However, that is not the greatest career threat to sysadmins, especially UNIX admins; the problem is that business gets rid of its admins and operators and help desk and expects the remaining staff to take up new tasks.

One place I know got rid of their system operator, their UNIX admin, and their mail admin as well - now leaving one person with jobs for four.

Not only that, but there are companies that have no IT staff at all - but rather, pay someone to “provide” IT “staff” - usually, high salaried, no benefit working folks who are being ripped off and are without any sort of job insurance or health insurance.

If it’s not that, then its H1B visa holders and outsourcing companies like WiPro.

The way admins are let go doesn’t help either - layoff through ambush.

Best be looking over your shoulder all the time - you’re liable to find a dagger in it one day.

Another thing: someone suggested being a plumber or electrician - there is more job security in the skilled trades these days. The Wall Street Journal had an article about that very topic - the columnist suggested that plumbers and such were better off than lawyers, and had better job security and better futures to look forward to.

Regards.
logadmin

who wants to work that much? i’m beginning to hate sysadmin work simply because that’s ALL i do now.

i’d be happy, again, with a small environment and 10% of my work completed and just sitting around and handling maintenance.

go be a bike messenger or cab driver or something…

Siempre se ha dicho que los buenos administradores tienen más tiempo libre que los malos administradores ( http://www.thetlog.net/2005/09/12/work-why-a-good-sysadmin-has-a-lot-of-free-/ ). Irónicamente eso puede hacer que sean poco valorados en su empresa y…

Become a “systems architect” or “network architect” instead. You get paid more to do even less work and you can act like a jerk to everyone else, even the office manager. Well, that’s what ours does anyway.

I’m in precisely the same situation you are in, except that I’m going back to system administration after a stint programming (php and perl). At least most sysadmins know what they are doing.

A general note, though: some commenters on Reddit implied that they saw this post of mine as “whining” about my job / personal situation. That is not the case at all, as I’m currently not employed (it says so in the post, but apparently many people didn’t notice it)! I quit my last job (as a sysadmin) last August, and I haven’t been looking for one since then; I’ve been busy with my personal projects. To whine about my job, I’d have to have one. My post is, instead, a collection of thoughts about a decade or so as a sysadmin.

I walked into my last company which was unbelievably behind the times. I worked there for nearly 10 years getting things in shape, moving them from their antiquated XTs and MacPlus machines, ridiculously overpriced third party systems, designing custom code to run the business systems, creating their website, building the network, automating everything under the sun - and on Windows at that…, etc. Basically moved them from a dinosaur to a state of the art company.

The next 3 years I spent trying to get them to see the big picture and move to the next stage. Year before last I faced a major hospitalization and was out for nearly 2 months. After I returned, I was asked to resign because “we did just fine without you, so obviously you’re not adding value to the company”.

I work for myself now.

First of all, you’ll be spending at least 1/3 of your time finding business or making contacts, until you have a very wide net and people start recommending you. You’ll be spending an additional 1/3 of your time dealing with billing, contracts, and scope. That’s the polite way of saying that people are jerks when it comes to money.

You can hire people to deal with those issues, and hire people to do basic freelance work, but once you’ve done that, you’re generally only making 2x your original salary, and have roughly a million times as many things to worry about, including competition and payroll.

If you love crafting finely tuned systems, consulting is probably not for you. Pursue what you love. If you love starting businesses, or you would like a chance to mentor others, or even you’d like more business acumen, then go ahead and start consulting. But don’t do it because other people tell you to.

If you’re looking to grow and learn from a sys-admin’s perspective, security is the hot new thing right now. Next will be software-as-a-service or SOA or whatever buzzword you’d like to call it, and we haven’t even seen the groundwork laid for that yet. Find new opportunities to improve the company, and any marginally competent manager will recognize that you’re showing initiative, which is one of those things they promote.

Then again, why listen to me? I’m a competitor!
-ben

You’ll find no creative satisfaction programming in a commercial environment, regardless of your job. Commercial environments have imperatives that are anti-creative. You mentioned needing to “look busy”, it’s no different for programmers. You won’t have time to actually think or plan what you’re doing, if you’re not tapping on that keyboard, you’re not working. If you want to do something creative, do it in your own time and learn how to live with your bad “day” job.

Don’t be fooled by these kiddies hacking out worthless crap everyday, becoming a good programmer takes a long time. Programming looks easy, but doing it well is very difficult and takes a lot of experience. This means the people that are good won’t trust you with anything serious or cool, and you don’t want to work for the people that aren’t good (which is most of them). In your situation, you really don’t have the knowledge or experience to appreciate how little you know.

Also, PHP is a commodity skill and you’ll be competing with younger more exploitable people for low paying jobs. It’s also a lousy language that will teach you bad habits.

Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Asshats.

No, seriously - fuck PHP

I know a sys admin (windows) who used all of his free time to write software for another company while working with us. Hush hush, two paychecks. Baching.

Talk to your manager if your bored, they will find something to work on.

So tell me, Han-Solo, why must these things always turn into Windows vs. Unix pissing match? Windows isn’t nearly as bad as you proclaim and if you think that Windows sysadmins just click and pray without actually knowing what they are doing your dead wrong. I’ve been working with Windows for about 10 years and six-figure salaries aren’t too hard to come by as long as your well rounded in your skills. I can barley change directories on a Unix box but I had no problem landing a lucrative position for the largest privately owned company in the world. At last count we have about 3600 Windows servers in production and I can’t remember the last time I said “I wonder why that happened” when dealing with my devices.