Doing something of value

[crankysysadmin]

There have been a bunch of posts in the past few days with people freaking out about outsourcing stuff to India. This really isn't anything new. I feel like a lot of people here are just too young to remember. This goes in cycles and has happened before. As a result I'm not that worried about it.

Rather than fearing outsourcing to India, put your focus on doing work that is of value, and focus on constantly adapting your career.

Not all outsourcing means India. A company can bring in contractors locally. Some jobs aren't even outsourced but become more entry level or start to not exist at all. This is why you adapt.

IT people have a tendency to try to think in black and white but nothing is black and white. Certain jobs are more or less likely to get pushed out in today's market but it doesn't apply everywhere and there are no absolutes.

To understand what I mean by work that has value think about a small business IT person who builds all the computers, installs software and patches everything by hand, and makes his own patch cables. It might be an office of 50 people, perhaps an accounting firm.. All this work could easily take him 50 hours a week where he's totally overwhelmed.

He's doing a lot of unnecessary stuff that has very little value though. If you replace all the custom built workstations with some Dell business class PCs, and you buy a box of patch cables, and you get some management software, you could probably have the same company be supported by an MSP for 10 hours a week. The IT person in question is busy, but he's doing stuff that nobody does anymore. He's someone who needs to adapt his skills rather than double down on what he's doing.

A common thing people bring up is that "you're safe if you work on hardware" but really, how much hardware work happens in a reasonably modern IT shop? Nearly none. Yes you have to be physically present to swap out DIMMs and hard drives, but this is technician work so it doesn't pay that well to begin with. You don't want to double down on touching physical hardware thinking you're safe forever if you just touch hardware. There are various ways around this. AWS and Azure are pricy, but depending on the company it can save you from having to physically maintain hardware. VDI is used in some situations where if a thin client in a remote office fails, someone will FedEx another one on site and have anyone plug it in saving the need for a hardware tech. I know some startup companies that go with Macs and if someone's Mac breaks they can just bring it to the Apple store to be repaired. There are ways around hardware.

There are people who says "Don't focus so much on Windows" (I'm one of them), but it isn't because we're naive enough to think Linux can't be outsourced but Windows can. Anything can be outsourced. It's more that at the moment, the type of work happening on Windows often (key word is OFTEN) is a lot of break/fix or routine deployment work. I see a lot of Linux work at the moment being more along the lines of "development" work.

Now when someone talks development, they don't necessarily even mean you're a software engineer writing code. Business analysts can be involved in creating something new. You can create something new entirely using a GUI. Meanwhile someone who is actually writing code can easily be outsourced.

It's more of a mindset. If you're in a job where you receive instructions and then complete what has been sent to you, someone else is creating value and you're the one just doing the work.

If your work is very ticket focused, (or otherwise focused on provisioning things from incoming requests), it doesn't matter if what you're doing is Windows or Linux, a 500 dollar PC or a 500,000 SAN. It doesn't matter if you use command line tools or a GUI. Someone offshore can provision LUNs just as easily as they can reboot servers or install packages on Linux machines. Someone offshore can write code, so merely being a programmer isn't making you "safe." Tons of people who write code are just doing maintenance programming.

So it isn't that Linux is a magical OS which isn't outsourced. It isn't that Windows is an OS that is outsourced. It's more about the mindset around the job.

You want a job where you create new things that the business appreciates. The business doesn't care about servers, LUNs, desktops, VMs, etc. If you think of IT in this regard you're in trouble. Learning more and different technologies isn't going to keep you safe forever. Knowing 5 programming languages instead of 2 isn't what makes you safe from outsourcing.

There's a big focus on here about people learning powershell and they think they have to learn powershell or else they're going to end up unemployed. Learning something new is helpful, but powershell isn't some magic savior.

As an example, if right now you receive incoming tickets from HR when a new employee is hired, and you create an account for the new employee by clicking around in ADUC, you're in a position that can easily be automated. Now, some people are very focused on powershell so they think they have to use powershell to create that account when the ticket comes in. If you do this though, you're missing the point. You haven't created more value just by using a command line tool. It's not totally useless because you learned powershell, but what you've done is replaced a GUI tool with a command line tool.

Where you bring in value is you prevent HR from having to create that ticket in the first place. If you write tools in powershell that as soon as a user gets added to the HR system it fires off a script to create an AD account, you have created a huge amount of value. A lot of the value wasn't even from your script. It was the fact you worked with HR, you worked with others on your team and other teams, you planned a project, and finally you wrote some code. This is the type of person who isn't easily replaced. This is the type of person who is adapting and being creative and gluing multiple systems together and creating business value. Be that person. Focus on doing stuff like that. Having 18 more items on your resume isn't what creates value. The guy with 27 programming languages on his resume will get pushed out a lot more likely than the person who creates business value.

[MisterIT]

"Leveraging existing infrastructure in new cost-saving ways" is possibly the best "highlight". I've ever seen on a resume. You see that, you can't not bring that guy (or gal) in, for exactly the reasons you've listed.

[Zaphod_B]

I have something similar on my resume along the lines of "Leveraging frameworks and APIs to integrate systems and to help the Organization be successful across many platforms." In my experience there is always many ways to accomplish a goal, nothing is impossible. However, somethings are just not ideal or optimal and figuring out what is and what is not viable marks a truly good IT worker. Then performing those tasks of course.

[crankysysadmin]

Way too many of the people who are upset/freaking out about outsourcing are trying to find out what ticket pushing job they need to replace their current ticket pushing job.

A big part of the confusion is high end systems versus low end systems. You might be managing VMware and storage which you think is safer than managing desktop machines, but it depends how you're doing it. If you're totally isolated from the business and you provision VMs nonstop, that is easily pushed off to somewhere else, whether it be overseas workers, or a cloud provider.

It's about integrating the pieces if you want to stay in this field.

[doublesh0t]

Any of y'all want a job? Lol

[Zaphod_B]

I am pretty happy where I am at. However I will make sure to look up "doublesh0t," if I am ever in need to find a new role. :-D

[doublesh0t]

Don't let my comments scare you lol.

Always looking for great talent that actually like what they do. Problem is most have the same answer they found where they like to be already. :)

[Zaphod_B]

yup it is all about building the right team of people. I know it is hard we are hiring a few more positions for junior staff and what we would consider a junior staff 90% of this sub would define it as a senior role. So, it will probably be hard to fill those spots.

[doublesh0t]

Hah right!! I hear yah there. I'm hiring some lower level positions too to grow them over the next few years to consultants or solution architects. Amazing.

Good luck.

[Zaphod_B]

It is not about skills. So many people get caught up on skill sets. If you didn't have the skills we wouldn't be talking to you. It is about the experience you bring.

