What’s the endgame of a Linux sysadmin?

[-]

Yep. Started as a Linux admin in ‘99. Became a “Linux Systems Engineer” and started learning python. A project I was working on needed to work on systems ranging from RHEL5 to RHEL7 led me to picking up Go. Now I’m lead SRE at, mostly working in Go, and Rust to a lesser extent.

While I struggle to call myself a software engineer, I do spend the majority of my day in an IDE. When I’m not writing code for our platform or product, I’m doing other infra automation work with Pulumi or troubleshooting/debugging production/environmental issues. My Linux, networking, and security background mean I’m better suited at certain things the traditional software engineers lack skills on.

[-]

sudonem@reddit

As someone with no experience with Go - what sort of project lead you to get into it?

I personally don’t think I’ll ever want be writing enough code on a daily basis to call myself a software developer, and I like the infrastructure side of things more than DevOps - so I’m wondering what the tipping point might be in moving from Python to Go or Rust. Aside, perhaps simply from interpreted languages vs compiled.

[-]

WilliamMButtlickerIV@reddit

You can try writing a cli tool

[-]

sudonem@reddit

Sure?

Libraries like argparse/optparse/docopt make it pretty accessible to develop CLI tools with Python - then complie to binary with Cython (if that's even necessary).

What are you suggesting precisely?

I ask that with no snark or sarcasm - I have no experience with Go so I'm not sure what specifically you're getting at with this suggestion.

[-]

WilliamMButtlickerIV@reddit

This is a cli framework that is lightweight and easy to get started:

https://github.com/urfave/cli

[-]

WHAT_THY_FORK@reddit

do you main go?

[-]

sudonem@reddit

I’ll have a look. Thanks.

[-]

DandyPandy@reddit

We had a fleet of systems that were owned by various groups. We wanted to hand off SSH access management to each group and not have to put in a ticket with our team to do the configuration. All of the systems were registered with a product code in a device inventory system called Device42. In Active Directory, there was a group for each product code and the members of that group consisted of the product's team members. We had the extension to allow SSH public keys be added as attributes on to the user's account.

The solution I came up with was to leverage the AuthorizedKeysCommand mechanism to query Device42 for the product code, then use that to query LDAP for a group matching that product code, then compare the public key trying to be authorized with those listed for each user in that group.

I tried to use Python, but the versions between RHEL5 and RHEL7 were too different to be able to have a single package to deploy. I decided to use Go because it was a single binary without any external dependencies that would run on everything we had deployed.

I've gotten to where I really appreciate typed languages. While Python has type hinting, if you're using a package that hasn't implemented the type hints, you're out of luck. Also, Python tooling/dependency management is bad. It's slow to start. It very quickly becomes a hog of disk space when you start pulling in multiple dependencies. Go is super fast. Compiles fast. The biggest gotcha you tend to run into with Go are nil pointer exceptions. I also hate the way error handling is done in Go, because you end up with a ton of if err != nil {} blocks everywhere.

[-]

neveralone59@reddit

Go is really good for cloud native development. It’s very easy to get concurrency going. It has better build tools than python. It makes some really poor choices in design a lot of the time but it’s really good for cloud native development. There’s a reason k8s, terraform and docker are written in go. Try it out, the libraries are mature if you are writing cloud native apps. It’s much easier to become competent in than other systems languages.

You have to understand the history of it though. It was made for people who were fresh out of college (hence its easy to learn but not as powerful as c++ or rust) and it was made to replace old c++ web services and create new ones. It’s not an incredible tool for most systems administration work though. Python really shines here, but go is worth learning.

[-]

sudonem@reddit

Thanks!

[-]

Yupsec@reddit

My title isn't SRE but "Cloud Development Engineer" and I get to live the same dream. Also with Go and a little bit of Python here and there when necessary.

I highly recommend this type of role for those who don't want to progress into traditional DevOps.

[-]

lev606@reddit

I also got started in the late 90s. Went from Linux admin to networking, cybersecurity, software development, and AI. Not to mention numerous leadership roles along the way. That's the awesome thing about starting as a Linux admin - you get a very broad view of so many technologies which gives you an opportunity to jump into a dozen different things.

[-]

zakabog@reddit

Where can this career take me besides DevOps?

I'm quite happy just being a Linux sysadmin making mid six figures, my bonus is a respectable full time salary and my base pay is higher than an upper middle class income. I don't really want to go anywhere else.

