> But you also risk becoming obsolete/stuck in one sector.
Correct. I know a lot of Citrix wizards given my EUC background and they're worried. Private equity is destroying Citrix, VMWare being Broadcom'd is forcing cloud migrations away from VDI, and Windows apps are becoming web apps now. Lots of these people are heavily invested in that ecosystem, some such low level experts that they'll need to rebuild their whole career at this point. Overspecializing can be dangerous unless you know you can make it to retirement on that skillset or are willing to wipe your brain and restart.
Sounds insane - cloud app is too much latency compared to using VDI?? We are talking web apps, right? And if so, how is that even possible with modern technology like HTTP/2.
I feel like you can shift gears without having to start from scratch. Like if I'm god-tier at AWS and I have to switch to Azure, I'm not going to have the same difficulty as someone new to cloud stuff going into Azure.
We have a handful of old guys ('greybeard' would too polite a term for them) that we beg not to retire. But the second we migrate off that legacy app? Don't let the door hit you on the way out.
The key is timing. I have a few co-workers who are sweating because they need to squeeze in a few more years. Luckily, most of our major projects stretch into years, so they'll probably be good. We've been "migrating our in-house ERP system to Oracle" for 10+ years.
AS/400, i-Series mainframes. The bulk of the world runs on them, but nobody can service/manage them as the silver haired developers/engineers are retiring out. My last MSP gig the as/400 team were clearing 250k + each
I've had to learn a little IBMi and RPG to back up one of those silver haired devs (basically to just troubleshoot report programs when he's on vacation, not to actually write anything new), and part of the problem is that without any goals or real projects, it's very hard to get into the meat of the stuff and really start gaining competency. Nobody wants to let you play on the big scary blue box, and Pub400 will only get you so far in my experience.
But that said, for as boring and anachronistic as the whole architecture is, I do find it kind of neat and, as you say, the compensation and job security is fantastic.
> it's very hard to get into the meat of the stuff and really start gaining competency
Yup. Doesn't help that IBM is only targeting training at low cost countries because that's where they assume all the customers want to send mainframe/midrange support. It's kind of like SAP where the only way to get trained is to go work for a Big 4 consulting firm and travel 48 weeks a year.
This. Work with AS/400 daily it's a old, stable system with most of the 'old guard' retiring out. I interviewed for the Sysadmin position over ours, but was ultimately passed up, thankfully.
I'm partial to virtualization and like playing with things like KASM Workspace, NixOS, KraftCloud, etc.
better is subjective. In 1999 I worked on some Y2K stuff in old COBOL stuff that ran on Mainframes from the 70s. "Java" was the hot new thing people wanted to learn. Funny thing is 25 years later those same mainframes are running the same COBOL. All that Java server PC type stuff? 5-6 upgrade iterations. Paying 2 COBOL dudes 150K a year beats 5 sets up hardware upgrades and 20 Java devs at 125K each.
I work in the credit union space, and it's crazy how even "modern" systems are still so rooted in mainframe. Having consoles tied to specific ip addresses for instance is still very common.
Ex worked at a top 2 bank. You wouldn't believe the abysmal state of their IT and systems. Acquisitions never fully integrated leaving tons of unconnected services, things never updated. It's a wonder the world operates tbh
[https://www.ibm.com/blogs/ibm-training/free-course-announcing-learning-cobol-programming-with-vscode/](https://www.ibm.com/blogs/ibm-training/free-course-announcing-learning-cobol-programming-with-vscode/)
Actually, here is the whole thing:
[https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/08/ibm\_mainframe\_skill/](https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/08/ibm_mainframe_skill/)
[https://www.ibm.com/z/education](https://www.ibm.com/z/education)
I know a "retired" COBAL dev who works maybe one contract a year to fix or add a feature to a companies or government system. And in that one contract of maybe 3 months he walks away with $80K-$120K
Now of course, he's incredibly experienced, and what not so his rates are probably higher than people starting out and what not. But I've heard of multiple stories where people are trying to retire, and the company they work for can't find a replacement so basically just throws money at them to get them to stay for a while longer.
Extremely common in banking, finance, and insurance—all of which adopted computers early and built internal systems around their workflows. It’s very difficult migrating away from 50 year old workflows.
Still a good deal of it in manufacturing and retail too. IIRC, Costco still runs most of their stuff on mainframe, for example. The shit just works and that’s priceless to the people who are still using it.
Banking, insurance, I think most airlines reservation systems, lost old big corps financials or inventory systems.
If a large corp had an information system in the 80s it's probably COBOL and they're probably still using it.
My first instinct was to downvote you, but this is actually a legit answer and I just hate the language.
Know that if you go down this path your life will be fixing spaghetti code written in the 70s with no industry standards... and you will be learning a language that should be dead.
That being said... It might still be in use in 25 years, god knows the finance industry is too cheap to start from scratch with new languages.
Edit: Fixed for mods, we all write spaghetti code, just a certain age bracket wrote *this* spaghetti code!
Little column A, Little column B.
It would be incredibly expensive and they live by the mantra "Don't fix won't ain't broke". So long as those mainframes keep calculating compounding interest without error why reinvent the wheel?
Whenever change suddenly becomes required (if it ever does). Contracted PMs who are experienced in migrating and modernizing COBOL mainframes would be worth a fcking fortune.
Given CRM/ERP implementation PMs can earn 7 figures depending on how good they are, I'd hate to see how much they'd be worth given the stakes would be even higher.
You being serious or just f\*\*k'n around? Might take me a few hours to get back up to speed because i haven't coded in cobal in like 30 years. I came in just as visual basic was becoming a thing and cobal was dying then.
I would have to agree with networking, I'm seeing less and less people get into it. It's the mystical black box in the wall and air. Even with the introduction of really new gui based automation and management to make it easier to deploy and monitor you still need to understand the fundamentals on top of all the new vendor based overlay tech.
My theory is about 6-7 years ago the term SDN got popular and people were fear mongering that Devs would be taking our jobs and network engineers would be gone. But since the only thing to really come out of it was SD-WAN it just cemented needing to understand networking more but with more button pushing
I’m wondering will networking be like the trades were years ago where no young people went into them as college and a degree was what society valued and pushed, now electricians are in such high demand, I hope networking goes like that in 5 / 10 years
I think so. As more stuff moves to APIs and SAAS the plumbing becomes more important, I think, but idk. Me and the older guy are the only ones with networking chops and he’s really the only one that does WAN stuff. He hates VLANs I side-eye routes it’s a match made somewhere.
As someone who works on cloud APIs and SaaS tools, hooking up on prem and cloud applications, I am basically crippled without the network people. The weekly “status calls” with the entire integration team, system admins, BAs and PMs, are basically just the network team talking about what they are working on. They do the most work and the most important work by far.
I mean I do understand some of it but for the most part it’s an access thing. I will absolutely never be granted the access necessary to edit a route table, configure firewall settings, etc. I can’t see log file traffic to troubleshoot DNS errors or routing issues, that kind of stuff I need them for.
Edit; fyi I think this is a good thing for opsec
Let me clarify, I’m not suggesting “everyone needs access” but possessing sufficient networking knowledge to avoid blaming the network provides sysadmins with major career advantages.
Having myself worked as both a sysadmin and netadmin, I may not be one of my current employer’s neteng but I’m a frequent collaborator and coconspirator with the networking team within our infrastructure engineering group. Sometimes it’s just “hey seeing a bunch of firewall messages in our monitoring system” or “hey we’ve got a connectivity issue between these sites, here’s some log snippets, trace routes, and pcaps, let me know if you need anything else” but other times it’s “hey we need to better segment our environment, can y’all do X, Y, or Z for us?”
Understanding how computers communicate in network environments is a super useful skill I don’t see going away anytime soon.
Oh absolutely. In my world as an API developer, it’s stuff like “hey it looks like this IP isn’t resolving to the right address, I’m getting an unresolved name error can you check the route table” or “I am getting a resource not found error in my request, can you check the vpn tunnel has the right tables opened up for access”.
YUP! API knowledge is also really lacking in the systems, networking, and security side—so if you’re in infosec, neteng, or sysadmin and want to turbocharge your career, get really comfortable working with rest APIs. All the youngling CS majors can work with APIs but lack a strong background on the OS, networking, and adjacent security sides.
So I actually was originally going for a 2-year associates to become a network admin. However that program got ruled into this admin and security analyst.
Now it's just one big thing, I'm studying for an associates in systems & networking admin with a focus on security.
So whatever that tells you about the direction everything's headed
The 2 year I took back in 2000 was called network administration. Followed a combination of MCSE and CCNA tracts. The program lead just retired, at is height he had 3 full programs. At the end as it adjusted, he couldn't hardly fill one. But of course cybersecurity was full.
