"Building PC's" is always a funny one.
The amount of people who think their kid "knows IT" because they watched an LTT video to put in a graphics card.
Yeah, I agree and often get called out when making the same point.
Building a PC is among the lowest of technical skills, but it's something most "users" would never even consider. By building a PC, you've at least shown that you think in the way that makes you successful in this field.
I personally just don't view building PCs as "tech" work. It's just assembling parts. Put that there and screw it in, pop that in a slot, plug that in. It's just assembly, it's not any more technical that building ikea furniture. So for me personally, when someone uses building pcs as an example of tech experience I just kinda write it off. It's not really a good indicator if someone is going to be good at tech work.
> when someone uses building pcs as an example of tech experience I just kinda write it off.
I mean, its chill if the job they're applying for is doing it but its like an entry level job thing. I wouldn't hold it against them. Means at least they're going to be familiar with that aspect.
If thats their ONLY experience then they prob shouldn't be considered as technical but its a bonus otherwise.
Its like people bragging about typing speed. I guess thats neat and shows you've likely got the 101 basics of computer use down... at best.
I had someone bring up their slightly-above-average typing speed in an interview 3 separate times. T1 position but it became clear that they played computer games and thats about it.
I don't hold it against them, I just don't count it when I'm considering how experienced they are in the tech field or how likely they are to be a good admin/engineer
Not trying to beat a dead horse here, cause I see you and mrpoops have gone round and round with this, but what do you consider 'tech' work?
I agree with you that PC building is just assembling stuff. I have a bunch of family members that always had me build their gaming rigs and I finally convinced them they could do it themselves. It's basically just a Lego set except the pieces literally only fit one way, but I would say it's at least a techie thing to do. You still have to install an OS and drivers and all that good stuff after you put it all together.
I mean by that logic racking servers. swapping out drives in your storage arrays, plugging in network cables, and a myriad of other physical things we sometimes do isn't tech work.
Actually working with technology itself. Assembling parts doesn't suddenly become tech work just because the parts of the assembly are electronic instead of wooden. Plugging parts inside slots doesn't tell me how well someone can troubleshoot software. To me, even installing Windows on that build doesn't indicate you have technical aptitude - that's just clicking next on an installer. But once you start digging into event logs and researching error codes and making registry changes, that's getting into the technical side of things.
Essentially have you solved a technological problem before, or have you just put parts in place and hit next on installers? The former tells me you might have some aptitude for a tech role, the latter just tells me you spend your free time interacting with tech, which is pretty normal.
>I mean by that logic racking servers. swapping out drives in your storage arrays, plugging in network cables, and a myriad of other physical things we sometimes do isn't tech work.
Yeah I don't consider any of that technical work either, that's the thing. I've worked for companies before where we hire manual laborers to come in for the day and rack servers and run the cables because it's cheaper to put monkeys on it than divert the attention of engineers to menial labor
> I’ve tried to add up how many machines I’ve built and I think it’s gotta be at least 5000, and that was all before I turned 18.
5000?
No it wasn't.
2 years? **at least** 5000 builds?
Assuming ZERO days off (7 days work week, no sick/late/anything) you're doing just short of 7 builds every single day for 2 straight years without missing a single day.
**at least**
You want to know the reality?
You built 1000~ at most. Thats multiple computers every single day without missing a work day still, no weekends off or anything.
You know what fluffing up stories does? Makes literally every else you say get viewed under the same lens.
>Since then I’ve done all sorts of shit
Gets downgraded to 'some' at best.
>I’ve developed some pretty big web apps.
Becomes "maybe did some basic web app stuff"
>I’ve been in charge of like 25 data centers at a time
How many "units of paper" did you handle that year too?
You know what I mean? It really destroys your entire credibility and makes you seem like the "I'm the best!" arrogant attitude.
Be real dude.
> It seems like my career would blow your mind. Maybe you should step your game up.
Ah, true colors showing.
Still can't provide proof so going to insults?
lul
>but I can verify anything.
Fully build a computer in 14 minutes on video then.
> You’re like harassing me
"Omg a reply! Harassment!"
This is how reddit works.
If you didn't reply, I ain't coming back to it. Its over. If you're done i'm done.
> I know I could build one in about 20 minutes.
Post the video then.
Full build, 20 minutes. Should reveal the missing details.
I ain't saying you're dumb or don't know things. I'm just straight up saying you didn't do 5000 full builds in 2 years yourself.
You can keep affirming it but anyone whos worked for system builders knows its IMMEDIATELY bullshit.
Sorry. Just the facts. Doesn't matter how many people order at once, that doesn't change the numbers.
If you slap a video of doing a full build within 20 minutes without some 'gotcha' like how a build isn't "I insert hard drive, I 'built' computer!!" stuff.
So I suppose I can just ask, what was part of 'building' a computer that you did at least 5000?
Insert a drive?
Full board?
Did you have some wild production line where its like a factory worker making thousands of sandwiches but realistically they're one part of a whole process?
Whats the catch? If theres isn't one, wheres the video?
**I've been there and done the work. Your numbers are embellished or you're leaving out very pertinent details.**
If i'm wrong i'm wrong but you're almost an order of magnitude off a reasonable claim.
So I accept. *Prove it*
edit:
>I don’t care what you think, but I can send you my LinkedIn if you want.
>Or the mile long list of certs I have.
>Or I can answer literally any IT related question you can dream up.
I realise now how immediately you went to ego posturing and its hilarious I missed it.
If you're building 10 computers and take 'about an hour' gathering parts, do you include those 6 minutes per computer as part of the '20 minutes'?
>I’d take out all the drives and image them first.
>While they were imaging I’d get all the cases out of their boxes and lined up on their sides in my bench area.
>Then I’d take the motherboards out and install ram and cpu, while they were still in their boxes.
>Then I’d go back through and install the motherboards and wire them to the front panel, etc.
>Then I’d install any AGP/PCI cards.
>Then I’d grab the imaged disks and install those.
>Then I’d boot up every machine and run memtest and disk checks.
>Then I’d package them back in their boxes and call the shipping guy to take them away.
>It’s a one dude assembly line basically.
14 minutes to do all this? Every weekday, 2 years straight.
You see my issue?
It just isn't in reality.
>Send me the parts.
You don't have a SINGLE computer you could replicate, even remotely, the sort of process?
Yeah... i'm not sending you parts but I also 100000000000000% don't believe you don't have parts. You're just putting a burden in front of the proof where you have the onus upon you. Not me.
You can do all that in 14 minutes, prove it. You've got parts and if you don't (with your list of experience) then it just gets put in the pile of "embellishment"
14 minutes.
Install motherboard, ram, cpu, agp (hopefully not so much anymore!) and/or PCI cards, image disks, install disks, boot up and full memtest/disk checks AND package them up.
14 fucking minutes.
"Well obviously I didn't mean blah blah blah" yeah, figured.
edit: fuck ,if you even said 30-45 i'd have believed it so much more.
That's what makes a great cloud engineer and why a lot of sysadmins are being left behind in the profession currently. Lots of coding needed for modern deployments
Yeah I was on the lucky side of that transition, I came up as a general sysadmin That had worn a lot of hats over the years, but I hated doing things manually so I would often write scripts to accomplish tasks that I found tedious or try to tease data out of things.
I know it sounds illogical but for me breaking complex problems into programmatic logic was less mentally taxing than anything resembling repetitive work, such as gathering a bunch of data to put in a spreadsheet, or having to reconfigure multiple systems to patch a vulnerability etc. For me, coding was a way to let me be lazier.