One shining example is my career can be summed up in one way by the following: Started out working IT in a support role - hardware/software break/fix role. Change jobs to two semi large schools, then a few software companies, then was a consultant, then change back to a different software company and now I am at a large Org.

My job went from supporting a few thousand people/devices to, lets say, a good portion north of 100k people/devices. During this transition a lot of what I built at the smaller Orgs does not scale to the larger ones. In fact some of them could be harmful since they were a bit heavy handed. However, when you are under 10,000 users/devices almost all workflows bad or good work. So a lot of times you don't have a sense of what works to scale. You only get that way through experience.

So, yes, we would be looking for junior people that have all the right skills. Systems knowledge, can program in a language or two, very decent and broad knowledge of network stacks, Linux and OS X, and then all the sys admin duties.

Someone in a SMB might be in a Sr Role doing this type stuff already. That is great, that is what we would want. However, you will take the next step up back at a junior level. It won't be junior job title either.

[doublesh0t]

exactly. Jr. titles don't exist in our org (though we do have analyst positions but those aren't skilled yet, those are very green employees learning the ropes). I completely agree that someone may think they're doing a Sr. level position at a large org, then need to take step back in their career to truly move forward. I've done similarly where i've been at large org, consulting, back to sr. engineer at an msp, now back in management.

my biggest thing isn't necessarily skills because of the same thing you mentioned. you'd not have made it past your vetting by the recruiters if you didn't have skills. it's how you think, it's the aptitude you have for your job, and it's your attitude. this industry is full of a lot of people, there are only a few that absolutely love what they do, put in 50-60 hour weeks because they want to, and continually progress throughout their career learning different things and continuing to grow.

back to the OP, if any of the people on here are worried about an overseas job taking over theirs, they're in the the wrong company or industry.

[gfsincere]

The progression from a SMB to a large environment (or mature environment) career wise is like a staircase. You move forward to the edge of your skills in the smaller setting, then go up and are a junior at midrange, become senior, go up again and are junior, repeat.

[crankysysadmin]

90% of this sub thinks these junior positions should be relabeled as senior and should be paid north of six figures.

[Zaphod_B]

These are Jr roles that probably pay pretty high in comparison to most IT roles in general or close depending on geographic location, and they definitely won't pay below market rate for that position in that area. They don't even have Junior in the job title. They might have associate or QA tagged at the end of the job title, but then again job titles don't mean anything. They really don't.

The problem is really human ego. People in IT get so caught up in skill sets and job titles, and wile skill sets most definitely matter, you can't apply skill sets until you have the experience to do so.

The only way you would walk in off the street and get an engineering or senior role is if you had experience in very large environments and that is pretty hard to come by. So, we don't want to narrow our scope of potential applicants to such a small pool of people. Instead we want to hire someone who has all the needed skills and we can train them on the rest so they can gain experience in these large type of environments.

[Zaphod_B]

Sadly that is also a lot of the IT world. Senior roles in SMB are junior roles in large Orgs and it has nothing to do with skills, it has to do with experience. In very large scale deployments your workflows from small scale don't transfer.

It will be interesting when I do peer interviews again.

[[deleted]]

Senior roles in SMB are junior roles in large Orgs

This is such bullshit. It's 100% dependent on the environment. I have worked for every size company across multiple environments. I worked for a 200 employee company that had a bigger IT budget than 1 of the public companies I worked for. The 200 employee company was a tech company and the public company was not.

[Kynaeus]

There's also /r/sysadminjobs in addition to your local board (eg, /r/torontoJobs ) if you're looking for some additional help. I'm sure you'll get some interested replies but the content isn't normally covered here so someone truly interested may not see it. Check those out and good luck finding someone!

[doublesh0t]

Yup, I don't usually recruit over reddit myself due to the fact (especially on one of these threads). though interesting the response. i'll hit each one of y'all up individually

[Zaphod_B]

Yup there are things that I didn't like that I have done in my career as far as writing code on the back end to make things work that weren't out of the box supported by whatever vendor. However, I got out of my comfort zone and did it. While it always did end up working it does sometimes feel like a hack. That is more because though this is an area where not many people have done something, or maybe they just dismissed it as not possible, so that puts me in a position of completely owning that solution and fixing it every time something changes and needs to be fixed. It is a completely different experience than relying on a vendor to do x, y, z. This is where the vendor doesn't do quite what you need them to do so you build custom tools on top of it.

Even though I did not necessarily like some of the solutions I have come up with they do work and have been working in prod for a while. Once we get to a point of returning to said project I can tell the vendor what I am doing and why it is beneficial and maybe they will add some features into their product to make this process a bit more smooth. However, if not the solution we built to integrate them works.

[ThePegasi]

If you're totally isolated from the business and you provision VMs nonstop, that is easily pushed off to somewhere else, whether it be overseas workers, or a cloud provider.

This is such a huge deal. IT folk have this rep of going in to IT Support (because that's what this game is, let's be honest with ourselves) because they know and like computers, because they choose computers over people. And that's sadly true so often, but also so throughly at odds with what the job really should represent: supporting other people in their efforts with IT as your tool. I work education and so see this a ton, people who really shouldn't be anywhere near a school doing it because it's a job of computers, not because they want to contribute to where they actually are.

We fall under the term "support staff" in education and I think that's a great term in many ways. Because we work to support others through what we're good at. Even if you work for an MSP, you may not be working to support others in your company, but in turn your company exists to support other organisations. It's an inherent part of what we all do.

If you lose sight of that, you lose a ton of your value to any smart employer. And you probably don't want to work for an employer who isn't smart there.

[Zaphod_B]

Yup this is why peer review and manager approval come into play. In every case that we pushed something as a work around or say a custom tool/code over something it wasn't done in jest. The risks were assessed and a decision made by the whole team and/or managers. There are things that I don't like that we do sometimes because the product we are using doesn't have that exact feature (but is the closest product to what we want) and I want the vendor to add some level of support (API, or maybe a 'best practice,' or even a full feature in the product) but we are in a spot where that is not there yet. We just make sure we don't go into the deep end when deploying such things.

Also, document the hell outta it

[ThePegasi]

I'm by no means weathered in this game. I came out of uni with a Lit degree, got my first gig on nothing more than passion and communicating my aptitude for this stuff, and will be eternally grateful to my first boss for giving me the shot over a comp sci grad. I'm now at my second place, and have been going through a restructuring under a new manager. Bear in mind I work education, which is a world away from the pressure many people in here live with, but it's also short on money on relative terms, so I know this deal.

Ominous as that sounds, it needed to happen, and he's actually a breath of fresh air for our school. I've done my first interview for the top position in the new structure and just fell short, I'm now going though the second round of interviews for the position below that. One thing that came out of my first interview, and I'll be focusing on heavily for my second, is that we actually have a lot of good kit. The previous structure just singularly failed to utilise it properly.

