30 Years a Sysadmin

itwbennett writes: Sandra Henry-Stocker's love affair with Unix started in the early 1980s when she 'was quickly enamored of the command line and how much [she] could get done using pipes and commands like grep.' Back then, she was working on a Zilog minicomputer, a system, she recalls, that was 'about this size of a dorm refrigerator'. Over the intervening years, a lot has changed, not just about the technology, but about the job itself. 'We might be 'just' doing systems administration, but that role has moved heavily into managing security, controlling access to a wide range of resources, analyzing network traffic, scrutinizing log files, and fixing the chinks on our cyber armor,' writes Henry-Stocker. What hasn't changed? Systems administration remains a largely thankless role with little room for career advancement, albeit one that she is quick to note is 'seldom boring' and 'reasonably' well-paid. And while 30 years might not be a world's record, it's pretty far along the bell curve; have you been at it longer?

Comments

Well for once I don't feel ancient

[bjohnson]

I've only been doing it for 21 years. :-)

The only thing that hasn't changed is..nothing.

I started out running a Dec Mini-Vax about the size of a washing machine, only much louder...(we still remember the blessed silence in our office/server 'room' the day it was finally turned off.) using (IIRC) kermit to connect to it from my desktop.

Cut my unix teeth on a HP/Apollo franken-unix thing: part SysV, part BSD.

All the machines I am sysadmin for now are Linux VM's, except my desktop systems...which all run OS X....so, yeah, still using Unix.

35 Years Coding and Admining

[Bigbutt]

Started with computers in 1980 as a Typesetter. Then a Timex Sinclair followed by a Color Computer and then an IBM. Professionally coding in 84. Building LANs and managing networks in 86. On the Internet at Johns Hopkins APL in 89 and managing 3+Share. Then 3+Open, LAN Manager, and Windows NT, then Solaris, Irix, HP-UX, and Linux at NASA. Now FreeBSD, Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, and Tru64.

Downloaded Slackware in '93 I guess with all the 3.5" floppies. Mandrake, Red Hat, OpenBSD, Ubuntu, and still Slackware on my home gear (along with Windows and Apple gear).

[John]

Been at since '89

[russbutton]

I got my first UNIX sysadmin gig in '89. Had a Zenith Z29 dumb terminal off of a serial line to a Pyramid computer. We had Fujitsu Eagle disk drives that weighed about 300 pounds and had about 1 megabyte per pound of data density. They hung off off a Sun 180 acting as a file server. Backups were done directly to open reel tape. In that first job I once spent 3 days loading UNIX onto an AT&T 3B2. It came off of 8" floppy disks and I had to sit there and swap these things in/out for 3 days.

I later worked at Sun Microsystems as a sysadmin, '92-94. We worked with prototype Sparc Center 1000 and 2000 machines in our server room. They worked with trays of 1.3GB disk drives off of a differential SCSI board. The 2000 (code named Dragon) had a max capacity of 1 TB of disk. When your drives are 1.3 GB drives, that's a LOT of drives. All of the RAID back then was done in software with a Sun product called On-line Disk Suite. Worked pretty well. There were a lot of people at Sun who wanted to kill it in favor of Veritas Volume Manager, but it worked too well and just refused to die.

Command line? Oh c'mon. Of course we work at the command line when it makes sense. If you're not comfortable working at the command line, you should go back to managing Windows servers.

My employer gave me an Apple Mac to use, which I hate. But it's that or Windows, which I also hate. I much prefer Ubuntu running the Windowmaker window manager. The Mac is adequate as a desktop, but I'd never spend money on a product that expensive with a 3 year useful lifespan. After 3 years, most anything Apple won't work with anything Apple which is new, which is why people keep buying the latest Mac toys that come out. It's a great business model, one which Microsoft ran for years.

Computers are toys. I get paid for playing with toys all day long. It's not a bad way to make a living.

36 years here.

[JustNiz]

First program I ever wrote was about 38 years ago, a 0's and X's game on an Wang 380 (programmable calculator from the late 1960's that used punched cards) but I have been working as a software developer professionally for about 36 years now.

Almost 20 years

[dave562]

I have been earning a paycheck doing IT work since 1996.

The biggest change that I have seen is the need to specialize. When I started, I was able to be a jack of all trades kind of sysadmin.

One of my bosses imparted the following wisdom to me. "To be a good IT professional, you need to understand systems administration, programming and networking." He was not implying that one needed to master all three of them. One just needs to understand enough about all three to be conversant about them with other professionals who might be experts in them.

These days, generalists are looked down upon. There is simply too much to know, and roles / job descriptions are too siloed. People are hired to perform a specific set of tasks or to have proficiency over a small portion of an entire environment. The larger the organization, the more prevalent this becomes.

39 years and counting

[ChesterRafoon]

First system I ever booted was a DEC PDP-8. I have actually loaded code with paper tape. Favorite system of my entire career to date was the VAX 11/780 running VMS. Thank you Dave Cutler. Now you kids get off my lawn ...

1978-2007+

[randalware]

system manager root ---- the accounts I used 80% of my day
the computer room ---- where I was 80% of the time
my cube/meetings --- the place I was 20% of the day
mac/windows desktop --- the thing I used for documentation/powerpoint/email and web surfing

unix/vms/mvs/os-9 ---- my main operating systems
c/perl/fortran/+ --- the languages used

currently on a medical forced sabatical and working on personal computer projects.

bad systems problems start at the top (budgets/scheduling/manpower/etc), the sysadmin knows this...
bring time, money, and quiet voices, then go to lunch with the sysadmin.
the napkin drawing will be the outline of the solution. (one of my old bosses kept a collection of million dollar project's first napkin designs)

support & listen to your local sysadmin...