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Ask HN: Why do I exist as a sysadmin?

• anbop 7y ago
  Why try so hard to learn something for which you have no aptitude, when you have other valuable skills? A 5 foot 100 pound guy shouldn’t be trying to learn football at the pro level no matter how high the NFL salaries are. Focus on what you’re good at. There will still be sysadmins by the time you are dead. Get better at your skill set so that you’ll be one of the ones standing.
  • setr 7y ago
    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
    • vortex_panda 7y ago
      I'm not sure why it's as difficult as it is for me. I'm sure there are people for whom it's not as much of a herculean task.
• cbanek 7y ago
  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.
  • vortex_panda 7y ago
    Thanks for the response. As far as debugging other people's work, I do that a fair bit within our configuration management system. I also write "fresh" config management states (we use SaltStack), fairly often as well. But SaltStack is mostly human-readable YAML/Jinja, so it doesn't seem to cause the same issues as trying to write and parse Python.
• quickthrower2 7y ago
  What about learning devops. Take your bash skills and apply them to cloud architecture, containers etc. that stuff will be in demand for a few years. Cloud Architect might be something to aim for.
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • vortex_panda 7y ago
    I have been wanting to try out things like AWS and containers and such, but I haven't had the chance yet. I think part of it is that I haven't had the chance in a work setting to check those things out. We have thousands of physical machines and on-prem VMs. Sometimes I feel like we're kind of "old-world".
    • sl1ck731 7y ago
      Physical infrastructure isn't going away anytime soon. I work in migrating people to public cloud and we are seeing a resurgence of people moving to "private clouds". Mostly vMware and OpenStack. Most people have begun realizing their CTOs cargo-culted AWS for their resumes and its costing more than owning DC or colocating does.
      • vortex_panda 7y ago
        I was wondering about that. Every time I looked at AWS pricing, it seemed insanely expensive for the people that just forklifted their on-prem services into the cloud without re-architecting it to fit that type of environment.
        • ocdtrekkie 7y ago
          Most cloud solutions costs 2-3 times more than the on-prem equivalents. The selling point that's usually trotted out is "but it just works and you can fire your IT staff". ...Most people who move to the cloud end up still needing IT staff to manage it, and are now, by proxy, paying for the cloud provider's IT staff too. (Hidden underneath all of those cloud providers are a silent army of IT people.) A recent conversation I had was whether to replace a server (five figures) when a neighboring organization was on the cloud for the same technology (three figures per year per device). The latter sounded a lot cheaper until you multiplied the devices by that three figure amount, and multiplied it by the five years the server's contract covered. The cloud solution became more expensive that the physical service in a little over a year. I have similar conversations about Office 365. It costs twice as much as buying on-prem Microsoft Office, even if you buy Office every version. There's really no reason not to skip every other release of Office, which makes it practically four times the cost of on-prem.
• NoInputSignal 7y ago
  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.
  • vortex_panda 7y ago
    I do enjoy automating infrastructure. I guess I feel somewhat obligated to dive into the development side due to the industry trends and the constant "Anyone can code", "Coding bootcamps", and such.
    • deleted 7y ago
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• proxygeek 7y ago
  You are not alone. I'd guess at least over 50% of folks here would have gone through a similar phase at some point in their lives (learning block wise). Based on my experience, especially over the past couple of years, I've realised that even if I can power through some of the subjects/topics which I find arcane (e.g. linear algebra, tensor calculus), I quickly lose what I've learnt if I don't get to apply the learning on a real project, not a toy one. In your case, I think once you've familiarised yourself with the absolute basic syntax structure if python, go find couple of real world projects and just try to get them done, without worrying too much about code elegance. That would give you the necessary confidence and understanding for moving up the next step. You can find small volunteer projects it participate in competitions (on platforms like kaggle) which may require you to use at least a portion of python. But most importantly, don't lose heart. Learning takes time. It's just as important to take a step back from it for a while as it is to keep at it. I strongly recommend a series of 4-5 video lectures on Coursera by a MIT prof I think. Course was called "Learning how to learn". You don't have to take everything in it but I still believe the overall approach may help you. Cheers and all the best!
