The creeping IT apocalypse • Hacker News Board

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#91

Post by eropple » Thu, Jan 17, 2019, 4:30 PM UTC

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #79

jugg1es wrote: post #67

This article is very prescient. This is happening now and the pace is speeding up considerably. I work in healthcare and we hit a tipping point about a year ago where HIE's and hospitals are now comfortable with their vendors going to AWS instead of insisting on on-premises infrastructure. In the last year, my company is basically turned on a dime and we no longer use virtually any of our on-premises hardware. If you…

At the same time, as a software engineering manager, I would have given my left eye for a highly competent AWS DevOps engineer. It took months to find someone with the skills we were looking for.

You might be an exception, but food for thought: the number one reason why my clients, when I was running a consulting business, couldn't find in-house DevOps folks was an unwillingness to pay. At best, most places would pay line engineer rates--the same thing they'd pay for a Java or a Rails developer--for a skillset that's significantly broader than most (certainly not all, but most) line engineers at a given level of seniority and is significantly more in-demand. In the Boston area as an example, I regularly saw companies trying to get senior devops engineers at rates more appropriate for mid-level, and principals for hilariously under rate. (We're talking $140K offers for a senior devops engineer when the next place would offer $180K, and $160K for principals who could get $220K elsewhere.)

To be fair, this is sometimes trickier because a lot of "devops engineers" are actually mouse-driven system administrators, so the means and medians often look odd. That somebody who does what I do, and somebody primarily doing things hand-o-matically, would have the same job title throws a wrench into one-to-one comparisons. But you can figure it out.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#92

Post by porpoisely » Thu, Jan 17, 2019, 4:33 PM UTC

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…

Another worry is recession and the popping of the tech bubble. Sooner or later the bubble has to popped and that's going to cause a lot of pain throughout the tech industry. Should be interesting to see how the industry rebounds and in what form. Will VR be the new "hot thing" like smartphones were after the 2008 recession.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#93

Post by eropple » Thu, Jan 17, 2019, 4:36 PM UTC

arminiusreturns wrote: post #71

geggam wrote: post #53

Completely agree with this. There is something to think about. The folks who are running things are plentiful right now but as this churns we will run out of folks who understand the lower layers well enough to manage it. As I interview people I run into this for things like SRE and DevOps already

Exactly this. I've been a sysadmin since I got out of the Corps, with a recent break and now found a really exciting startup that is automating something else. This is the first time I've really forced myself to stop allowing technical debt and lack of staffing to dictate how I automate, so I am working very close with the devops/SRE team, and I am continually flabbergasted at how much they don't know of the undersid…

There's definitely an issue in the devops/SRE world around understanding the totality of their stack. But I would submit that this is endemic to tech in general, not just devops/SRE folks. The combination of siloing and incuriosity isn't an SRE problem, at least not exclusively.

Selfishly, it also makes things harder for me, as somebody who is a generalist's generalist, because people legitimately do not know what to do with somebody who's built and shipped mobile apps, can drop into a new piece of backend software and rapidly get up to speed, will architect, implement, and manage your cloud environment, and has hard-won opinions about rack cabling techniques. But I do OK regardless.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#94

Post by paulie_a » Thu, Jan 17, 2019, 4:37 PM UTC

normal_man wrote: post #59

Wohlf wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we'll see a more apprenticeship type approach, where junior personnel are instead assigned to and trained by seniors. This would probably be a net good, but who knows how things will shake out.

I mean this is already an acknowledged good approach. Companies don't want to make that investment though, hiring both a senior and a junior who won't be immediately productive, and keep chasing the mythical senior who will work for mid-level salary.

It's cute that companies think junior or seniors will be immediately productive. There is a ramp up period. Hell the first day is probably just paperwork. Then 3 months of getting integrated.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#95

Post by erikb » Thu, Jan 17, 2019, 4:42 PM UTC

Until now the destruction of jobs through progress has never reduced the amount of work we needed altogether. For instance think about how the development of transportation created dozens of new jobs actually, and brought us in many regards onto new levels that wouldn't have been even imaginable before. I wouldn't worry too much about something that might not be just-bad and instead try to figure out what can be done with the changes that we already see. E.g. all this nice virtualization and automation means it's so much easier to share code and changes and ideas, and helps us communicate over borders, language barriers, etc.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#96

Post by _trampeltier » Thu, Jan 17, 2019, 4:43 PM UTC

arminiusreturns wrote: post #71

geggam wrote: post #53

Completely agree with this. There is something to think about. The folks who are running things are plentiful right now but as this churns we will run out of folks who understand the lower layers well enough to manage it. As I interview people I run into this for things like SRE and DevOps already

Exactly this. I've been a sysadmin since I got out of the Corps, with a recent break and now found a really exciting startup that is automating something else. This is the first time I've really forced myself to stop allowing technical debt and lack of staffing to dictate how I automate, so I am working very close with the devops/SRE team, and I am continually flabbergasted at how much they don't know of the undersid…

And most companys see in the IT just a cost factor. So they don't invest really in automation. They mostly just invest in creating even more data for marketing and other funny guys.

There is also the problem, if the IT is far away, the smallest problem needs "tickets" and days to solve and it will be never possible to automate something with a selfmade script, because your just a user and have no rights.

(Yes I'm a bit frustrated because a lot of this things at work at moment.. )

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#97

Post by CodeSheikh » Thu, Jan 17, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

Conspiracy aside, AWS is most likely profiling all of its customers code bases and coming up with patterns as in what domain their applications are being used for etc. In order to capture that low-code/no-code type of market they don;t have to do any market research when the research is already sitting with them. It is pretty genius from a business point of view but yes can become very concerning for mid-tire programmers as the article states.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#98

Post by mr_overalls » Thu, Jan 17, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

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…

> ISN'T ALLOWED TO USE THE CLOUD

Do you find this a bit strange, given that the Pentagon is making a massive push toward (presumably private) could infrastructure?

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-pentagon-cloud-idUSKB...

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#99

Post by tmaly » Thu, Jan 17, 2019, 4:50 PM UTC

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…

If anything, it will be a private cloud setup on an isolated company owned data center.

Re: The creeping IT apocalypse

#100

Post by shusson » Thu, Jan 17, 2019, 4:50 PM UTC

> but that they(cloud providers) are straight-up reducing the number of people required to deliver technical solutions.

I would like to see some evidence for this. Has anyone had such an experience?