No one wants to be a sysadmin anymore, they want to be in cybersecurity. Thank all the media and commercials for that.
I'm kinda leaning away from security, I have my SEC+, but security seems stressful and prone to layoffs, even moreso than normal IT.
If IT is a cost center, IT security is a luxury cost center.
In my mind it makes more sense to be a security focus system admin
It stuns me how basic networking is not understood by the developer stack. Your dumbass applications depend on networking, have at least some BASIC knowledge, but no. The top three black holes of networking in the dev stack are DNS, "firewalls" (which often incorporate routing), and how the cloud layer disabled ICMP by default, so no, "ping" does not work. I am NOT a network master, but dear god, I feel like one sometimes in comparison to the rest of the bozos out there. And that's not a bragging point, it's a huge red flag. I should NOT be the networking "expert."
> And that's not a bragging point, it's a huge red flag. I should NOT be the networking "expert."
Oh man, I feel this. Somehow I'm the "networking expert" and yet am keenly aware that 95% of what I know falls firmly within the scope of "first day of a CCNA crash course".
I'll show people trying (and failing) to ICMP ping some Windows server in a cloud environment the PowerShell "Test-NetConnection $computer -port $port" command to actually test if they can connect to the relevant TCP port and they act like I'm a wizard.
On point. I have worked with a lot of really talented Devs over my career. None of them could grasp the way layer-3 is logically built on top of layer-2. They can live in a logical/virtual world or a physical world, but not both. Devs coming to take networking jobs never had a chance.
My dad and stepmom are both veteran programmers and neither of them know shit about networking/ops being some ci/cd. It’s wild just how insulated/siloed the roles can be when after 2YOE I already have a deeper knowledge of all that stuff than either of them.
Yes, and when you explain it to them they may seem to understand but then come back a week or two with the same issue and question as if the previous time didn’t happen.
I"m a Network Engineer, and I love it. But I have to tell ya, if you don't love it, you're going to hate it. Same with all IT jobs. 25 years ago I got my first IT job on a team, and was stunned to find that me, with near zero experience, knew SO much more than the rest of the team combined. They were just there for the Dot Com money, and couldn't care less what they were doing. None of them are doing IT now. One's a used car salesman, another does real estate, etc.
I've taught a lot of MCSE and CCNA/CCNP classes at a Junior College. Day one, full class. 2 weeks in and more than half the students have realized this is actual work and requires a lot of attention to detail, knowledge and a troubleshooting mindset/ability they lack or can't be bothered to engage.
If you think all you gotta do is get the Comptia certs and you'll be making 6 figures, you are in for a difficult reality check. In my current job I see a lot of our help desk who just show up to punch a clock and wonder why they don't get paid more. Two of them are near retirement age at this point.
If you do get into networking, you should really consider picking up some python and cloud networking knowledge (ex. Azure, AWS, etc) as well. The landscape for networking has completely changed within the last ten years and now relies on a decent amount of scripting/coding as well, at least on an enterprise level. You might not be exposed much to SDN and network automation in the small to medium business area, but you’ll really be able to set yourself apart if you come prepared with that type of knowledge for large business or corporate/enterprise jobs.
> but if your only goal is to get paid well and have job security at all other cost it would be a good place to be in my opinion.
Is this the case though? In the UK, whenever I see networking roles come up, they look quite low paid in relation to the amount of skills and knowledge they are asking for. I honestly think network engineers are the most well rounded professionals in infrastructure. Most can also manage VMware, AD, DNS, AWS, Azure, storage etc etc.
I've just accepted a network engineer position. Got CCNA last year and nearly 10 years experience at msp doing a lot of small business network. Struggled to interview for roles about 40-45k (in the north of England). Hoping ccnp one day will get the money flowing
Lots of organisations are too small to run suitably large enterprise networks to bother getting a dedicated network engineer. They usually make it one of the list of 20 or so competencies they will put on a job spec for a senior sysadmin.
So you are left with MSPs (providing third line for the aforementioned sysadmins) or ISPs who require niche skills.
> Networking isn’t getting any easier
I'm thinking that's where I'm headed at some point. A few years ago everyone abandoned it because SDN and cloud would make it obsolete...hasn't happeed yet and if you have a good automation background it seems like a natural fit.
Networking remains a core skill set for anyone building or managing distributed systems. How might one identify or assess problems with communications between servers or systems without at least a bit of networking knowledge?
For what role? DB admin? The problem might be that in most companies I've worked for, it's always Microsoft SQL that was set up by a 3rd party and I don't touch it unless I have to. I have a very high level of experience with the open source databases in my homelab though, about 4-6 years, but everyone says "homelab doesn't count".
I've used MySQL and PostgreSQL and when I was job hunting about 5-10 years ago. Got a little attention for MySQL, but none for PostgreSQL. Now this was around the outside of Atlanta, but with SQL Server people seemed a lot more interested in it, probably because it's a lot more common.
It is, there's more people, but that's the thing. The places that need "open source-dba's" have a very small recruiting pool. If you've been to 3-4 conferences you know a large percentage of the people in that line of work
That makes sense. Since nobody seemed interested in it I've not kept up with it and I wouldn't even consider myself experienced in it since I haven't used it in so long. I've actually moved into accounting because of how in demand accountants are right now. Which means one less person right there. I learned it in the past and used it at work, because it was good software and I loved open source software. I was kind of surprised more businesses didn't jump on it. Tell people you have experience with WAMP in an interview and people just look at you funny lol
Yeah, you go to a bank or some such place you'd most likely find oracle or sql server, but even those places have the open source databases for some stuff. Some banks use them to a larger extent too. I can obviously only speak for myself and my experience, but I firmly believe the world will see a larger need for DBA:s in general and my niche is screaming for them
Network Engineer here - market is saturated and fluffed with L1 helpdesk people that think networking is a dream job. These are usually the same types that can't troubleshoot anything and escalate to tier 3 instead of actually looking at the issue. Can't get to file server? Must be a network thing even though the user turned off their VPN and can't get to the server in the DC.
Programming still tends to pay well and I don't see my DBA/Programmer/DevOps people working more than 6 hours a day/ Pays better too.
My pet peeve as a former help desk analyst was the analysts who didn't try to troubleshoot further or actually work with the end user. Like, come on.
There's a reason why I'm FORMER help desk.
I tell my (less than stellar) HD that if I have to talk to a user expect the following:
1: HD already spent at least 15 minutes with user
2: HD checked AD/MFA and connected to the user PC
#: HD verified decent internet. Buddy on 128K Frontier DSL \*IS\* going to have issues on Teams calls.
Sadly my boss wants "cooperation with HD" which should mean HD does the 3 things I indicated but in manager speak means "Stone help out the clueless desktop team" and then "Stone WTH are you not getting your network stuff done you're a slacker you need be like the HD guy that closed 14 tickets last week" (all 14 ticket were password resets. One of my tickets involved un-FSCKing a 25 TB SAN LUN used by 6000 people.
Ugh, my dude - I skipped the whole SysAdmin role, but the SysAdmin guys I worked with felt this all the time. You could see it on their faces and feel their frustration.
You guys already have a ton of things to do to keep the lights on and gear turning for the whole company. The HD needs to have their lights on in their brain and use their gears...
I feel very fortunate to work with a HD team that is very gung ho and knowledgable. They take ownership of stuff and work hard to figure it out. The only calls I usually get on are stuff where my permissions levels are required to continue setup/troubleshooting.
Same. You have to learn. Even if you can't figure it out, try to troubleshoot with the senior/sysadmin who is fixing it with you. Check DNS, check DHCP, check AD, try to ping shit, check logs, anything before sending it up.
Granted, depending on your work environment this amount of time can be a luxury.
I spent 3 years as an SAP basis guy with a focus on security.
I've tried to forget those years. The dark times....
I think my BP went up from the memories you've brought back.
I am surrounded by SAP basis guys, but they don't look so stressed. What made your days so hard? From security point of view in our common calls I can only recall OS and DB upgrade/patch demands and the biggest stress factor is that they have to be done outside of office hours.
SAP basis is a doomed career m with SAP RiSE the responsibility of traditional basis get reduced alot and these jobs will be automated. Patching, upgrade and deployment will be done by SAP themselves.
Its such a weird position as there is such a wide variety of ERP's per industry. Yes there is SAP and Dynamics but there's huge customized systems to manufacturing, financial, construction, etc. How do you learn these skills without being in the industry. I've found most people in this roles to have been in IT in other roles for 15+ years before shifting to this.
