System administrators and IT operations pros might want to rethink their careers, because analyst firm IDC is predicting substantial drops in the number of people employed in such roles.
The firm this week published its first “Worldwide xOps Census and Forecast” – a study that predicts “a substantial shift in the responsibilities of IT professionals will occur over the next five years.”
“IT professionals in the most purely operational roles are facing a transition to a more technical or focused role that very often may involve some level of software development work,” the firm asserts.
What do we think? Is IDG full of it? Is the industry trending toward DevOps? I suppose there’s always the other options - hyper-specialize in a given technology, or move on to management. Or go start a goat farm or something.
I’m a long-time university sysadmin, an area where people traditionally are responsible for a long list of unrelated technologies and piles of projects because of perennial understaffing. Automation in recent years has meant that a small number of us can manage a lot more by getting rid of recurring tasks, but at the same time, my department has been almost constantly hiring for the last couple years, and that doesn’t seem to be slowing. I think articles like this tend to overgeneralize by treating all industries as the same. There are obviously changes underway, and sysadmin roles may look different over time, but they’ve been talking in conferences about this transition for a fair number of years now. In education at least, the outcome thus far of a more DevOps way of looking at things is that we just get handed more to do, but can maybe actually handle it instead of just adding it to the pile.
With each passing day, the goat farm option sounds better and better. Lol
I tried the “move on to management” thing. It wasn’t for me.
The ways we work (and the ways we’re compensated) do seem to be in some sort of rapid decay death spiral though. No one knows what it means yet, certainly not IDC. And that’s not even what they’re talking about, they’re just talking about trends in how technology is being utilized. AI disrupted everything, and it’s not done and THAT isn’t even what they’re talking about.
Yes and no. The people that truly keep the lights on to critical systems I think are more insulated. I deal with active directory (and azure to an extent). I’m one of two engineers that are attuned to what is going on in AD in a 65k+ staffed company. I do other things than AD, but it needs care and feeding.
AD is going to stick around for a lot longer and may end up being in that cobol state where companies have it for critical things but there are few who truly understand how to work it.
Everyone else may end up in a DevOps-esque role. Then you have the scope of the industry too. I think this article overblows the premise it puts forth.
The scope of work expands but the pay stays the same…
As a result, more tech workers find themselves in what IDC described as “hybrid roles that combine traditional development activities with activities that formerly were associated with operations professionals who historically had few or no development-oriented responsibilities.”
I guess I’ve always been in what they’re calling a ‘hybrid role’ because this doesn’t seem like a new thing. Every good sysadmin I’ve worked with has some coding skills, not necessarily for developing software products but for solving IT problems. I can’t tell if they’re calling that ‘development’ or saying sysadmin need to learn to develop software products. Either way doesn’t seem like they’re talking about the same sector I’m familiar with.
This is why I say “don’t automate yourself out of a job” is a really bad idea. That’s what they just did to many of us in January.
Well it can be a good idea… if you’re looking to move on to those other options I mentioned (specialize, management, or goat farm). If you want to stay in the sysadmin space, I guess I’d still recommend automating, but with caution.
