Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky
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@IRJ said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
Admin roles are also dying with immutable infrastructure and HA. Designing a system that is immutable and highly available isn't expensive or time consuming on the cloud anymore.
That's not really a thing yet. People talk about it, but it's not out there impacting people in practice. And when you make things too immutable, you just shift the roles around and it all starts over again. Cloud really isn't here or there, it just shifts the names of things. But someone is still designing the initial system and someone (maybe the same person) is managing it.
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@IRJ said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@scottalanmiller said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@IRJ said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
It's the same way in IT. Most people will not start in engineering roles or design roles. We never see these positions as entry level with zero experience.
Same with administration, though. Admins require even more experience and knowledge to not be dangerous.
I'm actually saying that we see zero experience engineers everywhere, every day. It's the most common thing to have engineers have zero idea what's going on so much of the time.
I have never seen a true engineering position that says zero experience required before. I frequent LinkedIn, glassdoor, and other job boards.
Have any you care to share?
Sure you have. You see them every day. No one CALLS it engineering, but I already gave examples. For example... literally every FreeNAS ever deployed.
What would job boards tell you about this? You are using companies "titles" as a reference to their "roles". The two are rarely related.
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@scottalanmiller said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@IRJ said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
Admin roles are also dying with immutable infrastructure and HA. Designing a system that is immutable and highly available isn't expensive or time consuming on the cloud anymore.But someone is still designing the initial system and someone (maybe the same person) is managing it.
Yeah so you don't have an admin here as you admit. You have an engineer designing the system and replacing the system if there is issues. It's all design and no maintenance. Maintenance is automated during build.
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Every system that exists has been engineered. Every one. Most companies don't have a single engineering titled person, yet every one has someone that did their engineering. Almost all of those use either a zero experience engineer and/or they have nearly full time admins doing engineering on the side as an afterthought. Those two approaches account for almost the entire market.
The market for full time, professionally trained, skilled system engineers represents probably only 1-5% of the entire engineering in IT effort that exists. If your company has an engineering role, then it's already an outlier statistically within the field.
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@IRJ said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@scottalanmiller said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@IRJ said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
Admin roles are also dying with immutable infrastructure and HA. Designing a system that is immutable and highly available isn't expensive or time consuming on the cloud anymore.But someone is still designing the initial system and someone (maybe the same person) is managing it.
Yeah so you don't have an admin here as you admit. You have an engineer designing the system and replacing the system if there is issues. It's all design and no maintenance. Maintenance is automated during build.
Not in the real world. That's a nice theory, but applies to effectively no one anywhere. In the real world, engineering almost always is a trivial effort that involves almost no time, skill or planning, and all the effort goes into years of administration that deals with that haphazard system.
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@scottalanmiller said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@Obsolesce said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@scottalanmiller said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
Since probably effectively never arise until products are in production, it feels natural to hold admins accountable for the mistakes of engineers. Engineers toss the match over their shoulders and get to walk away. Organizations need to spend more time validating in real time what engineers do, not allow them to take the easy was out, and not leave them out of disaster discussions later.
Maybe in SMB it's like that. But in the larger places I've seen lately the world revolves around an Agile approach and constant feedback between stakeholders, admins, and engineers. There's thorough testing, test groups, pilots, and business pilots. Nobody is playing the blame game on admins that I've seen, not even a hint. The validation of what engineers are doing is huge from what I've seen. Though, definitely not in the SMB.
Maybe in the SMB you have 2 IT dudes, Engineer 1 and Admin 1.... Engineer 1 implements FreeNAS for the company's new storage solution and it fucks up because nobody knows what they are doing. But I can tell you that shit wouldn't wouldn't even pass as a concept in the Enterprises I've seen and talked to.
SMB "always" makes engineering an afterthought role of an admin. They hire admins, and have them do engineering for the itty bitty bit that is needed. Even a 300 person company might need under one week of engineering time a year. And any remotely qualified admin can do the engineering in their sleep most of the time. So that's what the SMB does.
OKay, so the SMB only has "admins", who are designing their systems, administering them, and then taking the heat? Well yeah, can't blame the engineer if there isn't one, when it was the Admin who did set it all up.
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@scottalanmiller said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@IRJ said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@scottalanmiller said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@IRJ said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
Admin roles are also dying with immutable infrastructure and HA. Designing a system that is immutable and highly available isn't expensive or time consuming on the cloud anymore.But someone is still designing the initial system and someone (maybe the same person) is managing it.