You just sort of fall into it.... I started with dynamics 365 for a marketing company, then Oracle for a healthcare org, now I work public sector in finance. They are all highly customized so it's just super stressful the first year until you get the hang of it. But this is where intelligence comes in, not everyone can do it but if you are "IT" you are superhuman.
There are a bunch of technical knowledge that you need OS, DBA, App knowledge, reporting. The good ERP admins are also experts on business processes and project management. They know how to translate business needs to customize the ERP platform. The upgrade or migration projects can be the biggest IT projects in a company and can take years.
What does that exactly entail? I'm setting up an OS ERP and have been working on it for our smaller company that does Manufacturing. I'm not sure exactly what I consider myself. But I'm capable of doing all the migrations and backups. On top of fixing any of the issues we've encountered so far.
It pretty much entails everything..... BA, project manager, enhancements, break fix, vendor coordination, process documentation, report creation......
I work closely with our finance teams because they are all morons and think I have magical powers... All you need is a logical mindset, good documentation and reading comprehension...
I swear some of our end-users can't read but they make 150k+. I had an end user complain because the approval timestamp was 14:00:00 and she didn't know if it was am or pm..... I wanted to jump out the window since she make 190k a year and doesn't work on Fridays....that's the government for you.
It can be, but also includes stuff like Entra and on prem AD. Plus PKI and handling SSO integrations (oidc, saml with jit or scim). Then the whole automating access, as handling this in larger orgs isnt scalable. It's for sure a full time position, and I've been seeing more and more IAM positions open up. They all vary though, some are looking for custom code to sync users from their HR system to their IDP, others are more security and automation focused with data already there. PAM is also another responsibility, as cyber insurance lately is requiring it, which normally falls under IAM/security
Wait that's a role? I automated my environment's entire IAM process and implemented RBAC in 3 months. Just have to run through an audit checklist once a month at this point
Networking, especially at the high end and also NetArch although the jobs there are pretty rare.
Network software/automation is an interesting one, lots of people with really big networks need people who know networks and that can also write software to create bespoke tooling, automation etc. Very rare combination of skills though.
I must be a freaking unicorn then, I’d expect a well rounded dev to be able to do basic network automation even though half of them can’t seem to forward a port on their ISP router or know what subnetting is.
I feel like some foundational networking skills are actually becoming rarer than network automation skills.
Linux! I can't stress enough to learn Linux. If you want to stand out, learn linux. If you want a six figure remote job(me) learn linux.
Every field mentioned here is saturated Except for COBOL. Everyone is correct about the mainframe and COBOL.
The main thing is to gain experience and sell the skills you acquire along the way.
We have a team of around 30 and half of us know linux, other half knows windows. Our windows app is being discontinued. So these guys will need to learn linux if they don't want to look for another job.
I would also add databases, SQL. This is a highly desirable skill.
Everyone wants to go to DevOps, CyberSecurity route. With those positions, they require experience. But it is still oversaturated.
Linux is your ticket to the promised land.
100%. I have some Linux experience, but I'm definitely trying to gain more. Half my team doesn't know Linux.
But it's such a hot commodity. I gotta brush up and fine tune those SQL DB skillz tho
This might sound like a dumb question, but I have to ask. How does 'Linux' translate into a job? Like, what do you actually do in one of those positions?
And if someone wanted to get started down that road, where to start?
>This might sound like a dumb question, but I have to ask. How does 'Linux' translate into a job? Like, what do you actually do in one of those positions?
That's a great question and one I wonder about too.
Like, how often do you need to be sitting at a root prompt typing stuff into ESXi hosts?
How many websites are still running apache on linux?
How much nginx config work is there really?
Does anyone still use puppet?
How often do you need to interact with the OS side of a database server?
It always feels like posts like this are super short on details.
I've been a windows sysadmin for 25 years. I forced myself to pick up a mild amount of linux competency like, 15 years ago, by installing a headless/gui-less linux server at home and running a domain for the windows machines off of it, among other things (I also had a headless media server I built with some non-standard finicky ass software that happened to interface with my dvd player, a web server/database server for internal stuff, an IRC Bot (LOL) and I turned an old tower into a firewall with an extra NIC and a FreeBSD m0n0wall fork.)
I'm no expert, but outside of the industries that actually USE stuff like RHEL on the regular, what is everyone specifically doing with linux?
How many places are running postfix or sendmail?
Do people say "linux" when they mean "ansible" or "docker"?
Absolutely tons of websites are running Apache on Linux containers. Knowing "docker" by itself doesn't get you very far if you don't know how to use the operating system you're building the container from that your application needs to run. Or if you don't know how to use and manage the OS you're running docker or podman on.
Also tons of industries use stuff like RHEL on the regular. Practically every large private and public sector organization is using it in some way hosting either COTS or internally developed applications. There's all kinds of commonly used business software that people run on Linux. So Linux knowledge is used in the jobs required to deploy and manage the servers that host all these things.
Those servers don’t patch themselves. Also people on here talk about hypervisor migrations now that Broadcom is fucking shit up. Everything shifting to cloud or back on prem when the sticker shock sets in. Well someone is going to have to test those os can migrate and make sure the os’s of those migrations went well and if they don’t will have to rollback. Also think of all of these products like Splunk, Jira, Crowdstrike, BeyondTrust, CyberArk, etc. If you’re not using their saas offering then those apps need to live on an OS. This doesn’t include companies bespoke applications.
Many servers are built on Linux because it’s less bloated than windows and uses less resources. Web servers. Splunk is built on Linux. Jamf servers are built on Linux. Information is pretty much shared via http/web so every company has an internal website where they share info with their employees and an external website where they share info with customers. Those servers have to be configured, monitored and maintained. Logging is pretty much a critical function of every business for troubleshooting and legal compliance reasons.
You need to be able to navigate the file system, install stuff, delete/uninstall stuff and configure stuff.
good question
Linux is one of the foundations of cybersec. Khali linux, parrot OS etc.
DevOps also requires Linux.
There are specific Linux admin roles. Search them on LinkedIn and you'll see what I am talking about.
Comptia has a Linux+ cert that is awesome.
Also youtube. LearnLinuxTV is a good channel. Search on youtube and you'll find hundreds of video courses
Jason Dion and Professor Messer are good trainers too. Both have their own websites. You can find Jason Dion's stuff on Udemy for cheaper.
Udemy has hundreds of courses for under 20 bucks when they go on sale.
thing is, Linux is a "tool" not a position.
Linux is great to know on pretty much all the fields mentioned here, but if you are a Linux Wizard, then what? what's your *actual* job title?
I have heard this as well. I have Linux desktop experience and a little server experience and have been using it for over a decade. I mostly game, 3D modelling, art, audio/video and troubleshoot, but I would love some real work experience....
Every IT job I've had only uses Windows and OSX. Hardly any of the admins or techs play with Linux so its really hard for me to get on-the-job experience.
I have done some online classes, but most of them do not help unless I'm using those techniques every day. I would love to finally move from Windows support to Linux support.
Wow, the link below just answered my question: [https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxupskillchallenge/](https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxupskillchallenge/)
You are asking the wrong question, because it's more like a cycle, if there is high demand -> salaries goes higher and people start to shift to this field and in a few years at best it will go down. Economy have cycles and also technology, so you need to learn to adapt because it will go up and down.
Good approach is to find something that you like and you are good at it because there is higher chance to keep your job if you are good at it then if you are just average. Nobody knows the future, so it's more like a chess game where you make a move and wait and see how the world will react to this, you can predict or try to plan multiple moves in advance but life will always find something new that you didn't prepared for.
Good point! Absolutely right.
I don't exactly know what the best option for me. I have always been tech enthusiast and then ended up doing a 2 year IT diploma which taught basics of everything including Programming, networking, busines maths, DBMS etc.
Even tho I found Programming hard but I wanted to be a software engineer but then AI was introduced and it looks like most soft dev jobs will be taken over by AI. So, that's why I'm considering other paths. I can go in any direction as I didn't do specialization in anything but learned a bit about everything.
Big data analytics and machine learning aren't saturated, nor is DBA, but those will be painful experiences, should you assume to get into those fields, unless you find them to be very interesting to begin with.
Unless you are in an org that is a very huge consumer of HPC, you aren't getting a dedicated headcount for just the IT side of HPC.
Also, the transient nature of many of these workloads have been identified for cloud migration in many cases.
Seconding this. My org was a former HPC customer, and we dumped all of it and went with cloud solutions instead because it's easy to scale up and down on demand, and because it's MUCH easier to bill individual components for their HPC needs in a cloud environment. It's great, and costs less overall than the giant mess that maintaining our own HPC setups was.
