In my experience, there are several kinds of sysadmins. Many of them are little more than low-skilled button pressers, password resetters, and service restarte

In my experience, there are several kinds of sysadmins. Many of them are little more than low-skilled button pressers, password resetters, and service restarters (although they may have lots of domain-specific knowledge learned by rote and not understood). The good ones, however, are more than competent programmers in their own right, can make quick and accurate diagnoses of tough problems and fix them, write their own tools, etc.