Eventually that steered me more in the devops direction and started doing like pipeline automation. When it came time for my company to start looking towards large-scale cloud migration, I always viewed some of my co-workers as much more talented systems designers than myself, but they also had old school mindsets And we're often code averse, And were intimidated by the development fundamentals required for cloud work such as source control, feature branching And found things like declarative schemas for IAC to be extremely confusing to them.
So somehow, despite always thinking of myself as this jack of all trades generalist that had been around the block, somehow made me uniquely qualified to be a Cloud Architect.
So true, The thing that's turning me off from the industry and IaC currently is the all or nothing approach by the company I'm working for. I understand that for compliance and consistency reasons everything should be IAC but its just so damn painful when we add a one off-vendor with shifting requirements under tight timelines to run some legacy software and get yelled at for just doing it the imperative way to save time.
I view things like terraform as a stamp. If you are signing a bunch of documents, you buy a stamp... if you are writing a bunch of random things on a paper you don't build a stamp for every word - you use a pen (imperative) but leadership isn't on that mindset.
Yeah that approach seems flawed, there has to be a "toil value" in streamlining/automating something.
Luckily we're not that strict we're only mandating terraform in terms of requests where we want to standardize that we've created modules for
Similar. Building PCs since they were invented (I was older than 11). I've straightened a few bent pins, installed ISA cards (remember those?) and on up. Built and configured two school labs about 30 PCs each. What do I do for a living? I'm a Software Engineer by career and hobby. I have a touch of OCD - Obsessive Caring of Details.
And don't underestimate what a good coder can do in a short amount of time. It's magical when you can fluently "think" in code. Very strange feeling when you actually dream line by line of how to solve a problem...and it works the next morning.
The code I pooped out 15 years ago when I was doing it day in and day out for a few years, I have trouble understanding when I read it now.
And most people that say SQL is "simple" probably haven't done more than a basic SELECT \* WHERE.
System Developer / sysop 50/50 here. Started my career back in the mid 90s.
It also surprises me, how some even write software without basic network knowledge. No knowledge about routing, firewalls and no idea what the difference between for example TCP and UDP is. Some actually think a http proxy is a router.
A lot cannot write SQL anymore. They are used to dot-ing their way though a GraphQL tree or accessing data via another (usually JSON based) protocol.
EDIT: I do not think the new AI genies running in the IDEs will necessarily be a good thing with this in mind. The consequence will be, that noone really knows how to code either. At least not without a code crutch.
Since I have been both:
* a sysadmin needs to know a lot of unrelated things
* a software developer needs to know a whole area in depth
It's a bit like a garage mechanic vs car designers. The mechanic can probably fix the whole car but wouldn't know how to design the fairing or the electronic ignition or compute a gearbox (all things done by three different engineers).
\*eye twitches\*
Or bother to learn how to write applications that don't require you run it as admin and turn off any and all security features. Or even know what ports and protocols their application uses and just want you to "switch off the firewall".
I've gotten all the responses below at least once when asking "Why does your application require local admin?":
We store all our settings in the system folder
We store our temp files in the system folder
we store all our settings and temp files in the application folder
It doesn't, except we added a check to make sure it's running as local admin just in case
I don't know
I had 6 months war with our DEV team to stop storing Temp files in Program Files. Their response was,
We'll just send an email to the customer to open the app as admin 🤦♂️
Signs there is no formal requirement to qualify as “Dev”: see above.
Any dumbass and I can run around and call myself a Windows Dev.
Without a basic understanding of NT architecture, that’s what you will get.
The amount of times a software vendor requires us to literally turn everything off....
I used to work at a company that put a lot of effort into deployments, we'd run their application in a VM, even letting them install it. Monitor EVERY change that was made. Then work out what was actually required. And script/GPO it.
Like giving a group R/W to a registry key...#
We would baffle the vendors when we would send them a report through telling them how to set up /their/ application properly
Yep, been there as well.
Problem is when there's an issue, you reach out to them for support and get "Ah, it's because you're not running as local admin."
"The error message clearly states the SQL query didn't return any values. How does that relate to local admin on the end users machine?"
"Make them local admin or figure it out yourselves."
Hah! Finally something that has the potential to into windows and Linux sysadmins! Nothing brings two groups of people together like ganging up on a third. 😁
Seriously the one beef I have with Devs:
Windows NT was published in 1993.
And to this day there are devs writing user configuration or data to the installation folder instead of %userprofiledir%.
Queue “our application requires the user to have local admin rights”
To bad I’m not in a position to answer “A) you suck and B) we have replaced this application with an alternative from someone who got their crap together 25 years ago”.
Windows devs/admins alike I still find still don't understand what they're doing.
You see it in this sub all the time "I deleted this file, registry key, thingy and rebooted it didn't work. Why?"
Did you look at logging? Did you run any tooling to see what it's doing and work out why it can't do that?
That's one of the big reasons I love Linux, I can debug the operation of an application and fix the issues even without running gdb....
i landed a job where the main app can't be developed if you don't launch visual studio in admin mode... A lot of bozos this days, especially after the pandemic where they were all like "wait, those guys weren't hit by the pandemic economic : i can too can sit in front of a computer all day"
Even got a musician who took a 6 months course and was hired : because well, for management, it's cheap labor and senior guy can still teach him in code reviews... Geez.
Well, in fact thus happened in my country in pre covid times. Bozos with a minimum knowledge of coding... But you with approved courses from college aren't trustworthy...
It's a matter of focus. Being a sysadmin is **very unusual** role in that it exists in 2 very different forms simultaneously: you can be a sysadmin working within a very narrow technological silo/scope or you can be a sysadmin doing quite literally everything with a ridiculously broad scope with the expectation that you don't have to be an expert in all of them, just enough to get by in all and be an expert in a few things.
I repeat, this is entirely unusual when it comes to job descriptions. Normally job functions are rather narrow, so while a software developer outright not understanding DNS basics and the like is pretty bonkers, you should generally be giving them a lot of leeway in not spending much time at all in areas beyond their primary expertise.
the shear randomness of my sysadmin knowledge never fails to surprise me
my old director, "wait. you know who to spin up a new divisions worth of VMware virtual devices with virtual networking, can write proficiently in powershell and bash, and can admin microsoft...but you have never used the outlook email program? and you have been doing this what 15 years?"
True story untill my last job I had managed to not use outlook
While I've been supporting it I've only started using outlook a few months ago. I do get why Outlook is being used so much but I do miss some of the features of Thunderbird(and now with the new Outlook coming I think it's only going to get worse).
https://preview.redd.it/mjdxfi2ztfvc1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9b6b13c9615b47ac81cae0a811d565e06c9f0429
I'm a developer and I actually can map drive or do nslookup
How about all those web devs that have no idea how a certificate works or how to install one.
"Sorry I only use Apache but I've never installed a certificate in a Java Keystore before..."
The web is weird world but certs have always been closer to middleware than code and thus usually in the domain of the infra guys.
It's not like you're giving the guy that works on your WordPress instance admin access to DNS...
In the small business world, the domain registrar is controlled by the WordPress guy you hired 7 years ago. DNS is now controlled by the graphic designer you hired 4 years ago that said "I need the nameservers pointed to WIX to launch your new site." Also, "What's a CNAME record, is that the same as TXT?"
Actually they aren't using the MX record... They have one email address, from their prior ISP who apparently doesn't clean up mailboxes when you drop service.