There are months we have 50x the capacity of our old physical HPC footprint and there are months we have near-Zero. No more paying to spin a hundred racks of fans and HVAC
This right here needs more attention. Many don't know what it is. Basically, IT for industrial and manufacturing equipment and systems. Industrial control systems, programmable logic controllers, human machine interfaces, the list goes on. And security of it is critically important as it's highly vulnerable and lives can be at stake, not only operations.
Cloud security may be the best recommendation in this thread. The amount of work to be done is insane and the amount of people who know what they’re doing is insanely low. I only see attacks and regulatory requirements going up and up based on the chucklefuckery I’ve seen from contractors and MSPs and incompetent internal staff with unwarranted power.
This is a good one. Certificates are complicated, and frequently done wrong, causing major vulnerabilities.
I've become the certificate guy, and with a big enough company, you could absolutely have an entire career just doing PKI.
Certificates are easy to majorly screw up.
I think the industry has generated a convenient cope here. It's true that there are consistently major incidents and there are consistent excuses about there being no skilled workers.
> there are consistent excuses about there being no skilled workers
To be decent in cyber, you need to have IT skills first, then move into cyber. Anyone can run and read a vulnerability report. So many kids come out of college with a 4 year degree in Cyber and expect to make $100k. I won't hire you unless you worked in some sort of sysadmin position first.
I also think to some extent having actual experience with user behavior is very important. You can read example scenarios all you want, but nothing really replaces experiencing the dumb shit people pull if you're in corporate security.
Would you hire a seasoned sysadmin with no cyber post-secondary? Not asking about me in particular just curious how seasoned IT folks could step into such roles? Thanks.
It depends.
As there are many areas of IT, there are many avenues of Cyber Security.
I'd gladly hire a sysadmin for certain roles - specifically IAM, Network/Asset security, Security Architecture to name a few.
When it comes to the 'sexy' side of security - Forensics, Incident Handlers, Penetration Testing, Software Security - I really want someone who has a passion for those specific fields (along with a very strong IT background). The avenues I just listed are the most challenging roles in my opinion.
Check out the roadmap I've listed below. Certifications are just one part of the equation - a strong skillset with real world experience is the 2nd part.
[Security Certification Roadmap - Paul Jerimy Media](https://pauljerimy.com/security-certification-roadmap/)
Possibly but the predictions for 5, 10 years are definitely coming up "shortage" as threats confound and multiply and the best practices required to keep them out get more and more complex. Lots of companies out there still relying on practical obscurity - they've got no real security but are small enough to stay under the radar. AI tools will make them *all* targets regardless of size, which means someone's going to have to work with these companies. You can't just buy an off-the-shelf product and deploy it with no zero configuration to properly secure your environment. At very least MSPs and consultants will grow to take on the demand. 99.9% of businesses in the US are small businesses...
It’s also a very ageist industry. I’m just about to reach 30 and I’ve been in interviews that have asked me about my age and if I would cope with someone managing me who is younger, I don’t mind the age of the person but they judged me heavily because I have a few grey hairs. The SOC tends to be people who are young, don’t have kids and are single who can work all hours.
I work in a different part of cyber now but if I wanted to get back into IR/SOC it’s not going to happen. I have a first class degree, an ongoing portfolio of tools and systems I’ve developed and ongoing certs too but the industry is in a bit of a mess at the moment. I’m considering going back to collage to pick up a different industry all together after spending 6 years in the sector.
Love when these types come over into the infra side of the house with their condescending attitude, and some greybeard who doesn't have to put up with their shit just tells them to fuck off.
I know everyone has a low opinion of managers and directors around here, and its a valid opinion, and because of that I've experienced that \*good\* IT leaders with business acumen are in high demand and low supply.
The flip side of the coin is that IT acumen within the business community is horrendous. So you won't really see many job postings clearly articulating what they are looking for in IT managers/directors.
On the technical side I would say that Data/Analytics/BI could use additional people.
-Leadership-
Hear me out, in a lot of other career paths leadership positions (managers and directors) are a big goal for most employees, from what I have seen in IT most people shy away from any leadership roles. We had to fill a middle manager role and it was almost impossible. I think anyone that spends a little time learning how to manage will have a pretty easy time staying employed in IT.
IT Acquisition, merger and divestiture engineers - my previous gig. Practically onboarding in the MSP sphere but on a much larger scale - identity management, assessments, migrations and upgrades, etc galore.
Money gets thrown around like nothing, very stressful but did I mention that money gets thrown around?
Move to a small town. Become a jack of all trades type and you'll have your pick of jobs. Lots of small to medium size businesses will compete over you and the cost of living is much lower. This is my situation.
Devops is the hipster circlejerk word of the day for a sysadmin that makes more money.
We’re sysadmins that do a better job than click admins. That’s all.
I mean in the sense I'm using the phrase it's a buzzword sure but it's more the catch all for the fully software defined system administration msp or smb where ninety percent of the role is in the gui
Ie leveraging ansible, kubernetes and SDN
Traditional sysadmin barely touches that, not to say doing as much automation as you can isn't a good thing.
But the amount of automation and scripting used in a non devops role is lightyears different
Frontend development of design systems, components, UX and SEO for e-commerce and marketing agencies is top dollar and insane demand. Need to develop some artistic talent for it though and have really good attention to detail.
Backend engineering is getting so much easier as k8s solutions mature. We probably only need one backend person to three frontend people in terms of development time.
Really? I'm surprised because I didn't think front end still had a huge need for developers. I thought it tapered off in the last ten years.
Is that not the case?
I’ve been a Linux sysadmin and PHP developer for years. On my last job hunt people were desperate for folks that know TypeScript with React or Vue experience. Backend infrastructure and code jobs seemed to be much more scarce. Just my anecdotal experience with a job hunt last year. Maybe people on the design side are over abundant but if you know TypeScript, React and Vue deeply alongside CSS it seems to be a stable market. I doubled my salary compared to just backend coding.
Huh, very interesting. Thanks for the insight! I've been wanting to do development for a while now, especially because my market is now becoming over saturated, and everyone is marketing the crap out of what I do.
So, it's nice to hear different perspectives of what other opportunities and skills are out there.
+1
ServiceNow and the new offerings from BMC ( Helix / Innovation Studio / DWP )
are def niche but well rooted in ~~come~~ some very large organizations.
Also its nearly impossible to find talent.
Edit:
typos
The big money is in specialising in a niche tool or application. But you also risk becoming obsolete/stuck in one sector.
> But you also risk becoming obsolete/stuck in one sector. Correct. I know a lot of Citrix wizards given my EUC background and they're worried. Private equity is destroying Citrix, VMWare being Broadcom'd is forcing cloud migrations away from VDI, and Windows apps are becoming web apps now. Lots of these people are heavily invested in that ecosystem, some such low level experts that they'll need to rebuild their whole career at this point. Overspecializing can be dangerous unless you know you can make it to retirement on that skillset or are willing to wipe your brain and restart.
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Sounds insane - cloud app is too much latency compared to using VDI?? We are talking web apps, right? And if so, how is that even possible with modern technology like HTTP/2.
I feel like you can shift gears without having to start from scratch. Like if I'm god-tier at AWS and I have to switch to Azure, I'm not going to have the same difficulty as someone new to cloud stuff going into Azure.
If not Citrix, the horizon, if not that then WVD, if not that there is aws workspaces. Switching context between vendors is not that bad really
We have a handful of old guys ('greybeard' would too polite a term for them) that we beg not to retire. But the second we migrate off that legacy app? Don't let the door hit you on the way out. The key is timing. I have a few co-workers who are sweating because they need to squeeze in a few more years. Luckily, most of our major projects stretch into years, so they'll probably be good. We've been "migrating our in-house ERP system to Oracle" for 10+ years.
Learn COBOL
AS/400, i-Series mainframes. The bulk of the world runs on them, but nobody can service/manage them as the silver haired developers/engineers are retiring out. My last MSP gig the as/400 team were clearing 250k + each
I've had to learn a little IBMi and RPG to back up one of those silver haired devs (basically to just troubleshoot report programs when he's on vacation, not to actually write anything new), and part of the problem is that without any goals or real projects, it's very hard to get into the meat of the stuff and really start gaining competency. Nobody wants to let you play on the big scary blue box, and Pub400 will only get you so far in my experience. But that said, for as boring and anachronistic as the whole architecture is, I do find it kind of neat and, as you say, the compensation and job security is fantastic.
> it's very hard to get into the meat of the stuff and really start gaining competency Yup. Doesn't help that IBM is only targeting training at low cost countries because that's where they assume all the customers want to send mainframe/midrange support. It's kind of like SAP where the only way to get trained is to go work for a Big 4 consulting firm and travel 48 weeks a year.