[-]

wompwompwomp69420@reddit

When you say mid six figures what range are we talking here?

[-]

the_smosher@reddit

Wizard in the basement with a beard to the floor whom others whisper about, unsure of your actual existence, until you are summoned and are the only one in the world who can fix the most esoteric problem with ease.

[-]

Old-Worldliness-1335@reddit

My dream is just to have a computer to run inventory in my fishing shop down by the beach where all I do is wind fishing reels and sell tackle all day

[-]

Next-Problem728@reddit

Barber

[-]

rloper42@reddit

30 year sysadmin here, but attempting early retirement. One thing I discovered: Your Career can change whether you want it to or not. I started out of college as a developer for vintage stuff like ADA, 68000, Dos C, etc, and then switched to pure sysadmin (Solaris and IRIX with SAN and storage) quickly. I stayed there a long time until Linux and virtualization took over, then pivoted to cyber security. In my InfoSec group, I was the go to for Linux questions and known as a ‘Swiss-army knife’. But then, I put myself into a group doing Kubernetes and AWS stuff, which then got co-opted into a formal DecOps Agile Scrum group. And that’s when I discovered I didn’t care for development, and had a hard time working with other more ‘pure’ developers. In hindsight, I kind think the issue was our Scrum team leader didn’t value the Operations and Sysadmin skills…he wanted a bunch of cookie cutter developers. I got unhappy, and made lateral moves away from that. Which ended up being worse in the long run.

So I’m now in my mid-50s, and just trying to decide if I want to jump back into a Devops landscape, or see what sysadmin stuff is still there, and also figure out some AI and LLM stuff and how it will affect me.

It’s as rough a time as I have known. And this is coming from getting laid off in 2008.

[-]

Akorian_W@reddit

I am trying to write an answer here but it is very hard. There are endless opportunities as a Linux Sysadmin. Literally. You can specialize into one of the endless subcategories or become a jack of all trades. Either way if ur good, youll be hired. And form there you can go up the ladder into expert or lead/management roles.

And in the end, if you are tired of all this bullshit, become a goose farmer

[-]

FlukyS@reddit

If you want more money move into CI or devops but sysadmin is a great foundation

[-]

Fantastic-Sky-7111@reddit

Maximum automation. But still telling people how difficult and time consuming things are

[-]

BaileysOTR@reddit

Total world domination.

[-]

citrusaus0@reddit

sre, cyber

[-]

TheAberrant@reddit

Goat farmer.

[-]

CarpinThemDiems@reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4l7kjd/found_a_text_file_at_work_titled_why_should_i/

[-]

DelusionalSysAdmin@reddit

Definitely worth the side journey to read! Although, there's a lot of romanticizing of goat farming in the doc. Goats are like AI. They do what they want. However, with goats, you don't have to worry about conflicting python libraries in order to get it to do what you want. Goats do all the things that you don't want them to do naturally. If you have goats and a python problem, you have bigger issues.

[-]

dnoods@reddit

This is closer to the truth than most realize. I long for the day I leave society behind and move on to a secluded piece of land with only a computer and high speed internet keeping me from being entirely off the grid. And goats are amazing creatures.

[-]

Electrical-Swan-3688@reddit

is this reply a meme now because I swear I've seen the same wording at least 20x

[-]

ZestyRS@reddit

I know more and more devops and sys admins who jokingly or seriously just don’t fuck with technology outside of work. Our Linux team makes more “use windows” and “I hate computers” jokes than anyone else

[-]

Sintobus@reddit

Get tired of using brain. Want to use body in a relaxed stress free manner. Simple labor as supplemental income on a retirement.

[-]

segagamer@reddit

I wouldn't call farm work simple labour personally.

[-]

Sintobus@reddit

A small goat farm that's purely supplement isn't too bad. If you're trying to make a living off of it alone for sure it'd be a load more.

[-]

segagamer@reddit

Depends whether you also grow their food or not, or have the money to buy enough land for that to never be a problem. They can get expensive!

[-]

dnoods@reddit

It does feel a bit cliche, doesn’t it? But those words came straight from the heart. The cold, black and partially dead heart that has been decaying from years in the corporate world.

[-]

surloc_dalnor@reddit

It's a meme, but there is a core of truth to it.

[-]

thinkscience@reddit

Goats are pure evil ! They always head bump you !! Happy head bump !! Sad head bump !! Angry head bump !!

