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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."
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...
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
Methinks many sysadmins would switch professions if only the whore houses would have them.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
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."
...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.
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.