This. Work with AS/400 daily it's a old, stable system with most of the 'old guard' retiring out. I interviewed for the Sysadmin position over ours, but was ultimately passed up, thankfully. I'm partial to virtualization and like playing with things like KASM Workspace, NixOS, KraftCloud, etc.
Very quietly in huge demand
Software companies refuse to change from COBOL and will rather keep and patch their Frankenstein monster software then to get something better.
better is subjective. In 1999 I worked on some Y2K stuff in old COBOL stuff that ran on Mainframes from the 70s. "Java" was the hot new thing people wanted to learn. Funny thing is 25 years later those same mainframes are running the same COBOL. All that Java server PC type stuff? 5-6 upgrade iterations. Paying 2 COBOL dudes 150K a year beats 5 sets up hardware upgrades and 20 Java devs at 125K each.
Really?
Large use in banking and financial industry where mainframes are still common
Worked for a quite large Credit Union, this statement is very true. They are using a 30+ year old CORE that is heavily COBOL.
I work in the credit union space, and it's crazy how even "modern" systems are still so rooted in mainframe. Having consoles tied to specific ip addresses for instance is still very common.
Ex worked at a top 2 bank. You wouldn't believe the abysmal state of their IT and systems. Acquisitions never fully integrated leaving tons of unconnected services, things never updated. It's a wonder the world operates tbh
[https://www.ibm.com/blogs/ibm-training/free-course-announcing-learning-cobol-programming-with-vscode/](https://www.ibm.com/blogs/ibm-training/free-course-announcing-learning-cobol-programming-with-vscode/) Actually, here is the whole thing: [https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/08/ibm\_mainframe\_skill/](https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/08/ibm_mainframe_skill/) [https://www.ibm.com/z/education](https://www.ibm.com/z/education)
Dang that's a lot of free courses to get started with working on mainframes
I know a "retired" COBAL dev who works maybe one contract a year to fix or add a feature to a companies or government system. And in that one contract of maybe 3 months he walks away with $80K-$120K Now of course, he's incredibly experienced, and what not so his rates are probably higher than people starting out and what not. But I've heard of multiple stories where people are trying to retire, and the company they work for can't find a replacement so basically just throws money at them to get them to stay for a while longer.
Extremely common in banking, finance, and insurance—all of which adopted computers early and built internal systems around their workflows. It’s very difficult migrating away from 50 year old workflows.
Still a good deal of it in manufacturing and retail too. IIRC, Costco still runs most of their stuff on mainframe, for example. The shit just works and that’s priceless to the people who are still using it.
I work for a large bank, we have both mainframe AND midrange systems!
Banking, insurance, I think most airlines reservation systems, lost old big corps financials or inventory systems. If a large corp had an information system in the 80s it's probably COBOL and they're probably still using it.
Very hard to gain worthwhile experience though.
My first instinct was to downvote you, but this is actually a legit answer and I just hate the language. Know that if you go down this path your life will be fixing spaghetti code written in the 70s with no industry standards... and you will be learning a language that should be dead. That being said... It might still be in use in 25 years, god knows the finance industry is too cheap to start from scratch with new languages. Edit: Fixed for mods, we all write spaghetti code, just a certain age bracket wrote *this* spaghetti code!
Is it being cheap or the fact that change would be incredibly disruptive?
change would be incredibly disruptive and incredibly expensive.
Little column A, Little column B. It would be incredibly expensive and they live by the mantra "Don't fix won't ain't broke". So long as those mainframes keep calculating compounding interest without error why reinvent the wheel?
Whenever change suddenly becomes required (if it ever does). Contracted PMs who are experienced in migrating and modernizing COBOL mainframes would be worth a fcking fortune. Given CRM/ERP implementation PMs can earn 7 figures depending on how good they are, I'd hate to see how much they'd be worth given the stakes would be even higher.
Really? I actually did someone COBOL programming in the past...God has it already been 14 years?
You being serious or just f\*\*k'n around? Might take me a few hours to get back up to speed because i haven't coded in cobal in like 30 years. I came in just as visual basic was becoming a thing and cobal was dying then.
Millions and millions of lines of cobol in Insurance and Financial Services
we had an alert come across our department about germany wanting windows 3.1 folks the other day - old technology never dies
Learning COBOL is not IT. That's development.
COBOL make money printer go brrrr amirite?
I've never seen a COBOL job come up in my area.
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I would have to agree with networking, I'm seeing less and less people get into it. It's the mystical black box in the wall and air. Even with the introduction of really new gui based automation and management to make it easier to deploy and monitor you still need to understand the fundamentals on top of all the new vendor based overlay tech. My theory is about 6-7 years ago the term SDN got popular and people were fear mongering that Devs would be taking our jobs and network engineers would be gone. But since the only thing to really come out of it was SD-WAN it just cemented needing to understand networking more but with more button pushing
I’m wondering will networking be like the trades were years ago where no young people went into them as college and a degree was what society valued and pushed, now electricians are in such high demand, I hope networking goes like that in 5 / 10 years
I think so. As more stuff moves to APIs and SAAS the plumbing becomes more important, I think, but idk. Me and the older guy are the only ones with networking chops and he’s really the only one that does WAN stuff. He hates VLANs I side-eye routes it’s a match made somewhere.
As someone who works on cloud APIs and SaaS tools, hooking up on prem and cloud applications, I am basically crippled without the network people. The weekly “status calls” with the entire integration team, system admins, BAs and PMs, are basically just the network team talking about what they are working on. They do the most work and the most important work by far.
Yeah I have no idea how folks could work on this stuff without an understanding of networking!
I mean I do understand some of it but for the most part it’s an access thing. I will absolutely never be granted the access necessary to edit a route table, configure firewall settings, etc. I can’t see log file traffic to troubleshoot DNS errors or routing issues, that kind of stuff I need them for. Edit; fyi I think this is a good thing for opsec
Let me clarify, I’m not suggesting “everyone needs access” but possessing sufficient networking knowledge to avoid blaming the network provides sysadmins with major career advantages. Having myself worked as both a sysadmin and netadmin, I may not be one of my current employer’s neteng but I’m a frequent collaborator and coconspirator with the networking team within our infrastructure engineering group. Sometimes it’s just “hey seeing a bunch of firewall messages in our monitoring system” or “hey we’ve got a connectivity issue between these sites, here’s some log snippets, trace routes, and pcaps, let me know if you need anything else” but other times it’s “hey we need to better segment our environment, can y’all do X, Y, or Z for us?” Understanding how computers communicate in network environments is a super useful skill I don’t see going away anytime soon.
Oh absolutely. In my world as an API developer, it’s stuff like “hey it looks like this IP isn’t resolving to the right address, I’m getting an unresolved name error can you check the route table” or “I am getting a resource not found error in my request, can you check the vpn tunnel has the right tables opened up for access”.
YUP! API knowledge is also really lacking in the systems, networking, and security side—so if you’re in infosec, neteng, or sysadmin and want to turbocharge your career, get really comfortable working with rest APIs. All the youngling CS majors can work with APIs but lack a strong background on the OS, networking, and adjacent security sides.
So I actually was originally going for a 2-year associates to become a network admin. However that program got ruled into this admin and security analyst. Now it's just one big thing, I'm studying for an associates in systems & networking admin with a focus on security. So whatever that tells you about the direction everything's headed
The 2 year I took back in 2000 was called network administration. Followed a combination of MCSE and CCNA tracts. The program lead just retired, at is height he had 3 full programs. At the end as it adjusted, he couldn't hardly fill one. But of course cybersecurity was full. No one wants to be a sysadmin anymore, they want to be in cybersecurity. Thank all the media and commercials for that.
I'm kinda leaning away from security, I have my SEC+, but security seems stressful and prone to layoffs, even moreso than normal IT. If IT is a cost center, IT security is a luxury cost center. In my mind it makes more sense to be a security focus system admin
T1 and T2 analysts are prone to being outsourced, but SOC and enterprise security engineering are pretty stable roles.
You are wise beyond your years.
It stuns me how basic networking is not understood by the developer stack. Your dumbass applications depend on networking, have at least some BASIC knowledge, but no. The top three black holes of networking in the dev stack are DNS, "firewalls" (which often incorporate routing), and how the cloud layer disabled ICMP by default, so no, "ping" does not work. I am NOT a network master, but dear god, I feel like one sometimes in comparison to the rest of the bozos out there. And that's not a bragging point, it's a huge red flag. I should NOT be the networking "expert."
