The Death of Sysadmin
-
@scottalanmiller said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@IRJ said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@scottalanmiller said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@Emad-R said in The Death of Sysadmin:
The number of servers one sysadmin is handling is increasing and increasing, I think even you said it yourself.
back in the day 1 sysadmin can manage = few servers, afterward it is 50-100, now it is expected to be able to manage 100-500. One day we wouldn't need to manage anything.Yes, but then the value and expertise of that system admin keep increasing, too. And there are loads and loads of private clouds. Each cloud is the new "computer".
Exactly what we call DevOPs now is the new System Admin. They are higher paid and more knowledgeable. Things have been going this way for awhile so you should not be surprised. Imagine what you'd be worth if you had AWS / Azure certifications right now
In fact, this is an opportunity for you to go this route. You have to leave the old mentality behind to grow in a new, ever changing environment.
And really, only barely different than we were back in 2006. DevOps isn't really new, just a new "brand name" on the same work that we did then. If we moved my 2006 environment into 2019 with zero changes, we'd call it devops.
What were you using in 2006 for your CI/CD pipelines?
-
@Obsolesce said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@scottalanmiller said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@IRJ said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@scottalanmiller said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@Emad-R said in The Death of Sysadmin:
The number of servers one sysadmin is handling is increasing and increasing, I think even you said it yourself.
back in the day 1 sysadmin can manage = few servers, afterward it is 50-100, now it is expected to be able to manage 100-500. One day we wouldn't need to manage anything.Yes, but then the value and expertise of that system admin keep increasing, too. And there are loads and loads of private clouds. Each cloud is the new "computer".
Exactly what we call DevOPs now is the new System Admin. They are higher paid and more knowledgeable. Things have been going this way for awhile so you should not be surprised. Imagine what you'd be worth if you had AWS / Azure certifications right now
In fact, this is an opportunity for you to go this route. You have to leave the old mentality behind to grow in a new, ever changing environment.
And really, only barely different than we were back in 2006. DevOps isn't really new, just a new "brand name" on the same work that we did then. If we moved my 2006 environment into 2019 with zero changes, we'd call it devops.
What were you using in 2006 for your CI/CD pipelines?
CI/CD is one of those new "long after DevOps was a thing" things. Even people doing DevOps were called DevOps before those were common. In 2006, it was insanely rare for even developers to use those things or be familiar with them. It's a very recent thing to start associating those with either field.
-
CI/CD is also one of those things that is just "one approach" in both IT and Dev circles. XP made it popular, it existed before but no one talked about it, and XP was only popular in "what people have heard of", not what people actively do. The majority of developers don't use it today. And many, maybe a majority or maybe not, don't think that it is appropriate even today. Regular integration is important, but many people believe that frequest, rather than continuous, is a better approach.
It's much like test first. It is a recent concept, not an old one. And while essentially all developers and DevOps know what it is, extremely few adopt it. It's today where CI was eight years ago.
-
CI/CD is also one of those things that is just "one approach" in both IT and Dev circles
Uh what are the "other" approaches?
-
@stacksofplates said in The Death of Sysadmin:
Uh what are the "other" approaches?
Frequent Integration is more common, for example. If you work with developers, CI is something everyone knows, but the majority don't do. In fact, almost none do in the real world. Good ones might mostly do it, but the average developer isn't a good developer. The average development shop is still struggling with source control, CI isn't even on their horizon.
-
@scottalanmiller said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@stacksofplates said in The Death of Sysadmin:
Uh what are the "other" approaches?
Frequent Integration is more common, for example. If you work with developers, CI is something everyone knows, but the majority don't do. In fact, almost none do in the real world. Good ones might mostly do it, but the average developer isn't a good developer. The average development shop is still struggling with source control, CI isn't even on their horizon.
That's not an other. That's part of CI/CD.