Yeah so you don't have an admin here as you admit. You have an engineer designing the system and replacing the system if there is issues. It's all design and no maintenance. Maintenance is automated during build.
Not in the real world. That's a nice theory, but applies to effectively no one anywhere. In the real world, engineering almost always is a trivial effort that involves almost no time, skill or planning, and all the effort goes into years of administration that deals with that haphazard system.
That's completely false. Engineering is almost always a trivial effort......
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@Obsolesce said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@scottalanmiller said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@Obsolesce said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@scottalanmiller said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
Since probably effectively never arise until products are in production, it feels natural to hold admins accountable for the mistakes of engineers. Engineers toss the match over their shoulders and get to walk away. Organizations need to spend more time validating in real time what engineers do, not allow them to take the easy was out, and not leave them out of disaster discussions later.
Maybe in SMB it's like that. But in the larger places I've seen lately the world revolves around an Agile approach and constant feedback between stakeholders, admins, and engineers. There's thorough testing, test groups, pilots, and business pilots. Nobody is playing the blame game on admins that I've seen, not even a hint. The validation of what engineers are doing is huge from what I've seen. Though, definitely not in the SMB.
Maybe in the SMB you have 2 IT dudes, Engineer 1 and Admin 1.... Engineer 1 implements FreeNAS for the company's new storage solution and it fucks up because nobody knows what they are doing. But I can tell you that shit wouldn't wouldn't even pass as a concept in the Enterprises I've seen and talked to.
SMB "always" makes engineering an afterthought role of an admin. They hire admins, and have them do engineering for the itty bitty bit that is needed. Even a 300 person company might need under one week of engineering time a year. And any remotely qualified admin can do the engineering in their sleep most of the time. So that's what the SMB does.
OKay, so the SMB only has "admins", who are designing their systems, administering them, and then taking the heat? Well yeah, can't blame the engineer if there isn't one, when it was the Admin who did set it all up.
No one was about blaming them. The point being - it's not being treated as a discipline. It's treated as "well he's an admin, so he can just engineer, too" because generally everyone sees it as a trivial "tack on" to administration. They don't think about the fact that it's the engineering role, they just think of engineering overall as something not worth thinking about. That's the point - it's overlooked because people generally think of it as trivial and unimportant and easy.
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@stacksofplates said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@scottalanmiller said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@IRJ said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@scottalanmiller said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@IRJ said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
Admin roles are also dying with immutable infrastructure and HA. Designing a system that is immutable and highly available isn't expensive or time consuming on the cloud anymore.But someone is still designing the initial system and someone (maybe the same person) is managing it.
Yeah so you don't have an admin here as you admit. You have an engineer designing the system and replacing the system if there is issues. It's all design and no maintenance. Maintenance is automated during build.
Not in the real world. That's a nice theory, but applies to effectively no one anywhere. In the real world, engineering almost always is a trivial effort that involves almost no time, skill or planning, and all the effort goes into years of administration that deals with that haphazard system.
That's completely false. Engineering is almost always a trivial effort......
It's completely true and I've given example after example. In the real world, engineering is generally done without planning or resources and it works enough for people to accept it. Then all the effort is hoisted onto administration. You can argue, but you can't deny that this is what 95%+ of the market does.
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@scottalanmiller said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@IRJ said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@scottalanmiller said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@IRJ said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
Admin roles are also dying with immutable infrastructure and HA. Designing a system that is immutable and highly available isn't expensive or time consuming on the cloud anymore.But someone is still designing the initial system and someone (maybe the same person) is managing it.
Yeah so you don't have an admin here as you admit. You have an engineer designing the system and replacing the system if there is issues. It's all design and no maintenance. Maintenance is automated during build.
Not in the real world. That's a nice theory, but applies to effectively no one anywhere. In the real world, engineering almost always is a trivial effort that involves almost no time, skill or planning, and all the effort goes into years of administration that deals with that haphazard system.
Its definitely how SaaS providers work nowadays. We'd lose our shirts if we spent money paying people to do busy work admin tasks.
