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Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

blog.professorbeekums.com

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Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#151

Post by probablybroken »

pjc50 wrote: post #74
cs02rm0 wrote: post #50

This might be controversial, but I don't think you get to be a half decent developer without being a reasonable sysadmin. Maybe my experience is unusual, but I've never worked anywhere that the sysadmins knew more than the developers about how best to run their code in production. And when things go wrong with it how best to find the cause of the issue. And I've never thrown code over a wall without having tested it…

I've done the dual sysadmin/developer thing for a small company, and the problem I experienced there was completely incompatible working modes. Sysadmins must deal with interrupts (requests, crises, things driven by external schedules etc) and then in the rest of their time build systems to manage or reduce the interrupts. Developers are expected to produce work on a predictable schedule. This is disrupted by interru…

I've been in this situation for a long time; The worst part is every so often you get assigned a PM who wants you to accept responsibility for meeting artificial development deadlines.

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#152

Post by davidgerard »

onion2k wrote: post #83
gedrap wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> The worst sysadmins get in the way of developers. Ones that scale down your CI server to the cheapest, throttled, one the hosting company has, leaving $800/day contract developers waiting for builds that run in 20 seconds on their laptops take nearly an hour. How likely is that the sysadmins were told to 'just make it run cheaper, I don't care' by someone higher in the foodchain?

How likely is that the sysadmins were told to 'just make it run cheaper, I don't care' by someone higher in the foodchain? If you're blindly following "orders" to reduce costs and doing things that push up costs elsewhere then you're not doing a good job. A good sysadmin (or the sysadmin's boss) should be able to pull up some numbers and say "Build tasks are being queued for an hour before they run. What impact is th…

I have long thought that one of the most effective workplace sabotages a sysadmin could put into place was to implement management plans without question.

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#153

Post by davidgerard »

eviln1 wrote: post #133

Hi, I'm a Sysadmin, and I've been a grumpy one through a larger part of my 15 years experience. My main issue was that Developers were acting like Users: they don't care about what you have to deal with, they want things to 'just work'. In return, I've treated them like children, in some instances yelled at them when they did dumb stuff. I've tried to educate them when possible, and was angry when the education didn'…

As a sysadmin, I love the devs who think "devops" and I make a point of saying nice things about them to the CTO.

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#154

Post by Clubber »

cs02rm0 wrote: post #50

This might be controversial, but I don't think you get to be a half decent developer without being a reasonable sysadmin. Maybe my experience is unusual, but I've never worked anywhere that the sysadmins knew more than the developers about how best to run their code in production. And when things go wrong with it how best to find the cause of the issue. And I've never thrown code over a wall without having tested it…

I agree. I also think it should work both ways. The worst jobs I've ever had is when the sysadmins have the mindset where they own the servers and are unwilling to deviate from what they've read at the behest of the developers.

"I will force AV on reads on the developer boxes." "I will install AV on the production DB servers without telling anyone in the development group, then make the developers prove AV was the cause of production slowness before removing it two weeks later." "I will force this crazy group policy on developers and when they complain, I will totally ignore them."

A bad, or uncompromising sysadmin (one in the same) make development work a complete nightmare.

I half believe the reason developers are embracing cloud architecture so much is to remove so many sysadmins out of the equation.

On a side note, a tip for developers. Always make friends with the sysadmins. Buy them lunch or something. Right or wrong, they can make your lives much better or much more miserable.

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#155

Post by tzakrajs »

I have ten years of experience in systems and have written tools software in Python and Javascript for Netflix, Stanford University and Google (current). I have never been a software engineer officially, but I want to be. I am a PC gamer, anime lover, and a proud SJW. Any takers?