  • vortex_panda 7y ago
    Thanks I think that some of my issues possibly stem from a combination of my previous job being a hostile work environment as well as repeatedly being told by other coworkers (and even a former manager) that: "The work that I was doing wasn't valuable." I still haven't come to terms with it I think.
• _bxg1 7y ago
  "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.
  • vortex_panda 7y ago
    Thanks, this is good to know.
    • ThJ 7y ago
      It's definitely the case that reading other people's code is much harder than reading your own. It's also the case that, if you write some code and let it sit around for a year, and then accidentally come across it, you're likely to wonder what kind of madman or idiot wrote it, until you realise that you're reading your own code. It helps to keep your code so simple and peppered with comments than even an idiot (you) can understand it. You don't learn to code by reading code, much like you don't learn to do math by reading equations, or carpentry by looking at houses. You have to get your hands dirty. Start with something "Hello World" level simple and add more bits as you go along. That's what we all do, really. The end result of such an iterative process will look inscrutable to others, but make perfect sense for you, because you made it. Big dirty public secret: One guy's code being inscrutable to the next guy is why the next guy always argues for getting rid of the system that the previous guy developed. It's usually not because it's a bad system (your new system eventually becomes the next guy's "bad old" system, after all), but because no programmer thinks the same way. Programming is very much a reflection of how a person thinks, of a mental model, and mental models are extremely individual things. Reading someone else's code is an exercise in empathy, and empathy isn't something programmers are known for. Programmers love to exist on their own little islands where everything works according to their internal logic. Teamwork means compromises. I once had to quit a job because I couldn't understand the internal logic of the team I had been hired to work with, as reflected in their codebase. The main trait needed in a programmer is the ability to endure mind-bending levels of frustration. You have to keep hammering that nail until the problem is solved.
• pier25 7y ago
  You need to write code so that your brain can assimilate this alien language and you'll be able to "think in code". Coding is difficult, don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It's completely normal to struggle. How long did it take you to learn to read and write English properly? 15-20 years?
• m3nu 7y ago
  Knowledge becomes redundant all the time. Look for interesting problems around you and build up useful skills. Maybe try Kubernetes and container tech as a bridge before building actual apps?
• fuzz4lyfe 7y ago
  I was a sysadmin and moved to software development. A big part of the difference is mindset. When I used to work with sysadmins often solutions to problems are "google for a while and then call the vendor". You need to get out of that mindset and become more self reliant. That machine you are using was built by humans, that language was designed by humans and you are likely attempting to solve a problem that isn't dramatically different than problems solved by tens to hundreds of thousands of other humans. You can do it. Without perseverance and mental toughness it's going to be an uphill climb to become a programmer.
  • vortex_panda 7y ago
    "google for a while and then call the vendor" This is unfortunately how most of our organization works. For certain types of things, we're actually required to do this due to regulations, bureaucracy, and what not.
• georgebarnett 7y ago
  I want to echo the sentiment of other posters. I’m a senior architect on a team of several hundred people and I can without a doubt say that Sysadmin skills are hugely valuable and SAs normally have a very distinct and useful perspective on the end to end process of software delivery (of which coding is only one part). My advice would be to explore more areas of self improvement. It’s not only code out there! You could look at continuous integration, focus on deployments, learn networking, go deep in cloud config management. There’s also the people side, like project managing technical implementations, managing vendors, or doing budgets and planning. You might also consider database admin which is really interesting work. I guess what I’m saying is don’t feel limited by coding not being you thing. If you can learn enough to get by, you’ll find many roles where it’s not the core skill.
• aSockPuppeteer 7y ago
  I suggest finding a language that you can learn online. It does not have to be what you really want to learn, just one you can get stared with. Ruby has some decent lessons out there where they tell you what to type, you type it, and see the results. First, like an essay, create an outline. Write what you want the output to look like, search stack overflow for examples, and it will get easier. I learned Matlab, essentially deleted it from memory, and felt as you describe a few years later. I had to relearn it and just pushing myself with the pomodoro technique (20 min on, 5 min break) worked. Good luck.