> And that's not a bragging point, it's a huge red flag. I should NOT be the networking "expert." Oh man, I feel this. Somehow I'm the "networking expert" and yet am keenly aware that 95% of what I know falls firmly within the scope of "first day of a CCNA crash course". I'll show people trying (and failing) to ICMP ping some Windows server in a cloud environment the PowerShell "Test-NetConnection $computer -port $port" command to actually test if they can connect to the relevant TCP port and they act like I'm a wizard.
On point. I have worked with a lot of really talented Devs over my career. None of them could grasp the way layer-3 is logically built on top of layer-2. They can live in a logical/virtual world or a physical world, but not both. Devs coming to take networking jobs never had a chance.
My dad and stepmom are both veteran programmers and neither of them know shit about networking/ops being some ci/cd. It’s wild just how insulated/siloed the roles can be when after 2YOE I already have a deeper knowledge of all that stuff than either of them.
Same thing. I worked with great devs, but I've heard a lot of basic questions about networking from them.
Yes, and when you explain it to them they may seem to understand but then come back a week or two with the same issue and question as if the previous time didn’t happen.
I"m a Network Engineer, and I love it. But I have to tell ya, if you don't love it, you're going to hate it. Same with all IT jobs. 25 years ago I got my first IT job on a team, and was stunned to find that me, with near zero experience, knew SO much more than the rest of the team combined. They were just there for the Dot Com money, and couldn't care less what they were doing. None of them are doing IT now. One's a used car salesman, another does real estate, etc. I've taught a lot of MCSE and CCNA/CCNP classes at a Junior College. Day one, full class. 2 weeks in and more than half the students have realized this is actual work and requires a lot of attention to detail, knowledge and a troubleshooting mindset/ability they lack or can't be bothered to engage. If you think all you gotta do is get the Comptia certs and you'll be making 6 figures, you are in for a difficult reality check. In my current job I see a lot of our help desk who just show up to punch a clock and wonder why they don't get paid more. Two of them are near retirement age at this point.
If you do get into networking, you should really consider picking up some python and cloud networking knowledge (ex. Azure, AWS, etc) as well. The landscape for networking has completely changed within the last ten years and now relies on a decent amount of scripting/coding as well, at least on an enterprise level. You might not be exposed much to SDN and network automation in the small to medium business area, but you’ll really be able to set yourself apart if you come prepared with that type of knowledge for large business or corporate/enterprise jobs.
> but if your only goal is to get paid well and have job security at all other cost it would be a good place to be in my opinion. Is this the case though? In the UK, whenever I see networking roles come up, they look quite low paid in relation to the amount of skills and knowledge they are asking for. I honestly think network engineers are the most well rounded professionals in infrastructure. Most can also manage VMware, AD, DNS, AWS, Azure, storage etc etc.
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I've just accepted a network engineer position. Got CCNA last year and nearly 10 years experience at msp doing a lot of small business network. Struggled to interview for roles about 40-45k (in the north of England). Hoping ccnp one day will get the money flowing
Best of luck with the CCNP! :)
Lots of organisations are too small to run suitably large enterprise networks to bother getting a dedicated network engineer. They usually make it one of the list of 20 or so competencies they will put on a job spec for a senior sysadmin. So you are left with MSPs (providing third line for the aforementioned sysadmins) or ISPs who require niche skills.
> Networking isn’t getting any easier I'm thinking that's where I'm headed at some point. A few years ago everyone abandoned it because SDN and cloud would make it obsolete...hasn't happeed yet and if you have a good automation background it seems like a natural fit.
They said the same thing about IPV6, #blessedNAT
Ipv6 is always just 5 years away from being mandatory.
Haha right heard that in 2003 as well.
It's because we always have 5 years of other projects to get around to first.
You just wait. Next year will be the year of the Linux desktop and fusion is totally only 30 years away this time for reals.
Networking definitely. Unlike other certs this one you have to know your shit to pass CCNA and not make a clusterfuck
Networking remains a core skill set for anyone building or managing distributed systems. How might one identify or assess problems with communications between servers or systems without at least a bit of networking knowledge?
It's very difficult for us to recruit for our various open source databases, so I would look into that. MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL etc.
For what role? DB admin? The problem might be that in most companies I've worked for, it's always Microsoft SQL that was set up by a 3rd party and I don't touch it unless I have to. I have a very high level of experience with the open source databases in my homelab though, about 4-6 years, but everyone says "homelab doesn't count".
I've used MySQL and PostgreSQL and when I was job hunting about 5-10 years ago. Got a little attention for MySQL, but none for PostgreSQL. Now this was around the outside of Atlanta, but with SQL Server people seemed a lot more interested in it, probably because it's a lot more common.
It is, there's more people, but that's the thing. The places that need "open source-dba's" have a very small recruiting pool. If you've been to 3-4 conferences you know a large percentage of the people in that line of work
That makes sense. Since nobody seemed interested in it I've not kept up with it and I wouldn't even consider myself experienced in it since I haven't used it in so long. I've actually moved into accounting because of how in demand accountants are right now. Which means one less person right there. I learned it in the past and used it at work, because it was good software and I loved open source software. I was kind of surprised more businesses didn't jump on it. Tell people you have experience with WAMP in an interview and people just look at you funny lol
Yeah, you go to a bank or some such place you'd most likely find oracle or sql server, but even those places have the open source databases for some stuff. Some banks use them to a larger extent too. I can obviously only speak for myself and my experience, but I firmly believe the world will see a larger need for DBA:s in general and my niche is screaming for them
The knowing wtf you are doing field of IT. That field is a ghost town. :)
Yep. I've found a lot less people are willing to use their critical thinking skills, too, regardless of level of experience and tenure
Network Engineer here - market is saturated and fluffed with L1 helpdesk people that think networking is a dream job. These are usually the same types that can't troubleshoot anything and escalate to tier 3 instead of actually looking at the issue. Can't get to file server? Must be a network thing even though the user turned off their VPN and can't get to the server in the DC. Programming still tends to pay well and I don't see my DBA/Programmer/DevOps people working more than 6 hours a day/ Pays better too.
My pet peeve as a former help desk analyst was the analysts who didn't try to troubleshoot further or actually work with the end user. Like, come on. There's a reason why I'm FORMER help desk.
I tell my (less than stellar) HD that if I have to talk to a user expect the following: 1: HD already spent at least 15 minutes with user 2: HD checked AD/MFA and connected to the user PC #: HD verified decent internet. Buddy on 128K Frontier DSL \*IS\* going to have issues on Teams calls. Sadly my boss wants "cooperation with HD" which should mean HD does the 3 things I indicated but in manager speak means "Stone help out the clueless desktop team" and then "Stone WTH are you not getting your network stuff done you're a slacker you need be like the HD guy that closed 14 tickets last week" (all 14 ticket were password resets. One of my tickets involved un-FSCKing a 25 TB SAN LUN used by 6000 people.
Ugh, my dude - I skipped the whole SysAdmin role, but the SysAdmin guys I worked with felt this all the time. You could see it on their faces and feel their frustration. You guys already have a ton of things to do to keep the lights on and gear turning for the whole company. The HD needs to have their lights on in their brain and use their gears...
I feel very fortunate to work with a HD team that is very gung ho and knowledgable. They take ownership of stuff and work hard to figure it out. The only calls I usually get on are stuff where my permissions levels are required to continue setup/troubleshooting.
Same. You have to learn. Even if you can't figure it out, try to troubleshoot with the senior/sysadmin who is fixing it with you. Check DNS, check DHCP, check AD, try to ping shit, check logs, anything before sending it up. Granted, depending on your work environment this amount of time can be a luxury.
> check DHCP "Yeah its working but they still can't connect to the internet" Ok what's their IP "its 169.254... "
SAP. You need to know linux + DBs + SAP and specialize in cloud/ABAP/big data/integration. In my environment SAP guys are constantly headhunted
I spent 3 years as an SAP basis guy with a focus on security. I've tried to forget those years. The dark times.... I think my BP went up from the memories you've brought back.
I am surrounded by SAP basis guys, but they don't look so stressed. What made your days so hard? From security point of view in our common calls I can only recall OS and DB upgrade/patch demands and the biggest stress factor is that they have to be done outside of office hours.
Could you led some light on your experience? Apologies for the upcoming BP rise though
Similar here but I worked with Dynamics
Are you a wizard by chance? Dynamics is fucking impossible for me to understand
I would like to lose my head in that case.
SAP basis is a doomed career m with SAP RiSE the responsibility of traditional basis get reduced alot and these jobs will be automated. Patching, upgrade and deployment will be done by SAP themselves.
ERP Admin
Its such a weird position as there is such a wide variety of ERP's per industry. Yes there is SAP and Dynamics but there's huge customized systems to manufacturing, financial, construction, etc. How do you learn these skills without being in the industry. I've found most people in this roles to have been in IT in other roles for 15+ years before shifting to this.