It's expensive and unnecessary in modern IT. I do agree that alot of places aren't doing it right today, but that's rapidly changing. The job market shows this and it's undeniable
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I'm flaborgasted that you guys thing that this isn't the most obvious thing ever, once it's been said. You all have been on this forum and others, you know that this is how the entire MSP market works, the entire SMB market, most larger companies. Engineering isn't given real respect, people with engineering titles are often not even engineers (tons of places use it as a rank rather than a role - the titles are actually backwards from reality) and almost no thought is put into it at all... to the point that almost no one even knows that an engineering would do versus an admin.
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@IRJ said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
Its definitely how SaaS providers work nowadays. We'd lose our shirts if we spent money paying people to do busy work admin tasks.
Not really. A few, but very few. It's a great ideal to strive towards, for certain workloads, but it flat out is not the norm in any industry.
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@IRJ said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
It's expensive and unnecessary in modern IT. I do agree that alot of places aren't doing it right today, but that's rapidly changing. The job market shows this and it's undeniable
Maybe it'll be common in the future. But even that I doubt. Predictions like that have been common for decades, but at the end of the day, decades after these things were promoted as "the future" we still see it almost never and we are still trying to get the "average" shop to think about 1990's multi-tier design instead of client/server architecture with flat file databases.
The market moves really, really slowly and once you are promoting concepts that the average company cannot hire someone who can even understand enough to talk about, you tend to get a lot of pushback as management can't comprehend how to handle their business that way.
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@scottalanmiller said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@Obsolesce said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@scottalanmiller said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@Obsolesce said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@scottalanmiller said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
Since probably effectively never arise until products are in production, it feels natural to hold admins accountable for the mistakes of engineers. Engineers toss the match over their shoulders and get to walk away. Organizations need to spend more time validating in real time what engineers do, not allow them to take the easy was out, and not leave them out of disaster discussions later.
Maybe in SMB it's like that. But in the larger places I've seen lately the world revolves around an Agile approach and constant feedback between stakeholders, admins, and engineers. There's thorough testing, test groups, pilots, and business pilots. Nobody is playing the blame game on admins that I've seen, not even a hint. The validation of what engineers are doing is huge from what I've seen. Though, definitely not in the SMB.
Maybe in the SMB you have 2 IT dudes, Engineer 1 and Admin 1.... Engineer 1 implements FreeNAS for the company's new storage solution and it fucks up because nobody knows what they are doing. But I can tell you that shit wouldn't wouldn't even pass as a concept in the Enterprises I've seen and talked to.
SMB "always" makes engineering an afterthought role of an admin. They hire admins, and have them do engineering for the itty bitty bit that is needed. Even a 300 person company might need under one week of engineering time a year. And any remotely qualified admin can do the engineering in their sleep most of the time. So that's what the SMB does.
OKay, so the SMB only has "admins", who are designing their systems, administering them, and then taking the heat? Well yeah, can't blame the engineer if there isn't one, when it was the Admin who did set it all up.
No one was about blaming them. The point being - it's not being treated as a discipline. It's treated as "well he's an admin, so he can just engineer, too" because generally everyone sees it as a trivial "tack on" to administration. They don't think about the fact that it's the engineering role, they just think of engineering overall as something not worth thinking about. That's the point - it's overlooked because people generally think of it as trivial and unimportant and easy.
I think it just depends on the environment and context. A proper engineer and proper administrator are totally separate and different jobs. Just like Architect is totally separate.
I mean sure, you can have 1-man IT shop ("it manager" plus a IT Admin) in a 300 person SMB, where that one guy has to play all three roles... architect, engineer, and administer everything. But that's not what we're talking about here at all. That's just your typical IT Generalist. But you will have proper engineers, that engineers some focused aspect.... such as system or service the company consumes. Then you may have a proper admin, for example a DBA, etc.
But you can't really have proper engineering, architect, and admin roles in the SMB IMO.
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@scottalanmiller said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@stacksofplates said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@scottalanmiller said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@IRJ said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@scottalanmiller said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@IRJ said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
Admin roles are also dying with immutable infrastructure and HA. Designing a system that is immutable and highly available isn't expensive or time consuming on the cloud anymore.But someone is still designing the initial system and someone (maybe the same person) is managing it.
Yeah so you don't have an admin here as you admit. You have an engineer designing the system and replacing the system if there is issues. It's all design and no maintenance. Maintenance is automated during build.