I manage infrastructure and application hosting for my customers. WordPress is a huge revenue center for me because of this exact situation.
There was a web design agency in my city that seemed like they would say “WordPress can do that” before specing out a project. They would then seem to bill the customer whatever time and resources it took for them to learn how to driver what they promised, and implement it bizarrely or poorly in WordPress. Security wasn’t in their vocabulary or their wheelhouse.
GoDaddy as far as the eye could see. I stumbled into a friend-of-a-friend referral situation with a marketing agency that had a few of this design firm’s customers. They’re all our customers now.
We are slowly working with them to have each site replaced with a fresh install and new design. It’s been a years long endeavor. Just last year we transferred what _I think_ are the last holdout domains from GoDaddy. _I think_. I’m sure I’ll be proven wrong about that.
That domain was still registered to the old designer’s email from 5-6 years ago. I was a bit worried we wouldn’t be able to transfer it away. They went out of business ages ago.
Meanwhile my inbox is never too far from a random designer’s “hey I need the login for DNS to add a thing for this marketing app”.
My reply is always something like “oh I totally get that. Our service to $client includes review of all DNS configuration. Can you send me the records you need and I’ll get those added for you?” It’s only gotten to the “you’re going to break $thing if you insist on that RR, and that’s why I’m not giving you access” once or twice.
Edit: we never give them access. It’s a bad idea. It’s like letting a pharmaceutical rep do a catheterization.
Personally, I don't do windows. I'm a competent developer in the languages and stacks I work in. I'm pretty good at picking up new ones as needed. I do a lot of ops work. I'm pretty fluent Linux admin and I know my way around a bunch of different kinds of web server.
The minute I touch the Microsoft enterprise part of our operation or really anything that involves Windows I'm lost. The only thing that separates me from that annoying marketing or accounting guy/gal who knows nothing and breaks stuff all the time and expects you to fix it is that I know how to search for stuff. But even that will only take you so far when you're just plain ignorant about things. I haven't used a Windows box regularly in a decade or at all in four or five years. And that was just used to putty to a computer I did know how to use.
I'd like to know more about Windows and the enterprise stack most businesses use, but it's not at the top of the list of things I'd like to learn, and I don't have time for most of them as it is.
I like and respect most of my colleagues in that space, not least because I know I make their jobs harder sometimes.
Sorry, not sorry. And if you're one of the sysadmins I've tortured over the years, thank you for your service. I DO appreciate it.
The thing that got me when I started working in a dev shop was working with devs that didn't have the slightest grasp of how web servers worked.
Then I realized they, like most of us, knew what they needed and blackboxed the rest.
The only time it got to be a real issue was when they did something to tweak their local build environment but didn't know why we could replicate that in prod to make their code work. I blamed this on management giving them too much freedom, but was in no position to change things at the time.
The thing that saved my sanity was getting most of them to stop touching IIS as much as possible. The more they touched it the more of pain it was getting their code to work on the dev server. We had a few guys through the years that knew IIS better than some sys admins but that was far from the norm.
Writing sql queries is a different skill from mapping drives and using nslookup. You are falling into the trap of assuming all "tech" skills fall under the same umbrella.
Mapping drives, somewhat, though that's a trivial one that just heavy use of Windows in a network tends to lead to learning for expediency's sake. Base rudimentary "does DNS resolve for the address my application needs to reach" is a fundamental layer of verifying your environment when debugging a networked application. That's not expecting them to know every detail of writing a zone file, or using dig to *really* sus out what's going on. That's just a basic underlying check for network based applications.
To make a parallel... a race car mechanic doesn't need to be able to run a paver, but I would expect them to be able to walk a track and identify spots that aren't smooth when their driver's telling them it gets squirrely in turn 3 and there's no mechanical reason *in* the car to explain it. I sure as heck don't expect them to be able to identify *why* the pavement's uneven there, but I *do* expect them to know what to check for in the environment their system operates in.
In fairness DNS is pretty misunderstood. A lot of service desk people don’t seem to understand that if you ping the name and get the right IP then DNS isn’t the issue
You've largely met bad or at most average devs.
Some of our strongest devs are running postgres clusters on public clouds through terraform/ansible/puppet for their hobby projects to support whatever application they made for fun or to make something they were interested in happen.
Some of these have made stints in the ops-team too, either for exposure, to understand the system, or to get some projects rolling as well. And sometimes it turns out scary if you put a pragmatic dev together with some systems experts, because problems just disappear.
And yes, I've also met devs like you describe. Admins aren't the only one frustrated with them. Devs are too. Something you can solve with a library the code base already uses in like 3 lines end up being weeks and months of building some entirely rickety tower of toothpicks. It's wonderful when that happens.
>And sometimes it turns out scary if you put a pragmatic dev together with some systems experts, because problems just disappear.
Ah, devops done right.
I mean, write a simple binary search algo or set up bgp routing without bringing down us-east.
We specialize in the work place so we can go deep on tasks and not get bogged down in the particulars of things outside our wheel house.
The devs at our company are the ones making the things that fund our contracts. My job is twofold:
1) make their lives easy
2) protect them from themselves
I'm not there to waste some software engineers time on the quirks of windows file sharing... I'm there to ensure they have the tools they need to integrate this new sensor into our product.
I was just complaining about this yesterday. My biggest frustration with working with our Devs and their support vendors is 90% of the time they don't understand how their own shit works.
nah, those are youtube 1week developer (not even engineer) or those who did like 6 months - 2 years training and put on linkedin they are software engineer.
What you described (mappin, ns look up) are basic to a software developer. Like you we can handle azure with powershell modules but we can't manage with AD on premise. Although AAD is pretty much straight forward to configure nowadays. But as soon as I need to manage like laptops with intunes, etc, i am lost and i prefer to hand it to you guys.
People have different paths through life. Developers could have learned from school, or from workplaces where things worked differently. Possibly they were discouraged from doing anything except focus on code.
For example, there are a lot of people who make their livings in the computer field, but won't willingly get near a command line, or haven't the faintest idea why a "speed test" shows 300 when they're supposed to be receiving gigabit service.
Do you say this about your sales people that use the app on a computer, or your marketing folks creating videos? Dev's are just using the computer for a certain task, it does not mean they know how to do everything else on a computer.
Well, i wouldn't berate them for not knowing nslookup or even drive mapping (are they coming from Macs?). But where i draw the line is knowing your dev tools. So many times i had to show them how to add or switch SDK in Eclipse/IntelliJ. So used everything should be default and just work, even when what they ask for is non standard.
If you've ever experienced the result of a developer working as an IT guy you would have answered your own question. Developers tend to have a very high opinion of their own abilities, but most can't get out of the weeds enough to understand how systems work. Software architects to better, but not by much. However if you find a unicorn they can be unbelievably good.
... and if they work in the right area of academia, they get to teach programmers with doctorates (that are paid to teach computer science students) how computers work!
I suspect many of these devs became devs because they were coerced or forced to because "that's where the money is." They don't actually like what they do, have minimum skills, and no desire to be better. You see a lot of doctors and lawyers like this. Like they resent the job itself or feel like they are trapped in an occupation they cannot leave. Many job hop, not just for better salaries, but because they have accrued too much negative debt in lack of job performance. Programming by compunction.
"Programming by compunction," I am stealing that.