• rajangdavis 7y ago
  If you have some experience with bash, I would recommend learning more bash. If you want to get into development, the next step might be to learn a new language. Ruby, Python, and Javascript are pretty popular scripting languages that will have some overlap with bash that you can connect to. Pick a language that works closest to how you think and work with it in place of what you would normally do with bash. Most importantly, understand that you are in technical role but that role is not the summation of who you are. Additionally, not all developers have sysadmin skills, so understand that what you provide is valuable. Don't be hard on yourself, you have your entire life to keep building on what you know and who you want to become.
• stunt 7y ago
  Sysadmin is an important role but don’t forget that what we call DevOps is an essential step for most of the SysAdmins these days. If you stick with the traditional definition of SysAdmin, your job market becomes smaller every year. That doesn’t mean you won’t find a high paying job, it just means there are less opportunities and more competition. Are you good at it? Then perhaps you don’t need those DevOps skills. There will be enough opportunities for your lifetime. Then instead focus on branding yourself. Write online about your skills, share your knowledge on internet to create a strong and visible profile that you can reference to it. Don’t keep your knowledge on your head. Make it more visible even stuff that you think is obvious and easy. Then you always have a better chance in the market and it is very likely that good offers knock your door. But, If you do feel that your career is at risk and you see kess chance in competing other SysAdmins, Then definitely invest on learning Cloud focused DevOps skills. And I think grasping the next step isn’t hard for a SysAdmin. Stuff like Modern CI/CD pipeline, Monitoring and integration with Cloud providers and different services, Cloud migration, some level of scripting probably in Python, etc. And about coding, first of all you don’t have to become a programmer, . so be careful what resources and courses you take as some of them might be unnecessarily overwhelming. and secondly, like everything else, there is a learning curve. You just need to pass it and be patient.
  • leowoo91 7y ago
    DevOps is also shrinking fyi.
• akarki15 7y ago
  It has helped me immensely to change my perspective. I don't see programming problems/blockers that I encounter as _my_ "mental blocker". I see them as problems that stand themselves. There is nothing wrong with _me_. I see the problems as these little (and sometimes big) challenges. Like a level in a game. Not clearing a level doesn't mean that the character you are playing is weak. It just means that the character is not using the right tool, or mechanics. The root cause is lack of information; there is nothing wrong with the character itself. If you can detach yourself from the problem and view yourself as a player in a game, you won't get frustrated. I have even come to like it. When I finally figure out why that sneaky race condition was breaking on prod after days and nights of debugging sessions, I feel like I have defeated a big boss in a game. I actually fondly recall these kinds of victories from my past years like a life event. Hope you can do the same :)
• p0d 7y ago
  You seem quite articulate. Have you thought of blogging or writing? There may be other avenues for your creativity other than coding. I have been a sysadmin for 20 years and imagine I will be for another 20.
  • vortex_panda 7y ago
    Thanks. I have thought about something like that, but I wouldn’t know what to write or blog.
• arpa 7y ago
  The majority of the comments fail to miss one important thing: the cloud is not an abstract magical thingy which provides whatever you need whenever you need. It merely abstracts away the underlying infrastructure - on hardware, network, sometimes even the OS level. It runs on the same(ish) hardware you can find in your own server rack. It runs the same Linux (or some customly patched Linux derivative), it is connected by twisted pair or optics, it still uses the same tech you, a linux administrator, use underneath the whole shiny packaging. Kubernetes is a collection of scripts. Docker is just a script written in go to easier leverage linux kernel cgruops and namespaces. To reiterate: cloud just hides this instead of replacing it completely. Worst case scenario, nobody (outside of amazon/google/azure/baidu) knows how to set up a simple webserver on a linux box in their closet - then your skills become invaluable for people not willing to keep their data/code/service god knows where with god knows who. There are still some people that value "on-premises/bare-metal" setup. So there's one venue. Another would be to deepen your sysadmin skills to the point where instead of working against the cloud, you could join them. As far as I know, they are constantly looking for good sysadmins. Now if you really want to become a dev... Well, i would suggest probably to start with what you know best: bash scripts probably. Start there. Start by small chunks. Take a small script, try to understand how it works. Try to write a small script. Try to find tasks that would be useful / interesting for you, e.g. make a script that starts playing music in the morning, constantly and slowly increasing the volume until you wake up - just make stuff: the key here is to have fun while doing it and achieve the result, not make everything perfect. And try to do this without any pressure on yourself. Sysadmins have value, and will continue to have value. You're doing this not because you're being obsoleted, but because you wish to better yourself.