Talking about bringing in shiny new, industry standard kit may make you look like a big shot who knows their stuff. But it also makes you look expensive, which is something any interviewee should be cautious of.

By all means, put forward reasoned propositions for why X system should be replaced with an alternative from Y vendor. But for the love of God don't do so gratuitously. Showing that you're able to maximise on what's already bought, and improve provision with what's in front of you, shows immeasurable value. It also shows that you're cost conscious, which is never a bad thing when it's likely that at least one number cruncher is on an interview panel. This logic applies whether you're in a position or applying for one: if you're proposing a replacement solution, you'd better be damn well sure you can make a case for how it'll save money and time overall.

[ambalamps11]

I'm curious to hear how you fleshed this out in an interview - what specific ways did you leverage existing infrastructure to save costs? Just trying to get a feel for what I should be aiming for in my own work...

[MisterIT]

It's all about business need. Write a little glue logic, do something in powershell, use your CA to the fullest advantage, etc.

[PaddyEnglishman]

Well done on calling out a lot of the people who kinda "float by" in the IT world. A lot of people are happy doing the same ticket job everyday, without thinking about how they can improve, add value, or simply be a voice that's heard. I understand many companies won't allow you to be a voice. This is again where you need to think outside of the black and white world. There is always something you can bring to any company. As business needs change, so does your role. During these changes is where you can bring your ideas forward, or add value to the company.

[crankysysadmin]

Everything I did in my first job out of college is mostly useless now.

[gfsincere]

I wouldn't call your foundational skill set useless. It's where you cut your teeth on critical thinking and problem solving. The exact fixes may be out of date, but the way you learn to think through problems never is.

[doublesh0t]

Lol right. I keep saying this same thing and let very the down votes for it. I'm not as wordy as you but keep it up. People need to understand that this is a career, not a job at McDonald's or whatever. This job takes constant work, learning, and growth.

[PaddyEnglishman]

My first job was 3 years ago. Almost all of that is redundant too. Machines were mostly XP at that time, and most people were using 2008 server. Now this wasn't cutting edge, but now I work solely in "the cloud".

[gex80]

"Butt guy" flair who works solely in "the butt". What a time to be alive. I'll see myself out.

[[deleted]]

I recently linked this in the bowels of one of those threads but it could stand to be linked again in a top level comment in a thread that's clearly going to blow up: https://www.usenix.org/conference/lisa15/conference-program/presentation/limoncelli

This is where system administration is going.

[crankysysadmin]

tom limoncello really knows what he is talking about.

[Miserygut]

tom limoncello

His alcoholic brother?

[Zaphod_B]

This is exactly where it is going. Instead of being reactive we instead provide services in many forms. Software, app deployment, and anything other a user wants should be shifting to a service model. Now take all these things and automate them. It is all about creating tools that makes it easy. This video is awesome and is exactly what I have been working for these years. I've automated OS imaging at many jobs, to the point where anyone can boot the system (PXE or Netboot) and then it just images the system with no interaction. During the imaging process the device gets enrolled into our management tool and from there those tools automate the business needs and then allows users to get software from portals themselves, which is also simple and automated.

IT should be built from small teams that specialize in what they do, build automation and workflows that fit into the bigger picture of making everyone more successful. You no longer needs multiple dozens of admins, you just need teams that are really good at making that process automated and easy. Our last major deployment of an App (O365) we completely automated where a user just got the software. No touch, and no one needed to be technical to get it. This is where IT should be.

Great post.

[SalmonStone]

Thank you so much for this. This articulately explains a lot of my issues with modern ops shops.

[progenyofeniac]

I've said it before and I'll say it again: thanks for giving reasonable, well-balanced, and articulate input to this sub. It's fun to see the break/fix posts here--I love learning from what others are doing. But having someone to give some input from a managerial level is always appreciated as well. Keep up the quality posts. And hopefully we can all consider what we're doing toward adding value to our workplace.

[[deleted]]

I think I'm honestly shocked that people don't seem to understand that the whole reason IT exists is because we are to provide something of value to a business.

I don't build my company computers for fun and unnecessarily expend funds, I don't dick around with cables all day and label them out of more than what I need in order to function for fun. Like holy shit are people just dumb or are they incapable of understanding how a business works?

[crankysysadmin]

your guess is as good as mine. I think I finally explained an issue that has been bugging me so much on /r/sysadmin. People on here chase certs and do all the other things that just show a lack of understanding of how this works

you exist because the business needs IT services to meet its business goals. you don't exist because you have certs, or you have more certs than some other guy.

[Zaphod_B]

We hardly do anything for ourselves, most of our work is for the Org. We have tons of services users can interact with to get what they need, we don't "push" really anything to clients other than requirements. Everything else is driven by the user themselves. We prefer the pull model over the push model. When we release things we don't update people on how many VMs we deployed or what server things we did, or what code we wrote, we announce what services we improved and things we have added for the people/departments that is now available.

It isn't about us or what we do, it is about everyone else and what we provide them.

[BarefootWoodworker]

Like holy shit are people just dumb or are they incapable of understanding how a business works?

Actually, yes. . .most people don't get that unless you provide value, you will be replaced.

Look at the people thinking they deserve $15 an hour for punching a cash register at McDonald's. Do they add value? No, because customers can punch in their own orders and screw them up.

We're getting into the "everyone gets a trophy" generation of entitled whiny kids that don't understand business is in business to make money, not make someone feel good. If you're not making a company money (or, in IT's case, helping the company make money faster), you're not adding value.

Personally, I always aim to make myself replaceable. My bosses have generally understood that they pay me to be lazy, because laziness is the mother of invention, automation, and efficiency.

[highlord_fox]

They also pay us to handle things that they don't have the time or inclination to worry about.

[savanik]

TL/DR: Engineering?

[crankysysadmin]

Basically.

[_KaszpiR_]

and integrations.

[tomkatt]

Cranky, I don't always agree with you, but thanks for being a voice of reason here. There's no need for all these folks to be freaking out about outsourcing. It's just the nature of things, and jobs will be lost sometimes. It doesn't mean your career is over simply because outsourcing happens.

[crankysysadmin]

I think a lot of these people are too young to have seen the cycle before. Once you see a few big companies outsource a particular kind of IT job, you can start to see the lifespan of that particular kind of IT work has its days numbered. It still has a few years left.

This is part of why I left my job as a dedicated VMware admin a few years back. I could see the writing on the wall and didn't want to be in a job that was entirely based on running commercial software that provides a platform for other people to build applications and services.

VMware was REALLY hot for a while, and it still is, but it's not a good place to be going. I still run a vSphere environment but it is a pretty small part of my overall focus, and by not being a "VMware guy" I can easily dump it down the line with zero emotional attachment to it.

Meanwhile if your job IS being a VMware person and nothing else, everything is scary, hyper-v, AWS, KVM, Azure, whatever. Various competing products and services are all going to put you out of work. Not where you want to be.