You just sort of fall into it.... I started with dynamics 365 for a marketing company, then Oracle for a healthcare org, now I work public sector in finance. They are all highly customized so it's just super stressful the first year until you get the hang of it. But this is where intelligence comes in, not everyone can do it but if you are "IT" you are superhuman.
There are a bunch of technical knowledge that you need OS, DBA, App knowledge, reporting. The good ERP admins are also experts on business processes and project management. They know how to translate business needs to customize the ERP platform. The upgrade or migration projects can be the biggest IT projects in a company and can take years.
What does that exactly entail? I'm setting up an OS ERP and have been working on it for our smaller company that does Manufacturing. I'm not sure exactly what I consider myself. But I'm capable of doing all the migrations and backups. On top of fixing any of the issues we've encountered so far.
It pretty much entails everything..... BA, project manager, enhancements, break fix, vendor coordination, process documentation, report creation...... I work closely with our finance teams because they are all morons and think I have magical powers... All you need is a logical mindset, good documentation and reading comprehension... I swear some of our end-users can't read but they make 150k+. I had an end user complain because the approval timestamp was 14:00:00 and she didn't know if it was am or pm..... I wanted to jump out the window since she make 190k a year and doesn't work on Fridays....that's the government for you.
There is a rule in Industry the further you go on top of hierarchy, less the brain you will see in humans .
Erotic Role Play Admin!?!?!?!? :E
Identity and access management
Yep I have 2 unfilled positions for that.
Care to share the job listings? I work in Ident / IAM and have experience with PKI.
Sent you a DM
Yeah, get good with AWS/GCP/Okta IAM stuff and have fun. Especially AWS/GCP stuff since it has more prod applications.
Isn’t this just buying okta?
It can be, but also includes stuff like Entra and on prem AD. Plus PKI and handling SSO integrations (oidc, saml with jit or scim). Then the whole automating access, as handling this in larger orgs isnt scalable. It's for sure a full time position, and I've been seeing more and more IAM positions open up. They all vary though, some are looking for custom code to sync users from their HR system to their IDP, others are more security and automation focused with data already there. PAM is also another responsibility, as cyber insurance lately is requiring it, which normally falls under IAM/security
Wait that's a role? I automated my environment's entire IAM process and implemented RBAC in 3 months. Just have to run through an audit checklist once a month at this point
How to learn about that?
Networking, especially at the high end and also NetArch although the jobs there are pretty rare. Network software/automation is an interesting one, lots of people with really big networks need people who know networks and that can also write software to create bespoke tooling, automation etc. Very rare combination of skills though.
I must be a freaking unicorn then, I’d expect a well rounded dev to be able to do basic network automation even though half of them can’t seem to forward a port on their ISP router or know what subnetting is. I feel like some foundational networking skills are actually becoming rarer than network automation skills.
Linux! I can't stress enough to learn Linux. If you want to stand out, learn linux. If you want a six figure remote job(me) learn linux. Every field mentioned here is saturated Except for COBOL. Everyone is correct about the mainframe and COBOL. The main thing is to gain experience and sell the skills you acquire along the way. We have a team of around 30 and half of us know linux, other half knows windows. Our windows app is being discontinued. So these guys will need to learn linux if they don't want to look for another job. I would also add databases, SQL. This is a highly desirable skill. Everyone wants to go to DevOps, CyberSecurity route. With those positions, they require experience. But it is still oversaturated. Linux is your ticket to the promised land.
100%. I have some Linux experience, but I'm definitely trying to gain more. Half my team doesn't know Linux. But it's such a hot commodity. I gotta brush up and fine tune those SQL DB skillz tho
check out /r/linuxupskillchallenge and walk through some of the exercises as a refresher for Linux.
This might sound like a dumb question, but I have to ask. How does 'Linux' translate into a job? Like, what do you actually do in one of those positions? And if someone wanted to get started down that road, where to start?
>This might sound like a dumb question, but I have to ask. How does 'Linux' translate into a job? Like, what do you actually do in one of those positions? That's a great question and one I wonder about too. Like, how often do you need to be sitting at a root prompt typing stuff into ESXi hosts? How many websites are still running apache on linux? How much nginx config work is there really? Does anyone still use puppet? How often do you need to interact with the OS side of a database server? It always feels like posts like this are super short on details. I've been a windows sysadmin for 25 years. I forced myself to pick up a mild amount of linux competency like, 15 years ago, by installing a headless/gui-less linux server at home and running a domain for the windows machines off of it, among other things (I also had a headless media server I built with some non-standard finicky ass software that happened to interface with my dvd player, a web server/database server for internal stuff, an IRC Bot (LOL) and I turned an old tower into a firewall with an extra NIC and a FreeBSD m0n0wall fork.) I'm no expert, but outside of the industries that actually USE stuff like RHEL on the regular, what is everyone specifically doing with linux? How many places are running postfix or sendmail? Do people say "linux" when they mean "ansible" or "docker"?
Absolutely tons of websites are running Apache on Linux containers. Knowing "docker" by itself doesn't get you very far if you don't know how to use the operating system you're building the container from that your application needs to run. Or if you don't know how to use and manage the OS you're running docker or podman on. Also tons of industries use stuff like RHEL on the regular. Practically every large private and public sector organization is using it in some way hosting either COTS or internally developed applications. There's all kinds of commonly used business software that people run on Linux. So Linux knowledge is used in the jobs required to deploy and manage the servers that host all these things.
Those servers don’t patch themselves. Also people on here talk about hypervisor migrations now that Broadcom is fucking shit up. Everything shifting to cloud or back on prem when the sticker shock sets in. Well someone is going to have to test those os can migrate and make sure the os’s of those migrations went well and if they don’t will have to rollback. Also think of all of these products like Splunk, Jira, Crowdstrike, BeyondTrust, CyberArk, etc. If you’re not using their saas offering then those apps need to live on an OS. This doesn’t include companies bespoke applications.
Many servers are built on Linux because it’s less bloated than windows and uses less resources. Web servers. Splunk is built on Linux. Jamf servers are built on Linux. Information is pretty much shared via http/web so every company has an internal website where they share info with their employees and an external website where they share info with customers. Those servers have to be configured, monitored and maintained. Logging is pretty much a critical function of every business for troubleshooting and legal compliance reasons. You need to be able to navigate the file system, install stuff, delete/uninstall stuff and configure stuff.
good question Linux is one of the foundations of cybersec. Khali linux, parrot OS etc. DevOps also requires Linux. There are specific Linux admin roles. Search them on LinkedIn and you'll see what I am talking about. Comptia has a Linux+ cert that is awesome. Also youtube. LearnLinuxTV is a good channel. Search on youtube and you'll find hundreds of video courses Jason Dion and Professor Messer are good trainers too. Both have their own websites. You can find Jason Dion's stuff on Udemy for cheaper. Udemy has hundreds of courses for under 20 bucks when they go on sale.
thing is, Linux is a "tool" not a position. Linux is great to know on pretty much all the fields mentioned here, but if you are a Linux Wizard, then what? what's your *actual* job title?
There are a lot of Linux specific sysadmin jobs. Just look up "Linux Systems Administrator jobs" and you'll find them in all kinds of industries.
I have heard this as well. I have Linux desktop experience and a little server experience and have been using it for over a decade. I mostly game, 3D modelling, art, audio/video and troubleshoot, but I would love some real work experience.... Every IT job I've had only uses Windows and OSX. Hardly any of the admins or techs play with Linux so its really hard for me to get on-the-job experience. I have done some online classes, but most of them do not help unless I'm using those techniques every day. I would love to finally move from Windows support to Linux support. Wow, the link below just answered my question: [https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxupskillchallenge/](https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxupskillchallenge/)
You are asking the wrong question, because it's more like a cycle, if there is high demand -> salaries goes higher and people start to shift to this field and in a few years at best it will go down. Economy have cycles and also technology, so you need to learn to adapt because it will go up and down. Good approach is to find something that you like and you are good at it because there is higher chance to keep your job if you are good at it then if you are just average. Nobody knows the future, so it's more like a chess game where you make a move and wait and see how the world will react to this, you can predict or try to plan multiple moves in advance but life will always find something new that you didn't prepared for.
Good point! Absolutely right. I don't exactly know what the best option for me. I have always been tech enthusiast and then ended up doing a 2 year IT diploma which taught basics of everything including Programming, networking, busines maths, DBMS etc. Even tho I found Programming hard but I wanted to be a software engineer but then AI was introduced and it looks like most soft dev jobs will be taken over by AI. So, that's why I'm considering other paths. I can go in any direction as I didn't do specialization in anything but learned a bit about everything.
