4 ms·

Grey hair sysadmin story time... I came to understand the "purposelessness" of my career very early on; when I decommissioned a bare metal server from a datace

Grey hair sysadmin story time... I came to understand the "purposelessness" of my career very early on; when I decommissioned a bare metal server from a datacenter after finishing the deploy of it's replacement and realised that the old server was the first unit I'd racked when I started in the position 4 years ago. That was ~20 years ago. Nothing I've had a hand in building / maintaining has "survived" for more than ~7 years. My Dad worked to build houses. Prior to my IT career I'd laboured for him and played my small part in the creation of many homes around where I grew up. They'll be there for a hundred years maybe. Quitting the ephemeral world of IT to work on building a homestead and creating tangible things that directly keep humans alive seems like an obvious calling to me. The constant evolution of "tech" is a blessing and a curse.

achenet 2y ago
> Nothing I've had a hand in building / maintaining has "survived" for more than ~7 years. The companies? The websites? Google, for example, has been in existence since 1998. If you're working on a farm, the crops don't live longer than a year. The livestock longer than that, but probably not decades - my (limited) understanding is that most cows are slaughtered around age 2 or 3. But the farm itself can, in certain circumstances, last for generations. If you're talking houses, sure, solid walls can last decades, centuries, millennia even (cf the Pyramids). However, I think this is because stone is particularly durable. Roofs, windows, doors, anything that isn't made of really good masonry will tend to decay much quicker than that. Even states like the Roman Republic and Empire (which had probably a good ~2000 year run if we count from 509BC to the fall of Constantinople in 1453) will eventually crumble and fall. Now a tech company is a newer type of institution than a farm, but some of them are quite old - GE was founded in 1892. IBM was founded in 1911. We can also take Bell telephone and Standard Oil, both of whom were broken up by anti-trust cases, but whose descendants still live on today, as other examples of tech companies that have had lifespans similar to or greater than houses or farms. Of course, I understand that "I built some software/racked some servers for a company 20 years ago and they're still business" isn't the same as "I put the bricks in that wall twenty years ago and the house is still there". So I agree that the individual artifacts we create in the tech industry are somewhat fleeting, compared to things made of metal and stone, even if, compared to things like music or other performing arts, where the song disappears the minute you stop playing, software running on computers is relatively lasting. And artifacts created with software, while they are a relatively new thing, may prove quite durable. Films made with Final Cut, or songs made with Pro Tools, or heck, even video games like Doom, may prove to outlast every house that you ever worked on. It's possible that 200 years from now, people will still be watching YouTube videos made today, even if, in a Ship of Theseus like fashion, every line of code and every server that YouTube is currently using has been replaced since then.
- Fuzzwah 2y ago
  Every company I've worked for still exists and many will clearly continue for many many years (some previous employers were Universities). Some previous roles I was involved in solving "this could end the business" situations, so I do thank you for making me realise that I laid bricks (or more importantly; helped detect and repair serious foundation problems) for my employers.
- morleytj 2y ago
  This is a really beautiful sentiment, it's interesting to look more at our careers as stewards of a lasting organization in some ways, where every iteration of some product is dependent on the existence of work done before. Even with ephemeral software we all leave our mark in that way. Thank you for writing that.
progmetaldev 2y ago
I'm not sure how deeply involved you've gotten into homesteading, and whether you are doing anything in the IT world, but if you are still a bit connected to IT then I'd suggest scratching an itch you have with software. Perhaps something that connects your homesteading to IT, so you are able to use your knowledge from both? I've worked for smaller companies, and have software I started in 2009 that I am still working on, literally up to 15 minutes ago. I enjoy working with the client, because they are building in an area that seems to be untapped for potential. I've moved across two programming languages, and two database systems, to keep the software running, and feel that my personal investment and belief in what my client is doing has helped push me in a direction where I am almost tied to this software as my client. It's a good feeling, and think perhaps you need a project like that for yourself. The benefit is that you are also homesteading, so you could learn IoT software for your homestead, even starting off with something simple like watching temperatures at night, or reading humidity readings to decide whether to water areas of your garden/food source. I grew up with grandparents that lived off the land, mostly pushed from them growing up during the Great Depression. I wish I had known to ask more questions of them while they were around, but I did pick up a strong work ethic, along with what I picked up from my parents. Having a project that you enjoy goes a very long way towards keeping an interest in anything, whether it's IT or gardening of vegetables, flowers, or raising animals for meat or labor (or pleasure, but figured that fell outside of homesteading).
Workaccount2 2y ago
I have wondered how people who have spent their career jumping from runway to runway feel when they look back over their shoulder and only see plane wrecks at the end of derelict runways. Perhaps they made a ton of money, but it has to hurt on some level to have never seen your work amount to something.
- tonyarkles 2y ago
  I laughed really hard today. I did some contract work for a friend of mine a long time ago and he sent me a message today to let me know that the some of the code I wrote for him was broken. He sent me a screenshot of git blame… I committed it in 2011 :D. Definitely made me smile knowing that that work has been humming along in production for 14 years without a hitch. The only reason it broke is because, apparently, Django finally removed an API that they deprecated a while ago.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    Code I slaved over and expended all my effort - gone when the startup collapsed. Half-assed solution I threw together as an intern in 1999? Still operating and foundational to this day. Ah, well.
TheCoelacanth 2y ago
You wouldn't say that manufacturing tires is purposeless just because the tires need to be replaced in a few years. They were able to accomplish a lot of transportation while they lasted. You wouldn't say that making a sandwich is pointless just because you'll need another one tomorrow. It let you survive and gave you the energy to do things. The purpose of a server is what it was able to do for people while it lasted. The fact that it won't last forever doesn't take away that purpose.

