I was bummed out when reading How do I get my sysadmin to do anything? by Paul Boutin. Most of the content is fine, sure, but this line bothered me:
No one sets out to be a professional systems administrator — do you ever see kids wearing toy pagers playing sysadmin?
… well, I did, in essence. From high school on I was destine to be an SA. Its what I wanted to do, what I wanted to be. I would draw Slayer, Megadeth, and “Sun Microsystems logo’s on my binders, I inserted Sun midrange data sheets into my Trapper-Keeper. I wanted to work on big computers, Cray’s, Sun’s and Thinking Machines, and be a great sysadmin. To this day thats unchanged.
Paul later says “sysadmin is a career cul-de-sac”, but I don’t see that. I plan to continue being a sysadmin for years to come… this isn’t a pitstop in my youth. Frankly, any career is the same if you choose to see it that way. I plan to follow my career path like any other, gaining more power, influence, and knowledge and climbing that ladder, which for a sysadmin leads from Junior, to Senior, to Lead, to Director, to CTO, and perhaps beyond… it’s all the same really, just with more power and influence and knowledge that are spread further and further across an organization or organizations.
I’ll admit that my approach and view of administration differs from the majority of my peers and onlookers. I see the craft as having a uniquely wide range of functions and roles. For instance, part of an admins job is to make technology decisions and recommendations, taken to that logical end you become a marketer who actively evangelizes a given technology solution… and for me that results in standing in the Sun booth at JavaOne and other conferences sharing the good news. Am I in marketing? No. I’m simply taking part of my role as a sysadmin to its natural and logical end. Another example, solving problems. You find a problem, you research and fix the problem, you apply that research to furthering the thing that you originally set out to fix and ultimately move in one of several direction such as documenting the thing, coding on the thing, or creating a new better thing. Are you now in tech pubs or development? No, you’re simply taking that role as a sysadmin to its natural and logical end.
My point being… administration is a career and a very fulfilling one. A challenging one, yes, but for those of us who have a passion for technology it’s exactly what we want to be doing with our lives and exactly what we plan to keep doing. Whether I’m labeling servers or writing kernel modules, I’m a sysadmin and proud of it.
Well said, Ben!
I’m a vocational system administrator. I have alway liked to toy with computers, from inside to outside, and done the ocasional
programming. But where I shine is in making the things go smooth, be it connecting the unconnectable, or configuring the unconfigurable. I am aware that a non-working machine is a stopper for somebody needing to get his/her work done. Helping these people is a natural way to make this a better world, not a nuissance!
As usual, everyone’s mileage may vary, so Paul can have had a bad time doing all of this. I for one have had it also, but that has never stopped me for longing to help people. After all, no matter how big or small a company is, at the end of the day, there is only people who wants to do his/her work the better possible way. And there are we, helping with the servers, the networks, the printers…
Our work is to help them work. And we are proud of it!
So I wasn’t the only person graffitting Sun Microsystems logos on my school jotters? Cool!
Yeah, I grew up wanting to be a sysadmin. University was a predestined path for me, so I did software engineering, but I spent most of my time doing sysadmin for the Tardis[1] project and bugging the SAs at the Uni into letting me play with Sun kit.
But I fell into the dark side. I didn’t see how sysadmin could be a career with a good future and a great salary. So I’m a software developer. I’d still love to get more involved in the systems side of stuff, particularly building big infrastructure — everything from the Storage (mmm, Thumpers!) at the back end to the BGP routers at the front. But I haven’t found the opportunity yet. One day.
[1] http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/
Well said. Back in the mid 90s in college, while I was on to get my degree in Economics, I learned that I loved linux and unix. At that point, despite my degree, I decided that I wanted to work with unix as a career since I loved it, regardless of pay and stability. Of course, things have turned out nicely on both fronts.
13 years later, I still love unix, still hate AIX, and couldn
I had a CS prof years ago try to explain to me the difference between a sysadmin and a software engineer as:
A software engineer designs complex software (*cough*) while a sysadmin is well versed in USING and implementing complex software.