[-]

nonelectron@reddit

Need to flip those goats and show them who is boss. No more headbutts

[-]

thinkscience@reddit

😂 remembered something i saw on liveleaks !!

[-]

SaucyKnave95@reddit

True facts. Our Service Manager (oh sorry, "VP of Service") has goats. He needed a hip replacement partially due to being surprised hit by goats over the years.

[-]

thinkscience@reddit

got traumatized for life on a pet safari with goats !!

[-]

jimirs@reddit

Damn, do we all think the same?

[-]

TheRealLazloFalconi@reddit

Same here, except without the computer and high speed internet.

[-]

im_trying_gd@reddit (OP)

Lmao that’s my ten year plan.

[-]

TheAberrant@reddit

Haha, yeah - I had goats then got into DevOps! (Only two tho, far from a farmer).

Linux skills can lead to lots of things, so really up to you and where you want to go. I’ve known sysadmins pivot to Cybersecurity, management, DevOps / Platform Engineering, and even app development (Python scripting led to that mostly).

[-]

Scoutron@reddit

What is devops even like? I hate being a sysad

[-]

dogturd21@reddit

I want to treat my wife to some baby goat therapy - any suggestions in the Maryland USA region ?

[-]

dgcxyz@reddit

Been my ten year plan for 30 years

[-]

michaelpaoli@reddit

Yak shaving.

[-]

3rple_Threat@reddit

https://steemit.com/funny/@netdragonx/why-you-should-quit-your-job-and-become-a-goat-farmer

[-]

lemon_tea@reddit

I was gonna suggest yak herder, but this works.

[-]

udsd007@reddit

More likely yak shaver.

[-]

lemon_tea@reddit

https://youtu.be/trXjZ70ab1Q

[-]

chuckmilam@reddit

Professional fly fisherman.

[-]

saysjuan@reddit

Part time Fishing guide here. It’s exactly the same as working Level 1 help desk but I’m on a boat and no ticketing system. It’s more catching than fishing but it’s far more enjoyable.

[-]

arkane-linux@reddit

I am well on my way. Linux admin here, I started training a Border Collie sheepdog.

After spending most of my life behind a monitor, it is nice to finally get away from it.

I am only 28 and am already done with this crap.

[-]

thrax_uk@reddit

Oh I see, so you start with pets, then look after cattle and end goal is a heard of goats. Makes sense now :)

[-]

redditor100101011101@reddit

You dare, Ed Boys?????

[-]

Hangikjot@reddit

I’m generally on the windows side, but that’s is my plan too. Goats and chickens a cabin.

[-]

bigbirdtoejam@reddit

sysadmin is a job too. Devops as you said. After that, wherever the universe takes you. Coach a Lego robotics team at your local school

[-]

Roffeboffe@reddit

I got a full time job as a Linux sysadmin November 2020. Came from a Network manager job. Spent two months automizing all Linux tasks with Ansible. Since then I have worked 90% network and 10% Linux.Turns out they hired me because I was fluent in the OSI model in addition to knowing how to resize a logical volume.

So the Endgame is in Networking, I guess.

[-]

Even_Bookkeeper3285@reddit

Money and lots of it.

[-]

ecdthegreat@reddit

Become one with the kernel

[-]

debacle_enjoyer@reddit

I’m an engineering architect at a software company now, started as a Linux guy. I have a lot of decisions to make for my upcoming career options next time I’m promoted.

[-]

Scary_Bus3363@reddit

IT management if you are inclined to deal with abuse and pain.

[-]

skaven81@reddit

I've been a sysadmin / DevOps / SRE / architect / whatever since 2003 and what I see now is a disturbing trend of new junior staff coming in who have absolutely zero idea of what happens inside a computer or an operating system (or even what an operating system is).

What this means is that anybody with a passable amount of "cross-domain" experience -- somebody that knows how a computer works internally, how network and storage systems work, how datacenters are built, and how to automate things -- has become unobtainium. If you have a broad complement of skills like this (as many/most linux sysadmins do) then your "endgame" can be really anything at all in the tech space that piques your interest. Hiring managers like me will fall over themselves to hire people into senior/leadership positions who actually understand what's happening under the thin veneer of the cloud APIs.

Want to be an IT architect? Cloud services developer? SRE at a hyperscaler? Linux kernel developer? Linux services consultant? DevOps guru? Seriously, you can do any of these things starting with the solid foundation of a best-practices-based Linux sysadmin job. Just steer your career ship in the direction you find the most rewarding and make sure you don't get too hyper-focused on a single toolkit/technology/software stack, and you should be able to be plenty mobile in the job market going forward.

