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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.
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.
Not many I'd think. Most sysadmin types need to be able to lay hands on the systems they're supporting.
Hard to add new hardware to a box if you can't touch it.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
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.
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...
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
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 /.
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.
I have supported many remote sites. If I needed to add hardware, I called the vendor. For one company, I never had to visit the remote sites at all. Local talent was contracted to do network stuff, and HP did the hardware end.
For the other (Sun systems), I did all the network stuff, and visited the remote site about once every 3-6 months. It was a new system, and we occasionaly re-worked the network for the first couple of years. We also did a couple of hardware swaps ourselves because we were able to, there would have been no reason not to have Sun do it.
There is no reason why a skilled admin in the United States, India, China, Brazil, or wherever cannot maintain a remote site anywhere in the world with the appropriate support structure. 99% of what a sys admin does has nothing to do with hardware itself.
If you find that you are having to constantly touch hardware, then I would look at whatever hardware vendor you are using and get a different one.
Or get a girlfriend.....
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
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
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)
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'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.
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.