if the current state of affairs will keep on.
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...
Most job postings I see these days look like this:
Experience: 2 to 3 years
Requirements: Cisco, VPN, Wireless, Security, DNS, DHCP, HTML, Java, E-mail, Windows 2003, Windows 2000, Linux, Unix, Sun, Oracle, App(a), App(b), App(c). Must be able to manage time effectively, god at the technologies listed, etc.
Salary: $30,000 to $45,000
Ok.. this is a small exageration.. but the point I make is that a lot of companies seem to think that they can hire someone with a very broad/very experienced for smaller amounts of money.
Perhaps this is the market... but I have a tendancy to believe this has to do with Human Resources trying to meet some managers expectations. Wouldn't you be just a little incredulous at seeing those requirements... where would you find the time to do all those things if you are but one person??
(1st sig) If this were a snappy sig, you'd be reading it right now. (2nd sig) I'm a karma whore. >Insert FUD here
If anything, the article's emphasis is on desktop support and the end-user experience.
Any seasoned sysadmin will have war stories to share regarding how servers drift out of sync (just the o/s, ignore anything else for now) over time, not just from a baseline, but from other servers which are meant to be identical. Read Steve Traugott's white paper on Turing Equivalence in Automated Systems Administration if you want to get a better feel for the issue.
The postman hits! The postman hits! You have mail.
"Is there really more to life than food, shit, and sex?" -- Elvis
Dual Opteron, 2 Gig of Ram, DVD+-R/RAM for backups and a 5 disk, 360 gig Serial ATA RAID array on a 3ware card. Total cost was under $3500. I don't think that compares to much of anything. And it'll compile a 2.4.x kernel in under a minute :)
Yay, you got the first "Woe me" message, Stewart.
Let me put down my Starbucks $5 coffee and shed a quick tear for you. There. I'm done now.
Maybe you're not employed as a sysadmin because:
a) you're no good at it
b) your attitude sucks
c) have no friends or friendly former colleagues, and therefore no professional networking
d) don't lie enough in your cv
e) don't have enough education/certifications
f) don't try hard enough finding a new job
BTW, how do you know that they get 100s of applications? Is that what you tell yourself to make yourself not as bitter with life as you should be?
For all of the objections others have raised, like take-home being much lower than billing, bad hours, etc, you all forgot one.
The profession is potentially lethal. You may take home something other than pay. I have no idea if working women insist on barriers, or if there's a price premium to go without barriers, or if they require a recent negative test document. But none of that is foolproof.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Don't assume that, as I AM an admin. ( among other things ) And have been in the business for 20 + years.
My point is not that things will be 100% user manageable. ( notice my original post )
The point is that as things become more advanced more people can generally manage their own systems. It will be 'close enough' for daily business.
No, not 100%, but perhaps 75%. That reduces the need for an onsite admin. And reduces the numbers of admins needed out in the world. Same goes for hardware techs. As hardware is expensed out in 2 years, when a pc breaks, it just gets tossed and a new one purchased. So there goes a lot of the break-fix guys.. Programmers, same thing as a lot of canned software is 'good enough' so the need for custom programs are going down.
Again, I never meant to imply that NO IT people will be needed, just greatly reduced needs to the point that MOST are not needed, especially in the small business world. And I do speak from experience. I have been seeing this trend for a few years now. More and more the users are able to adequately maintain their systems at an increasing rate. Until something drastic happens of course.
Sure it's a combination of training, and advancements in ease of administration, but its still taking place.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
...if you've an HP/compaq proliant with a remote insite/lights out board on it then they can do that remotely too: including booting off a virtual floppy over the network, and powering it on from cold remotely...
Specifically, you might use a stratum to sync up if a common NTP server doesn't suit you, but you really don't need "GPS skills". It's almost like the author wanted to throw in some buzzwords to sound more techie.
Back to the main assertion, I'd say we're just fine as sys admins (or network admins). I deployed all sorts of scripts and tools, such as Big Brother, to automate my job. Also learned NAWK/AWK, and Expect scripting for various activities such as installing SSH on aboutt 160 Sun servers running Solaris 8. I can safely say that despite my best efforts to automate, there was still always work to be done. Someone has to _RUN_ the scripts, and tweak them down the road. The best automation for computer systems still needs a fair amount of human intervention. It just makes us more productive. Instead of putting in 80 hours a week, we'll now get to see our family after a "normal" 40 hour week.
