[LINK] No more human sysadmins??

[Robert Brockway]

On Fri, 9 Aug 2013, Rachel Polanskis wrote:

> As a sysadmin who is watching their job disintegrate, pushing the devops 
> line for many years, but continually forced to specialise, I just know 
> my future has been commoditised. Sysadmins are a fast disappearing 
> species, especially in environments that drank the Service Based koolaid 
> and used it as an excuse to push it out.

Hi Rachel.  It sounds like you're not very happy about the way things are 
going and that's certainly sad to year.  I remember your name popping up 
on various lists over the years.  I can't remember which ones exactly but 
I'm sure SAGE-AU was one of them.

I don't agree that sysadmins are a fast disappearing species.  I do 
believe that Sysadmins who worked as they did 10 years are a fast 
disappearing species.

One of the notable characteristics of sysadmin work in my view is that it 
is in a constant state of flux.  As abstraction layers are added the 
sysadmin sits at or near the top layer (mostly) making stuff work.  The 
work has changed but from my view it has generally become more 
interesting.  I don't need to compile sendmail anymore[1] - I'll worry 
about making automated RT4 ticket creation work from Icinga instead. 
Yeah I can do it with email but there are better ways.

Whether services are run locally, or hosted or whatever, there is a need 
to make stuff work and to keep it working and this is where the sysadmin 
has always sat - it's just the stuff that keeps changing.

[1] I'll install Postfix from a package instead, or more likely, the 
entire build will be automated.

Cheers,

Rob

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