Not in the real world. That's a nice theory, but applies to effectively no one anywhere. In the real world, engineering almost always is a trivial effort that involves almost no time, skill or planning, and all the effort goes into years of administration that deals with that haphazard system.
That's completely false. Engineering is almost always a trivial effort......
It's completely true and I've given example after example. In the real world, engineering is generally done without planning or resources and it works enough for people to accept it. Then all the effort is hoisted onto administration. You can argue, but you can't deny that this is what 95%+ of the market does.
No you gave an example of FreeNAS and have completely ignored things like SRE where design upfront including architecture, engineering, coffee design, IaC, etc are all roles for the engineer. Immutability is vital and SREs are embedded in specific teams and only supporting that application.
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@scottalanmiller said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
I'm flaborgasted that you guys thing that this isn't the most obvious thing ever, once it's been said. You all have been on this forum and others, you know that this is how the entire MSP market works, the entire SMB market, most larger companies. Engineering isn't given real respect, people with engineering titles are often not even engineers (tons of places use it as a rank rather than a role - the titles are actually backwards from reality) and almost no thought is put into it at all... to the point that almost no one even knows that an engineering would do versus an admin.
Because you have people actually in the industry currently telling you how enterprises are doing it. Not how they did it in 2004.
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@Obsolesce said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
I think it just depends on the environment and context. A proper engineer and proper administrator are totally separate and different jobs. Just like Architect is totally separate.
Absolutely, no question. I've promoted this for years. I speak at conferences about it. I write about it.
But in the real world, almost all (and I REALLY mean ALMOST ALL) companies do one of two things...
- Mix the two together in a single person and ignore the engineering portion to the point of absurdity.
- Use the titles for things unrelated to the admin and eng roles and pretend that they don't understand English.
Are there shops that take it seriously? Yes, my Wall St. experience was universal that every shop did. And all the same, and all that matched english. But outside of that, it stays pretty rare. Even IBM doesn't use the terms correctly. Their senior "engineers" are called "analysts" and engineer means "junior."
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@Obsolesce said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
But you can't really have proper engineering, architect, and admin roles in the SMB IMO.
Correct. I never said that they could. I've been pointing out that in the SMB they focus exclusively on the admin portion of the role and consider all other aspects to be after thoughts. Only the admin function do they think about day to day.
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@stacksofplates said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@scottalanmiller said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@stacksofplates said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@scottalanmiller said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@IRJ said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@scottalanmiller said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@IRJ said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
Admin roles are also dying with immutable infrastructure and HA. Designing a system that is immutable and highly available isn't expensive or time consuming on the cloud anymore.But someone is still designing the initial system and someone (maybe the same person) is managing it.
Yeah so you don't have an admin here as you admit. You have an engineer designing the system and replacing the system if there is issues. It's all design and no maintenance. Maintenance is automated during build.
Not in the real world. That's a nice theory, but applies to effectively no one anywhere. In the real world, engineering almost always is a trivial effort that involves almost no time, skill or planning, and all the effort goes into years of administration that deals with that haphazard system.
That's completely false. Engineering is almost always a trivial effort......
It's completely true and I've given example after example. In the real world, engineering is generally done without planning or resources and it works enough for people to accept it. Then all the effort is hoisted onto administration. You can argue, but you can't deny that this is what 95%+ of the market does.
No you gave an example of FreeNAS and have completely ignored things like SRE where design upfront including architecture, engineering, coffee design, IaC, etc are all roles for the engineer. Immutability is vital and SREs are embedded in specific teams and only supporting that application.
Yes, but the difference is my example represents nearly the entire market. I didn't say that there weren't exceptions. But that's what they are.
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@stacksofplates said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
@scottalanmiller said in Engineering vs Administration - That's what makes Windows and FreeNAS so risky:
I'm flaborgasted that you guys thing that this isn't the most obvious thing ever, once it's been said. You all have been on this forum and others, you know that this is how the entire MSP market works, the entire SMB market, most larger companies. Engineering isn't given real respect, people with engineering titles are often not even engineers (tons of places use it as a rank rather than a role - the titles are actually backwards from reality) and almost no thought is put into it at all... to the point that almost no one even knows that an engineering would do versus an admin.
Because you have people actually in the industry currently telling you how enterprises are doing it. Not how they did it in 2004.
Yes, but you guys talk to those companies too. I'm not somehow magical in getting to talk to enterprises and SMBs. This community alone has lots of both.
