Ask HN: Why do I exist as a sysadmin?

I am currently a Linux administrator at a state university in the US. I do the standard variety of administrative things that one would expect: provision servers and VMs, manage storage pools, use monitoring tools to keep track of systems, use configuration management tools to automate installation and configuration of packages and services, etc, etc...

As more and more services and tools are rolled into cloud provider's portfolios, I can't help but think that there's no point for me to exist. Here on HN, in person with other tech-minded people that I know, and elsewhere in the tech sphere, I'm bombarded with a viewpoint that boils down to: "Be a developer, or get out of the tech industry."

Herein lies the issue. I have thus far been unsuccessful in any programming endeavors that I have attempted. I can manage to throw together bash scripts and other glue that's necessary to make automation tasks function at my work, but these are largely cargo culted from various stack overflow posts or other online resources. Whenever I attempt to dive into anything that I would consider "development", such as python programming, it's as if my brain completely ceases to function and all of the words and symbols on my screen turn into an incomprehensible alien language. It doesn't matter how long I stare at it or how much I reference the documentation, that alien language never reveals its true meaning to me.

This inability to understand syntax is not only saddening to me, it's made much worse by a variety of mental issues that seem to amplify the issue, such as: PTSD, anxiety, depression, borderline personality disorder, and dyscalculia. All of these feed off of each other in a vicious cycle of frustration, hopelessness, self-loathing, and worse.

I suppose my question is:

Has anyone had a similar experience and managed to push through the mental blocks associated with learning to program while having your own mind constantly working against you?

Okay, first off, being a sysadmin or an ops person is important! You are the first line of defense, and many times, companies just need eyes on systems (all the time). It's your ability to analyze a problem that makes you useful. There are ALWAYS boring repetitive service tasks that aren't rewarded but someone needs to do (this is true for devs too). Most of this probably doesn't seem hard or new to you, but I just want to say that even non-programmers are very important to any org.

Okay, now to the coding part.

"Has anyone had a similar experience and managed to push through the mental blocks associated with learning to program while having your own mind constantly working against you?"

All the time. I have the depression, and a few other mental problems most likely, and I have to say, for as much as my brain helps me it hurts me a lot too. Especially with programming and engineering, I feel like things are impossible right up until there's some breakthrough, and then things are fine. It happens really quickly, and soon you're just onto the next problem - many times I feel I don't relish the victory of whatever I have solved enough before moving onto the next thing. You might be doing the same thing too - I can't tell how much or little progress you've made, but learning is hard, and it makes everyone feel dumb, not just you.

"I can manage to throw together bash scripts and other glue that's necessary to make automation tasks function at my work, but these are largely cargo culted from various stack overflow posts or other online resources" This is more of the job than you'd think. I honestly think you're on the right track here.

As a sysadmin, are you good at debugging other people's code when something breaks (do you try? sometimes there's org boundaries that prevent this)? That is also a hugely valuable skill. I know some people who are frightened of writing code fresh, but are great at finding and fixing bugs.

I'm not sure this will be of much help, but I also think as a society we're all about fixing our problems rather than leveraging our strengths. If coding just doesn't click with you, that's fine, obviously other tech things do click with you. Keep working on finding what works for you.

First off, I think you should give yourself more credit as what you do has importance and you are valued.

> "Be a developer, or get out of the tech industry."

I don't agree with this. There are plenty of jobs in operations that require the skills you have (e.g. standing up servers and automating the heck out of things)

Writing code and creating software was one of the few things that really clicked for me, so I can't share advice on that. One thing I can say is that all of the operations work is where I feel myself spinning and getting nowhere, I push through when I have to, but I don't always have hours to spend debugging an environment--i leave that to someone who can solve the same issue in minutes.

Its still valuable for a sysadmins to have some ability to program/script, if only to improve his own utility and sanity (automating out trivial/mindless things); however, its not clear to me why sysadmins seem to often have trouble breaking into programming — afaict, they’re extremely similar in practice. Particularly when you accept that most of software engineering is just composing libraries, while system administrators compose programs and os’s. Both rely on incantations held together by poor documentation, arbitrary configuration, and convoluted tooling. Programming is a bit more structured in its language.. but otherwise they’re rather similar requirements (and half of why you have SEs trying to eat SAs lunch); it’s not obvious to me that the inverse task should be a significant hurdle.

Or rather, the experience of an SA should translate decently into SE

"Whenever I attempt to dive into anything that I would consider "development", such as python programming, it's as if my brain completely ceases to function and all of the words and symbols on my screen turn into an incomprehensible alien language. It doesn't matter how long I stare at it or how much I reference the documentation, that alien language never reveals its true meaning to me."

For what it's worth, I've been a developer professionally for 5 years and I still have this experience whenever I first look at code written by other people, no matter its quality.