The whores in Amsterdam, well.. at least the ones in the Red Light District, and per 'trick' make around 100 Guilders (US$50, IIRC) and they have to deal with the Lager Louts, the ooglers, the tourists, etc. But, on the other hand, they have nice clean little rooms with sinks and a bed, and since its legal they have full police recognition (and no-hassle assistance, I imagine) and probably decent working hours.
/.
Thank God Mrs. Anonymous Coward doesn't read
As a working SyaAdmin, I'm not worried about my job disappearing until the lusers figure out to: 1. Make sure it's plugged up 2. Make sure it's turned on 3. Reboot their Windows computer 4. Quit downloading Spyware/viruses 5. login to the network without locking their account.
I agree; can't beat cheap dell servers.
However, the guy was running Oracle and Tomcat. I think he needs the high power. The PowerEdge 1750 at 3.06GHz isn't really in the same league due to the 533 FSB and DDR266. True it's about 1.5K less than the Xserve, but you try to ratchet the speed up to compensate for the limitations and match the Xserve (3.2GHz if Apple's benchmarks are to be believed), the price comes back in line.
Don't forget the Xenon isn't 64-bit either.
It's what you're comfortable with. Personally, I think it's close enough that IT managers can make whatever decision they want.
For me, it's OS X and FreeBSD (provides improved software compatibility with OS X over Linux) on the old x86 machines. I can't stand the constant programming interface and name changes (/dev => defvs => udev) on Linux either. Let's not even go into the ide-scsi module. That's neither here nor there, though...
What radical transformation is server hardware and software undergoing that makes anyone think this stuff will suddenly work so well that it will reduce the need for experts to maintain and operate them? Heck, the mere existence of Microsoft guarantees lifetime employment for anyone willing to suffer though learning how to use their software, and this is exacerbated by the fact that Microsoft seems to be exceeding Moore's Law (but in terms of code size and complexity) while delivering at best, a slow linear increase in real functionality.
Short of AI, I don't see sysadmins ever going away, or even decreasing.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I've read all the 3+ posts here. So far, nobody has mentioned a really important fact.
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.
For several reasons:
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.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Janitorial staff. What is that suppossed to mean?
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).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Solaris admin here. I have not touched a machine for the last 4 years...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I read this and I think that my sentiment can best be summed up with the following quote:
"If the vendors started doing everything right, we would be out of a job. Let's hear it for OSI and X! With those babies in the wings, we can count on being employed until we drop, or get smart and switch to gardening, paper folding, or something. "
-- C. Philip Wood
Come one people. Real sysadmins will always be in demand.
*** Stop trying to be cool. ***
A second-cousin of bloat is overconsolidation... putting too many dissimilar software systems on one piece/set of hardware because it "saves money". Change control events for such hosts are akin to a company meeting, with everyone only focusing on the software they own. And who's in the middle, to make sure it all stays working? The sysadmin.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
Cisco certification, Oracle certification and a MSCE. You would almost think they were trying to replace 3 or 4 employess with one position.
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.
There isn't a cost/benefit in the $1000 range, but there sure as hell is in the $6000 range. At least if you want the server to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.
Having been a longtime (and soon to be former) Dell customer, I'm tired of having to escalate every stinking spare part request. We were back and forth with their call center for WEEKS trying to get a simple replacement power supply for our RAID. They suggested we play swappy with the various components, without regard to the fact that we had 100GB of data on there that takes 48 hours to restore from backup. (And the fact that the power problem caused disks to wink out if we swapped components, cascading to container loss.)
When they finally offered to send a support technician out, he was only available 9-5. Yeah, real helpful to tell the building "Sorry folks we have to drop the fileserver today at 2:00. Oh, and if this clown screws it up, we might be back up on Thursday. Assuming he finds the problem, and we don't end up having to drop ship another unit because the local field office doesn't have any spares."