[-]

ShepRat@reddit

I'm expecting us to be like the old COBOL developers, able to make a massive hourly rate for small amounts of work right through retirement because there is far too few with skills coming up behind.

[-]

skaven81@reddit

Exactly. There's always going to be some sharp, motivated juniors that figure this stuff out on their own and backfill us old greybeards as we retire. But the advent of cloud-native and cloud-only (and I think to some degree, the decline of DIY desktop computers replaced with everything-is-soldered-in laptops tablets and phones) means that we're well past "peak sysadmin". In the 2000s and 2010s basically anybody with a strong interest in "computers" had enough knowledge simply by osmosis to make a decent sysadmin. Not anymore.

[-]

Broad-Comparison-801@reddit

damn this is actually a great point. I was just into computers as a kid and was building VMs and emulating things at like 12 because I thought it was cool. I feel like anybody who was into even more mainstream computer stuff in the 2000's like pirating video games had to know more about the structure of a file system then even the average PC gamer today. if you were interested in computers you really could be spun up as a sys admin pretty quickly. not so much anymore.

on this note though, we have been trying to hire a junior sis admin for a while and finally found one. He's like 20 years old and has zero college experience and he just loves Linux. which excites me so much... so there are some young kids out there who will fill the void, but I think they are few and far between.

[-]

skaven81@reddit

building VMs and emulating things at like 12 because I thought it was cool. I feel like anybody who was into even more mainstream computer stuff in the 2000's like pirating video games had to know more about the structure of a file system then even the average PC gamer today. if you were interested in computers you really could be spun up as a sys admin pretty quickly. not so much anymore.

Exactly this. Those of us that were "into computers" in the late 90s and early 2000s hit the proverbial jackpot of getting "on the job training" just by virtue of being computer geeks at home, and then when we entered the workforce, offshoring was not as much a thing, so junior roles were abundant and paid well, which made a great career trajectory.

It's just one of many things that my generation had so much easier than the current generations entering the workforce.

[-]

Broad-Comparison-801@reddit

im 30 and accidentally went on a date with a 21 year old guy the other day. he looks older and has been a firefighter and currently works in HVAC. we did not meet on a dating app so I just assumed he was much older.

anyways... I was asking him about people his age that he's friends with and what they're doing. he exists in a suburb of the metropolitan area I live in. most of his friends and peers come from middle to upper middle class blue collar families. despite the blue collar influence, most of them are going to college and racking up debt.

it makes me feel so bad. it's one of the reasons I pushed so fucking hard for this 21-year-old we are hiring and why I was so willing to take on a little bit extra work mentoring someone very green.

our generation really is in kind of a weird position. I guess everyone who's like 30 to 45 probably feel similarly... but things are not looking great for the generation on either side of us.

I was just young enough to miss 2008. I graduated in 2013 and went to the army shortly after. i got out of the army during the IT Gold Rush of 2020 with zero professional experience. I did a bullshit job in the army and didn't learn anything. so I scrambled and got one certification and almost immediately started making 55K a year on a help desk basically just because I'm a computer person and I had one certification.

sure, I've worked hard. i made it to DevOps engineer in 5 years through being strategic and obtaining the right certifications and experience... but really, I was just born in the perfect time for my very specific flavor of autism.

I've actually tried to think about in analogy for people who are just super into computers like me. I can't really come up with one that correlates well to other types of labor. The only thing I can think of is like a third string professional athlete lol.

I'm no 10x senior Dev but I'm a very competent team player. I show up and I work hard. and because of my spawn point my interest just happens to be very marketable and lucrative.

maybe some people who have gotten into niche types of auto labor? or like a tailor who specializes in wedding dresses? but even that it usually takes more time and usually requires more risk/self employment to get the same income level as a computer person.

I enjoy sewing and if I had the same level of interest/passion for sewing that I do computers I could definitely make a good living. but I would have to own my own business and gross over 300k a year to take home the same money that I do now. and God knows how many hours I would work. I do maybe 20 hours of actual work these days. maybe 30 total in a week including meetings and admin but it's pretty low.

being good at computers in the US for people of my generation is like one of the most clear forms of a golden ticket I've ever seen. I'm totally ranting at this point but side note, our demographic, people who make good money in tech, turn out to vote the least of any demographic lmao. I don't remember how that data was gathered but I remember looking at it and thinking their process made sense. they weren't just shitting on tech people for the sake of it. we are in astonishingly privileged class and I wish more of us used our privilege to influence labor in the United States.

