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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."
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?
"It's not The Oldest Profession..."
Long hours, weekends/holidays, on-call, bad pay... I sure feel like a corporate whore.
Admins have been forced to "Assume the position" for quite some time.
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...
"mid- to upper-$60,000 range."
Yeah, that's about what, $2.50 and hour for most system admins....
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?
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.
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.
I though it was your wildly unkempt hair, your affinity for white labcoats, and that bizzare odor that eminates from your cubicle/office.....
I'd mod you up had I points, but I don't so I'll try and post an informative response instead.
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.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
I always thought that farming was the oldest profession ;-)
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Methinks many sysadmins would switch professions if only the whore houses would have them.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
There will be a need for sysadmins...
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
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
[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)
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 $1.00 frozen dinners from Swanson every night...
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Then of course there are the long weekends where they have to work round the clock to fix an emergency!
Don't forget that everyone is going to expect them to fix problems at home too so their job is extened to the power of N where N = number of employees.
HEY! ...
What a minute! Oooohh.... FWORD!!!!
The greatest hindrance to success is a well-rationalized excuse
She was married?
"Piter, too, is dead."
automated upgrade tools and self-updating software
Yes, that wonderful all-knowing all-seeing demiurge that M$ 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.
...the whole of European history could be summed up in two words...
;)
And US history is much, much more complex than that?
Yeah, and have you ever navigated a GUI with voice commands only?
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.
"Piter, too, is dead."
*clickety-clik* you have lots of space now.
I think you were more of a consultant than a sysadmin. I think the truest definition of a sysadmin is there replacing hardware, software, managing end users, etc on a daily basis. Real sysadmins only sleep about 5 hours a night, usually in the parking lot of their workplace!
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!
"Is there really more to life than food, shit, and sex?" -- Elvis
It's funny because if there's ever a fire, you won't need to bother calling the fire department... just a bulldozer.
help me i've cloned myself and can't remember which one I am
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
or if a big bad wolf wolf comes along he might blow your house down.
Althought I have absolutely no proof i think its very likely Oga the cave woman trade a little love'in for some skins and meat way before they ever figured out how to farm.
I mean, would you have sex with Rosanne Barr or Hillary Rosen for only $1000? :o)
Of course I would. Once I removed my eyes and fingertips...
I mean, would you have sex with Rosanne Barr or Hillary Rosen for only $1000? :o)
:)
Surely neither of those two would charge that much!?!?
I'm not a nerd. Nerds are smart.
You have obviously never been married...
I have heard it said that you don't pay prostitutes for sex, you pay them to leave.
This would explain why Bob, our Sysadmin was in our wiring closet whereing a loin cloth, wolf's head hat, and shacking some buffalo bones at my racks of cables. One day I asked him, "What in the hell are you doing in there dressed like that?" and when he stopped his ritualistic dance and song, all of a sudden we were exceeding our collision domain, the UPS's started beeping, our backups were failing, the Internet router failed, and flames were shooting out of the patch panels! Then he looked at me and said "Do you understand now? I am the Shamanistrator"
I always thought that farming was the oldest profession ;-)
Of course, chicken farming! Some people raise over a thousand cocks a year.
You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.