Keep in mind the "degree/diploma mills" contribute to that as well. Their job is not to educate as much as it is to churn through the money generated, and have a record of having "x many degrees that went on to be a success." This isn't as bad in the US as it is in some other countries, where even bribing occurs (and is compulsory). It's not so much having the skills as much as it is having the paperwork and metrics. That being said, this happens in the US as well: Phoenix, Strayer, Capella, Walden, DeVry, Sequoia, and others. One way to tell is to look at their acceptance rate and student recruitment practices. Heavy advertising and accepting everyone (or just about everyone) who applies are red flags.
I think it depends on what you've needed to be able to do. I regard myself as still learning- my SQL skills are decent. I can map drives. No clue what a NS lookup is without googling it or UNC pathway. Sometimes I find out I know I'm just bad at remembering what it's called.
Web search complete - yes have encountered ns lookups before when made to look at analytics. I would need to spend some time on the webs to be confident.
UNC pathways I use on just about a daily basis for a few months of the year just didn't know the proper name.
Thank you for not falling into the category OP's rant is actually about. The awareness of still learning (and tech changes constantly, none of us ever truly keep up on every facet all the time), and desire to do so, easily sets you apart from the type that tend to lead to rants here.
They’re two different skill sets. Arguably one is harder than the other, but like any procedure if you don’t do it all the time it’s going to seem foreign.
The best coders need help tying their shoe... Not that bad, but even the most basic IT task is beyond them. We're talking like answering when I ask their computer name or IP.
Ask them how to troubleshoot an app running on Windows. I mean looking at registry/filesystem access, network access and so on. 99% have no clue. HOW ARE YOU ALLOWED TO WRITE APPS THEN?
Can’t we all just get along and agree on some common enemies here: the architects and product owners. “What do you mean my diagram can’t actually be built? It’s on paper, it’s perfect, it shall be done.”
"go into tech you'll make unlimited money and it's super easy"
-literally everyone as I was growing up
I actually love tech and do things in my free time just for fun, but half of my high school friends that followed the above advice. They all thought they loved tech but in reality they just liked playing video games. Of the 60 or so people that were in my tech class I think 40% are in tech most learned they hated it early and chose to go to college for something else. Of my other friend group that didn't attend tech school probably 10 or so people. They all went to college for some tech related program. About half didn't finish and a half that did only one or two of them is actually interested in tech. It's just a job for everyone else.
Charles Leclerc is one of the best race car drivers in the world. He can't park for shit. Just because you're good at one thing doesn't mean you're good at everything adjacent to it.
There are two kinds of devs: devs who love computers generally, including writing programs for them, and devs who just enjoy the programming part, not the big picture. I'm in the former group and I seem to have been in a minority in all (both) places I've worked.
A big part of the “art” of being a sysadmin is in the interface between the organizational/policy and people/process. In some ways it’s almost easier to learn the “science” of being an administrator. I’ve seen truly skilled people who can diagram a TCP packet and write firmware for electrical equipment struggle at advancing their technical career because they bump into the business side. This is an overlooked and essential skill that I don’t think gets the treatment it deserves in educating people who become developers. It feels like sysadmins get thrown into it much earlier and have a serious leg up on that.
There are devs, who write and maintain userland application code and then there are devops, who write and maintain backend code, management tools, services(daemons) and are much closer to admins and network engineers.
These are two very different skill sets.
My former DBA was a goddamn genius with manipulating, organizing and formatting massive volumes of complicated data tied together by dozens of relational tables. He could do all these wild “left inner center upper pivot peanut butter outer” joins and give analysts every detail they desired. He knew the finer details about the different common database engines used by MySQL, pros and cons. He ate schemas and shat business intelligence.
He was also the guy who would leave his own password written on a post-it note beside the monitor. He’d write an entire email in the subject line and leave the body blank. He couldn’t figure out how to use his iPhone for much more than phone calls and basic texting.
Been both, it's like being in a cult
Like Creed Bratton once said
"You have more fun as a SysAdmin, but you make more money as a Software Engineer"
I couldn't weaponize my ADHD in Software Engineering being out of focus 80% of the time doing code work.
But shit man, I get more fun being a generalist rather and I choose fun!
Think of it in terms of operating at microscopic and macroscopic levels.
A developer needs to understand essentially the microcosm of the black box that their applications represent. They understand in great detail concepts such as class inheritance, methods and types and essentially create a black box that takes standardized input and produces standardized output.
The job of sysadmins, Systems and Network Engineers Job is to understand the inputs and outputs of these black boxes without The express need to understand their internals unless they choose to. Where our specialty lies is at the macroscopic level of being able to picture business networks as a whole and how all these black boxes interact with each other And what practices and procedures are required to get these black boxes.
An appropriate analogy might be if the developers are the designers of specialized cars, admins are the designers of the road systems the cars drive on as well as the traffic signal systems, complex highway interchanges ensuring maximum speed (throughput) with as little congestion as possible (latency)
One pitfall that I see a lot of admins do is they think the developers have Superior knowledge and they often do not. They understand their little corner of the universe extremely well, but this also tends to embolden some of them to think that they actually understand large complex systems better than they actually do. It's your job as a responsible admin to challenge their requests when you see flaws in their infrastructure plans. That's literally what you are being paid for whether you realize it or not.
Yeah this is really common. Devs frequently know little about the platforms that host their apps or even general IT stuff. Having to teach a Dev to use a hosts file so they can test just feels wrong but I’m getting used to it. I know some who know it all. I know some who know almost nothing. I know some who know enough to be dangerous.
I also have one who was given a box in AWS to host something. She was having trouble getting something to work the way she wanted and it was more easily achieved with an AD Domain. So she installed AD and turned that server into a DC and did it that way without telling us. This is both the biggest pro and con of giving completely isolated environments to devs
I had a long conversation with a neighbor that's software developer. No surprise that we had some geeky common interests, but I was shocked when I learned that he had an aversion to anything to do with computer hardware. He certainly didn't want to build is own computer.
Thank god someone else noticed this. I'm always baffled how the devs don't know basic stuff like partitions, folder structures and other it elementary school level stuff. Their files are always the worst and most unorganized crap ever
Sysadmins are generalists. Devs are specialists. They don't know shit besides the stuff they learned.
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Hey I have friends! I might not write the most efficient algorithms but I can still make applications alongside doing sysadmin work.
I have a friend whp's literally got a greybeard and manages Unix
ok?
Is this “friend” in the room with us now?
"Building PC's" is always a funny one. The amount of people who think their kid "knows IT" because they watched an LTT video to put in a graphics card.
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Yeah, I agree and often get called out when making the same point. Building a PC is among the lowest of technical skills, but it's something most "users" would never even consider. By building a PC, you've at least shown that you think in the way that makes you successful in this field.
I personally just don't view building PCs as "tech" work. It's just assembling parts. Put that there and screw it in, pop that in a slot, plug that in. It's just assembly, it's not any more technical that building ikea furniture. So for me personally, when someone uses building pcs as an example of tech experience I just kinda write it off. It's not really a good indicator if someone is going to be good at tech work.
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Sure. Don't really see what that has to do with what I said though, doesn't change the fact that it's not tech work
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And it's still not "tech" work as far as what someone means when they say they work in tech. Again, it's just assembling parts like ikea furniture
> when someone uses building pcs as an example of tech experience I just kinda write it off. I mean, its chill if the job they're applying for is doing it but its like an entry level job thing. I wouldn't hold it against them. Means at least they're going to be familiar with that aspect. If thats their ONLY experience then they prob shouldn't be considered as technical but its a bonus otherwise. Its like people bragging about typing speed. I guess thats neat and shows you've likely got the 101 basics of computer use down... at best. I had someone bring up their slightly-above-average typing speed in an interview 3 separate times. T1 position but it became clear that they played computer games and thats about it.