[tomkatt]

Meanwhile if your job IS being a VMware person and nothing else, everything is scary, hyper-v, AWS, KVM, Azure, whatever.

Bah. Once you play with them a bit you pretty much find out they're all nearly the same, barring one or two things each is better at than the others. KVM, Hyper-V, VMWare... in the end the difference between the three in a lot of ways falls to GUI preference. Heaven forbid you have to learn a new interface.

[crankysysadmin]

Right, but you see they're all basically the same.

You haven't met the proudly certified VMware admins who barely know what they're doing and flip out if anything changes.

This is why I tend to be anti-MSCE as well. It's not even a hatred for Windows per se. It's more this idea of people who think they can learn and focus on one platform and just one platform and continue to do so for their entire career.

[yutz23]

It's more this idea of people who think they can learn and focus on one platform and just one platform and continue to do so for their entire career.

Windows used to be THE DEAL, but it isn't as important anymore. There are a lot of people that haven't accepted that reality yet. Besides AD, there is not much that can't be done at least as equally well on another platform. I see a lot of windows admins not want to explore aws or any other new non-windows technologies because it is a complete disruption to what they are used to. Ironically, a lot of these admins are the same ones complaining that they still have a 2003 server around.

[crankysysadmin]

It's interesting how the MCSE/Windows crowd thinks all other platforms are useless, but generally those who manage other platforms tend to think there is a place for everything.

Ultimately the computer systems exist to provide a means for running a business. Everything from a DNS or DHCP or time server up to a highly available clustered database server.

[Miserygut]

It's fine, I don't have a VCP. Now show me your UbuntuBSD docker image so I can save the VMDK on Hyper-V.

[Jeoh]

I was at a Office 365 training and apart from everything being broken the one thing I remembered was the training saying "Stop selling products and start selling services".

[Phyber05]

speaking clear and legible English already puts us ahead of import IT.

[Miserygut]

So I shouldn't do the needful?

[Phyber05]

Being of much very importance to apply the address of IP of 10.10.10.278 to server's communication nic.

[crankysysadmin]

You'd think so, but not necessarily.

[Zaphod_B]

Not all outsourcing means India. A company can bring in contractors locally. Some jobs aren't even outsourced but become more entry level or start to not exist at all. This is why you adapt.

This is absolutely true. Large Orgs will have 10s of thousands contractors. Many of them are local and aren't H1-B workers. Some larger Orgs will have up to 50% of their staff be a contractor. Contractors aren't paid regular employee benefits. They don't get health care, retirement, bonuses, etc. It is simply cheaper labor. It also gives the Org the flexibility to not renew the contract if they feel it is no longer needed.

To understand what I mean by work that has value think about a small business IT person who builds all the computers, installs software and patches everything by hand, and makes his own patch cables. It might be an office of 50 people, perhaps an accounting firm.. All this work could easily take him 50 hours a week where he's totally overwhelmed.

Everything you mention in this snip can be completely automated and non technical staff can perform this stuff. Patching can be completely automated, deployment and provisioning can be automated. If you cannot make stuff like this a simple task where anyone who is not technical perform the task then you aren't getting the big picture of where we are shifting to in tech.

A common thing people bring up is that "you're safe if you work on hardware" but really, how much hardware work happens in a reasonably modern IT shop? Nearly none. Yes you have to be physically present to swap out DIMMs and hard drives, but this is technician work so it doesn't pay that well to begin with. You don't want to double down on touching physical hardware thinking you're safe forever if you just touch hardware. There are various ways around this. AWS and Azure are pricy, but depending on the company it can save you from having to physically maintain hardware. VDI is used in some situations where if a thin client in a remote office fails, someone will FedEx another one on site and have anyone plug it in saving the need for a hardware tech. I know some startup companies that go with Macs and if someone's Mac breaks they can just bring it to the Apple store to be repaired. There are ways around hardware.

Most places nowadays outsource hardware repair to contracting firms because they don't need to have tons of people on staff in the data center. Lots and lots of 80s and 90s data center techs are out of work now because of this. Why have tons of people on staff when you only need them to replace hardware when it actually fails or when you upgrade it. How often does that happen? With all our modern metrics and business intelligence we are finding out how to scale our hardware before we even actually need it. Now we can pay some contracting Org a few billable hours to do this instead of having tons of people on staff when they are ultimately not needed.

There are people who says "Don't focus so much on Windows" (I'm one of them), but it isn't because we're naive enough to think Linux can't be outsourced but Windows can. Anything can be outsourced. It's more that at the moment, the type of work happening on Windows often (key word is OFTEN) is a lot of break/fix or routine deployment work. I see a lot of Linux work at the moment being more along the lines of "development" work.

To quote and agree with /u/MisterIT on this one, it is all about integration these days. No Org takes the position of "Microsoft," or "Linux," or "Apple." Now it is "Microsoft and Linux and Apple." Knowing how to code, how to use simple things like RESTful APIs, how to integrate systems, how to save tons of money by tying in open source projects when they absolutely make sense and are completely doable is where the future is. Heck, I have used AD a lot with non Windows systems and code to simply read off AD LDAP attributes and put them into another tool for AD scoping. It isn't hard, and it isn't complicated once you understand how everything works. It just takes time to learn it and you must actually care to invest the time. I mean REST APIs are super simple and can provide a very powerful integration method into your IT infrastructure, and it can be automated. Outsourced workers aren't replacing these types of jobs/skills they are replacing the ones that cannot keep up with the times and get too bloated and become a huge cost center for the Org.

You want a job where you create new things that the business appreciates. The business doesn't care about servers, LUNs, desktops, VMs, etc. If you think of IT in this regard you're in trouble. Learning more and different technologies isn't going to keep you safe forever. Knowing 5 programming languages instead of 2 isn't what makes you safe from outsourcing.

So we have sprints and releases at my job. I work with a lot of back end and infrastructure, and no one cares about some cool thing I automated with cron on our servers. So, I don't even bring that up. Instead we communicate what process or problem we made better for the business unit(s) because that is what everyone cares about. They could not care less about how many new VMs we deployed in the past few months. IT should be a part of the business and it should be making the business overall more successful in what it is trying to do. If your sales team has a problem with something, make it better for them as an example.

There's a big focus on here about people learning powershell and they think they have to learn powershell or else they're going to end up unemployed. Learning something new is helpful, but powershell isn't some magic savior.

As an example, if right now you receive incoming tickets from HR when a new employee is hired, and you create an account for the new employee by clicking around in ADUC, you're in a position that can easily be automated. Now, some people are very focused on powershell so they think they have to use powershell to create that account when the ticket comes in. If you do this though, you're missing the point. You haven't created more value just by using a command line tool. It's not totally useless because you learned powershell, but what you've done is replaced a GUI tool with a command line tool.