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#156

Post by pyrale »

eviln1 wrote: post #133

Hi, I'm a Sysadmin, and I've been a grumpy one through a larger part of my 15 years experience. My main issue was that Developers were acting like Users: they don't care about what you have to deal with, they want things to 'just work'. In return, I've treated them like children, in some instances yelled at them when they did dumb stuff. I've tried to educate them when possible, and was angry when the education didn'…

This, so much this. You don't need to be the sheep with 5 legs every manager wants, what you need is to be accessible to collaborate with people on problems.

That's an individual skill as well as a systemic one, though.

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#157

Post by tyingq »

I would change it from "should have sysadmin experience" to "should have operating system knowledge, or ask the right questions".

The example in the article isn't what I tend to see in real life. What I do see are things like:

- Not knowing about various limits (number of open sockets, or listen queue depth for example), how to know you've hit one, how to deal with it.

- Not handling various error situations correctly (can't open file due to permissions for example)

- Security issues. ( socket listening on 0.0.0.0 when localhost would work, for example)

- Making assumptions about things like "current working directory" or "certain environment variables will be already set for me"

For many of these, including a sysadmin or system knowledgeable architect in the right discussions would suffice.

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#158

Post by divanvisagie »

tzakrajs wrote: post #155

I have ten years of experience in systems and have written tools software in Python and Javascript for Netflix, Stanford University and Google (current). I have never been a software engineer officially, but I want to be. I am a PC gamer, anime lover, and a proud SJW. Any takers?

What are you on about?

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#159

Post by ptero »

pjc50 wrote: post #74
cs02rm0 wrote: post #50

This might be controversial, but I don't think you get to be a half decent developer without being a reasonable sysadmin. Maybe my experience is unusual, but I've never worked anywhere that the sysadmins knew more than the developers about how best to run their code in production. And when things go wrong with it how best to find the cause of the issue. And I've never thrown code over a wall without having tested it…

I've done the dual sysadmin/developer thing for a small company, and the problem I experienced there was completely incompatible working modes. Sysadmins must deal with interrupts (requests, crises, things driven by external schedules etc) and then in the rest of their time build systems to manage or reduce the interrupts. Developers are expected to produce work on a predictable schedule. This is disrupted by interru…

Developers IMO benefit greatly from having the general engineering experience. This helps understand how the part they build fits in a full product, where the narrow spots are, what is likely to break first, where formal documentation is insufficient / contradictory / wrong, etc.

Sysadmins, who often manage crises, acquire this experience way or another (e.g, by researching options to fit a square peg in a round hole without leaks), so developers with sysadmin experience tend to all have it. I think though that the key part is the "engineer" part and it can be acquired and used without sysadmin-imposed hassles (interrupts, crises, being underappreciated).

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#160

Post by morbidhawk »

eviln1 wrote: post #133

Hi, I'm a Sysadmin, and I've been a grumpy one through a larger part of my 15 years experience. My main issue was that Developers were acting like Users: they don't care about what you have to deal with, they want things to 'just work'. In return, I've treated them like children, in some instances yelled at them when they did dumb stuff. I've tried to educate them when possible, and was angry when the education didn'…

I think there are definitely developers out there that give little to no respect to systems administrators.

I've seen this ignorance even in college professors. In my first programming class in college I took a CS class that had both CS and IT students in it since it was required for both kinds of students. The (CS) professor kept trying to convince students how much better CS was and gave some good arguments (ie: salary) but the most arrogant thing he said is that IT is a subset of CS and that by doing a CS degree you would understand everything it takes to be in IT. He also mentioned how in IT you would be constantly fixing other people's computer problems but as a software engineer you wouldn't need IT's help since you can fix it yourself. The funny part is part-way through my degree I realized that college didn't even offer a real CS degree it was called "CIT with Computer Science Emphasis" which none of my advisers nor professors mentioned would cause issues getting jobs outside of Utah, the best thing I did was leave that school and finish my CS degree elsewhere which caused me to lose a lot of unnecessary credits and almost felt like I was starting over. I feel like I got scammed but that's beside the point I am yet to work for a company where a software engineer gets to manage his own computer without following IT guidelines like my CS prof had described.

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