[-]

ShepRat@reddit

When I was a kid in the 90s, I had to make a boot disk with a custom autoexec.bat to get some games to run. It was in the manuals how to do it. I was on Usenet at 13 where I first heard about Linux.

I broke our computer multiple times and my dad had to take it to his friend at work to fix, his friend always explained exactly what was wrong and dad would explain it to me (dad was technical, but on analog systems). Once we got a new one, I could connect the old one to the net and use that to figure out what I broke and fix it myself.

I can't see my son having anything close to that kind of education, not on computing technology.

[-]

doolittledoolate@reddit

Same with MySQL, or databases in general. Everyone pushes it to the cloud and teams are mostly scared of it, and performance optimisation there is a dark art now. Even the MySQL IRC room sees a few messages a week.

[-]

HTX-713@reddit

I don't think they can replace us with AI anytime soon, and there are too many companies that won't let go of aging infrastructures. Even then, there's always going to be crazy situations that only seasoned admins can figure out or band-aid. I will happily collect my paychecks until retirement.

[-]

kai_ekael@reddit

Funny, I applied to many jobs with 30+ years experience with Linux, etc. etc. and less than 2% bothered to contact me. Most hiring are looking for cheap and new, not mature and know what to do.

[-]

skaven81@reddit

Admittedly that's a separate problem. Hiring managers can scream at the HR department that a particular person is who they want, but it won't matter if the candidate knows what salary they deserve and won't agree to HR's ridiculous low-ball offer.

There have been so many good candidates I've interviewed over the years that I was not able to hire because HR said they wanted "too much" money. Sucks for me but I am glad candidates are pushing back and demanding a fair salary commensurate with their skills.

[-]

HTX-713@reddit

and what I see now is a disturbing trend of new junior staff coming in who have absolutely zero idea of what happens inside a computer or an operating system (or even what an operating system is).

You hit the nail on the head. Everyone coming in as "Devops" or "Engineers" have literally no ops experience. We literally lost a client because they had two newbie Devops people trying to manage websites and they couldn't figure out a very simple mail issue. I came into the project to see the client out and fixed it the first day... Too late.

[-]

InfoAphotic@reddit

I just got a junior sys admin job starting in a month. Part of the role is Linux OS. What really key areas do you think junior sys admins are missing or should know foundationaly as well as how computers work etc

[-]

skaven81@reddit

It's important to not just learn "Linux OS" as if you were reading a book. You need to build an intuition for how IT infrastructure works. It should be intuitively obvious to you the difference between a relational database and a NoSQL database and the pros/cons between them. It should be intuitively obvious why NFS is a poor choice of storage for performing distributed builds using something like make. You should be able to construct a mental model of what an OCI container "is" on a Linux system, and (most importantly) what it's not. It should be intuitively obvious why GitOps and automating everything (even the trivial stuff) is the right move even when the startup you're working for only has a half-dozen employees.

I'm not saying "go take classes to learn these topics" (though you should totally do that too). I'm saying that you should approach your job with vigor. Don't just close the tickets. Keep asking why things work the way they do. Build a homelab if you don't have sufficient permissions at work to explore. If you start your career in IT/DevOps/SRE/whatever-you-want-to-call-it with the mindset that you want to understand everything (not just the "job" you have today) and (importantly) you find that you actually enjoy it...that's gold. Follow that. Feed it. Learn, explore, and invent. Fail, then fail again -- those lessons about what doesn't work are just as (if not more) valuable than the cases where everything worked right out of the box.

[-]

chucks86@reddit

I have all that cross-domain knowledge, but not the confidence to apply to senior positions.

[-]

UltraChip@reddit

I ended up transitioning to engineering awhile ago.

[-]

IhateDropShotz@reddit

real engineering or software/network engineering ?

[-]

UltraChip@reddit

I don't know what you think "real engineering" is but I design shipboard components for the maritime industry.

[-]

IhateDropShotz@reddit

that is definitely real engineering

[-]

ParoxysmAttack@reddit

Morph into the villain- a project manager.

[-]

kai_ekael@reddit

NO RUTTIN' WAY!

[-]

kennyj2011@reddit

Imagine the pain you could inflict… lol!

[-]

BloodyIron@reddit

Don't think about this as "Where does it go?"