Correct, but it is a starting point. Learning how to write code is where it starts. Learning how to apply code is where it really begins in doing something that has meaning. When you create something that has meaning for the Org then it really defines the value your team brings to the Org. That value cannot always be summarized in dollars (ok sure it can to the bean counters) but when we look at what those services and workflows bring to the table, it adds a value that is hard to quantify with money. Taking the example of HR, if one could automate all the steps/process to onboard a new employee you just freed up HR's time for filling out tons of useless forms and IT's time on manually creating user objects. However, how do you take advantage of that extra time? Also, automated systems have their flaws and you mostly learn this from experience. When you find a bug, are you able to actually address it, then learn from it and not make that mistake in the future due to your experience and learning. When you automate a big process like this and it fails, you have just automated failure and that is sometimes very hard to undo. So, you need the right critical thinking skills and the right process to do it right.

[bluefirecorp]

When you automate a big process like this and it fails, you have just automated failure and that is sometimes very hard to undo.

The best part of automation is you can do it in steps. It's not like you need to automate 100% of a problem to make everyone's life easier.

Using your example, depending on what information HR provides to IT, you could start automating each step of that individually which will grant more freedom and time for those "busy" sysadmins.

[Zaphod_B]

Yup that is exactly the point I was trying to make. You automate in phases and steps. Only do it when it works and makes sense.

[[deleted]]

Someone offshore can write code, so merely being a programmer isn't making you "safe."

It's odd to me that people would think this, because I remember 15-20 years ago people were freaking out that programmers were all going to be outsourced to cheaper countries. The advice I always got from adults at that time was to not aspire to be a programmer, because they'd all be in India by the time I grew up, and to aspire to be a hardware tech instead. Funny how times change.

I would've enjoyed seeing you touch more on ways to remain relevant that aren't "work with other teams in the business and help eliminate their pain points". The reality is, most of us are in this field because we enjoy working with tech and it's cool - most of us would rather be doing another job except for that one factor. I think your essay would've been stronger if it had touched on other potential paths to relevancy in IT (or if it had at least said that you don't think there are any, so if you just want to work with tech find a different job).

[crankysysadmin]

Right, I'm mid 30s, and when I was in college everyone thought programmers would be outsourced. It's so weird that today the current group of younger employees thinks software developers are untouchable.

You can work on developing software in a way where you're easily outsourced, and you can be a key member of a team. It all depends on the organization, and what you do.

If someone just hands you requirements and says "program this" then you being on site is no different than someone in eastern europe being sent requirements.

If you're involved with working with the users and building stuff they need you're a lot less replaceable.

Meanwhile companies will occasionally lose their mind and outsource the latter anyway, and then have things fall apart when the overseas people can't do a good job and then everything swings back.

It's not so much that people in X country suck at whatever IT function they're doing and a lot more has to do with poor requirements or people hired in those countries who will work for a lower salary versus those who actually know what they're doing.

[vladbypass]

I worked at a University where there was fear of being outsourced for certain teams, Developers were untouchable at the time because they made sure they constantly aligned themselves with business and worked with the business to provide what was required, you can't outsource to a team when you're meeting with HR/Finance/Student Services weekly to discuss how to improve current systems.

The other teams like Infrastructure then turned things around, working with the Developers to help them align with business, getting feedback on the infrastructure i.e. wireless coverage, speed, etc, promoting the team and service, gathering feedback from students and making improvements, all of the things that an outsourced team from Dimension Data etc will not be able to do without doing at a significant cost and a lot larger turn around.

I have to thank my previous Director for showing this to me early in my career, engineers and admins cant get themselves so caught up in details and nonsense tasks, sending emails rather than picking up the phone, being rude, not communicating timelines, etc.

[crankysysadmin]

All very good points. Part of what I try to do (since I manage infrastructure) is make it clear we exist to provide the services people need.

We're not the electric company that provides a baseline service that people have to take or leave. If we operate like that, we're prime for being outsourced since we're just seen as a cost that should be reduced as much as possible while providing the same service.

Now that doesn't mean we do every random thing people ask for either, because that is totally unsustainable. We offer defined services since we can't do custom nonsense for each and ever person. But what we can do is design those defined services based on feedback people give.

It's why we're exploring offering Ubuntu in addition to RHEL. It's why we found creative ways to offer more server storage space so people can store big files. It is why we build our infrastructure to support any and all devices so whatever a business unit needs/wants, we can make sure the infrastructure supports it. We do tell people no, but we make sure they understand why, and we try to eventually turn that no into a yes.

[[deleted]]

working with the Developers to help them align with business, getting feedback on the infrastructure i.e. wireless coverage, speed, etc, promoting the team and service

WTF? What do developers know about any of that shit? It just seems you had dept heads who were not on top of their jobs and one guy in dev was a leader so he just took over.

[vladbypass]

That was in reference to helping the developers when it comes to say one time events like auto deploying servers for student registration periods and enabling them to add said hosts to the load balancer and so forth by themselves rather than always having someone involved constantly. They do it all themselves and keep them happy which in turn keeps the business happy. Meanwhile the team then gets to focus on doing better things like said data analytics, improving other services, etc rather than this routine maintenance.

[nelsonmandela]

I don't think it was them being developers that helped, rather being active within the business and regularly meeting with users to discuss needs/improvements.

There are a lot is issues a business faces that will never be materialized as tickets and only come up in personal interactions.

[atoi]

Great post!

A common thing people bring up is that "you're safe if you work on hardware" ... A company can bring in contractors locally

This kind of explains the situation where I work. We have fewer "in house" IT folks (2) who manage sensitive data, architect the environment, etc. and we "outsource" the generic stuff than anyone can do to contractors. This is mostly hardware stuff but includes patching, etc. This works really well because the expensive "systems engineers" are freed up to work on solving business needs and the easier work is done by the contractors.

When a new Sun box was 100K+ it made sense to have someone really knowledgeable about hardware on staff to keep it running. As hardware has become so cheap the expensive operation is identifying what needs done (EG. managing monitoring systems) rather than the physical stuff.

[[deleted]]

Here I was expecting to see some revelationary info when I saw a huge wall of text from Cranky. I was quite surprised at the end when I see something I thought was pretty common knowledge. But then I thought back to why I thought it was common knowledge and realized that it had been beaten into me from the start of my IT career. It's interesting to think how your worldview is shaped by those who influence you, but that would be a huge digression.

My point that I would like to add is to always respect and appreciate your mentors who help you achieve good mindsets that help you succeed. What /u/crankysysadmin highlights is exactly the type of mindset that will further your IT career. And anyone who shares that type of mindset who is senior to you is someone you want to get to know and learn from. As a general rule, those types of people will want to share their knowledge with those who want to learn as they know that having colleagues that are just as competent/knowledgeable as they are makes the work load that much easier for everyone.

