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Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

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Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#61

Post by agentgt »

Big picture... things could be far far worse for you.

Its pretty hard to give any sort of advice with such little information. I'll just say you really can't fall in love with the technology but rather you should love solving problems... ie be technology agnostic. There are lots of real world problems still left to be solved.

I also have some doubts that you seriously took advantage of working at Microsoft. I can tell you working from home with my own company you really really miss learning from others. The idea making synergy and excitement of being around other smart people even if its only during lunch break is a huge highly underrated benefit long term.... and now you will be sitting on a couch.

I honestly can't figure out if it is your goal to just program simple little programs with assemble or C? Is that what makes you happy? Did Microsoft not challenge you enough? Again serious lack of information.

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#62

Post by officialchicken »

estefan wrote: post #39
m0nty wrote: post #24

49 here, I'm not enjoying working in IT nowadays, I think it got old about 5 or 6 years ago. So I quit and I'm pursuing my own projects, doing some programming, and trying not to worry too much. I could have ground it out for a few months more in that lucrative contract I had, but just how long can I put up with being that bored? Personally, if I have to go back to the circus, I'll probably aim for short contracts or…

I don't want to be a downer, but devops is definitely NOT just a new name for being a sysadmin. We've actively recruited for people who are not old fashioned jump-on-a-box-and-make-hot-changes sysadmins. They need to understand automated infrastructure and deployment through code, so it's not a small niche to just pick up easily. If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it and it wouldn't pay so well.

Sure it is. Don't the "DevOps" administer, provision, and manage your systems? Have you ever seen a unix guru who didn't have scripts and use automated tooling? And when a system fails (and they all fail eventually) the routine is the same no matter what you want to call it.

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#63

Post by estefan »

officialchicken wrote: post #62
estefan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to be a downer, but devops is definitely NOT just a new name for being a sysadmin. We've actively recruited for people who are not old fashioned jump-on-a-box-and-make-hot-changes sysadmins. They need to understand automated infrastructure and deployment through code, so it's not a small niche to just pick up easily. If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it and it wouldn't pay so well.

Sure it is. Don't the "DevOps" administer, provision, and manage your systems? Have you ever seen a unix guru who didn't have scripts and use automated tooling? And when a system fails (and they all fail eventually) the routine is the same no matter what you want to call it.

At one company our "unix guru" didn't bother to set up anything like ganglia so when the server's disk got full and brought down the product he looked like an idiot...

Maybe it's good vs bad but it happens. In the puppet/chef era I'd have said you needed to have a background in coding to be a good devop, but ansible has changed that now I think.

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#64

Post by vonmoltke »

agentgt wrote: post #61

Big picture... things could be far far worse for you. Its pretty hard to give any sort of advice with such little information. I'll just say you really can't fall in love with the technology but rather you should love solving problems... ie be technology agnostic. There are lots of real world problems still left to be solved. I also have some doubts that you seriously took advantage of working at Microsoft. I can tel…

> I'll just say you really can't fall in love with the technology but rather you should love solving problems

Of course, if you only love certain kinds of problems, that can be effectively the same thing.

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#65

Post by PaulHoule »

estefan wrote: post #63
officialchicken wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure it is. Don't the "DevOps" administer, provision, and manage your systems? Have you ever seen a unix guru who didn't have scripts and use automated tooling? And when a system fails (and they all fail eventually) the routine is the same no matter what you want to call it.

At one company our "unix guru" didn't bother to set up anything like ganglia so when the server's disk got full and brought down the product he looked like an idiot... Maybe it's good vs bad but it happens. In the puppet/chef era I'd have said you needed to have a background in coding to be a good devop, but ansible has changed that now I think.

You haven't lived if you haven't filled a disk at some point.

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#66

Post by fsloth »

bitserf wrote: post #59
onion2k wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no actual evidence for this, but I think it's reasonable to believe that within 10 years about 95% of enterprise software will run in a browser. There'll still be niches where it isn't the case (CAD being an example) but for everything else, it's web technologies all the way down.

Have a look at OnShape. That future is coming faster than some people think.

Online business models are not yet foolproof, though. As I understand it Tinkercad basically went busted a few years ago because people did not want to pay for an online tool and eventually Autodesk bought it. Please correct me on the details. Also, I have no data either way to show would Tinkercad done any better as a desktop software.

(https://www.tinkercad.com/)

OnShape is certainly an exciting experiment. If they pull through financially it will be pretty strong signal, IMO.

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#67

Post by xjlin0 »

onion2k wrote: post #40
fsloth wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"everything seems to be running on stock Ubuntu VMs nowadays" Except if one is developing desktop software. Windows is pretty dominant at desktop, especially when considering enterprise, CAD and so on.

I have no actual evidence for this, but I think it's reasonable to believe that within 10 years about 95% of enterprise software will run in a browser. There'll still be niches where it isn't the case (CAD being an example) but for everything else, it's web technologies all the way down.

Even CAD is moving to the browser. I saw Autodesk showing their CAD project in the browser in a job fair.

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#69

Post by bjornlouser »

> So, my most recent stint at Microsoft just didn't work out. The tech was cool, but the day-to-day workflow was tedious and torturous.

This sentiment will typically go unchallenged because we all know that micromanagement is here to stay. Still, please do share the juicy bits that led you to become dispirited.

Re: Ask HN: Does this old horse have a few years of useful work left?

#70

Post by skewart »

manyxcxi wrote: post #48
estefan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to be a downer, but devops is definitely NOT just a new name for being a sysadmin. We've actively recruited for people who are not old fashioned jump-on-a-box-and-make-hot-changes sysadmins. They need to understand automated infrastructure and deployment through code, so it's not a small niche to just pick up easily. If it was that easy, everyone would be doing it and it wouldn't pay so well.

On top of that, there needs to be some Dev to go with the Ops. I've seen some guys who come from a great SysAdmin background that are used to some Powershell or Bash but get utterly lost with Chef or Puppet. Not just that but the overall package of scripts is just messy and very hard to maintain. That being said- I'd rather have someone transitioning to DevOps with more SysAdmin experience than Dev- the cleanliness a…

"I'd rather have someone transitioning to DevOps with more SysAdmin experience than Dev- the cleanliness and composition can be learned a lot faster than the networking, security, and other topics that most Devs have never had to maintain first hand."

Totay agree. It's a lot easier to pick up enough Ruby to be comfortable with Chef than it is to learn the thousands of different things about networking and security - and probably the OS your average developer has been using for a long time too - that a good sysadmin knows.

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