Think about it as "Where do I want to go?" and then identify what you need to get there.

Define YOUR life for you.

[-]

TwoBootDisk@reddit

Linux admin can transfer to a ton of other positions that people have already mentioned. I’ve been doing it for only 5 years and love my job. But only because I have an amazing work life balance and can afford my lifestyle.

So really, end game for me is whatever is comfortable. I don’t need to make a ton of money. But I wouldn’t mind transferring out of the more technical side to a more mentor role or someone who could change company culture.

[-]

Gabe_Isko@reddit

Cloud infrastructure, but also, why not become a software engineer? It always blows my mind that sysadmins don't program and software engineers can't run the code they write.

[-]

jmeador42@reddit

To be left alone.

[-]

dubl1nThunder@reddit

oh man.. the days of covid were amazing. nobody was anywhere, it was like we had the whole planet to ourselves! i had to fly for work during lockdown and there was approx 3 people on the plane, 10 people in the airport, nobody on the street. i walked down Times Square one day and there was like 5 people there, it was amazing.

[-]

jmeador42@reddit

I hear ya! My commute took 45 minutes down the interstate, but during covid I could get there in 30 minutes. I would be lucky to see three cars on either side of the interstate the entire 40-mile drive. It was truly some apocalyptic stuff.

[-]

MaxFischerPlayers@reddit

This is the most correct answer.

[-]

compulsivelycoffeed@reddit

Ugh ...can't wait.

[-]

nocommentacct@reddit

You dig yourself into a little niche eventually that doesn't take up much of your time. Ensure it stays essential, negotiate a good work life balance, and have it easier than most other professions.

[-]

Sharp-Shine-583@reddit

Nerf herder

[-]

bangemange@reddit

The world of buzzwords are your oyster my friend. I'm in platform engineering now, but started as a straightup Linux / LAMP stack guy. Proper Linux skills are always important.

[-]

re-verse@reddit

Platform engineers rise up!

[-]

rayjaymor85@reddit

I'm actually working on some certs to get into Platform Engineering now 🤣

[-]

agenttank@reddit

which ones?

[-]

Hxcmetal724@reddit

Survive lol

I came into my position with some knowledge (basic stuff) and they handed me 30 servers on a enterprise level domain, FreeIPA, AD trusts, STIG hardening, etc.. Hell, its been 3 years and I still can't figure out how to install and configure an HPC.

Survive until 60 and get a side gig to make money with less stress lol

[-]

agenttank@reddit

whats an HPC?

[-]

WizeAdz@reddit

A supercomputer.

It’s a Linux system administration specialization.

They’re always messy in my experience.

[-]

Electrical-Swan-3688@reddit

survive until 60 ? brother social security wont be around and even if it is, the age will be raised to 75. we're working until we're in the ground

[-]

suburbanplankton@reddit

I don't have an 'endgame'.

I'm very happy doing what I do now and pulling in a 6 figure salary that enables my wife to devote her time to charitable work (which is her calling), and allows us to live quite comfortably. My plan is to keep doing this for another 10-12 years, then retire.

[-]

Sushi-And-The-Beast@reddit

Or go out in a hail of gunfire.

[-]

WizeAdz@reddit

That happened at my workplace in 2007.

[-]

InfoAphotic@reddit

How did you get into Linux admin? I just got a junior system admin job I’m starting in a month and part of the role includes Linux OS. I currently daily drive arch Linux and have a proxmox home lab. Is Linux admin a good area to pursue? I was thinking RHCSA?

[-]

Dave_A480@reddit

Don't know how you get into it now, but back in the day it was learning bash, perl or both...

Perl is currently very legacy... Bash (and the classic CLI tools it ties together - awk, sort, sed, uniq, and so on) is still a thing....

Everything else builds on that....

Eg there's something you can't do with an Ansible module, what do you do? Inline a bash script with ansible.builtin.shell

And so on...

[-]

dodexahedron@reddit

The days when perl was king even for web apps were...dark times... Then PHP largely replaced it, making it like... more legible but not much better.

Gawd, PHP was once used not too terribly infrequently as a local scripting language and not just the default not-java/.net Linux web language.

*shudder*

But, back on topic, absolutely 10000% what you said.

A firm command of everything in coreutils is enough to put you head-and-shoulders above a disturbingly large percentage of people with "Linux Sysadmin" jobs and is all you need to be able to figure almost anything else out or, if all else fails, beat it into submission.