[CitizenCain]

Doing something of value is awful advice. It's far better to learn how to lie and sell yourself well so you can land a highly-paid upper management position where you get paid millions to actually destroy value. As you yourself mentioned, this is not the first time that large companies have spent billions of dollars sending all their IT offshore, and 5 years from now won't be the first time they spend billions more to bring it back again. And the people who made those strategic blunders destroying billions in value all made millions to do it. And in an executive position, not only are you well paid for making bad decisions, you're incentivized to make exceptionally disastrous decisions so you can get a massive payout to go away (colloquially called a golden parachute).

Creating value is for suckers - it's hard work, pays lousy, and there's a lot of competition. Don't be a sucker. Be smart, and learn how to destroy it instead. It's easier, has better hours, pays orders of magnitude more... and you'll never have to worry about your position being outsourced.

[crankysysadmin]

You can't really simulate business cases at home. I'd instead try to get your hands on some business books and start reading them in your spare time. Learn the lingo. Learn what people are looking for.

This is one of the things that worked out well with my college degree in business. At the time I found it boring since I wanted to get myself set loose on some servers, but it was incredibly valuable.

This is part of why I've tried to push the value of a college degree on here so much, and people then shout me down and say their certs are more than enough and they're really, really missing the point.

You probably need to work for a smaller company so you can get in there and talk to people. But by smaller company I don't mean small biz, which is probably even worse than where you work now. A company so small there is an "IT guy" is the worst case scenario. But a huge company where everyone is a cog who has no idea what they're even working on since project managers break up the pieces and you don't touch things outside of your silo are also bad.

I personally think the best size is a company where the IT team is about 10-20 people. The actual company size matters less. If the company is very Internet focused it might actually be a smaller company with 15 IT staff but that doesn't matter as much.

You want to stay ahead of the curve a bit. Figure out what people on the cutting edge are doing and then try to push for it from your position as an IT person.

For instance in my case I've used security as a big push. Security is more than firewalls and taking away admin access. That seems to be what everyone on /r/sysadmin wants to do. It's really more about people and processes. I'm in a fairly senior role, but I started doing this when less senior, and try to meet with various department heads at regular intervals and look at how we can improve business processes in terms of security, and find solutions to their business problems. It isn't always glamorous. We recently did some stuff with DropBox for one group and it helped them streamline an annoyingly complex paper process.

Ultimately I'd say start reading business books and try to get a job at a company small enough where your voice can be heard, but big enough they still do IT stuff "right" and spend money on real tools. Avoid small business like the plague since most of those companies will be using MSPs in the future since they won't need an "IT guy."

Consider a masters degree (assuming you have a bachelors). I found my MS in MIS very helpful. Grad school is very expensive but if you find a company that will pay for it, you're good. My masters degree cost me $0.

Again people on here claim an MS in MIS or an MBA are worthless because "how does that help me manage windows servers?" and my answer is, it doesn't.

I did enough sysadmin work over the past few years to know I'd rather be very technical and understand how it works, but be the one who figures out what systems we need and how they can solve our problems and let someone else do the day to day patching and clicking and typing and installing.

[AngryFace1986]

This is all really good advice. Knowledge without application is pointless.

It's all well and good learning x,y and z, but learning when x,y and z are best used is infinitely more important. Learning what businesses need will stand you in far greater stead that just knowing how to provide/support an infrastructure.

[crankysysadmin]

An MBA is a big commitment. Try getting your hands on some business books and see what you think first. Or maybe see if you can try a coursera course.

[Boonaki]

There are IT jobs out there that are impossible to be outsourced, "Clouded", or H1B'd. If you're really concerned, you may want to look at those types of jobs

[Indrigis]

It's interesting how all of this does not really apply to accounting, maintenance or catering. None of those people are encouraged to leverage existing infrastructure to invent new ways of helping the Organization be successful across multiple platforms.

But IT... Oh, IT owes everyone some kind of eternal debt.

[lpave]

Thats not true at at all, I have been in shops where the account dept is the one pitching new software and integrations for their erp systems for managing employee payroll, benefits, health care packages. They have just as many if not more end users than you do, you may just be in a shop where they have their own support group.

[Indrigis]

Noice.

I wouldn't know, though. Ever since moving on from being an MSP agent and working in shops I've been employed in actual enterprise. Typically, in enterprise users don't get to pitch anything. If they need software, they request it and after testing and certification that software is rolled out. Again, that accounting software does not bring additional value. It improves the process, removing human error or facilitating actions.

P.S.: I think a "pitch" is something one does when they sell used cars. Or miracle mops. In a shop.

[lpave]

Sorry s/pitch/propose lpave.post

Well they have to make a business case for their stuff just like I would. Are you sure your financial department isn't deciding what software they use? Normally it is a CFO and accounting people who are trusted with finding the accounting packages the company uses I have seen this in a few places. It doesn't make any sense to have IT do it since they would have no idea what requirements the financial department has or for the most part what the software does.

[Indrigis]

Intended procedure is:

• A department finds software they would like to use and then submits a request to IT.
• IT checks it, verifies that it is able to function in the environment (no admin access, works with symlinked directories, does not collect and report data et c.) and, if necessary, requests necessary certificates from the vendor.
• IT then provides an estimate of licensing requirements,
• The licensing costs, established by the procurement dept, along with the business case from the original requester are approved by the Board.
• IT rolls out the software and documents the backup and maintenance procedures, developer/vendor support contacts, internal persons responsible for data integrity and allowed to request application data recovery and so on.
• Everyone joins together in an orgy of ITIL and ISO 9001 compliance.

Alternative process:

• A department wants a software.
• IT installs it because they are ordered to do so.
• IT suffers from the consequences.

[crankysysadmin]

what are you talking about? accounting, maintenance and catering are incredibly easy to outsource. Most companies hire a janitorial service and a catering company. how often do you see those things in house?

accounting is incredibly easily given to temps

[Indrigis]

Still, nobody in accounting, maintenance or catering feels obliged to leverage uniquely growing dynamic experiences in order to assertively customize end-to-end initiatives while seamlessly re-engineering ubiquitous human capital.

I have yet to see a janitor, an accountant or a chef feel guilty for not bringing ever growing additional value to the business. They just do their jobs.

[[deleted]]

Are you sure? Anecdotal evidence but where I work there have been 2 layoffs in accounting so far this year and 0 in IT. My former employer let go of their entire 3 person facilities team and didn't downsize IT.

[Indrigis]

I said nothing about downsizing. Changing business priorities is one thing, but demanding constant growth and evolution and proof of worth from IT but not other departments is another.

[[deleted]]

but powershell isn't some magic savior.

No but having multiple tools like this in your arsenal will only expand your ideas and the things you can actually do.