-
Pick a project on GitHub/GitLab. If they have a .travis yml, Jenkinsfile, .gitlab-ci.yml, bamboo.yml, etc they are leveraging at least CI. I don't think I've noticed one without a build file for quite some time.
-
@scottalanmiller said in The Death of Sysadmin:
CI/CD is also one of those things that is just "one approach" in both IT and Dev circles. XP made it popular, it existed before but no one talked about it, and XP was only popular in "what people have heard of", not what people actively do. The majority of developers don't use it today. And many, maybe a majority or maybe not, don't think that it is appropriate even today. Regular integration is important, but many people believe that frequest, rather than continuous, is a better approach.
It's much like test first. It is a recent concept, not an old one. And while essentially all developers and DevOps know what it is, extremely few adopt it. It's today where CI was eight years ago.
Are you referring to the Agile approach of working? That's not the same thing as DevOps.
-
@stacksofplates said in The Death of Sysadmin:
Pick a project on GitHub/GitLab. If they have a .travis yml, Jenkinsfile, .gitlab-ci.yml, bamboo.yml, etc they are leveraging at least CI. I don't think I've noticed one without a build file for quite some time.
Yeah, but that's why I pointed out that most projects aren't up to using Git yet. You are filtering out the most likely to have CI as a starting point.
-
@Obsolesce said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@scottalanmiller said in The Death of Sysadmin:
CI/CD is also one of those things that is just "one approach" in both IT and Dev circles. XP made it popular, it existed before but no one talked about it, and XP was only popular in "what people have heard of", not what people actively do. The majority of developers don't use it today. And many, maybe a majority or maybe not, don't think that it is appropriate even today. Regular integration is important, but many people believe that frequest, rather than continuous, is a better approach.
It's much like test first. It is a recent concept, not an old one. And while essentially all developers and DevOps know what it is, extremely few adopt it. It's today where CI was eight years ago.
Are you referring to the Agile approach of working? That's not the same thing as DevOps.
Um, duh. Agile is one approach to dev, one that promotes CI. I think you just stated by point, you are assuming one aspect of Agile dev and assuming that all DevOps comes from one bit of Agile dev, which isn't true at all.
-
@scottalanmiller said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@stacksofplates said in The Death of Sysadmin:
Pick a project on GitHub/GitLab. If they have a .travis yml, Jenkinsfile, .gitlab-ci.yml, bamboo.yml, etc they are leveraging at least CI. I don't think I've noticed one without a build file for quite some time.
Yeah, but that's why I pointed out that most projects aren't up to using Git yet. You are filtering out the most likely to have CI as a starting point.
Yeah I don't believe that, and anyway just because you're not using Git doesn't mean you're not using CI/CD.
-
@stacksofplates said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@scottalanmiller said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@stacksofplates said in The Death of Sysadmin:
Uh what are the "other" approaches?
Frequent Integration is more common, for example. If you work with developers, CI is something everyone knows, but the majority don't do. In fact, almost none do in the real world. Good ones might mostly do it, but the average developer isn't a good developer. The average development shop is still struggling with source control, CI isn't even on their horizon.
That's not an other. That's part of CI/CD.
That's the first I've heard of something like that. CI means "continuous", not "occasional". We moved to CI because what we had before wasn't often considered enough. If all those things are part of CI, then everything is CI and it's all we've ever done. But that's not the case, frequent, infrequent, automated, manual integration were all around and CI came about as an alternative.
-
@stacksofplates said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@scottalanmiller said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@stacksofplates said in The Death of Sysadmin:
Pick a project on GitHub/GitLab. If they have a .travis yml, Jenkinsfile, .gitlab-ci.yml, bamboo.yml, etc they are leveraging at least CI. I don't think I've noticed one without a build file for quite some time.
Yeah, but that's why I pointed out that most projects aren't up to using Git yet. You are filtering out the most likely to have CI as a starting point.
Yeah I don't believe that, and anyway just because you're not using Git doesn't mean you're not using CI/CD.
