Re: Advancing from Unix Sysadmin to Programmer

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Date: Thu, 20 May 2004 22:05:23 GMT

On Thursday 20 May 2004 06:05, Martin McMahon wrote:

> Hello there.
>
> I am a 33 year old Unix System Admin and am currently at a stage
> in my career where I have identified a change is needed in my career.
>
> I am nearly finished (one year left) a B.Sc. in Information Technology
> and have approx. 8 years of solid Unix System Admin experience behind
> me. I am also proficient in Shell Programming, Perl and reasonably
> proficient in C. I do not have experience in OO programming, but am
> practising at home on personal projects.
>
> I would be very grateful if there is someone out there who could
> answer this question for me, or who has gone through the same scenario.
> My question is:
>
> Is it possible at this stage of my life to transfer (by whatever
> means) to a purely programming role, considering my age,
> experience and education?
>
> Any experiences, opinions and criticisms are all appreciated.
> I realise some may say that Unix Sysadmins *are* programmers,
> but I do not believe that to be the case - we are more like
> mechanics who maintain what has been designed and occasionally
> repair or tack on certain additions of our own.
>
> Finally for anyone who might believe I'm being rash -
> I did not suddenly decide this, but have been thinking and mulling
> this over in my head for over a year now. A conversation I had with
> my boss recently (by far the best and open minded manager I have
> ever worked for) is what enabled me to realise I needed to make a
> decision.

I can only speak for myself here, but I made exactly the reverse transition:
from programming to sysadmin, largely because I felt programming was too
narrowly focused and, thereby, too limiting. Granted, you don't
necessarily create the next world-beater application as an admin, but you
have scope for programming, scripting (as distinct from programming),
hardware and software configuration and a host of other tasks and skills
that make _possible_ that world-beater and every other application that
appears.

Yeah, the hours are frequently miserable as an sysadmin, users and managers
often don't understand that you can't just snap your fingers and unscrew
their screw-ups, that regenning a system or replacing a hard-drive
necessarily takes time, that installing and configuring a new package in
the face of poor or non-existent documentation is not a day in the park.
BUT there are equal pressures as a programmer: KLOCS, code reviews and
walkthroughs, unreasonable and unpredictable customer and management
demands for more and newer "features" (what somebody called 'freeping
creaturism') and a host of other negatives.

_Can_ you make the transition at this stage of your career? Absolutely!
Should you? Only you can answer that.

Bob Melson

-- 
Robert G. Melson            Nothing is more terrible than 
Rio Grande MicroSolutions   ignorance in action.
El Paso, Texas              Goethe
melsonr(at)earthlink(dot)net

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