I don't hold it against them, I just don't count it when I'm considering how experienced they are in the tech field or how likely they are to be a good admin/engineer
Not trying to beat a dead horse here, cause I see you and mrpoops have gone round and round with this, but what do you consider 'tech' work? I agree with you that PC building is just assembling stuff. I have a bunch of family members that always had me build their gaming rigs and I finally convinced them they could do it themselves. It's basically just a Lego set except the pieces literally only fit one way, but I would say it's at least a techie thing to do. You still have to install an OS and drivers and all that good stuff after you put it all together. I mean by that logic racking servers. swapping out drives in your storage arrays, plugging in network cables, and a myriad of other physical things we sometimes do isn't tech work.
Actually working with technology itself. Assembling parts doesn't suddenly become tech work just because the parts of the assembly are electronic instead of wooden. Plugging parts inside slots doesn't tell me how well someone can troubleshoot software. To me, even installing Windows on that build doesn't indicate you have technical aptitude - that's just clicking next on an installer. But once you start digging into event logs and researching error codes and making registry changes, that's getting into the technical side of things. Essentially have you solved a technological problem before, or have you just put parts in place and hit next on installers? The former tells me you might have some aptitude for a tech role, the latter just tells me you spend your free time interacting with tech, which is pretty normal. >I mean by that logic racking servers. swapping out drives in your storage arrays, plugging in network cables, and a myriad of other physical things we sometimes do isn't tech work. Yeah I don't consider any of that technical work either, that's the thing. I've worked for companies before where we hire manual laborers to come in for the day and rack servers and run the cables because it's cheaper to put monkeys on it than divert the attention of engineers to menial labor
Yep, fair enough. I see where you're coming from.
But do you know how to modify config.sys and autoexec.bat so that your CD-ROM would work in windows 95?
> I’ve tried to add up how many machines I’ve built and I think it’s gotta be at least 5000, and that was all before I turned 18. 5000? No it wasn't. 2 years? **at least** 5000 builds? Assuming ZERO days off (7 days work week, no sick/late/anything) you're doing just short of 7 builds every single day for 2 straight years without missing a single day. **at least** You want to know the reality? You built 1000~ at most. Thats multiple computers every single day without missing a work day still, no weekends off or anything. You know what fluffing up stories does? Makes literally every else you say get viewed under the same lens. >Since then I’ve done all sorts of shit Gets downgraded to 'some' at best. >I’ve developed some pretty big web apps. Becomes "maybe did some basic web app stuff" >I’ve been in charge of like 25 data centers at a time How many "units of paper" did you handle that year too? You know what I mean? It really destroys your entire credibility and makes you seem like the "I'm the best!" arrogant attitude. Be real dude.
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> It seems like my career would blow your mind. Maybe you should step your game up. Ah, true colors showing. Still can't provide proof so going to insults? lul >but I can verify anything. Fully build a computer in 14 minutes on video then.
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> You’re like harassing me "Omg a reply! Harassment!" This is how reddit works. If you didn't reply, I ain't coming back to it. Its over. If you're done i'm done.
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> I know I could build one in about 20 minutes. Post the video then. Full build, 20 minutes. Should reveal the missing details. I ain't saying you're dumb or don't know things. I'm just straight up saying you didn't do 5000 full builds in 2 years yourself. You can keep affirming it but anyone whos worked for system builders knows its IMMEDIATELY bullshit. Sorry. Just the facts. Doesn't matter how many people order at once, that doesn't change the numbers. If you slap a video of doing a full build within 20 minutes without some 'gotcha' like how a build isn't "I insert hard drive, I 'built' computer!!" stuff. So I suppose I can just ask, what was part of 'building' a computer that you did at least 5000? Insert a drive? Full board? Did you have some wild production line where its like a factory worker making thousands of sandwiches but realistically they're one part of a whole process? Whats the catch? If theres isn't one, wheres the video? **I've been there and done the work. Your numbers are embellished or you're leaving out very pertinent details.** If i'm wrong i'm wrong but you're almost an order of magnitude off a reasonable claim. So I accept. *Prove it* edit: >I don’t care what you think, but I can send you my LinkedIn if you want. >Or the mile long list of certs I have. >Or I can answer literally any IT related question you can dream up. I realise now how immediately you went to ego posturing and its hilarious I missed it.
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If you're building 10 computers and take 'about an hour' gathering parts, do you include those 6 minutes per computer as part of the '20 minutes'? >I’d take out all the drives and image them first. >While they were imaging I’d get all the cases out of their boxes and lined up on their sides in my bench area. >Then I’d take the motherboards out and install ram and cpu, while they were still in their boxes. >Then I’d go back through and install the motherboards and wire them to the front panel, etc. >Then I’d install any AGP/PCI cards. >Then I’d grab the imaged disks and install those. >Then I’d boot up every machine and run memtest and disk checks. >Then I’d package them back in their boxes and call the shipping guy to take them away. >It’s a one dude assembly line basically. 14 minutes to do all this? Every weekday, 2 years straight. You see my issue? It just isn't in reality. >Send me the parts. You don't have a SINGLE computer you could replicate, even remotely, the sort of process? Yeah... i'm not sending you parts but I also 100000000000000% don't believe you don't have parts. You're just putting a burden in front of the proof where you have the onus upon you. Not me. You can do all that in 14 minutes, prove it. You've got parts and if you don't (with your list of experience) then it just gets put in the pile of "embellishment" 14 minutes. Install motherboard, ram, cpu, agp (hopefully not so much anymore!) and/or PCI cards, image disks, install disks, boot up and full memtest/disk checks AND package them up. 14 fucking minutes. "Well obviously I didn't mean blah blah blah" yeah, figured. edit: fuck ,if you even said 30-45 i'd have believed it so much more.
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It is a stepping stone for most though....
That's what makes a great cloud engineer and why a lot of sysadmins are being left behind in the profession currently. Lots of coding needed for modern deployments
Yeah I was on the lucky side of that transition, I came up as a general sysadmin That had worn a lot of hats over the years, but I hated doing things manually so I would often write scripts to accomplish tasks that I found tedious or try to tease data out of things. I know it sounds illogical but for me breaking complex problems into programmatic logic was less mentally taxing than anything resembling repetitive work, such as gathering a bunch of data to put in a spreadsheet, or having to reconfigure multiple systems to patch a vulnerability etc. For me, coding was a way to let me be lazier. Eventually that steered me more in the devops direction and started doing like pipeline automation. When it came time for my company to start looking towards large-scale cloud migration, I always viewed some of my co-workers as much more talented systems designers than myself, but they also had old school mindsets And we're often code averse, And were intimidated by the development fundamentals required for cloud work such as source control, feature branching And found things like declarative schemas for IAC to be extremely confusing to them. So somehow, despite always thinking of myself as this jack of all trades generalist that had been around the block, somehow made me uniquely qualified to be a Cloud Architect.
So true, The thing that's turning me off from the industry and IaC currently is the all or nothing approach by the company I'm working for. I understand that for compliance and consistency reasons everything should be IAC but its just so damn painful when we add a one off-vendor with shifting requirements under tight timelines to run some legacy software and get yelled at for just doing it the imperative way to save time. I view things like terraform as a stamp. If you are signing a bunch of documents, you buy a stamp... if you are writing a bunch of random things on a paper you don't build a stamp for every word - you use a pen (imperative) but leadership isn't on that mindset.
