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No, it's better. I basically got burned out writing the same code for 5 different financial companies so tried something new. Loved Linux, loved the CLI, loved

No, it's better. I basically got burned out writing the same code for 5 different financial companies so tried something new. Loved Linux, loved the CLI, loved the power it gave me. I've literally saved a startup when paged in a nightclub at 3am and having to type very carefully to fix their database replication. You need to pivot in work, especially as most of us will be working for 40 years+. I'm getting into the security stuff now, which I think is the new hotness.Only thing bringing me back to programming is golang which is absolutely superb for server-side stuff.

ams6110 10y ago
I always seem to end up in sysadmin work. I guess I'm good at it. If you're smart and can use tools to your advantage you can create great value. Using ansible and judicious scripting I can do the work that used to take half a dozen sysadmins who just ploded through repetitive work over and over manually. That's a good argument to get a nice salary.
chrisper 10y ago
Hmm... I was asking because I am about to graduate in CS. But I think I like Sysadmin stuff more.
- thwarted 10y ago
  Continue with your CS degree. In my experience, all good sysadmins have significant development experience. This is especially useful when working at small companies/startups.
  - chrisper 10y ago
    Yes. I can always change to sysadmin later on or just do both at once in a way.
  - aisofteng 10y ago
    I'd like to counter (but not disagree) with: in my experience, all good developers have significant sysadmin experience, whether professionally or self-taught. As a tech lead of a team that is largely junior, I keep running into places where a lack of sysadmin-type knowledge seriously harms the ability of a CS degree holder (anywhere from BSc to PhD) to do real-world software engineering work unless they have either been self-taught in sysadmin sort of things or have had a couple years experience that has forced that sort of experience on them. To give an example, a fresh-out-of-school CS degree holder that never played with Linux servers for fun in his own time might be able to implement some software and then easily learn to Dockerize it, but may be stuck for three days on getting it to talk to other services both locally and in a test environment because of essentially zero exposure to ideas in networking - and yet the fix to the problem takes about 5 minutes for someone with exposure to how networking works. ("What's a bridge?") Another example comes from general familiarity with the server/client model: the rule of thumb to have a max number of worker threads equal to twice the cores available unless there is a reason to re-evaluate that. All that said, I would still favor sticking with the CS degree as well. Basic practical familiarity with sysadmin concerns can be more or less picked up over time via personal projects and then as needed on the job, but the formal knowledge accumulated over a CS degree would be much harder to do that with. I would only suggest to make sure to spend time on personal projects that, for lack of a better term, are full-stack.
    - jnordwick 10y ago
      I'm a greaat developer, but a terrible sysadmin. I just don't have the mentality for it. I can pick up pieces, and I know the hardware, but I'll never me a good sysadmin. I have a lot of unix experience, but setting up my own laptop is always a beast of effort. I don't want to ever setup a continuous integration systems with source repo. I'll make a mess of it. However, if you haven't had networking experience in college, you went to a terrible program. I had exposure to networking (at Cal) in 3-4 classes.
- eru 10y ago
  If you can program well, and like some aspects of sysadmin-ing, then becoming a Site Reliability Engineer (at eg Google) might be for you. There are always looking for people. (I used to work as an SRE, before I made my way back into functional programming and finance recently.)
  - chrisper 10y ago
    Thanks. I'll look into that.

ams6110 10y ago

I always seem to end up in sysadmin work. I guess I'm good at it. If you're smart and can use tools to your advantage you can create great value. Using ansible and judicious scripting I can do the work that used to take half a dozen sysadmins who just ploded through repetitive work over and over manually. That's a good argument to get a nice salary.

chrisper 10y ago

Hmm... I was asking because I am about to graduate in CS. But I think I like Sysadmin stuff more.

thwarted 10y ago
Continue with your CS degree. In my experience, all good sysadmins have significant development experience. This is especially useful when working at small companies/startups.
- chrisper 10y ago
  Yes. I can always change to sysadmin later on or just do both at once in a way.
- aisofteng 10y ago
  I'd like to counter (but not disagree) with: in my experience, all good developers have significant sysadmin experience, whether professionally or self-taught. As a tech lead of a team that is largely junior, I keep running into places where a lack of sysadmin-type knowledge seriously harms the ability of a CS degree holder (anywhere from BSc to PhD) to do real-world software engineering work unless they have either been self-taught in sysadmin sort of things or have had a couple years experience that has forced that sort of experience on them. To give an example, a fresh-out-of-school CS degree holder that never played with Linux servers for fun in his own time might be able to implement some software and then easily learn to Dockerize it, but may be stuck for three days on getting it to talk to other services both locally and in a test environment because of essentially zero exposure to ideas in networking - and yet the fix to the problem takes about 5 minutes for someone with exposure to how networking works. ("What's a bridge?") Another example comes from general familiarity with the server/client model: the rule of thumb to have a max number of worker threads equal to twice the cores available unless there is a reason to re-evaluate that. All that said, I would still favor sticking with the CS degree as well. Basic practical familiarity with sysadmin concerns can be more or less picked up over time via personal projects and then as needed on the job, but the formal knowledge accumulated over a CS degree would be much harder to do that with. I would only suggest to make sure to spend time on personal projects that, for lack of a better term, are full-stack.
  - jnordwick 10y ago
    I'm a greaat developer, but a terrible sysadmin. I just don't have the mentality for it. I can pick up pieces, and I know the hardware, but I'll never me a good sysadmin. I have a lot of unix experience, but setting up my own laptop is always a beast of effort. I don't want to ever setup a continuous integration systems with source repo. I'll make a mess of it. However, if you haven't had networking experience in college, you went to a terrible program. I had exposure to networking (at Cal) in 3-4 classes.
eru 10y ago
If you can program well, and like some aspects of sysadmin-ing, then becoming a Site Reliability Engineer (at eg Google) might be for you. There are always looking for people. (I used to work as an SRE, before I made my way back into functional programming and finance recently.)
- chrisper 10y ago
  Thanks. I'll look into that.