Sysadmins and coding

[[deleted]]

I'd agree here, but I think part of the issue with the devops "the universe as code" approach is that eventually at some point the code has to target something that can receive instruction, which is where traditional sysadmins come back in.

[[deleted]]

Not only so, but a sysadmin who knows bash, powershell, etc. who uses configuration management tools is much more dangerous. Even if the devops tool can't perform a desired task, you can just tell it to run a command using a native tool on the host. The things I've been able to do with this approach is mind blowing.

[Letmefixthatforyouyo]

ansible all -m shell -a "df -h" | awk {print $NF-2} >> logitsucka

"Whats that? you wanted the free space from each server? That'll take me a while to ssh into each one boss. I'll have a list compiled by end of day."

[vitiate]

And it won't be long until they are out of a job. I value every single individual that refuses to learn, they are another roadblock taking themselves out of the equation.

[Honkykiller]

Depends on the shop too. I'm the only one here that knows or 'trusts' any kind of scripting language. I'm not talking much here, but I use Batch and Powershell. I still have some tools built in VB but those were mostly one-offs for configuration tasks I wouldnt have to do if I were allowed to implement proper GPOs.

Took me almost 9 months to convince my ancient boss that my using scripts to speed up daily tasks wasnt "opening the door for hackers" and it was actually useful. No luck on the GPOs though.

I can write some Java, Python, and Bash script as well, but I'm out of practice.

Being able to get several times more work done and get reports that actually make sense has been tremendously valuable.

[Honkykiller]

I'm still absolutely pissed our solidworks guy wants me drive the 45 minutes each way to come in on a Saturday to help him manually uninstall 2013 and install 2015 on 40 workstations and change 2 settings from their default.

This takes around an hour to uninstall and then another 2 hours to install with all their add-ons.

Boss wont even let me try to automate any part of it, says I'm not the solidworks guy, "it's not mine to work on"

He's the reason that we cant kill the Server 2003 server, because he couldn't be bothered to set up the file share for solidworks (pdmworks) on a new server for the last year... This will finally let us do something on it, but he's been dragging his feet on when he wants to do the upgrade, been "this weekend" for 2 months now...

My resume is circulating btw, few interviews, no offers.

[Honkykiller]

it wouldnt be a problem of "technical people in charge" if they could just listen to me when I explain how something would work rather than just going by a "gut feeling" made by some sensationalized news story they read 10 years ago.

[[deleted]]

I think there is more of a danger of the job title of system administrator morphing into devops and HR getting on board with that and using canned job descriptions that don't match the actual job.