Heck... I knew a guy at a past job with a senior role on the company's "Unix" team (Linux and OpenVMS), who didn't even understand basic job control like how to background a process...... like...... ????? And he wasn't the only one, either. This was less than 10 years ago. His skills were literally replaceable with man bash and a few minutes of reading.

[-]

suburbanplankton@reddit

Honestly, I just sort of fell into it. I was a Windows admin, but when we inherited a couple of Linux servers in a merger, somebody needed to take care of them, so I feverishly started googling (actually, I was probably Yahooing back in those days).

Fast forward a few years, there was an opening on our Linux team, which happened to me managed by my former boss (the company has gone through a restructuring, and lots of people had moved around). He told me to apply, and the rest is history, as they say.

As to whether it's a good area to pursue: that depends on your circumstances. It's been good to me. RHCSA certainly won't hurt. Red Hat is big in the corporate world (I'm in healthcare, and it's what we use).

[-]

lnxrootxazz@reddit

I love my job but I would swap it for a small house on a lake nearby the woods somewhere in Finland or Canada, living alone with a dog amd two cats, working from 07am to 2pm without thinking about anything close to selinux, Iptables, ansible, or bash scripts.. Just cold nature, birds singing and the smell of fresh grass and wood every morning

[-]

CyberKiller40@reddit

Anything really... The sysadmin field is broad, and can lead to programming, devops, cloud, security, architecting, management and lots of others. Just be careful to focus your energy, or not, and become a ninja :-). Drop into a project to save their world and drop out cause others need help too.

[-]

iheartrms@reddit

I miss alt.sysadmin.recovery

[-]

thinkscience@reddit

Make more money for the corporate overlords !

[-]

michaelpaoli@reddit

Where do you want to go?

DevOps? SRE? Team Lead? Management? ...?

Can go any number of technical directions, e.g. climbing, broadening, deepening, specializing, etc.

Can go or add management bits or select parts thereof, though in general management is a very different animal mostly requiring a very different skill set - but there's some slight to modest bits of overlaps, and even generally climbing in technical areas without the management bits, there are often areas that at least slightly/modestly overlap, e.g. cost estimations, budgeting, equipment/facilities planning, etc. Depending how lines are drawn and/or how flexible, various parts of that may land more on the "management" side and/or much of that may be delegated onto the "technical" side (e.g. (sr.) sysadmin / DevOps).

[-]

jesserobbins@reddit

I mean, we had to create DevOps so everyone had a career path and got raises and didn’t have to fix printers.

[-]

jesserobbins@reddit

Also if you have never read this it describes the cycle https://monkeybagel.com/pumas.html

[-]

jesserobbins@reddit

Although when I was CEO of Chef I had to fix the fucking printer.

[-]

cusco@reddit

Architect. But learn devops skills first

[-]

SaintEyegor@reddit

Beard cultivation, having a kickass sandal and Hawaiian shirt collection is always a benefit.

I’ve been a *nix admin for over 35 years. My main gig is architecting and running our HPC. I’m also deeply involved in capacity planning, analytics and beating the junior (and way too many “senior” admins) kicking and screaming towards adopting best practices.

[-]

surloc_dalnor@reddit

Goat farming or moving towards cloud/security/SRE...

[-]

Amidatelion@reddit

Back to sysadmining. After 5 years at a quarter million I am completely ready to go back to sanity. Startup culture, cloud sprawl, disconnected-from-reality executives, they can all go hang. I am ready for Linux deployments, networking, file-system hyjinks, etc.

[-]

Hebrewhammer8d8@reddit

Endgame do what ever the fuck I want.

[-]

Superb_Raccoon@reddit

5 dimensional chess.

[-]

NoUselessTech@reddit

Windows Sysadmin /s

[-]

usa_reddit@reddit

Baker, definitely bread and donut baked.

Or you could move on to Cloud Architect/Admin.

[-]

notUrAvgITguy@reddit

I started my tech career as a Linux sysadmin, I'm in what I think is my endgame career. I'm in presales/solutions engineering.

I get to talk tech all day. I get time to toy around and test things out. I get to design solutions. I'm never on call. I make double what I used too. I get to travel to tech conferences and events. It's not for everyone, but I love it.

[-]

trying-to-contribute@reddit

Devops -> DevSecOps -> ???? -> CISO

[-]

GoaGonGon@reddit

Thanos?

[-]

ToThePillory@reddit

Managing other sysadmins is probably the normal career path.

