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The problem is when hardened system administrators and DBAs were replaced by people who were certainly not worthy successors. As that transition took place, a l

The problem is when hardened system administrators and DBAs were replaced by people who were certainly not worthy successors. As that transition took place, a lot of the added value was eliminated.

giantg2 2y ago
But who needs to know what happens behind the facade of the services? It does everything for us! I miss the days of having an expert sys admin and DBA to help with tough issues. Now we're all on our own with no training. Most of the good people got axed or thrown into other roles. Becoming good at something only to have it thrown away and undervalued pisses me off.
- sadops 2y ago
  [flagged]
- sadops 2y ago
  Fine, I'll say it: this is what ruthless cost-cutting gets us. But it's fine, I'm sure the stock buybacks are going so well for all involved.
- nineteen999 2y ago
  I'm one of those old sysadmins/DBA's, and having worked in devops for a year or two a few years back, I was able to take the best parts of it that I found useful, and leave the rest for the internet widget crowd to bicker about on here and in the workplace. I brought CI/CD, automated deployments, and infra tests with me to what was a very "retro" non-cloud UNIX style environment. I left all the horseshit (kanban, retrospectives, scrum) for the others that are not really all that interested in actually getting shit done. While those guys had a bunch of shiny tools to play with all day long, they lacked basic UNIX skills that us old guys have, and you had to continually had to show them how it was done. The results speak for themselves. Couldn't be happier (or more securely employed) at this stage of my life.
  - giantg2 2y ago
    That's great. When my company axed the Ops people, they didn't move them onto dev teams (some did, but very few). So we ended up with DevOps teams that were whole Dev experience. The Ops part was supposed to be "easy" with AWS. It was completely a cost saving play at my company by throwing more responsibility on the existing dev - combine roles and reduce headcount.
- altdataseller 2y ago
  What sort of skills does a sysadmin and DBA have that most engineers lack? Most engineers should know the basics of bash scripting, iptables, Unix logging, cron, systemd, etc. as well as SQL, debugging slow queries, optimizing them, backing up dbs, etc
  - wild_egg 2y ago
    _should_ know is different than _do_ know. Most engineers have little to no understanding of those systems topics and the only DB knowledge they've picked up is what leaks through their ORM A person who competently knows all those topics _and_ how to write application code is worth their weight in gold
    - sgarland 2y ago
      > A person who competently knows all those topics _and_ how to write application code is worth their weight in gold IFF the company consistently values those skills. IME, they’ll say upon interviewing or hiring that those aren’t necessary for their workload, until they suddenly are, where you’re lauded as a hero. Predictably, the memory of hero status fades when promo season comes around, because those “aren’t core skillsets,” or something similar.
      - giantg2 2y ago
        'fades when promo season comes around, because those “aren’t core skillsets,” or something similar.' Exactly what I'm going through right now with a potential PIP. Last year I was told there was a solid basis for me being the getting the highest rating, but only if my core work was faster. Now they want to PIP me like nothing else I contribute to matters.
        sgarland 2y ago
        I’m very sorry. I quit a job once because they couldn’t follow their own rubric for promos. “We’ve written down objective guidelines for what constitutes your relative performance.” “Great, looks like I’m a shoe-in.” “Well… there are intangibles.” “Then why have the rubric?”
- sadops 2y ago
  [flagged]
mingus88 2y ago
I don’t know. As someone who has tried to introduce the simple concept of version control to various sysadmin orgs over the years, I am fine with many of those types of sysadmins going away A lot of those guys just couldn’t handle a reality where they couldn’t name all their systems with cute Dr Who hostnames and do all their work as local root with riced out bash prompts Devops at least forced them to the same table with the dev org, and if they ended up getting replaced in the transition then I shed zero tears
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- 29athrowaway 2y ago
  Sysadmins provisioned and managed version control systems for years. CVS, Subversion, etc.
  - betaby 2y ago
    RCS!
    - mingus88 2y ago
      I introduced RCS to my sysadmin team in the mid 90s but again you always had those guys with god complexes who couldn’t be bothered to ‘ci -u’ or ‘co -l’ properly because that’s not how they do things. And if your entire team isn’t onboard then it’s worse than having no VCS at all God riddance to those guys. They thrived in silos.
      - 29athrowaway 2y ago
        Well, some people are not agreeable, do not want to be seen taking guidance from others. They are not worried about understanding what they do, or improving their practices, they are worried about status and how others perceive them. Those people may be able to protect their status in the short term, maybe even bluff and be promoted. But they will never truly understand what's going on.

