System Admins R.I.P.?

#1

Post by danielle17 » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 12:58 AM UTC

System Admins R.I.P.?
blogs.mulesoft.org

Re: System Admins R.I.P.?

#2

Post by jacques_chester » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 1:42 AM UTC

" Compared to system administration, being cursed forever is a step up." -- Paul Tomko.

Re: System Admins R.I.P.?

#3

Post by heresy » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 1:45 AM UTC

Probably best career decision I ever made, was in 1999, 1 year into my career, to switch from system administration to programming as my focus.

Re: System Admins R.I.P.?

#4

Post by tastybites » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 1:46 AM UTC

The whole SaaS model just shifts the sysadmins around to where they are more efficiently utilized. They're not disappearing.

Re: System Admins R.I.P.?

#5

Post by knieveltech » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 1:47 AM UTC

It's interesting to see all these cloud-based services being used in the real world but I hardly think this is the death knell of systems administration as a profession.

It would take a pretty major shift in attitudes for medium and large companies to start trusting vendors with the kind of data we're talking about here.

Re: System Admins R.I.P.?

#6

Post by iigs » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 1:48 AM UTC

Maybe, but I don't think so.

Not many years ago people got paid to, among other things, pick out the appropriate operating system for any given application. Clearly there's not much of a future in that.

These days that same person is responsible for vetting cloud hosting providers, email service providers, and has to be capable of comparing the "old" in-house solutions and bring things inward if there's benefit.

The technology changes, but the role more or less stays the same. The system admin is generally a bridge between business operations and the technology stack, and there's always going to be glue there, particularly for businesses of at least 10 people.

Disclosure: System Admin / Engineer by trade. Weigh my opinions appropriately.

Re: System Admins R.I.P.?

#7

Post by mediaman » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 1:49 AM UTC

tastybites wrote: post #4

The whole SaaS model just shifts the sysadmins around to where they are more efficiently utilized. They're not disappearing.

But part of being more "efficiently utilized" is improving labor productivity, which all else being equal reduces the demand for sysadmin labor.

Although it might make for a more interesting sysadmin job for those that remain.

Re: System Admins R.I.P.?

#8

Post by Semiapies » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 1:56 AM UTC

As with virtually every headline-as-a-question, no.

Too much existing infrastructure. Too many systems that aren't web-UI apps with cloud backends.

Maybe in ten years, this will be more plausible.

Re: System Admins R.I.P.?

#9

Post by tjarratt » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 2:04 AM UTC

So we've progressed from a small subset of the population as sys admins to ... everyone who wants to deploy an application/service being a sys admin? This seems like a step backwards, in some ways.

I suppose this is a win for people that just want email, or documents, or calendars, but for anything else, you're stuck maintaining your own data in the cloud.

Re: System Admins R.I.P.?

#10

Post by wccrawford » Tue, Jan 25, 2011, 2:05 AM UTC

You can have my system admin when you pry him from my cold, dead hands.

Wait, that doesn't sound right.

The points stands, though: I really don't want to do that stuff and he's welcome to it. And I seriously doubt the whole world is going to use someone else's servers... There will always be companies that don't trust 'the cloud'.