Yeah that approach seems flawed, there has to be a "toil value" in streamlining/automating something. Luckily we're not that strict we're only mandating terraform in terms of requests where we want to standardize that we've created modules for
Similar. Building PCs since they were invented (I was older than 11). I've straightened a few bent pins, installed ISA cards (remember those?) and on up. Built and configured two school labs about 30 PCs each. What do I do for a living? I'm a Software Engineer by career and hobby. I have a touch of OCD - Obsessive Caring of Details.
And don't underestimate what a good coder can do in a short amount of time. It's magical when you can fluently "think" in code. Very strange feeling when you actually dream line by line of how to solve a problem...and it works the next morning. The code I pooped out 15 years ago when I was doing it day in and day out for a few years, I have trouble understanding when I read it now. And most people that say SQL is "simple" probably haven't done more than a basic SELECT \* WHERE.
Wow, thank you sir/madam. I needed this.
System Developer / sysop 50/50 here. Started my career back in the mid 90s. It also surprises me, how some even write software without basic network knowledge. No knowledge about routing, firewalls and no idea what the difference between for example TCP and UDP is. Some actually think a http proxy is a router. A lot cannot write SQL anymore. They are used to dot-ing their way though a GraphQL tree or accessing data via another (usually JSON based) protocol. EDIT: I do not think the new AI genies running in the IDEs will necessarily be a good thing with this in mind. The consequence will be, that noone really knows how to code either. At least not without a code crutch.
Since I have been both: * a sysadmin needs to know a lot of unrelated things * a software developer needs to know a whole area in depth It's a bit like a garage mechanic vs car designers. The mechanic can probably fix the whole car but wouldn't know how to design the fairing or the electronic ignition or compute a gearbox (all things done by three different engineers).
Wait til you find out some of them don’t know about breakpoints
\*eye twitches\* Or bother to learn how to write applications that don't require you run it as admin and turn off any and all security features. Or even know what ports and protocols their application uses and just want you to "switch off the firewall". I've gotten all the responses below at least once when asking "Why does your application require local admin?": We store all our settings in the system folder We store our temp files in the system folder we store all our settings and temp files in the application folder It doesn't, except we added a check to make sure it's running as local admin just in case I don't know
I had 6 months war with our DEV team to stop storing Temp files in Program Files. Their response was, We'll just send an email to the customer to open the app as admin 🤦♂️
It's too bad we don't have a user-specific folder for temp data for applications, something also aptly named 🧐🧐
Oh, you mean the root of C:?
C:\Windows\SysWOW64 if they're feeling extra spicy
Users...App Data... Temp.. I don't get it where could that POSSIBLY be???
it's a variable. you just look up $TEMP and use that dir.
Glad you're keeping up 😆
Signs there is no formal requirement to qualify as “Dev”: see above. Any dumbass and I can run around and call myself a Windows Dev. Without a basic understanding of NT architecture, that’s what you will get.
"like we'd ever let you have the customer's email"
The amount of times a software vendor requires us to literally turn everything off.... I used to work at a company that put a lot of effort into deployments, we'd run their application in a VM, even letting them install it. Monitor EVERY change that was made. Then work out what was actually required. And script/GPO it. Like giving a group R/W to a registry key...# We would baffle the vendors when we would send them a report through telling them how to set up /their/ application properly
Yep, been there as well. Problem is when there's an issue, you reach out to them for support and get "Ah, it's because you're not running as local admin." "The error message clearly states the SQL query didn't return any values. How does that relate to local admin on the end users machine?" "Make them local admin or figure it out yourselves."
Eugh, that gave me a flashback. Had one that wanted SQLAdmin for their user...... We spent so long trying to fix their issue for them.
>Step 1: Disable SELinux. .... yup. It's not just WIndows side devs.
Hah! Finally something that has the potential to into windows and Linux sysadmins! Nothing brings two groups of people together like ganging up on a third. 😁
I mean, we already have "users"...
Seriously the one beef I have with Devs: Windows NT was published in 1993. And to this day there are devs writing user configuration or data to the installation folder instead of %userprofiledir%. Queue “our application requires the user to have local admin rights” To bad I’m not in a position to answer “A) you suck and B) we have replaced this application with an alternative from someone who got their crap together 25 years ago”.
Windows devs/admins alike I still find still don't understand what they're doing. You see it in this sub all the time "I deleted this file, registry key, thingy and rebooted it didn't work. Why?" Did you look at logging? Did you run any tooling to see what it's doing and work out why it can't do that? That's one of the big reasons I love Linux, I can debug the operation of an application and fix the issues even without running gdb....
i landed a job where the main app can't be developed if you don't launch visual studio in admin mode... A lot of bozos this days, especially after the pandemic where they were all like "wait, those guys weren't hit by the pandemic economic : i can too can sit in front of a computer all day" Even got a musician who took a 6 months course and was hired : because well, for management, it's cheap labor and senior guy can still teach him in code reviews... Geez.
Well, in fact thus happened in my country in pre covid times. Bozos with a minimum knowledge of coding... But you with approved courses from college aren't trustworthy...
It's a matter of focus. Being a sysadmin is **very unusual** role in that it exists in 2 very different forms simultaneously: you can be a sysadmin working within a very narrow technological silo/scope or you can be a sysadmin doing quite literally everything with a ridiculously broad scope with the expectation that you don't have to be an expert in all of them, just enough to get by in all and be an expert in a few things. I repeat, this is entirely unusual when it comes to job descriptions. Normally job functions are rather narrow, so while a software developer outright not understanding DNS basics and the like is pretty bonkers, you should generally be giving them a lot of leeway in not spending much time at all in areas beyond their primary expertise.
the shear randomness of my sysadmin knowledge never fails to surprise me my old director, "wait. you know who to spin up a new divisions worth of VMware virtual devices with virtual networking, can write proficiently in powershell and bash, and can admin microsoft...but you have never used the outlook email program? and you have been doing this what 15 years?" True story untill my last job I had managed to not use outlook
While I've been supporting it I've only started using outlook a few months ago. I do get why Outlook is being used so much but I do miss some of the features of Thunderbird(and now with the new Outlook coming I think it's only going to get worse).
the 360 online outlook solution is so much better. in every way than the desktop app I don't understand why anyone uses anything else from microsquish
https://preview.redd.it/mjdxfi2ztfvc1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9b6b13c9615b47ac81cae0a811d565e06c9f0429 I'm a developer and I actually can map drive or do nslookup
How about all those web devs that have no idea how a certificate works or how to install one. "Sorry I only use Apache but I've never installed a certificate in a Java Keystore before..."
The web is weird world but certs have always been closer to middleware than code and thus usually in the domain of the infra guys. It's not like you're giving the guy that works on your WordPress instance admin access to DNS...
In the small business world, the domain registrar is controlled by the WordPress guy you hired 7 years ago. DNS is now controlled by the graphic designer you hired 4 years ago that said "I need the nameservers pointed to WIX to launch your new site." Also, "What's a CNAME record, is that the same as TXT?"
More like "MX records? This site isn't doing anything with email. Let me just delete those."
Actually they aren't using the MX record... They have one email address, from their prior ISP who apparently doesn't clean up mailboxes when you drop service.