Or of the sysadmins I know, becoming a teacher of an unrelated topic.

[-]

adeo888@reddit

I don't know a thing about DevOps, and I really don't want anything to do with the Dev part. My first two distros were Yggdrasil and Slackware. That was in 1996, and I'm still a UNIX/Linux admin. Linux translates very well to UNIX and the BSDs, so there is plenty to do out there.

[-]

dhsjabsbsjkans@reddit

Hobo with a nest egg.

[-]

Own_Refrigerator160@reddit

You just keep on leveling up until you get wiped out by the tech economy capsizing horribly every 8 years or so. In all seriousness what happens is you start dealing with companies doing more and more complicated of things with technology.

[-]

g3n3@reddit

Manager of multiple Linux admins. CTO. etc

[-]

lazyant@reddit

It’s a perfectly valid job in itself in many organizations

[-]

DkTwVXtt7j1@reddit

WFH, get all your work done with automation and just fucking chill out. Read a book, play some quake 3.

[-]

tomkatt@reddit

I do that now. WFH, ereader and Steam Deck for the occasional downtime. It’s the blessing of feat and famine type work on salary.

[-]

masterz13@reddit

How does one reach that level

[-]

tomkatt@reddit

Umm… dunno actually. 😅

I can give you a rough idea of the path I took.

Technically I’ve been building a skill set for remote work since 2015 or so when I started getting sick of being a desktop support monkey.

I spent a year learning Python, another six months on Java, then three months on powershell. I promptly forgot most of the powershell and Java. 😂

From there I got a VMware VCA cert while they were offering it free, picked up a NOC role in a datacenter doing networking, storage, and VM stuff (lots of enterprise switch stuff, lots of L2 VPN tunneling and some Linux stuff with adding storage to VM disks and LVMs for customers. Drank from the fire house there and learned a ton, but it was a high stress environment.

After that I took a few months off because that job was literally killing me stress-wise, got my Linux+ CompTIA cert, and a few months later landed a job at VMware. There I worked with their vRealize Automation suite and got my VCP-CMA cloud certification.

Ironically the VMware stuff is barely relevant now thanks to Broadcom, but I enjoyed it for a few years and excelled. Broadcom hates remote work and I had savings so I quit without a job lined up.

Applied to a few things on a whim and landed my current job only a few weeks after my VMW end date. I’m now at a data company doing technical support for a data management and control product that deals with stuff like protecting PII, data lifecycle management, stuff like that. I don’t wanna get too specific there since it’s a smaller company and I could doxx myself with more detail than this (if I haven’t already).

I’m serious about remote work, I won’t take an in person job and I moved from a major metro (Denver area) to a rural ex-urb. I have a dedicated home office now, backup power via solar and battery, and internet backup via hotspot for availability no matter the circumstances. I’m also good at managing my own time and work and don’t need oversight generally.

[-]

AnApexBread@reddit

Living alone surrounded by Mt Dew 2Ltrs probably.

[-]

Raithmir@reddit

Retirement and death.

[-]

Responsible-Shake112@reddit

Taxes and death

[-]

moderatenerd@reddit

15 years as IT generalist. 3 years as Linux engineer. I'm learning some Dev work and planning on creating apps mix of paid and open source in my free time. Hope to create my own company later.

[-]

sprashoo@reddit

for me, I got more and more into the automation side of things until I slid into being a full time software engineer. I find software a lot less stress than managing servers, and it pays better too

[-]

alexanderkoponen@reddit

Here are some ideas how many years of being a Linux sysadmin can be crucial in becoming a good...

SRE - You work with a bunch of developers and help them become better at bash and teach them all the server Linux tricks. Teach them how to monitor and trace their applications, i.e., with BPF. Or maybe aid in the IPv6 transition. Help them to understand DNS...

Cyber Security Architect - You take all your skills in network, servers, virtualization, keeping systems patched and stable, and you assess system designs, point out where there can be holes people don't consider.

Audit officer - same as above, but you work for a due diligence company, and your job is to assess if the customer has everything in order to earn their certificate or not.

CTO, CIO, CSO, CISO - C-level boss and tell everyone what they should do.

Teach - write books, work at a school (Wozniak style), write a blog, hold courses, do a youtube channel.

-

I'm no expert, just spitballing some ideas here...

[-]

im_trying_gd@reddit (OP)

I know what DevOps is I just didn’t want answers about it. Thanks.

[-]