sys admin job prospectus

[Shivkumar]

Dear Sirs,

I have been in application support on unix platform for last 5-6 years. I am thinking to switch to unix system admin area.

I work in web infrastructure support on unix platform.

Will it be a good decision to change the career in sys admin path ? I have heard that sys admin jobs are more stable and higly paid.

Thanks,
Shiv

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

I am obviously biased since I've been in system administration for 25 or so years, but I wouldn't want to do anything else. I originally started out as an application programmer and am just very glad that I had the opportunity to make the switch.

I can't really address the stability or pay rate of the job, though, other than the fact that I've been here at the same company for 20 years and I'm satisfied with my salary.


Pete

[DCE]

Shiv,
I do not know that any position in today's world is very stable.

If you decide to add sys admin skills to your web infrastructure skills, you will definitely enhance your marketability.

However career decisions should not be based strictly on dollars. If you are not happy with a position then it is not wortyh it, no matter how stable or well paying.

Sys admin can be enjoyable and rewarding but there are downsides as well. 7x24 on call, and week-end work are just two that come to mind.

The bottom line is if you think it is something you would enjoy, pursue it

[Mel Burslan]

Actually, it is a matter of give and take. In my opinion, there is not solid line between and application support person and a system administrator. Yes on the very high level, you can say that their scopes of work are different, but when it comes to the real world, both need to know quite a bit of each others' area of expertise. For instance, I am a sysadmin and was like that through out all my IT support life, but every new place I had to work, I learned the application support along the way, let it be a home brew accounting system or an enterprise wide SAP implementation.

Getting highly paid, is a concept any sysadmin laughs at. If you are in it for the money, it is not really going to cut it. Yes there may be a few bucks more pay per month or per year, but considering the sleepless nights you will spend and the elevated stress levels due to an unexpected system outage, I amnot sure if that can be compensated with any amount of money. You have gott to be literally in love with the computers to become a good sysadmin and not dread going to work. Otherwise, sysadmin life is the most unbearable job in the whole world.

Is it a good decision. The answer, as always : IT DEPENDS. You have to decide it for yourself after hearing from the others. My opinion, I would not trade my sysadmin job for any other, let alone pure application admin. But to everyone, his or her own...

Good luck.

[Marvin Strong]

I will say on paper for dollars system administration looks good, but keep in mind that most yearly salaries are based on 40 hours per week. And well working 40 hours a week as an admin is extremely rare. 50 - 60 or more, not counting additional on-call hours.

Nothing every breaks during normal business hours.

However, the job can also be enjoyable, I for one just enjoy hacking away at a unix commandline.

And I wouldnt claim admins are more stable in their jobs than others, its easy to get outsourced, and I know a few people that were unempoyeed for 6months - 1 year or more during the last tech bust.

[Steven E. Protter]

It has been for me.

I've got a decade of experience and managed to successfully move my career 7000 miles east.

Once you have the skills and proven problem solving abilities, it can be lucrative.

I would not want to do anything else.

I'd learn Linux admin too because there are a lot of shops like my new one with a lot of server interactivity between the platforms.

If you are good at what you do, they pay well.

I worked substantially below scale in the US for a long time. I didn't move for various reasons that best not be discussed. One of them was fear of change and a lack of self confidence. Hard to believe but true.

I will add that regular participation in
ITRC can help. When I started interviewing in Israel, perspective managers were aware of my abilities by reading here. I'm certain it enhanced my prospects and marketability.

Remember I moved to a country where I'm not proficient in the local language.

So if you are good and polish your skills like a craftsman and don't fear change, you can do well.

As far as stability goes, you never know. Sun seems to be in trouble as a platform, and Linux is making inroads against HP-UX. Stability depends on a lot of factors such as how the business is going where you work.

I wouldn't want to be an admin in certain US industries now that are on the endangered list.

My thoughts, jumbled as they are.

Good luck, and don't hesitate to reach out one to one.

http://www.isnamerica.con/contactsep.shtml

sEP

[Shivkumar]

Are Sun Solaris and HP-UX facing tough competition from Linux as compared to IBM AIX unix ?

best regards,
Shiv

[Victor BERRIDGE]

Hi Shiv,

I also started as a developper, VB and cobol on mainframe, I had the opportunity to start developping on oracle/unix (HPUX) and I took it, when it came to have a fix job I was offered to keep my job as developper because could not offer better but was asked to do unix administration...
I never had regrets
With time I officially became sysadmin and happy to be here...
For me the money isnt all that important, its more how do you sleep at nights or do you have stomach ulcers...
I used to suffer both when in development...


All the best
Victor

[Steven E. Protter]

No more points please.

All operating systems that have license fees are facing competition from Linux. The cost of ownership is simply lower in many cases.

You can now run Linux on the fastest, high end Itanium servers and get world class support for a price similar to what it costs to get it for Windows or Unix.

SEP

[Shivkumar]

Recently, i have come to realize that working 24x7 and weekend for prolong duration is not good for health. I worked during my initial career for longer hours. It has affected my health. Now i want the feedback of the people / experts on this forum what their experience says.

It will help me to pursue my future career and peaceful life.

I have seen unplanned infrastructure, lack of seasoned/experienced expertise in team and lack of fundings while designing infrastructure creates lots of pressure on the sys admins and supporting folks later on.