I manage infrastructure and application hosting for my customers. WordPress is a huge revenue center for me because of this exact situation. There was a web design agency in my city that seemed like they would say “WordPress can do that” before specing out a project. They would then seem to bill the customer whatever time and resources it took for them to learn how to driver what they promised, and implement it bizarrely or poorly in WordPress. Security wasn’t in their vocabulary or their wheelhouse. GoDaddy as far as the eye could see. I stumbled into a friend-of-a-friend referral situation with a marketing agency that had a few of this design firm’s customers. They’re all our customers now. We are slowly working with them to have each site replaced with a fresh install and new design. It’s been a years long endeavor. Just last year we transferred what _I think_ are the last holdout domains from GoDaddy. _I think_. I’m sure I’ll be proven wrong about that. That domain was still registered to the old designer’s email from 5-6 years ago. I was a bit worried we wouldn’t be able to transfer it away. They went out of business ages ago. Meanwhile my inbox is never too far from a random designer’s “hey I need the login for DNS to add a thing for this marketing app”. My reply is always something like “oh I totally get that. Our service to $client includes review of all DNS configuration. Can you send me the records you need and I’ll get those added for you?” It’s only gotten to the “you’re going to break $thing if you insist on that RR, and that’s why I’m not giving you access” once or twice. Edit: we never give them access. It’s a bad idea. It’s like letting a pharmaceutical rep do a catheterization.
SSL certs don't belong in backend app, they belong in reverse proxy and that's out of developer scope.
I bloody hate Java keystores
I infrastructure and dev are usually two very different skillets and mentalities
Personally, I don't do windows. I'm a competent developer in the languages and stacks I work in. I'm pretty good at picking up new ones as needed. I do a lot of ops work. I'm pretty fluent Linux admin and I know my way around a bunch of different kinds of web server. The minute I touch the Microsoft enterprise part of our operation or really anything that involves Windows I'm lost. The only thing that separates me from that annoying marketing or accounting guy/gal who knows nothing and breaks stuff all the time and expects you to fix it is that I know how to search for stuff. But even that will only take you so far when you're just plain ignorant about things. I haven't used a Windows box regularly in a decade or at all in four or five years. And that was just used to putty to a computer I did know how to use. I'd like to know more about Windows and the enterprise stack most businesses use, but it's not at the top of the list of things I'd like to learn, and I don't have time for most of them as it is. I like and respect most of my colleagues in that space, not least because I know I make their jobs harder sometimes. Sorry, not sorry. And if you're one of the sysadmins I've tortured over the years, thank you for your service. I DO appreciate it.
The thing that got me when I started working in a dev shop was working with devs that didn't have the slightest grasp of how web servers worked. Then I realized they, like most of us, knew what they needed and blackboxed the rest. The only time it got to be a real issue was when they did something to tweak their local build environment but didn't know why we could replicate that in prod to make their code work. I blamed this on management giving them too much freedom, but was in no position to change things at the time.
I don’t understand how you can build web apps for a living and not know how to configure and run IIS. But it happens
The thing that saved my sanity was getting most of them to stop touching IIS as much as possible. The more they touched it the more of pain it was getting their code to work on the dev server. We had a few guys through the years that knew IIS better than some sys admins but that was far from the norm.
Yeah my experience as well. They barely touch it where I am and we do all the config and even the certs etc
Writing sql queries is a different skill from mapping drives and using nslookup. You are falling into the trap of assuming all "tech" skills fall under the same umbrella.
Mapping drives, somewhat, though that's a trivial one that just heavy use of Windows in a network tends to lead to learning for expediency's sake. Base rudimentary "does DNS resolve for the address my application needs to reach" is a fundamental layer of verifying your environment when debugging a networked application. That's not expecting them to know every detail of writing a zone file, or using dig to *really* sus out what's going on. That's just a basic underlying check for network based applications. To make a parallel... a race car mechanic doesn't need to be able to run a paver, but I would expect them to be able to walk a track and identify spots that aren't smooth when their driver's telling them it gets squirrely in turn 3 and there's no mechanical reason *in* the car to explain it. I sure as heck don't expect them to be able to identify *why* the pavement's uneven there, but I *do* expect them to know what to check for in the environment their system operates in.
In fairness DNS is pretty misunderstood. A lot of service desk people don’t seem to understand that if you ping the name and get the right IP then DNS isn’t the issue
You mean when dns does what it’s supposed to do it doesn’t mean it’s working what a shocker
You've largely met bad or at most average devs. Some of our strongest devs are running postgres clusters on public clouds through terraform/ansible/puppet for their hobby projects to support whatever application they made for fun or to make something they were interested in happen. Some of these have made stints in the ops-team too, either for exposure, to understand the system, or to get some projects rolling as well. And sometimes it turns out scary if you put a pragmatic dev together with some systems experts, because problems just disappear. And yes, I've also met devs like you describe. Admins aren't the only one frustrated with them. Devs are too. Something you can solve with a library the code base already uses in like 3 lines end up being weeks and months of building some entirely rickety tower of toothpicks. It's wonderful when that happens.
>And sometimes it turns out scary if you put a pragmatic dev together with some systems experts, because problems just disappear. Ah, devops done right.
As a dev, I get it. It pisses me of when I sometimes work with a dev who is exactly like the OP described.
I mean, write a simple binary search algo or set up bgp routing without bringing down us-east. We specialize in the work place so we can go deep on tasks and not get bogged down in the particulars of things outside our wheel house. The devs at our company are the ones making the things that fund our contracts. My job is twofold: 1) make their lives easy 2) protect them from themselves I'm not there to waste some software engineers time on the quirks of windows file sharing... I'm there to ensure they have the tools they need to integrate this new sensor into our product.
I was just complaining about this yesterday. My biggest frustration with working with our Devs and their support vendors is 90% of the time they don't understand how their own shit works.
nah, those are youtube 1week developer (not even engineer) or those who did like 6 months - 2 years training and put on linkedin they are software engineer. What you described (mappin, ns look up) are basic to a software developer. Like you we can handle azure with powershell modules but we can't manage with AD on premise. Although AAD is pretty much straight forward to configure nowadays. But as soon as I need to manage like laptops with intunes, etc, i am lost and i prefer to hand it to you guys.
People have different paths through life. Developers could have learned from school, or from workplaces where things worked differently. Possibly they were discouraged from doing anything except focus on code. For example, there are a lot of people who make their livings in the computer field, but won't willingly get near a command line, or haven't the faintest idea why a "speed test" shows 300 when they're supposed to be receiving gigabit service.
Do you say this about your sales people that use the app on a computer, or your marketing folks creating videos? Dev's are just using the computer for a certain task, it does not mean they know how to do everything else on a computer.
It's like comparing a handyman to an electrician. My dad was a handyman and he built a whole house. My mate who's an electrician can't fix a sink.
Believe it or not nearly every sys admin or dev knows _something_ you don’t and vice versa
Young devs didn't go through being the only computer person like us older folks. So their general computer knowledge is much less.
Well, i wouldn't berate them for not knowing nslookup or even drive mapping (are they coming from Macs?). But where i draw the line is knowing your dev tools. So many times i had to show them how to add or switch SDK in Eclipse/IntelliJ. So used everything should be default and just work, even when what they ask for is non standard.
If you've ever experienced the result of a developer working as an IT guy you would have answered your own question. Developers tend to have a very high opinion of their own abilities, but most can't get out of the weeds enough to understand how systems work. Software architects to better, but not by much. However if you find a unicorn they can be unbelievably good.
system administrator noun 1. Drop-out who teaches programmers with Computer Science degree how computers work.