  • AstralStorm 7y ago
    Alternate approach that works is to start simple and low level. Twiddle bits, read hardware manuals. Code your own window blinds controller. Play a chiptune directly from hardware. Skip all the abstractions and push the numbers and currents. Then when you get it, it is easier to go up in stack.
• amriksohata 7y ago
  Sorry to hear about the latter, please give yoga, chanting aum, meditation and vegetarnism a go, seriously google the gut brain axis, it might help.
• bennybob 7y ago
  On the programming front, I ve worked as a programmer for 12 years. I consider myself as not smart at all. I worked hard at learning my trade. I'd suggest you take things really slowly, some things you are going to have to rote learn. I wish I had found this book when I was starting out: https://www.htdp.org https://www.htdp.org I've only browsed it, but it looks like the best way to get started to me. My brother worked through https://learncodethehardway.org https://learncodethehardway.org python book, he liked that. I used the learn c the hard way and I like the guy's teaching style. He makes it clear that this stuff can be hard and you need to take your time. I was constantly overwhelmed by programming, but I just kept going. I'm now at the point where I realise coding isn't the hardest part of the job anymore.
• rambojazz 7y ago
  > 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 Are you thinking that everybody is migrating to cloud? For a business there is a lot of value in having their own local servers and infrastructure, even if small. Especially if they own data.
• lousken 7y ago
  What do you mean? Doesn't matter if it's on premise or in the cloud(someone elses computer) - someone still has to manage it from the company's point. If you leave it to the devs it'll be a disaster. With that said, this industry is moving fast and if you wanna keep up you need to learn bash/python or powershell on windows, eventually... this is true. Or you can move to smaller companies with fewer assets to manage. If you say you can throw a bash script together than that's a good start. When doing that, try to understand what the author has done - check how the script was made, look up each function and try to remember what they do. Once you remember functions you can always use that knowledge and look up syntax and arguments in the docs and start writing your own code. Bash is not a good place to start though, because it has a lot of weird syntax but python is rather clean. Also take your time, don't think it's something you can learn within a week or month, give it 6months - year, don't push it. If you can't figure it out today, it's ok, try another day.
  • scarface74 7y ago
    I disagree, if you leave it to the sysadmins that take their same mentality to the cloud, it’s a bigger disaster. I straddle both sides and I’d much rather deal with a seasoned software architect who comes to the cloud from that side than a sysadmin who comes from the other side. A sysadmin doesn’t want to automate his job and let the cloud provider manage what they can manage. A good software Architect is mich more likely to be push as much off on to manage services as possible and automate as much as possible.
    • vortex_panda 7y ago
      "A sysadmin doesn’t want to automate his job and let the cloud provider manage what they can manage" There may be some people like that, but I never said that I didn't want to automate my job. I'd rather automate as much as possible. I realize that in order to scale infrastructure, you can't be sitting around manually pressing buttons and running apt-get command to install software.
      • scarface74 7y ago
• omnifischer 7y ago
  Linus Torvalds once said in an interview with the "IBM Kid - from future is open" that he appreciates all sysadmins. You are one of those. Cheer up!
• aerojoe23 7y ago
  I wish we had a competent dedicated sys admin at work. I say competent because we've had tech support guys try to fill the sys admin role and the knowledge gaps... Anyway I'm supposed to be a software developer and I end up spending a good chunk of time on sys admin stuff.
• jressey 7y ago
  > 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? Yes, each of us.
• sergiotapia 7y ago
  My man you are the other side of the coin as far as I'm concerned. Instead of being on premises, you should dive into cloud orchestration and management. You are still desperately needed as an IT person. The analogy I like to use is: when building a house, you need a civil engineer and an architect. You wouldn't hire someone who does both right? Two very separate disciplines. It's the same with programmers and IT. We both need each other. We write the code, you make sure that baby has enough room to grow and be secure. I would never attempt to set up AWS for anything serious because that's just asking to be hacked. I would recommend we hire a proper systems IT person.