True, but essentially no one moves to CI without code management first, it's so hard and cart before the horse.
You are looking at big, public repos and viewing the world that way. But remember, most development is done in languages like Java on old code bases in big silos where all of these concepts remain uncommon.
-
@scottalanmiller said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@stacksofplates said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@scottalanmiller said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@stacksofplates said in The Death of Sysadmin:
Pick a project on GitHub/GitLab. If they have a .travis yml, Jenkinsfile, .gitlab-ci.yml, bamboo.yml, etc they are leveraging at least CI. I don't think I've noticed one without a build file for quite some time.
Yeah, but that's why I pointed out that most projects aren't up to using Git yet. You are filtering out the most likely to have CI as a starting point.
Yeah I don't believe that, and anyway just because you're not using Git doesn't mean you're not using CI/CD.
True, but essentially no one moves to CI without code management first, it's so hard and cart before the horse.
You are looking at big, public repos and viewing the world that way. But remember, most development is done in languages like Java on old code bases in big silos where all of these concepts remain uncommon.
Well we have thousands of applications 99% in Java in both SVN and Git and most are pipelined. Maybe not all are good pipelines, but they are pipelines.
-
@scottalanmiller said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@Obsolesce said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@scottalanmiller said in The Death of Sysadmin:
CI/CD is also one of those things that is just "one approach" in both IT and Dev circles. XP made it popular, it existed before but no one talked about it, and XP was only popular in "what people have heard of", not what people actively do. The majority of developers don't use it today. And many, maybe a majority or maybe not, don't think that it is appropriate even today. Regular integration is important, but many people believe that frequest, rather than continuous, is a better approach.
It's much like test first. It is a recent concept, not an old one. And while essentially all developers and DevOps know what it is, extremely few adopt it. It's today where CI was eight years ago.
Are you referring to the Agile approach of working? That's not the same thing as DevOps.
Um, duh. Agile is one approach to dev, one that promotes CI. I think you just stated by point, you are assuming one aspect of Agile dev and assuming that all DevOps comes from one bit of Agile dev, which isn't true at all.
I think you are wrong here.
-
@scottalanmiller said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@stacksofplates said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@scottalanmiller said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@stacksofplates said in The Death of Sysadmin:
Pick a project on GitHub/GitLab. If they have a .travis yml, Jenkinsfile, .gitlab-ci.yml, bamboo.yml, etc they are leveraging at least CI. I don't think I've noticed one without a build file for quite some time.
Yeah, but that's why I pointed out that most projects aren't up to using Git yet. You are filtering out the most likely to have CI as a starting point.
Yeah I don't believe that, and anyway just because you're not using Git doesn't mean you're not using CI/CD.
True, but essentially no one moves to CI without code management first, it's so hard and cart before the horse.
You are looking at big, public repos and viewing the world that way. But remember, most development is done in languages like Java on old code bases in big silos where all of these concepts remain uncommon.
Ant, Maven, and Gradle are the building blocks of Java build tools leveraged in CI/CD. Its odd you would pick Java as a language that wouldn't be a part of that process.
-
@Obsolesce said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@scottalanmiller said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@Obsolesce said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@scottalanmiller said in The Death of Sysadmin:
CI/CD is also one of those things that is just "one approach" in both IT and Dev circles. XP made it popular, it existed before but no one talked about it, and XP was only popular in "what people have heard of", not what people actively do. The majority of developers don't use it today. And many, maybe a majority or maybe not, don't think that it is appropriate even today. Regular integration is important, but many people believe that frequest, rather than continuous, is a better approach.
It's much like test first. It is a recent concept, not an old one. And while essentially all developers and DevOps know what it is, extremely few adopt it. It's today where CI was eight years ago.
Are you referring to the Agile approach of working? That's not the same thing as DevOps.
Um, duh. Agile is one approach to dev, one that promotes CI. I think you just stated by point, you are assuming one aspect of Agile dev and assuming that all DevOps comes from one bit of Agile dev, which isn't true at all.