My disagreement at the time was obvious, because my passion was system administration, but software design/development was the only path to working on large scale systems in college.
Requiring skills ranging from datacenter design, l3/l4 networking, coding (in a variety of languages and on a long list of platforms). The sysadmin is at heart the true technical savant, imho.
-Thomas
System administration is a big job. Those who work in the wrong environments with the wrong attitude make it seem like drudgery. But when approached holistically, as you indicate, it is a craft, and it is very fulfilling. You get a change to work at every level of “the stack.”
Apparently he’s never worked with a real Sys Admin before. In my mind there are two types of SAs. Those that are passionate about what they do and will be working on it until the wee hours of the morning because they want to, not because they have to. And those that are 9 to 5ers doing the SA thing just long enough to become a manager so they can stop doing the hands on work.
I find that at work I’m the one pushing the technology envelope because my personal projects demand it. Whether that’s cutting edge rails apps or Zones or security or whatever. By contrast I see others who are virtually drug into new technology. Passionate SAs are out there but they are certainly more rare than your garden variety SA but you know it when you work with one. Judging by Paul’s comments he’s never worked with one.
I agree with you also. I’m still in school (High School) and I have wanted to be a sysadmin ever since 8th grade, since I started using UNIX systems then. I think system administration sounds like a good job. What advice do you have for someone looking to get into this field?
I’m an SA, one of those dedicated, stay up all night types, possibly addicted to the field and of course Unix … to say that system administration is not a career is totally wrong, management and pretty much anything else holds no interest for me, i am fortunate to work for a very large Solaris house, possibly the biggest
and couldn’t be happier when digging around in oodles of arcane stuff, cant think of anything else id rather do … for Zachary above … advice to get into the field. read anything you can, use a Unix of any variety, read some more, break stuff, fix stuff, read some more, ask some questions, read some more, fix stuff, etc … most importantly ! HAVE FUN and don’t be afraid of breaking things, you can always fix it again 
I
Great comment Ben,
I think one of the problems with the image of a system administrator as a career is that it has such a broad connotation. When I started out as a jr UNIX system administrator, my offical title was student UNIX operator I. But I did everything from doing light systems programming in C to changing reels, printer paper and user assistance. I saw what the more senior admins were doing and it was truly impressive, these were real system administrators. I decided I loved doing both systems programming and systems administrator
Now days I think the label applies to everyone from help desk people, to windows gui jockeys and SMIT (AIX) massagers to people who are passionate about the underlying technology and the fascination with learning new things, solving problems and making machines do neat things.
There are so many people who ‘got into IT ’cause it pays well’ and have little to no fascination with the subject, and the Boutin guy is probably in the crow.
C()
Being a sysadmin is great job – you can push it in any direction your company will let you. However it’s also true that no matter how many presentations you do for management or how many times you clean up their short-sighted decisions you will never be viewed any better than a replaceable techie. Maybe it’s just the place I work at…but I would be curious to know if others have the same experience. Seems the only people who get ahead are those who can BS really, really well.
Zachary,
My advice would be to take notes on anything interesting you do. Then post those notes on a webpage so that others will have an easy time doing the same thing. Then, when you finally do apply for a job, put a link to the notes on your resume. Also, interact with listservs and other elements of the IT community.
After a couple of years worth of notes and interacting the community, the site will prove without a doubt that you’re a real thing — nobody can produce a substantial amount of technical notes overnight. Also, Googling your name (provided it’s not too common) will probably leave the impression that you’re a bona-fide sysadmin and can work with the IT community too. A resume is great — but a resume backed up by a website which contains information related to your career-path that would take weeks or months to write means a whole lot more — it’s kind-of like a graphic designer who brings a portfolio to an interview. As it worked that way for me.
As Cass said, buiding stuff and breaking stuff and fixing it again, tinkering, and learning to use new tools is vital — but it sounds like you’re doing that already.
Best of luck, and hopefully I’ll see you at a tradeshow or in a job-interview in a couple of years!
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Very interesting article: “Systems Administration as a Career: A Response”
Nice blog
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Career in Administration is a challenging one. Its a very good career. The post is very good.
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