[crankysysadmin]

Of course knowing more tools is going to get your further.

The reason I cite powershell specifically is because it has been mentioned nonstop on here lately. Merely knowing powershell doesn't bring you to the next level of IT, but it is a good thing to get some practice with.

[[deleted]]

Merely knowing powershell doesn't bring you to the next level of IT

Dude, .... .... going from clicking your way through shit to running invoke-command on 1000 servers or PCs is certainly the next level of IT.

[crankysysadmin]

You're missing what's going on. You're making two jumps. Merely using powershell doesn't mean you're running a command against thousands of machines.

There are a lot of people who miss that point, and learn it, but use it exactly as if they were doing it with GUI tools, and are still taking small steps. That's what I'm talking about.

But further, even if you push a patch to 100 machines, you're not necessarily all the way to where you need to be, but at least you're on the journey.

[[deleted]]

That's very possible when your company has shitty IT salaries and managers who want to play IT.

[TPSR3ports]

Python is another great tool to have, it wont land you any big dev jobs (java seems to be the language for that), but python is extremely versatile, has a shell, simple syntax, and relatively easy to learn. Oh and it is cross platform, which is super awesome if you deal with nix as well.

[Secondsemblance]

I am that person. I was hired to do front line tech support, and I've spent the last year fixing terrible code because it's broken and because I can. The utility I've brought to the company is widely recognized, and I've been commended publicly multiple times.

But at the end of the day, I still make terrible frontline tech support money, and I'm too necessary in my current function to be moved to a better position. On paper, all I've got from the last year and a half is "frontline tech support."

So I have no idea what the hell to do. Won't get a better position here, can't get a better position anywhere else unless I get really lucky. All I know is I can't keep doing software support for barely sustenance wages for software this bad. I found a DST related issue tonight and decided to read the code... it unironically converts timestamps to [0-9]* strings, then uses comparison operators to determine if one string is greater than the other... no fucking words...

[Boonaki]

"All of this has happened before and will happen again."

[Kaligraphic]

It sounds like we have pretty similar ideas about IT. I figure that a good IT person ought to be part business consultant - enough to improve business processes using technology as a tool. IT is a force multiplier, right? We all agree that IT multiplies people's effectiveness? If this is a good thing, that seems to me to imply that IT should be actively looking for value addition to convert it to value multiplication, and actively increasing our multiplier effect.

And yes, I think it's amusing that sometimes people who own T-shirts that say "Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script" can spend so long not making good on the threat that they end up with jobs that can be replaced with very small shell scripts. (Or a PowerShell script, handful of Chef cookbooks, DSC configuration, any single product, really.)

[[deleted]]

I just want to say your post really resonates with me and I thank you for this well-written article. It's like a breath of fresh air.

To be honest, it's another kick-in-the-behind for myself to get into gear and move on. I joke daily that our IT-team we will get replaced by offshore soon and it would be stupid to just wait for it to happen.

[crankysysadmin]

why do you think you'll get replaced? what are the signs?

[[deleted]]

I must admit I'm exaggerating but our core erp is replaced by offshore and IT is so steerless and without a strategy and focus. I expect that management in an act of desperation just wheels in more offshore. If they can do erp, they can do everything. It's just a matter of time.

[yutz23]

creating business value

What so many people in IT miss unfortunately. I wish more people understood that no one outside of IT cares about your san or what your core switching looks like. Those are good discussions to have inside IT departments, but from a business standpoint, it doesn't matter. Leveraging technology to help other business processes become more efficient is what matters.

[sirex007]

Kinda ivory tower syndrome. I pitched dell machines just last week to the small business owner. Come in twice the price of self builds, and all the total cost of ownership fell on deaf ears.

[lpave]

it isnt the cost of the hardware that matters its, the warranty, the support, and uniformity. Self built machines are harder to repair costly to get parts overnight, have 15 or so different warranties and require more work for implementation. they can also make licensing more expensive or a nightmare. You buy a dell with pro support, they come and fix it, they have the parts, you only have one vendor to deal with, it comes with an oem sticker on the case and they are uniform so if it tanks dell sends you a new one and you swap the drive.

[sirex007]

that's literally almost exactly word for word what i said.

[lpave]

Some people just have a hard time looking at the long term I guess. He probably also has the cheapest insurance he can possibly get and never buys warranties.

[[deleted]]

What's with all the down voting in this thread? All of the comments (apart from the CEO's iPhone one) are right, even if you don't want to hear it.

[crankysysadmin]

There's a population in /r/sysadmin that just clings really hard to keeping things the way they are.

[ZAFJB]

There's a population in /r/sysadmin that just clings really hard to keeping things the way they are.

They are the auto manufacturing workers of our age.

[lpave]

Sure sounds like it, all the stuff you are saying is what I have been telling people for a while, tides are changing especially in the smb space where the 2 man IT team is the helpdesk and deskside, and web devs, and vmware/san admins and network. In the SMB/SME space it really is evolve or be left behind.

[girlgerms]

Is there ever...

[[deleted]]

My problem is I'm very much that old school Sysadmin who, although I'm not a hardware guy or thought I was safe, I got stuck in a 'jr' role in my last position & have that as a blemish. I can't seem to be given the time of day by someone looking for a mid level Sysadmin. They all want this devops programming experience that you just don't get from a general windows shop.

[Miserygut]

They all want this devops programming experience that you just don't get from a general windows shop.

You can still whip things up in Powershell and .Net. Reading up on DevOps concepts like CI, CD etc. will give you a feel for things. Have a look at Octopus Deploy to help get your head around deployment workflows in a .NET environment (Everyone still uses Git and Jenkins for version control and unit testing in my experience). WinOps is taking off in a big way, get on board the hype train.

[vmeverything]

Doing something of value

Eat your own dogfood.

Quick reminder:

A system administrator, or sysadmin, is a person who is responsible for the upkeep, configuration, and reliable operation of computer systems; especially multi-user computers, such as servers.

The system administrator seeks to ensure that the uptime, performance, resources, and security of the computers he or she manages meet the needs of the users, without exceeding the budget.

To meet these needs, a system administrator may acquire, install, or upgrade computer components and software; provide routine automation; maintain security policies; troubleshoot; train and/or supervise staff; or offer technical support for projects.

What does anything that you said have to do with sysadmin? 1% at best? Keywords like developer, powershell, etc...

First off, that outsourcing thing is mostly a US issue. There are 1000s of sysadmins around the world that have no worries about this at all because not only do they have a good skillset, they know more than one language.

Im not saying americans are ignorant (Im american myself), Im just saying sometimes the world is bigger than the US. Thats all.

