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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 f

by geggam 8y ago

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

arminiusreturns 8y ago
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 underside of the systems they use, or just fundamentals of many things. (I even had one guy yesterday try to tell me I should stop using emacs and start using pycharm because "it's a real IDE" , yet this is one of the guys who's going to "automate all the things"!?) I'm having to learn to automate better, but they don't seem to be learning how to admin better, but I also consider that part of the sysadmins job... just as devops and SRE need to be "evangelists" in order to get C-suite buy in, I think the sysadmins need to make sure the lower level knowledge isn't being lost, or worse, discarded falsely as not relevant. Having seen the inside of so many places though, it also continually surprises me how many companies are all struggling with the exact same issues, to the point I'm highly tempted to try to pitch a whole IT solution I've been thinking on for years at the next YC. One thing I've noticed on HN is that too many people tend to think of all companies as SV software startups, when there is a huge swath of companies in-between coasts that don't have a single dev or programmer and are just doing their business. Much of the "devops is killing sysadmin" hysteria is overblown due to this filter bubble.
- eropple 8y ago
  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.
- _trampeltier 8y ago
  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.. )

by geggam 8y ago

arminiusreturns 8y ago

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 underside of the systems they use, or just fundamentals of many things. (I even had one guy yesterday try to tell me I should stop using emacs and start using pycharm because "it's a real IDE" , yet this is one of the guys who's going to "automate all the things"!?) I'm having to learn to automate better, but they don't seem to be learning how to admin better, but I also consider that part of the sysadmins job... just as devops and SRE need to be "evangelists" in order to get C-suite buy in, I think the sysadmins need to make sure the lower level knowledge isn't being lost, or worse, discarded falsely as not relevant. Having seen the inside of so many places though, it also continually surprises me how many companies are all struggling with the exact same issues, to the point I'm highly tempted to try to pitch a whole IT solution I've been thinking on for years at the next YC. One thing I've noticed on HN is that too many people tend to think of all companies as SV software startups, when there is a huge swath of companies in-between coasts that don't have a single dev or programmer and are just doing their business. Much of the "devops is killing sysadmin" hysteria is overblown due to this filter bubble.

eropple 8y ago
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.
_trampeltier 8y ago
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.. )