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The creeping IT apocalypse

forrestbrazeal.com

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Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#81

Post by AlanSE »

3pt14159 wrote: post #48
Ruxbin1986 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are hundreds of thousands of people or System Administrators that have made life long careers out of managing networks, server farms, windows and linux systems since the early 90s. It's not fancy as software development or drives business value but work that needs to be done. The Cloud greatly diminishes and in some cases completely eliminates that work. The only thing left is actual software development.

If you've tried to hire a good sys admin in North America you'd be shocked at how high their salaries are getting. Amazon is hiring them by the boatload. Shopify is moving to all cloud because they're unable to staff. The problem is that junior sys admins aren't as useful as before to most startups. I still think they'll figure it out, but the industry is changing.

Another way to look at the trend - a lot of companies are moving to the cloud because they can't get the people to do it on their own.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#82

Post by throwanem »

zelon88 wrote: post #68

I keep seeing thse kinds of articles where the author has drank the Cloud kool-aid themselves, forgotten how to function without it, and insists that it's impossible to function without it. This guy even drags manufacturing into the mix, and obviously has no idea about manufacturing in the United States. Manufacturers in the USA don't make cheap coffee cups. We don't make underwear. We don't make car fenders. We make…

We don't need a lot of people to do all those things.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#83

Post by klodolph »

sharemywin wrote: post #70
klodolph wrote: post #15

This has been happening since the 1970s. Or earlier. I don’t really think of it as an apocalypse. IT skills have never had a long shelf life. Any time you are a technology expert at your company, in IT, the technology landscape will shift under you. This is the Red Queen Hypothesis in action. People who ran mainframes in the 1980s became trusted experts and then most of the jobs evaporated. Same thing happened to peo…

The problem is most companies want someone with 3-5 years of experience in that new skill set. So, unless you jump on that particular band wagon early you're out of luck.

In my experience, companies say 3-5 years but this requirement is written by someone in HR translating what the hiring manager said. The hiring manager is more likely to hire someone who has less than 3-5 years of experience, or even hire someone with zero experience, as long as the candidate demonstrates aptitude.

The trick is to write your resume so it gets past HR's filter, but without putting bullshit on it. It's unfortunate but I consider this kind of thing a critical skill for anyone applying to technical jobs.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#84

Post by jtchang »

I am seeing this happen with game developers as well. Unity has made it super easy to release a game which is fantastic. However a lot of newer game developers don't necessarily know as many fundamentals.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#85

Post by MrL567 »

The flipside of this is, in a hypothetical world where Amazon / Google is trust busted, this problem is delayed somewhat because only Google / Amazon have the necessary scale to create the IT apocalypse. I mean there is Salesforce and Heroku but the major IT automation stuff is from the FAANGs really.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#86

Post by toomuchtodo »

forrestbrazeal wrote: post #2

Author here - I'm serious when I say that I'm happy to be a sounding board if you're at a career crossroads. Twitter DMs are open @forrestbrazeal.

I don’t have twitter so I hope you don’t mind me engaging here.

I would be very careful before dismissing AWS’ no code/low code project. Mulesoft, Microsoft Flow, and Zapier have a combined revenue of hundreds of millions of dollars a year in serving a market for establishing business logic workflow without code. I am only surprised it took AWS so long to move into the space considering the cross marketing opportunity to existing customers and their compliance capabilities.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#87

Post by sevensor »

3pt14159 wrote: post #48
Ruxbin1986 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are hundreds of thousands of people or System Administrators that have made life long careers out of managing networks, server farms, windows and linux systems since the early 90s. It's not fancy as software development or drives business value but work that needs to be done. The Cloud greatly diminishes and in some cases completely eliminates that work. The only thing left is actual software development.

If you've tried to hire a good sys admin in North America you'd be shocked at how high their salaries are getting. Amazon is hiring them by the boatload. Shopify is moving to all cloud because they're unable to staff. The problem is that junior sys admins aren't as useful as before to most startups. I still think they'll figure it out, but the industry is changing.

So AWS is really Amazon's play to corner the market on sysadmins? That sounds remarkably plausible.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#88

Post by dgudkov »

>Repetition is a sure warning sign. If you’re building the same integrations, patching the same servers over and over again every day, congratulations – you’ve already become a robot.

This is absolute spot on. It's our company's bread and butter to automate repetitive human operations. I can tell that many companies are looking for solutions that would automate as much human work as possible. Repetitive routines are the typical candidates to replace with software or less skilled personnel.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#89

Post by sandworm101 »

zelon88 wrote: post #68

I keep seeing thse kinds of articles where the author has drank the Cloud kool-aid themselves, forgotten how to function without it, and insists that it's impossible to function without it. This guy even drags manufacturing into the mix, and obviously has no idea about manufacturing in the United States. Manufacturers in the USA don't make cheap coffee cups. We don't make underwear. We don't make car fenders. We make…

>> Nobody here is making the 100,000,000 wrenches you can buy at Wal-Mart.

There are still people making nails in the US. Fertilizer. Food gets exported. Then there is all the stuff to too expensive to ship. Lumber, aluminum sheeting, cement ... lots of non-precision stuff is still made locally. Not every US factory makes munitions.

And some stuff is made locally not because of 'better' manufacturing ability but for speed. The fashion industry has to react quickly, quicker than overseas shipping can manage. I just ordered a small electronics assembly from a Canadian manufacturer not because they are the most skilled or precise but because they can chat with me on the phone and ship a small-run (5) faster than any Asian manufacturer. (It's a device for measuring laser energy at specific wavelengths but I have some specific needs re how the data is collected/displayed. It only took a 10-minute call to explain my issues and get a deal together.)

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#90

Post by kypro »

strikelaserclaw wrote: post #32

I think for most mid level guys the threat isn't AI doing their job. I think its the influx of people who will undoubtedly join the "coding" workforce once automation takes away many trivial jobs like driving trucks, cabs, or flipping hamburgers at McDonalds. All these people will be told to retrain themselves and go into the tech sector, and we'll get a huge influx of cheap tech people.

I don't know if you know any working class people, but a lot of them simply don't have the intellectual capacity for tech work - which is often why they flip burgers.
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