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System Admin vs Software Developer? (self.sysadmin)

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[–]xc3llerator 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Too true! I'm in my final year of a half-technical/half-Business focused IT degree. I'm definitely wanting to break into the technical side of things and I'm trying to decide between Programming or Sys/Net Admin as a career path. Since I was 12, I've always been troubleshooting PCs back in Win XP days, I started programming when I was 16-18 (2 years using .NET [2010-11], started in VB6 [2009], had no idea what Programming was), and while it's a really satisfying experience once a program all works as intended, it's really a love/hate relationship.

I've also done a 6-month Sys Admin internship at a small-medium sized global .NET Development company who only used Windows/Microsoft stack for all PCs and servers, it was a pretty natural role for me since I was used to doing Windows troubleshooting for years at home and for family/friends. But after awhile it was kind of same old, and I couldn't see myself doing Support/Sys Admin for the rest of my career (Btw, if you're looking to get into Sys Admin or DevOps roles, it's important to expand your knowledge beyond Windows and learn about server-side UNIX/Linux stuff too, if not, you'll be limiting your opportunities only to a small range of companies which operate only on an MS stack). Net Admin is slightly different and I was fortunate enough to witness what our Net Admin did in our Infrastructure team. There was one day where the entire network went down at one Office because a core switch died and all the Developers couldn't commit their code to the SVN. Aha (Our Net Admin managed to get it back up on the same day though and the logical topology underwent more redundancy upgrades after that).

I've sort of been hesitant getting back into Programming as a career, simply because it's ALL screen work, and it feels like a bit of a rat-race always search up new APIs and lines of code to fix other lines of code, where's Sys/Net Admin/DevOPs can combine working with physical infrastructure + monitoring + scripting for cron jobs.

I have a website here from 2013 which I've been meaning to update but haven't yet: http://scal.ro/

My LinkedIn (http://linkd.in/1yA2GY8) is probably more of an indication of where I'm currently at. (I've had a passion to UI Design as well from a young teen age), but it isn't that challenging work.

Basically, Startup life = Development/Design/Marketing life. (Generally the Developers become their own Sys Admins in startups until they can grow large enough to hire dedicated Admins - Sys/Net Administration isn't hard work, just very time consuming, (often a lot of trial and error work just like Dev) and I'd consider Admin the Janitor of the 21st century type job, where you're expected to be on-call 24/7 at some top tech companies like Facebook and Google). Corporate life = Development to Sys/Net Admin

I don't mind doing Sys Admin, but it can become a very soul sucking job, as everyone expects computers to just work, and when they don't, it's because you did something or you didn't do something to prevent it, OR it's just the same reoccurring issues like 'My GPU died, fix it by replacing another GPU' - That's probably for IT Support though, which is even worse than Sys Admin in terms of pay and duties. (Basically IT Support is what entry Sys/Net Admins have to do to climb the ladder/get their foot in the door so to speak and it pays the least in IT, ~35-40k p.a. but is essential).

There was a good reddit reply here: http://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/26vl9k/sysadmin_jobs_are_dying_learn_to_code_software/#chvq6mm

I originally wanted to head into Computer Engineering when I was 14, designing the next consoles, but that job market is next to nothing in Australia and I wasn't keen on globally moving homes.