achenet 2y ago

> Nothing I've had a hand in building / maintaining has "survived" for more than ~7 years. The companies? The websites? Google, for example, has been in existence since 1998. If you're working on a farm, the crops don't live longer than a year. The livestock longer than that, but probably not decades - my (limited) understanding is that most cows are slaughtered around age 2 or 3. But the farm itself can, in certain circumstances, last for generations. If you're talking houses, sure, solid walls can last decades, centuries, millennia even (cf the Pyramids). However, I think this is because stone is particularly durable. Roofs, windows, doors, anything that isn't made of really good masonry will tend to decay much quicker than that. Even states like the Roman Republic and Empire (which had probably a good ~2000 year run if we count from 509BC to the fall of Constantinople in 1453) will eventually crumble and fall. Now a tech company is a newer type of institution than a farm, but some of them are quite old - GE was founded in 1892. IBM was founded in 1911. We can also take Bell telephone and Standard Oil, both of whom were broken up by anti-trust cases, but whose descendants still live on today, as other examples of tech companies that have had lifespans similar to or greater than houses or farms. Of course, I understand that "I built some software/racked some servers for a company 20 years ago and they're still business" isn't the same as "I put the bricks in that wall twenty years ago and the house is still there". So I agree that the individual artifacts we create in the tech industry are somewhat fleeting, compared to things made of metal and stone, even if, compared to things like music or other performing arts, where the song disappears the minute you stop playing, software running on computers is relatively lasting. And artifacts created with software, while they are a relatively new thing, may prove quite durable. Films made with Final Cut, or songs made with Pro Tools, or heck, even video games like Doom, may prove to outlast every house that you ever worked on. It's possible that 200 years from now, people will still be watching YouTube videos made today, even if, in a Ship of Theseus like fashion, every line of code and every server that YouTube is currently using has been replaced since then.

Fuzzwah 2y ago
Every company I've worked for still exists and many will clearly continue for many many years (some previous employers were Universities). Some previous roles I was involved in solving "this could end the business" situations, so I do thank you for making me realise that I laid bricks (or more importantly; helped detect and repair serious foundation problems) for my employers.
morleytj 2y ago
This is a really beautiful sentiment, it's interesting to look more at our careers as stewards of a lasting organization in some ways, where every iteration of some product is dependent on the existence of work done before. Even with ephemeral software we all leave our mark in that way. Thank you for writing that.

progmetaldev 2y ago

I'm not sure how deeply involved you've gotten into homesteading, and whether you are doing anything in the IT world, but if you are still a bit connected to IT then I'd suggest scratching an itch you have with software. Perhaps something that connects your homesteading to IT, so you are able to use your knowledge from both? I've worked for smaller companies, and have software I started in 2009 that I am still working on, literally up to 15 minutes ago. I enjoy working with the client, because they are building in an area that seems to be untapped for potential. I've moved across two programming languages, and two database systems, to keep the software running, and feel that my personal investment and belief in what my client is doing has helped push me in a direction where I am almost tied to this software as my client. It's a good feeling, and think perhaps you need a project like that for yourself. The benefit is that you are also homesteading, so you could learn IoT software for your homestead, even starting off with something simple like watching temperatures at night, or reading humidity readings to decide whether to water areas of your garden/food source. I grew up with grandparents that lived off the land, mostly pushed from them growing up during the Great Depression. I wish I had known to ask more questions of them while they were around, but I did pick up a strong work ethic, along with what I picked up from my parents. Having a project that you enjoy goes a very long way towards keeping an interest in anything, whether it's IT or gardening of vegetables, flowers, or raising animals for meat or labor (or pleasure, but figured that fell outside of homesteading).

Workaccount2 2y ago

I have wondered how people who have spent their career jumping from runway to runway feel when they look back over their shoulder and only see plane wrecks at the end of derelict runways. Perhaps they made a ton of money, but it has to hurt on some level to have never seen your work amount to something.

tonyarkles 2y ago
I laughed really hard today. I did some contract work for a friend of mine a long time ago and he sent me a message today to let me know that the some of the code I wrote for him was broken. He sent me a screenshot of git blame… I committed it in 2011 :D. Definitely made me smile knowing that that work has been humming along in production for 14 years without a hitch. The only reason it broke is because, apparently, Django finally removed an API that they deprecated a while ago.
- bombcar 2y ago
  Code I slaved over and expended all my effort - gone when the startup collapsed. Half-assed solution I threw together as an intern in 1999? Still operating and foundational to this day. Ah, well.

TheCoelacanth 2y ago

You wouldn't say that manufacturing tires is purposeless just because the tires need to be replaced in a few years. They were able to accomplish a lot of transportation while they lasted. You wouldn't say that making a sandwich is pointless just because you'll need another one tomorrow. It let you survive and gave you the energy to do things. The purpose of a server is what it was able to do for people while it lasted. The fact that it won't last forever doesn't take away that purpose.