• laughingbovine 7y ago
  I think you may be going about learning programming wrong. I've seen this several times (source: am DevOps/programmer) where my non-CS-degree sysadmin/IT coworkers will sort of "force it" when trying to learn programming. This includes things like reading technical docs way above their head, copy/pasting a lot from SO and not fully understanding things, and diving into complex code bases. It's a slog for the guys who do it this way, and I think its because there are some in-between steps that they skip over. I usually suggest tutorials, but I get the impression from them that the tutorials they use are long, boring, and worst of all.. too easy. Then they dive into real-world work and get overwhelmed. I feel like this is akin to showing them how interlocking gears work for the first time and then asking them to fix my car. What helped me was being in that setting where I would get small not-real-world problems to solve over and over. IOW homework, classwork, etc.. I think is what helped. Eventually I did enough small things that when I saw real-world code, I could pick it apart into pieces that I understood because I've actually programmed those pieces before. Having written it before was a huge help as well because I already had to be familiar with the concepts to get it to work... reading it was then a matter of comparing what they have to what I wrote in the past and incrementing my knowledge (rather than starting from zero understanding). TL;DR I think there is a gap between beginner/intermediate tutorials and real-world coding. I think you may need to find yourself a path through this gap that involves solving a lot of practice problems and working your way up. HTH and Good Luck
• wodenokoto 7y ago
  You transition to being a "Cloud Engineer", which is basically the same, but in the cloud. You'll be running bash scripts through a terminal emulator in your browser, and define settings for managed vm's using yaml. There's a brand new cloud world out there and it looks pretty much the same. I think the next hot thing after devops and datascientists are gonna be cloud architects and engineers.
  • scarface74 7y ago
    God no. Don’t tell him this. There are already too many sysadmins that take the on prem, non automated, lift and shift mentality to the cloud, and leave in their wake an infrastructure that costs more than if they had just used bare metal at s colo. If you’re hosting a bunch of VMs “in the cloud” and doing the same stuff you did on prem you’ve just gotten the worse of both worlds - you’re spending more and not getting any of the benefits of letting your cloud vendor do any of the “undifferentiated heavy lifting”. My experience with “cloud architects” who don’t know anything about development is that they are actually a liability.
    • vortex_panda 7y ago
      I'm aware of the "lift and shift" mentality that some people have. I know several people who work at another company that decided to just uplift their on-prem VM-based software stack into AWS. It went very poorly.
• apenney 7y ago
  You know, I feel like the perfect person to answer this. I used to be a sysadmin, then a devops engineer, then a "VP of Infrastructure", and I'm currently doing some hands on work again as a "lead devops engineer". Like you, I used to be frustrated at my inability to program, and I felt like I could never make sense of any of it. I spent years in my earlier career sticking to "sysadmin things" because of that limitation. Eventually, as automation hit the industry, I started writing more and more ruby code (we were Puppet users) and eventually I took a full time job for a year writing ruby code. It was never an inability, it was always a confidence thing. I was scared to try and fail. By taking a full time position as a developer I -had- to succeed, and I like to think I did. I found it's not nearly as hard as I imagined, and the fact I did not have sysadmin duties competing made a HUGE difference. I was able to dedicate all day to what I was doing, not fit it into the corners of my life. From what you wrote above, it's pretty clear that your personality woes (anxiety probably is the big one here) is convincing you that you can't do this. I wasted years convinced that it was "too hard", but in reality I just didn't have the motivation to push through my discomfort. I don't actually write a lot of code these days, but I'm no longer afraid to pick up some code and modify it if I need to because I know it's just a matter of being patient and figuring things out as I go.
• NoCanDo 7y ago
  There's no exist, there is only power. That said, sysadmins will never become obsolete in your lifetime.
• pryelluw 7y ago
  Email (address in profile) me if you want to do some pair programming sessions. I've helped others get unstuck this way.
• davidmott_ 7y ago
  An sysadmin can be critical in so many aspects of a project. I think its best you appreciate this and avoid this vicious cycle at all costs.