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
As long as there remain users who exist asking questions like "how do I save that word file" I'll never be out of a job. ;)
"self-updating"??? I certainly hope that most self-respecting companies wouldn't rely on self-updating systems to manage things. I would actually hope that they just wouldn't use self-updating at all. That just isn't safe to install ??? without testing it or even knowing what is going to be installed. Get a clue here that sys admins are necessary to make sure upgrades and patches are tested and applied properly and at appropriate times.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
Angry about the lack of advancement in the field? Consider corporate espionage, if you work for a company whose information is worth stealing.
Hopefully this link hasn't already been posted.
The farm was an important development...no longer did man have to hunt and gather, always chasing food. So...no...farming is not the worlds oldest profession :D
Blar.
They *could* ship your job over there, but don't you think the geeks in Bangalore or Mumbai would revolt once they found out they were programming to kill sacred cows? I think not! :-)
I see it all the time. At my school, they just had a party where they tacked on like 3-5 more sysadmins. And what seems to be true is that for every sysadmin you add, more things break. Our kernal is possibly the most broken, unreliable, slow, bloated piece of crap I've ever seen. Mostly because we have so many sysadmins that whenever we fix it, it just breaks again. I don't think the sysadmin job is going to last much longer as a thing thats in demand. Because there are far too many kids now who know Linux backwards and forwards. And when they grow up to be real sysadmins, half of them will be out of a job.
>> code monkeys just code and go home).
yeah. I had a day off last month, thank you. Our sysadmin gets waaay more time off than I do (and substantially more bananas, too.)
Quiet you fool!
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.
...demand they enjoy today?! yuh, right...
i'm a super duper senior unix SA who's been out of work for the past 18 months! i ain't enjoyin' it either...
Need I say more. They provide continual job security for us. And the more there are the better.
Sig? No thanks, I don't smoke.
you forgot to add the no lube part.....
I went through that phase myself- I was excited about converting my car to natural gas- It's pretty easy. I found that Time taken up by such hobbies makes it much more expensive than it seems at first. Hiring contracters to do "special" projects is amazingly expensive. then girls usually aren't to thrilled with what is essentially an "antisocial" activity. Many of the 60's kids learned about trying to live "alternative lifestyles." You see neighbors, friends and family cheerfully polluting with shiny new SUVs, and you finally figure "what's the point of me busting my ass?"
Really? Don't tell my boss that.
It's much like system administration. There are control rooms, and equipment to be monitored and fixed. There's certification, required by law for some types of plants. New equipment comes and goes, and you have to keep up.
That's your future, sysadmins.
Sysadmins will always be around because someone has to setup that automated software. If it actually got to the point where "automated" software ran smoothly 99% of the time, then the sysadmin might work for (or be) a contractor who comes in when things break. That person is still a sysadmin. If the sysadmin were in-house then his role might diversify and cover more duties - programming, administration (of the non-system type), management. The sysadmin may even be doing stuff not related to computers.
Whatever happens, the sysadmin will still be necessary.
-kidlinux.
I have been out of work since November 2003.
I am a sysadmin with 10+ years experience in many flavors of UNIX, which according to this article should make it easy to find a job.
Not so.
I rarely get to the phase of even touching on salary in interviews. Perhaps it is because I am at 38 "overqualified" (old)? Perhaps it is because I actually know my shit, spend nights and weekends learning my craft, but failed to get that pile of paper certifications? Trying to work on that now, but DAMN it's hard finding a decent Linux/UNIX sysadmin job it seems.
> will sysadmins be in such high demand that they
:/
> enjoy today?
Of course! Outsourcing for cheaper labor will always be in high demand.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Ever wonder why my handle is DigiShaman? *grin*
Life is not for the lazy.
Who will fix the automated systems when they break?
The Foresight Exchange is an idea futures market. Players trade contracts based on claims about the future--such as whether or not there will be another terrorist attack against the United States, how many IT Jobs there will be in 2012, or whether Scaled Composites will win the X-Prize. Players who profit by correctly predicting the future achieve a high score that proves their omniscient wisdom.
