3 ms·

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

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]

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]