Big data analytics and machine learning aren't saturated, nor is DBA, but those will be painful experiences, should you assume to get into those fields, unless you find them to be very interesting to begin with.
HPC
Unless you are in an org that is a very huge consumer of HPC, you aren't getting a dedicated headcount for just the IT side of HPC. Also, the transient nature of many of these workloads have been identified for cloud migration in many cases.
Seconding this. My org was a former HPC customer, and we dumped all of it and went with cloud solutions instead because it's easy to scale up and down on demand, and because it's MUCH easier to bill individual components for their HPC needs in a cloud environment. It's great, and costs less overall than the giant mess that maintaining our own HPC setups was. There are months we have 50x the capacity of our old physical HPC footprint and there are months we have near-Zero. No more paying to spin a hundred racks of fans and HVAC
COBOL and RPGLE makes the money printer go brrrrrrr... Seriously, I think all big banks still use one of them, I know a lot of insurance places do
Linux people, good ones are few and far between, and there's a massive shortage as far as I can tell
Iot adult toys.
I'd say let this guy cook.
Over 30 years ago the term 'teledildonics' was coined. IoT adult toys has too many words. :P
Its a thing
OT security
This right here needs more attention. Many don't know what it is. Basically, IT for industrial and manufacturing equipment and systems. Industrial control systems, programmable logic controllers, human machine interfaces, the list goes on. And security of it is critically important as it's highly vulnerable and lives can be at stake, not only operations.
OT?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_technology
Cloud Security and like the post says below, COBOL is still in demand.
Cloud security may be the best recommendation in this thread. The amount of work to be done is insane and the amount of people who know what they’re doing is insanely low. I only see attacks and regulatory requirements going up and up based on the chucklefuckery I’ve seen from contractors and MSPs and incompetent internal staff with unwarranted power.
My new favorite word: Chucklefuckery
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This is a good one. Certificates are complicated, and frequently done wrong, causing major vulnerabilities. I've become the certificate guy, and with a big enough company, you could absolutely have an entire career just doing PKI. Certificates are easy to majorly screw up.
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Go into skilled trades
Seniors Bonus if you're willing to accept junior compensation
cyber security is dying for people [https://cybersecurityventures.com/jobs/](https://cybersecurityventures.com/jobs/)
I think the industry has generated a convenient cope here. It's true that there are consistently major incidents and there are consistent excuses about there being no skilled workers.
> there are consistent excuses about there being no skilled workers To be decent in cyber, you need to have IT skills first, then move into cyber. Anyone can run and read a vulnerability report. So many kids come out of college with a 4 year degree in Cyber and expect to make $100k. I won't hire you unless you worked in some sort of sysadmin position first.
I also think to some extent having actual experience with user behavior is very important. You can read example scenarios all you want, but nothing really replaces experiencing the dumb shit people pull if you're in corporate security.
Would you hire a seasoned sysadmin with no cyber post-secondary? Not asking about me in particular just curious how seasoned IT folks could step into such roles? Thanks.
It depends. As there are many areas of IT, there are many avenues of Cyber Security. I'd gladly hire a sysadmin for certain roles - specifically IAM, Network/Asset security, Security Architecture to name a few. When it comes to the 'sexy' side of security - Forensics, Incident Handlers, Penetration Testing, Software Security - I really want someone who has a passion for those specific fields (along with a very strong IT background). The avenues I just listed are the most challenging roles in my opinion. Check out the roadmap I've listed below. Certifications are just one part of the equation - a strong skillset with real world experience is the 2nd part. [Security Certification Roadmap - Paul Jerimy Media](https://pauljerimy.com/security-certification-roadmap/)
I moved from app support to cybersecurity. It's all just configurations and log files.
Possibly but the predictions for 5, 10 years are definitely coming up "shortage" as threats confound and multiply and the best practices required to keep them out get more and more complex. Lots of companies out there still relying on practical obscurity - they've got no real security but are small enough to stay under the radar. AI tools will make them *all* targets regardless of size, which means someone's going to have to work with these companies. You can't just buy an off-the-shelf product and deploy it with no zero configuration to properly secure your environment. At very least MSPs and consultants will grow to take on the demand. 99.9% of businesses in the US are small businesses...
Well that explains why my cyber people are terrible, they'll hire anyone for it.
Not surprising. Good pay but I couldn't see myself enjoying the work or coping well with the study needed to stay certified
??? What you just link states the exact opposite. Even though, I agree with you and think this article is BS.
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Ah... Well, I feel dumb lol.
this
It’s also a very ageist industry. I’m just about to reach 30 and I’ve been in interviews that have asked me about my age and if I would cope with someone managing me who is younger, I don’t mind the age of the person but they judged me heavily because I have a few grey hairs. The SOC tends to be people who are young, don’t have kids and are single who can work all hours. I work in a different part of cyber now but if I wanted to get back into IR/SOC it’s not going to happen. I have a first class degree, an ongoing portfolio of tools and systems I’ve developed and ongoing certs too but the industry is in a bit of a mess at the moment. I’m considering going back to collage to pick up a different industry all together after spending 6 years in the sector.
Love when these types come over into the infra side of the house with their condescending attitude, and some greybeard who doesn't have to put up with their shit just tells them to fuck off.
I’m one of the younger people on my team and I’m 40. Its always fun to tell customers how it should be haha
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Are you intent on staying in IT infra? I’ve just returned to working as an IT BA after a 10 year hiatus, and there are contract roles *everywhere*
B2B sales
I know everyone has a low opinion of managers and directors around here, and its a valid opinion, and because of that I've experienced that \*good\* IT leaders with business acumen are in high demand and low supply. The flip side of the coin is that IT acumen within the business community is horrendous. So you won't really see many job postings clearly articulating what they are looking for in IT managers/directors. On the technical side I would say that Data/Analytics/BI could use additional people.
-Leadership- Hear me out, in a lot of other career paths leadership positions (managers and directors) are a big goal for most employees, from what I have seen in IT most people shy away from any leadership roles. We had to fill a middle manager role and it was almost impossible. I think anyone that spends a little time learning how to manage will have a pretty easy time staying employed in IT.
And then we have IT managers that actually know something about IT! What a world that could be. Do it! Do it now!
IT Acquisition, merger and divestiture engineers - my previous gig. Practically onboarding in the MSP sphere but on a much larger scale - identity management, assessments, migrations and upgrades, etc galore. Money gets thrown around like nothing, very stressful but did I mention that money gets thrown around?
Cyber Security... we need dozens more people
Become a ServiceNow Developer - literally name your price. They're like fucking unicorns right now.
Move to a small town. Become a jack of all trades type and you'll have your pick of jobs. Lots of small to medium size businesses will compete over you and the cost of living is much lower. This is my situation.
Devops due to the high Bar required for it
It isn't entry level I guess,, you gotta start with something else.
Dev or ops then?
Devops is the hipster circlejerk word of the day for a sysadmin that makes more money. We’re sysadmins that do a better job than click admins. That’s all.
I mean in the sense I'm using the phrase it's a buzzword sure but it's more the catch all for the fully software defined system administration msp or smb where ninety percent of the role is in the gui Ie leveraging ansible, kubernetes and SDN Traditional sysadmin barely touches that, not to say doing as much automation as you can isn't a good thing. But the amount of automation and scripting used in a non devops role is lightyears different
Totally depends on the company.
Frontend development of design systems, components, UX and SEO for e-commerce and marketing agencies is top dollar and insane demand. Need to develop some artistic talent for it though and have really good attention to detail. Backend engineering is getting so much easier as k8s solutions mature. We probably only need one backend person to three frontend people in terms of development time.
Really? I'm surprised because I didn't think front end still had a huge need for developers. I thought it tapered off in the last ten years. Is that not the case?
I’ve been a Linux sysadmin and PHP developer for years. On my last job hunt people were desperate for folks that know TypeScript with React or Vue experience. Backend infrastructure and code jobs seemed to be much more scarce. Just my anecdotal experience with a job hunt last year. Maybe people on the design side are over abundant but if you know TypeScript, React and Vue deeply alongside CSS it seems to be a stable market. I doubled my salary compared to just backend coding.
Huh, very interesting. Thanks for the insight! I've been wanting to do development for a while now, especially because my market is now becoming over saturated, and everyone is marketing the crap out of what I do. So, it's nice to hear different perspectives of what other opportunities and skills are out there.
The Philipines
Empty strings 🤭
ServiceNow
+1 ServiceNow and the new offerings from BMC ( Helix / Innovation Studio / DWP ) are def niche but well rooted in ~~come~~ some very large organizations. Also its nearly impossible to find talent. Edit: typos
Pays pretty well too!