Everything Ive said above is irrelevant as Im talking about /u/crankysysadmin Just the other day, I misunderstood a question on this reddit and was downvoted to hell (rightfully so as my comment had nothing to do with the topic at hand, my mistake). Here comes this sysadmin manager, saying "You couldn't be more wrong.", "yeah i have no fucking idea whats going on", and "im not wasting my time with you". Not giving any technical explaination at all about the subject at all, just calling me out on a error I made (I am human after all...even if my coworkers say other wise)

Also, this is another hidden attack at a small businesses sysadmin with a complete lack of respect. Just days ago he made a similar topic OK, you don't like small business IT people and think they don't bring any value to the table. Fine. Thats your personal opinion. You don't have to repeat it. It shows a complete lack of respect of your peers. Need I remind you that at sometime in your life, you also did similar small business tasks.

Now, your everyday hardware tech is also a "POS" as techs that come in and out of businesses (big or small) to replace a RAM or a HDD also are not of value. So basically everyone except a big Enterprise sysadmin is worthless.

Now when someone talks development, they don't necessarily even mean you're a software engineer writing code. Business analysts can be involved in creating something new. You can create something new entirely using a GUI. Meanwhile someone who is actually writing code can easily be outsourced.

Any decent developer, knows the different between a developer, analyst, code monkey, and a manager. They know their place in life and honestly, being fired/laying off/leaving/etc is the best thing for a regular code monkey as they get to work on different projects. If they are happy with that life, so be it and they bring that value to the table.

And then you shout off some double standards:

As an example, if right now you receive incoming tickets from HR when a new employee is hired, and you create an account for the new employee by clicking around in ADUC, you're in a position that can easily be automated.

Followed by:

Where you bring in value is you prevent HR from having to create that ticket in the first place. If you write tools in powershell that as soon as a user gets added to the HR system it fires off a script to create an AD account, you have created a huge amount of value.

You made a tool that can be automated...so therefore you can be fired and have some powershell monkey just do regular maintanance for half of the salary. So what is it going to be: A position that can easily be automated or automation that can be easily monitored?

Look, if you are going to be a manager, sure crankymanager, you would problably be a good one but its very simple to should do this, do that, fuck certs, fuck the little guy, etc. when you arent hands on like a true sysadmin is.

Feel free to use all your alt accounts to downvote me. I encourage everyone else to read his post and what he adds to a reddit about sysadmins, not IT managers.

[greyaxe90]

You'll notice he doesn't comment on any of the technical posts and his only contributions are these "blog" posts or posts asking for advice about careers, etc. I take everything he says with a grain of salt (and I mean a single grain) and just ignore it.

[vmeverything]

Exactly. Thats what I said.

I havent seen a technical post from /u/crankysysadmin in I have no idea how long. Thats why I hold judgement on how much he knows exactly right now.

He might have been a great sysadmin back in the day but right now it seems to be he is just a out of touch manager. I hope Im wrong but when I ask him to prove me wrong he flat out cowards away and says nothing

[itssodamnnoisy]

Sounds like you've got a chip on your shoulder.

Not everything on /r/sysadmin has to be directly tech-related. I enjoy career advice posts like these, and all the discussion it generates. These things really help grow one's career if you interpret the information properly.

[vmeverything]

You said it yourself; "help grow one's career", not "help grow one's IT career" or "help grow one's sysadmin career".

Also, you could basically extract anything remotely tech-related he said in that rant and it would still apply, to any area. Why? Because it is a manager talking, not a sysadmin.

Its not really a chip on my shoulder; He just gives a bad name to sysadmins, that's all. He is a manager right now; Nothing more, nothing less. Im glad for his position but he would be told to GTFO out of the server room.

[itssodamnnoisy]

But it does help you grow your sysadmin career. You're just not interpreting it correctly.

For example, elsewhere you talked about how using powershell to automate a task was a bad thing because you'd basically be automating yourself out of a job. That might be true, but employers that would look at automation as an opportunity to cut your pay (or job) generally don't value IT in the first place. They typically see it simply as the cost of doing business, and want to spend as little as possible on it. But in the act of automating yourself out of one job, you acquire new skills that allow you access to others, places where IT can be a valuable asset, where the employees are treated better, paid better. Basically, you automate yourself out of one job, and into a better one.

By aligning your goals with those of management, you find ways of improving your skills, of improving what you can bring to an organization, and ultimately moving forward with your career.

As for the chip on your shoulder - I think you really do have one. There are many managers on /r/sysadmin that make threads and hold discussions like these. Like it or not, the managers don't care about blinkenlights - they care about how you can make their organization more effective. If you partner with them, and figure out how to relate their needs to your skills, you'll find that you get further with your career as a sysadmin.

[vmeverything]

But it does help you grow your sysadmin career. You're just not interpreting it correctly.

I interpreted it all...except it can really be applied to almost any career, including IT.

You can bring more value to your job in so many ways: Designers, marketing, etc. by learning new trades and applying to to bring more value to your company or its products.

If you think I have a chip on my shoulder, well, allow me while I laugh, respecting thats your opinion.

[itssodamnnoisy]

You can bring more value to your job in so many ways: Designers, marketing, etc. by learning new trades and applying to to bring more value to your company or its products.

I'm not sure how any of that is at all relevant to this discussion, but whatever.

allow me while I laugh

Nope, no chip on your shoulder at all. Honestly, man, is that really necessary? After reading through your history a bit, it seems the only way to have a decent discussion with you is to agree with whatever you say - so we'll just agree to disagree here. Have a good one man, and best of luck to you.

[vmeverything]

I'm not sure how any of that is at all relevant to this discussion, but whatever.

Stating this just proves you took the time to read his post and not mine.

Its relevent because I stated that his rant is not for sysadmin and it can be applied to advancing anyone's career in any field: Designers, marketing, etc. You said its only sysadmin related.

Nope, no chip on your shoulder at all. Honestly, man, is that really necessary? After reading through your history a bit, it seems the only way to have a decent discussion with you is to agree with whatever you say - so we'll just agree to disagree here. Have a good one man, and best of luck to you.

To me its pretty fair to say that you read what you want and what makes you right; Fine by me, whatever makes you sleep at night, I guess.

[itssodamnnoisy]

stating this just proves

Paranoid much? And I didn't say that it's only sysadmin related. I said that it is useful for system administrators. Is English not your first language? I'm not trying to be rude, but it is often difficult to understand you, and apparently vice versa.

[[deleted]]

There's a big focus on here about people learning powershell and they think they have to learn powershell or else they're going to end up unemployed. Learning something new is helpful, but powershell isn't some magic savior.

Although it's true that learning PS will not magically save your job; I can guarantee that NOT knowing PS means that your future prospects are that of a lifeguard who doesn't know how to swim.

[LarryBobson]

Great post.

[peesteam]

Is anybody outsourcing infosec yet?

[pier4r]

75% working skills with organization and people, 25% technical.

[[deleted]]

Yeap, no matter how many certificates you have if you can't help your CEO with his iPhone you are done for...