
Ask HN: What do I do with 2 decades of sysadmin knowledge? - neckbeardadm
I&#x27;ve worked as a sysadmin for 2 decades now. I know pretty well Linux internals, I can program in C&#x2F;Python decently, discuss filesystems, talk about IT operations, networking, etc. I think I&#x27;m a pretty well rounded professional.<p>Yet, all work I can find today is around creating CI&#x2F;CD pipelines in some cloud product.<p>It seems all this knowledge is for nothing now. I see my less experienced colleagues with barely any knowledge of the lower layers of their infrastructure, stumble upon issue after issue and then write postmortems like they discovered water on Mars.<p>I&#x27;m being more negative right now then I usually am but I really don&#x27;t want into management and I really like working with infrastructure and designing well oiled systems. I also don&#x27;t want to be stuck in traditional sysadmin work (which I am not, for about a decade already).<p>Is positioning myself as a experienced consultant to safe failing infrastructure projects from doom my only alternative in this world of shallow systems knowledge?
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dozzie
Start writing tools for sysadmins. Think of all the times when you hit a wall
because there was no inventory database that could be _queried from command
line_ , not just browsed through a web UI, or when you wanted to coordinate
several backup systems but keep them separate, or when you wanted to run a
well-defined script on a remote host after an event, or when you wanted to
plug in your own data processing into a monitoring system, or run a command on
a set of servers with some of them being temporarily down -- and later review
the run reports, or maybe to keep syslog logs in some place that could be
queried and not be as brittle and slow as Elasticsearch.

There are still blank spots in sysadmin's tooling, but nobody looks this way.
And there are still companies that know that they need tool writers.

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LinuxBender
Update your linkedin and clearly define your goal to work in a traditional
data-center. There are still plenty of mid to large companies that have a need
for traditional engineering and system administration. It is actually getting
much harder to find people with this experience.

Pipeline engineering is just one tiny piece of system architecture,
engineering and administration. The flood of requests you are seeing are the
small to mid sized companies experimenting in public cloud to reduce costs.
One size does not fit all.

Certainly position yourself as someone that can (re)build their infrastructure
to create a solid foundation on which all manor of automation can be created
and simplified.

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tomohawk
There are plenty of consulting firms that do work for federal government or
fortune 1000 that need people with your skills.

Add value to your skills by learning how the cloud environments layer on top
of this and maybe by getting a cert or two. A colleague of mine blitzed the
AWS Solutions Architect Associate in a day based on similar experience to
yours.

There's lots of work in advising best approach to move to cloud or stay on
prem or do combo.

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drenvuk
Would joining FANG et al be something you'd be interested in? I thought they
hired you guys to handle the actual servers that power the cloud.

~~~
neckbeardadm2
Visa issues don't allow me to consider that at the moment but I think joining
as a SRE in one of these companies would be a great choice.

Unfortunately, it's impossible for a 3rd-world citizen to get a US visa and
one European country already refused my visa request a few months ago (on the
basis I don't have a degree). I don't think I can go through that path again
with the odds of getting through being so low for me.

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dylanhassinger
learn Kubernetes and re-label yourself as a Senior DevOps engineer

~~~
neckbeardadm2
Already there :)

Maybe I'm getting pessimistic due to my workplace and what I see in websites
like WeWorkRemotely, RemoteOk, etc. I'm not sure, maybe I need to stick my
head a bit more and get a glimpse at other companies.

I see people spinning up K8s clusters with no thought to security,
performance, etc. All. The. Time. And they are getting so much accomplished
with a flood of kudos. And I'm the party pooper if I, very politely really,
raise these concerns and offer solutions. It's like I'm the uninvited guest to
the party, I don't know how to put it another way.

This is what drove me to think of being a consultant. That way people can
shoot themselves in the foot and I'm called in to clean everything. At least
it's not this daily struggle (or is it?)

~~~
Rjevski
> I see people spinning up K8s clusters with no thought to security,
> performance, etc. All. The. Time.

Totally agreed. A Kubernetes (or any similar large thing) cluster is a huge
liability - it’s a living thing of its own, kinda like a nuclear reactor that
needs competent people to manage & monitor it all the time.

Not to mention a lot of K8S users would actually be better off with something
smaller like AWS or even Heroku, and make huge savings on maintenance.

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java-man
you can write a software tool which packages your knowledge into a useful
product.

~~~
neckbeardadm2
I have thought about this and I may actually pursue that, yes. It's good
advice.

My main task is troubleshooting, to be honest. I keep getting called into "war
rooms" to pinpoint where multiple teams are failing to find a solution. I
can't think of a product that's like that (that doesn't involve AI?)

But maybe working on a building block solution (monitoring, backup, etc) as a
service might give me a good path. Thanks.