The problem is when hardened system administrators and DBAs were replaced by people who were certainly not worthy successors. As that transition took place, a lot of the added value was eliminated.

giantg2 2y ago

But who needs to know what happens behind the facade of the services? It does everything for us! I miss the days of having an expert sys admin and DBA to help with tough issues. Now we're all on our own with no training. Most of the good people got axed or thrown into other roles. Becoming good at something only to have it thrown away and undervalued pisses me off.

sadops 2y ago
[flagged]
sadops 2y ago
Fine, I'll say it: this is what ruthless cost-cutting gets us. But it's fine, I'm sure the stock buybacks are going so well for all involved.
nineteen999 2y ago
I'm one of those old sysadmins/DBA's, and having worked in devops for a year or two a few years back, I was able to take the best parts of it that I found useful, and leave the rest for the internet widget crowd to bicker about on here and in the workplace. I brought CI/CD, automated deployments, and infra tests with me to what was a very "retro" non-cloud UNIX style environment. I left all the horseshit (kanban, retrospectives, scrum) for the others that are not really all that interested in actually getting shit done. While those guys had a bunch of shiny tools to play with all day long, they lacked basic UNIX skills that us old guys have, and you had to continually had to show them how it was done. The results speak for themselves. Couldn't be happier (or more securely employed) at this stage of my life.
- giantg2 2y ago
  That's great. When my company axed the Ops people, they didn't move them onto dev teams (some did, but very few). So we ended up with DevOps teams that were whole Dev experience. The Ops part was supposed to be "easy" with AWS. It was completely a cost saving play at my company by throwing more responsibility on the existing dev - combine roles and reduce headcount.
altdataseller 2y ago
What sort of skills does a sysadmin and DBA have that most engineers lack? Most engineers should know the basics of bash scripting, iptables, Unix logging, cron, systemd, etc. as well as SQL, debugging slow queries, optimizing them, backing up dbs, etc
- wild_egg 2y ago
  _should_ know is different than _do_ know. Most engineers have little to no understanding of those systems topics and the only DB knowledge they've picked up is what leaks through their ORM A person who competently knows all those topics _and_ how to write application code is worth their weight in gold
  - sgarland 2y ago
    > A person who competently knows all those topics _and_ how to write application code is worth their weight in gold IFF the company consistently values those skills. IME, they’ll say upon interviewing or hiring that those aren’t necessary for their workload, until they suddenly are, where you’re lauded as a hero. Predictably, the memory of hero status fades when promo season comes around, because those “aren’t core skillsets,” or something similar.
    - giantg2 2y ago
      'fades when promo season comes around, because those “aren’t core skillsets,” or something similar.' Exactly what I'm going through right now with a potential PIP. Last year I was told there was a solid basis for me being the getting the highest rating, but only if my core work was faster. Now they want to PIP me like nothing else I contribute to matters.
      - sgarland 2y ago
        I’m very sorry. I quit a job once because they couldn’t follow their own rubric for promos. “We’ve written down objective guidelines for what constitutes your relative performance.” “Great, looks like I’m a shoe-in.” “Well… there are intangibles.” “Then why have the rubric?”
sadops 2y ago
[flagged]

mingus88 2y ago

I don’t know. As someone who has tried to introduce the simple concept of version control to various sysadmin orgs over the years, I am fine with many of those types of sysadmins going away A lot of those guys just couldn’t handle a reality where they couldn’t name all their systems with cute Dr Who hostnames and do all their work as local root with riced out bash prompts Devops at least forced them to the same table with the dev org, and if they ended up getting replaced in the transition then I shed zero tears

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
29athrowaway 2y ago
Sysadmins provisioned and managed version control systems for years. CVS, Subversion, etc.
- betaby 2y ago
  RCS!
  - mingus88 2y ago
    I introduced RCS to my sysadmin team in the mid 90s but again you always had those guys with god complexes who couldn’t be bothered to ‘ci -u’ or ‘co -l’ properly because that’s not how they do things. And if your entire team isn’t onboard then it’s worse than having no VCS at all God riddance to those guys. They thrived in silos.
    - 29athrowaway 2y ago
      Well, some people are not agreeable, do not want to be seen taking guidance from others. They are not worried about understanding what they do, or improving their practices, they are worried about status and how others perceive them. Those people may be able to protect their status in the short term, maybe even bluff and be promoted. But they will never truly understand what's going on.