I think you are wrong here.
How does repeating what I said make me wrong? I keep saying that they are not the same. Not sure what you think you are arguing against. Nothing I've said in any way conflates the two.
-
@stacksofplates said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@scottalanmiller said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@stacksofplates said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@scottalanmiller said in The Death of Sysadmin:
@stacksofplates said in The Death of Sysadmin:
Pick a project on GitHub/GitLab. If they have a .travis yml, Jenkinsfile, .gitlab-ci.yml, bamboo.yml, etc they are leveraging at least CI. I don't think I've noticed one without a build file for quite some time.
Yeah, but that's why I pointed out that most projects aren't up to using Git yet. You are filtering out the most likely to have CI as a starting point.
Yeah I don't believe that, and anyway just because you're not using Git doesn't mean you're not using CI/CD.
True, but essentially no one moves to CI without code management first, it's so hard and cart before the horse.
You are looking at big, public repos and viewing the world that way. But remember, most development is done in languages like Java on old code bases in big silos where all of these concepts remain uncommon.
Ant, Maven, and Gradle are the building blocks of Java build tools leveraged in CI/CD. Its odd you would pick Java as a language that wouldn't be a part of that process.
Not really at all, as Java was popular and entrenched before those were popular. And bottom line, no matter what tools are out there, most developers currently in the work force were not taught those approaches (they were unheard of in university even in 2006) and went to work at companies that had never heard of them.
I've worked in new Java west coast start ups in the last two years that chose Java and had never heard of this stuff. Is it odd that they picked Java? Yes, but not for that reason. They were just "normal developers" without these kinds of skills, and they weren't kids who learned this as "the one way to do it" like it is taught only extremely recently.
It might seem like these approaches are super obvious today, but this is an extremely recent phenomenon. It seems so obvious that we feel like it must have been how people did this for forever, but it just wasn't. CI wasn't popular until XP made it so, and XP was still one of those "niche things" that people thought was a crazy developer cult well into the 2000s.
-
Compare to system admin work....
By far the majority of people doing system admin work today aren't just not doing DevOps, they aren't even automating in any meaningful way. To all of us, this seems crazy, but we represent the 1%, we are the outliers. We are a self selecting group of people who take the time to learn things, get peer review, discuss, etc. Most people, including most IT people, don't do that. I do work for all kinds of companies, and let me tell you, even recommending something akin to DevOps is met with a "are you crazy, what world do you think this is" response in most cases. The IT folks are defensive because they don't think that they could ever do that, and management thinks it is nuts because they only want IT doing what they already know.
Even working in a multi-billion dollar hedge fund as recently as 2015, they were not yet aware of the RSAT tools for Windows (primarily a Windows shop) let alone PowerShell automation let alone DevOps. Yet they were quarter to a third of a million dollar a year admins working with the most expensive equipment and access to any training or tools known to man. But they just weren't pushing the envelope.
When we did DevOps for a giant 10,000 node cluster on Wall St. in 2006, it was so ground breaking that it was in all kinds of magazines as the first of its kind for the industry.
And these are shops that all write insane amounts of code, too, often with similar approaches.
But look even at SW let alone shops that don't get online at all. Those people aren't even remotely considering DevOps or even old fashioned scripting. Almost all just use the Windows GUI and, if we are lucky, the RSAT tools. That's reality. Average is a pretty low bar.
IT is the same as development. The average developer doesn't know "patterns" yet, and that was the "CI of 1992".
-
And that brings us back to the OP. The world of system administration is so bad, because of averages, that even if every great shop in the world goes to DevOps, containerization, cloud, insert buzz word here, tons and tons of shops are going to remain doing snowflake work for decades to come. And the people who will be out of work aren't the good system admins who were great but otherwise failed to move into devops, no, it's going to be the crappy ones on the bottom that can't compete even doing GUI work. The bottom is where the skimming happens, not the top.