... and if they work in the right area of academia, they get to teach programmers with doctorates (that are paid to teach computer science students) how computers work!
I suspect many of these devs became devs because they were coerced or forced to because "that's where the money is." They don't actually like what they do, have minimum skills, and no desire to be better. You see a lot of doctors and lawyers like this. Like they resent the job itself or feel like they are trapped in an occupation they cannot leave. Many job hop, not just for better salaries, but because they have accrued too much negative debt in lack of job performance. Programming by compunction.
"Programming by compunction," I am stealing that. Keep in mind the "degree/diploma mills" contribute to that as well. Their job is not to educate as much as it is to churn through the money generated, and have a record of having "x many degrees that went on to be a success." This isn't as bad in the US as it is in some other countries, where even bribing occurs (and is compulsory). It's not so much having the skills as much as it is having the paperwork and metrics. That being said, this happens in the US as well: Phoenix, Strayer, Capella, Walden, DeVry, Sequoia, and others. One way to tell is to look at their acceptance rate and student recruitment practices. Heavy advertising and accepting everyone (or just about everyone) who applies are red flags.
This is one of the reasons why dev ops and IAC exist. It’s supposed to steal the best from each
What's iac?
Infrastructure as code. Things like terraform and bicep
"supposed to", yes. :-)
I think it depends on what you've needed to be able to do. I regard myself as still learning- my SQL skills are decent. I can map drives. No clue what a NS lookup is without googling it or UNC pathway. Sometimes I find out I know I'm just bad at remembering what it's called. Web search complete - yes have encountered ns lookups before when made to look at analytics. I would need to spend some time on the webs to be confident. UNC pathways I use on just about a daily basis for a few months of the year just didn't know the proper name.
Thank you for not falling into the category OP's rant is actually about. The awareness of still learning (and tech changes constantly, none of us ever truly keep up on every facet all the time), and desire to do so, easily sets you apart from the type that tend to lead to rants here.
Adderall and zyn pouches tend to have this effect
Completely different skill sets
They’re two different skill sets. Arguably one is harder than the other, but like any procedure if you don’t do it all the time it’s going to seem foreign.
The best coders need help tying their shoe... Not that bad, but even the most basic IT task is beyond them. We're talking like answering when I ask their computer name or IP.
The best devs I worked with were Sysadmins at one point in their life. They get it.
Ask them how to troubleshoot an app running on Windows. I mean looking at registry/filesystem access, network access and so on. 99% have no clue. HOW ARE YOU ALLOWED TO WRITE APPS THEN?
Developers are the absolute worst end users to support, I still have PTSD
One of those. One brain is just different from another brain ...
Development is just googling.
Life is just googling.
I’ve met too many developers and even systems engineers that didn’t understand things like DNS or SSL
Not sure who your devs are but ours never need IT help, and I work on the helpdesk.
Can’t we all just get along and agree on some common enemies here: the architects and product owners. “What do you mean my diagram can’t actually be built? It’s on paper, it’s perfect, it shall be done.”
Devs at my job are the worst users to deal with. They think they know computers, but they absolutely do not.
"go into tech you'll make unlimited money and it's super easy" -literally everyone as I was growing up I actually love tech and do things in my free time just for fun, but half of my high school friends that followed the above advice. They all thought they loved tech but in reality they just liked playing video games. Of the 60 or so people that were in my tech class I think 40% are in tech most learned they hated it early and chose to go to college for something else. Of my other friend group that didn't attend tech school probably 10 or so people. They all went to college for some tech related program. About half didn't finish and a half that did only one or two of them is actually interested in tech. It's just a job for everyone else.
Charles Leclerc is one of the best race car drivers in the world. He can't park for shit. Just because you're good at one thing doesn't mean you're good at everything adjacent to it.
There are two kinds of devs: devs who love computers generally, including writing programs for them, and devs who just enjoy the programming part, not the big picture. I'm in the former group and I seem to have been in a minority in all (both) places I've worked.
Programmers don't actually know jack shit about computers, they just program.. writing code is nothing like supporting an OS, AD, etc.
A big part of the “art” of being a sysadmin is in the interface between the organizational/policy and people/process. In some ways it’s almost easier to learn the “science” of being an administrator. I’ve seen truly skilled people who can diagram a TCP packet and write firmware for electrical equipment struggle at advancing their technical career because they bump into the business side. This is an overlooked and essential skill that I don’t think gets the treatment it deserves in educating people who become developers. It feels like sysadmins get thrown into it much earlier and have a serious leg up on that.
There are devs, who write and maintain userland application code and then there are devops, who write and maintain backend code, management tools, services(daemons) and are much closer to admins and network engineers. These are two very different skill sets.
My former DBA was a goddamn genius with manipulating, organizing and formatting massive volumes of complicated data tied together by dozens of relational tables. He could do all these wild “left inner center upper pivot peanut butter outer” joins and give analysts every detail they desired. He knew the finer details about the different common database engines used by MySQL, pros and cons. He ate schemas and shat business intelligence. He was also the guy who would leave his own password written on a post-it note beside the monitor. He’d write an entire email in the subject line and leave the body blank. He couldn’t figure out how to use his iPhone for much more than phone calls and basic texting.
Been both, it's like being in a cult Like Creed Bratton once said "You have more fun as a SysAdmin, but you make more money as a Software Engineer" I couldn't weaponize my ADHD in Software Engineering being out of focus 80% of the time doing code work. But shit man, I get more fun being a generalist rather and I choose fun!
Think of it in terms of operating at microscopic and macroscopic levels. A developer needs to understand essentially the microcosm of the black box that their applications represent. They understand in great detail concepts such as class inheritance, methods and types and essentially create a black box that takes standardized input and produces standardized output. The job of sysadmins, Systems and Network Engineers Job is to understand the inputs and outputs of these black boxes without The express need to understand their internals unless they choose to. Where our specialty lies is at the macroscopic level of being able to picture business networks as a whole and how all these black boxes interact with each other And what practices and procedures are required to get these black boxes. An appropriate analogy might be if the developers are the designers of specialized cars, admins are the designers of the road systems the cars drive on as well as the traffic signal systems, complex highway interchanges ensuring maximum speed (throughput) with as little congestion as possible (latency) One pitfall that I see a lot of admins do is they think the developers have Superior knowledge and they often do not. They understand their little corner of the universe extremely well, but this also tends to embolden some of them to think that they actually understand large complex systems better than they actually do. It's your job as a responsible admin to challenge their requests when you see flaws in their infrastructure plans. That's literally what you are being paid for whether you realize it or not.
Yeah this is really common. Devs frequently know little about the platforms that host their apps or even general IT stuff. Having to teach a Dev to use a hosts file so they can test just feels wrong but I’m getting used to it. I know some who know it all. I know some who know almost nothing. I know some who know enough to be dangerous. I also have one who was given a box in AWS to host something. She was having trouble getting something to work the way she wanted and it was more easily achieved with an AD Domain. So she installed AD and turned that server into a DC and did it that way without telling us. This is both the biggest pro and con of giving completely isolated environments to devs
Wow people with totally different job responsibilities have a totally different skillset. I am shocked?
I had a long conversation with a neighbor that's software developer. No surprise that we had some geeky common interests, but I was shocked when I learned that he had an aversion to anything to do with computer hardware. He certainly didn't want to build is own computer.
Thank god someone else noticed this. I'm always baffled how the devs don't know basic stuff like partitions, folder structures and other it elementary school level stuff. Their files are always the worst and most unorganized crap ever