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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.
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...
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
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.
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
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 . . .
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
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.
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
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)
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.
"The boom for this career is over and will not return"
I'm young and missed out on the boom! but am wondering what the problem is? Just because companys aren't willing to pay ridiculus salaries to anyone that can turn on a computer any more does that mean that we are under paid now? I'm ready for when most IT workers lose the attitude of super genius because they can install a modem (who uses a modem?). Yes, we are far above the average user in knowledge but its not because we are super intelligent but mostly because we are intraverts that would rather spend time on the pc than having human interaction. Or maybe we are geniuses and I'm so smart that I don't know how smart I am because I'm to smart to understand what dumb is because it is opposite of me. I'm gonna go ask for a raise....
I am not responsible for spelling errors.
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.
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..
*clickety-clik* you have lots of space now.
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.
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
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.
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!
... 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
"Is there really more to life than food, shit, and sex?" -- Elvis
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.
...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...
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.
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.
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.
Really? Don't tell my boss that.
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.