System Administrator or Programmer?

Anything to do with the traditional world of get a degree, get a job as well as its alternatives
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SimpleLife
Posts: 771
Joined: Wed Aug 21, 2013 8:23 pm

System Administrator or Programmer?

Post by SimpleLife »

Which do you consider better/worse and why? I do both, largely because we are understaffed almost everywhere I've worked and I have skills in both areas.

I'm torn on which I detest most, because I pretty much detest them both. At my previous job a few years ago, I preffered systems work to programming. Databases, web and application servers, etc. Could have just been an all you can eat style consulting firm where the answer to any customers question is "yes", so programming sucked something real bad. I didn't care for the after hours work and stress of doing system upgrades, migrations, implementations etc. either, but at the time that was the lesser of two evils. Projects were done quicker, less involvement with PM's, less change requests, and mostly within the capability of the software. There was still stress because you are dealing with enterprise systems and potential for data loss, but at least no endless dreamt up ideas for software.

In any case, where I work now the front end work is not as bad. What get's to me most is the endless change requests, basically all of the PM's I work with were admin assistants up until a year ago, so there is no real process no matter how much I try to steer it that way. Basically it's whatever these PM's dream up that day, I add in. There is no actual process because the entire organization is run by people who got in on the buddy system, not actual experience, education or capability. Nevertheless, it kills me to sit through this crap, building whatever random change someone wants that day, because they just think it would be "nice". No metrics on ROI, no requirements traceability matrix, etc.

The reason I ask is because my position is being split into two and I am offered a choice. Right now the back end role has some really heavy lifts coming up in the next 3 months. Plus there is no guarantee the position will exist in a year, as when we merge with another company in a year or so, that position will likely be redundant. But they will likely still need a front end developer to service everyones fantasies.

Once this job ends though I may end up someplace fierce development wise and am not looking forward to that. Nothing they want me to build is too crazy, just the people drive me nuts. At most places, it's the crazy and the people that drive me nuts, because of no process.

Not sure which to pick. If I pick dev, I can still use my lab at home to keep up on the systems stuff. In reality I'm really looking at making my next move a move into technical program management or something similar.

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GandK
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Re: System Administrator or Programmer?

Post by GandK »

After 20 years of programming:

There was a sweet spot for me in programming between years 5 and 15. You need a certain amount of experience for people to be comfortable with you making design decisions rather than simple coding decisions. When you get to that point, you've arrived... that's when things get fun. Then you find the right position at the right company. If you hate routine, you want to avoid large shops where you could get stuck on a "maintenance" team. If you hate surprises, that's exactly where you want to be. My favorite job was in a small health care company where I was one of only 3 programmers and only 7 IT people. I worked long-ass hours but I got to do a wide range of things and learn everybody else's jobs in the IT department, too. Every job I had after that one bored me.

At some point later on (year 15 or so for me), with software development, people want you to move into management if you haven't yet. The pressure begins at about the time your hair starts turning gray and it intensifies thereafter. Project management, program management, team management... they start expecting you to do things that most people who are fantastic engineers and designers are not cut out to do. Either you must become an architect... a consultant who generally travels a lot and designs huge systems, or you consent to a promotion that removes all the things you like about your job and makes you a paper-pusher instead, OR your reputation takes a hit because people think you were unable to either become an architect or get promoted. Few engineers of any persuasion get to just engineer for their entire career. There's expected to be an early period of apprenticeship (fine, makes sense) and a late period of supervising other engineers. And if supervision ain't your thang, there can be uncomfortable social consequences. At about the time that would have become a serious problem for me, I retired.

Most of the sys admins I had the pleasure of working with were fantastic people who could do their jobs with their eyes closed, in their sleep, and were often called upon to do so at 4:00 am on a Monday morning because "the damn server upgrade failed and people would start arriving at the office at 6 and... and... and... !!!" Kindergarten cops for terrified grown-ups, poor things. They held a lot of hands and wiped a lot of butts. Their jobs had zero appeal to me. FWIW.

JamesR
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Joined: Sun Apr 21, 2013 9:08 pm

Re: System Administrator or Programmer?

Post by JamesR »

Aren't you talking about 3 types of roles?

System Admin, Backend Developer, and Frontend (design/javascript) Developer?

Backend Developer is the sweet spot. Avoid the constant change requests, and avoid the on-call nature of system admin work. (I'm a Backend dev in Ruby on Rails, pretty low stress job!)

SimpleLife
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Joined: Wed Aug 21, 2013 8:23 pm

Re: System Administrator or Programmer?

Post by SimpleLife »

Negative, two roles. I'd still be responsible for developing back end solutions, though we refrain from those for a long list of technical reasons to make our lives easier down the road. And by our, I mean mine, since I'm the one that actually does the work there while everyone else just reports "status". :roll:

So most of the dev work becomes thin client apps rather than, in my world, C# that is compiled and placed into the GAC on the servers.

I think a telling sign about how I feel is that a year ago I did not have access to the servers as a result of a merger. I did not want my access back, but alas, I was identified as the more qualified of the individuals to do the back and systems stuff so they put me back on that even though I didn't want it. In THIS organization, I much preferred the dev work to the systems work. But in others it was the other way around. Lately I've been feeling pretty burntout on both, hence why I said I detest both, just not sure which one I hate more, and which one is best for me in the long run.

The other option is of course, something I'm leaning toward more and more: next job be a Technical Program Manager or other Technical Manager (preferably not a project manager). Either that or a Cloud Solutions Architect. That seems to be an up and coming IT specialty, and I have experience in it, having done a few projects for that before. Pays more than most programming and sys admin jobs and is basically about the same pay I make now, from what I've seen.

Stahlmann
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Re: System Administrator or Programmer?

Post by Stahlmann »

nuggets of wisdom here.

liberty
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Location: Norway

Re: System Administrator or Programmer?

Post by liberty »

What's the point of sys admins when everything is cloud based? I understand that Amazon and other cloud providers need sys admins, but other than that I don't really see any need for them anymore.

macg
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Re: System Administrator or Programmer?

Post by macg »

@liberty, I somewhat agree with you. The traditional "sys admins" does kind of go away, but in some cases it's a matter of evolving to something new... I currently work for a company as what I guess would be labeled "AWS Cloud Administrator", and my duties range across the boards - automating the creation / deletion of whole environments, production rollouts, system architecture, evaluating AWS services to see how they could fit in, general programming to make everything better. So it's kind of a mesh between some of what sys admins do, plus what OS owners do, plus what scripters/programmers do...

I know there are some companies that just don't need sys admins any more, because they let other companies (e.g., AWS, Azure) do it all for them. Yet others host their own "cloud", which requires the more traditional IT setup. And many do what I am in - a sort of hybrid.

In my opinion, whichever role someone chooses to pursue, you should always have working knowledge of others. Meaning, the best "pure" sys admins I have seen are the ones who can program or script their way out of the procedures they use. And in reverse, the best system architect or "pure" programmers that I know have an understanding of what the other connected roles, like the sys admin side of things, actually do and need.

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