It's not just fun and games, though--the exchange provides an overall market consensus prediction. Anyone can create a new claim to help them gain insight into the future. As a software developer I worried about my future job prospects and so I created the ITJOBS market to find out what will happen. The claim pays out from $1 to $0 depending on whether the number of IT jobs paying over $50k/year grows or shrinks by up to 35%. Currently the symbol trades between $0.65 and $0.75 which translates to a market consensus of about 1% annual job growth annually. However, since the claim just began trading thare not yet enough market participants for this prediction to be significant--you could help change that! Sign up and test your foresight.
What's even cooler is that the foresight exchange has a programmable API and documented protocol so that you can write automated trading bots. Since it's play money you have nothing to lose but your self respect! There are many such bots trading on the market now, some of them having been running for years. The Shimari Project includes a Java API that can be used to programatically access the exchange; writing one for your own favorite langauge would also be quite easy. Note though that there is a limit of one account per human player--you can't have a bot and also have a human trading account. This is to prevent various kinds of cheating.
The Foresight Exchange is not just a fun (and free) online game, it's also a useful source of information about the future. If you think you can predict who will win the next election, or you just want to know what the consensus opinion is, sign up and find out. The more people who participate in this market the more accurate its predictions will be.
Disclaimer: I have no relationship with the Foresight Exchange other than that I am a player, a member of the unrelated Shimari Project, and the author of the ITJOBS claim--which I created because as a software developer I wanted to know what the future held in store for me!
There are better summaries of these statistics--and probably the inspiration for this article--here:
The Future of IT Jobs In America
Statistics for developers, computer scientists, and so forth can be found along side those for sysadmins here:
/. article.
The Future of IT Jobs in America
Which probably inspired this
Go ahead and deny it, but it's obvious to anyone with even the slightest amount of intelligence that Overly Critical Guy is your other troll account. Please don't make me list the reasons, unless you really want to look foolish. Unlike your phony ramblings about having Taco on your side, I can back up my assertions.
Trust me, you don't want to go there.
Do we have less mechanics today? Cars are more advanced and reliable than ever.
(Oh hang on, there aren't. They might be easier to drive and more technologically advanced, but there's a whole batch of different things that can go wrong now, that we need mechanics for).
Do we have less hospitals today? Newer drugs and safer practices surely mean that we need fewer doctors and beds than in the 'bad old days'
(What you say? New diseases? New ways of hurting oneself?)
Yes I know I'm agreeing with the FA, but really, what a stupid thing to question.
The more things change.....
Command attempted to use minibuffer while in minibuffer
This is to kill the stupid lameness filter. Dumb lameness filter. The lameness filter is lame. That's why they call it the lameness filter. Blah blah blah blah blah. The *real* OOG doesn't do all this crap. The real OOG can post anything he wants, dammit! The real OOG doesn't bother with lowercase letters or definite articles. Is that enough yet, lameass filter? Ah, good. It is. Really kills the humor of the parody though.
And even though you change it frequently in order to effectively troll Slashdot, the same style of thoughts were there. If you wanted to make plausible denial possible, you could have at least tried to do something different.
Again, you can deny it all you want but there is plenty more where the above came from, and it all comes from you--you are the one who is condemning yourself with your own words.
To continue to deny it is really juvenile. You've been found out. Why not come clean and admit it?
For the benefit of those too lazy to click on the above links, here are the pertinent texts.
As Overly Critical Guy: As bonch:
then provide hardware support. now you're talkin dallahs.
2nd: I don't waste my time begging moderators to mod you down--they seem to be able to do that all by themselves. (BTW, I seriously doubt that they get reversed in metamod. Nice way to try and threaten potential moderators.)
3rd: I could not care any less about what you have to say about anything. Your opinions matter not a whit to me.
4th: It doesn't matter how you try to spin things, everyone knows that Overly Critical Guy is your other troll account. There is no "mystique"--just your lies.
5th: You are an angry person. You could seriously use some expert help in this area.
Like I said before: I have a life. It doesn't depend at all on you. I bet that irks you to no end, since you seem to thrive on attention--even if it's the pathetic attention of a bunch of losers here on Slashdot.
PS: I am hereby ordering you to reply to this post yet again. Don't be late douchebag! Remember, I control you (idiot)!