I am thinking to move towards a technology and environment where technology itself enforces upto certain level of structuredness in the environment.

Thanks,
Shiv

[Rick Garland]

If you are lucky enough to get into a stable environment, those loong hours will be plentiful. In this case you may want to be a contractor and get paid by the hour.

Every SysAdmin will have some all-nighters, there is no way around it. Things break.

Linux is a fast up-and-comer to the data center. It has much lower costs and companies can get investment returns much quicker. However, I do see that Linux will complement the likes of HPUX, Solaris, etc. An all out takeover of the data center is unlikely (in my prediction). And then, if I had a crystal ball I would not be here either.

Being a UNIX SysAdmin is a great career choice. I have enjoyed it tremendously because I am learning something all the time.

[Ranjith_5]

Hi Shiv,


I understand that PAY of UNIX admins in the present market is as follows.

AIX
HP
SUN

The reason being Sun Solaris trainings are easily available and cheap, there are more admins on this platform. At the same time AIX and HP is having less experts inthe world. If you are comfortable with HP at present you get certified on this only, you can also learn AIX which will be an added advantage.


Regards,
Syam

[Yogeeraj_1]

hi shiv,

Sysadmin indeed involves working 24x7 during some periods of time and also weekends for prolong duration -- which as you rightly observed -- is not good for health.

it also involves commitment to the proper running of your systems.

It is not just about pay! it is not just HP-UX, Sun solaris or linux!

You are still young so go for it! It's a lifetime experience. You will love it!

As long as you keep pace with technology and commit yourself to continuous learning, you will live happily!

good luck!
kind regards
yogeeraj

[Arunvijai_4]

Shiv,

Unix administrators love their jobs very much because its always fun working on Unix. I started of my career in Java develeopment and moved to HP-UX porting, administration and QA three years back. I am happy what i have done, feeling satisfied with my job.

If you don't want to work on 24x7, you would definitely consider moving into QA & testing on Unix, what i am doing today. Its fun, challenging and lucrative.

-Arun

[Mahesh Kumar Malik]

Hi Shiv

Any new experience is an addition to knowledge. You should explore this area in order to expand your experience profile

Regards
Mahesh

[Stuart Abramson_2]

Here are some career path choices for UNIX System Admins with Application experience:

1. Move into Application Infrastructure Architecture. i.e. - design the servers, disks, backup system, etc, configurations on which new applications instances of of SAP and Oracle Applications will be built. You probably need to work for a big consulting company, like Accenture or IBM Global Solutions; and then you have to change locations every 2 years or so. This takes advantage of your System Admin experience, but you don't have to work 24 x 7.

2. Move into EMC Storage Administration. Design, implement and support SAN infrastructures that connect to UNIX servers to run SAP, Oracle Applications. Do storage provisioning - zoning, LUN masking and presentation. Write BCV and SRDF scripts. EMC/SANs are designed to be 99.99 reliable (and I mean it) and you don't get too many middle of hte night calls. It pays more also.

CONTRACT SALARIES: I would say that contract programmers today make something like this (in the US, big cities, large corporations [who can afford new hw/sw]):

Windows Admins: $40/hour
UNIX Admins: $50/hour
EMC Storage Admins: $65/hour
Oracle DBAs: $75/hour

I'm guessing.

[MarkSyder]

I moved from system support (including a certain amount of application support) two and a half years ago.

It was definitely the right move for me. But would it be the right move for you? I didn't need to ask anyone - I knew I wouldn't regret the move. The fact that you need to ask the question suggests it may not be right for you.

The best person to answer the question is you - you've read our opinions, you've now got to decide if it's what you want.

Good luck.

Mark Syder (like the drink but spelt different)

[Geoff Wild]

I have been in IT for 16 years now - Unix SysAdmin for 12 - I started at the bottom - pulling cable and installing 3270 devices...

I have thoroughly enjoyed my career...I'm now a senior unix admin/ team lead and wouldn't want anything else.

Highly paid? Depends on what you think highly paid is - I make a decent living and have time to spend with my family - best to be working with on a site with multiple admins - as most places have 24 x 7 support - we rotate the pager weekly - so I only go on call once every 7 weeks.

Now, comparing Unix to NT - pay is much higher with Unix.

As far as Linux - I wouldn't say it is "tough" competition - but there is some.
As far as Unix flavours - I prefer HP-UX...then AIX....as far as Solaris goes - I'd rather support Linux then Solaris...

I have a couple of Linux servers myself - good to practise on.

Good luck to you and your future career.

Rgds...Geoff

[A. Clay Stephenson]

I can tell you if your Sysadmin job is not very nearly an 8x5 duty cycle then you aren't doing it correctly. Of course, there are weekends when patches must be applied so as to minimize business impact but, in general, the work hours should be very predictable. You will have to work very, very hard for the first few months to get your systems to this level of redundancy and reliability. You will also spend months getting all of your monitoring scripts to either notify someone or take corrective action automatically.

I actually maintain a large, business critical data center and have gone years with zero unplanned downtime --- and this is a lights-out facility w/o a 7x24 staff. It's not easy to get to that level of reliability but it can be done in a normal 40-hour work week. Ideally, everyone should wonder just what it is that you do because it never appears that you do anything. The less than ideal sysadmin spends almost all his time as a fireman.

[Dave Hutton]

If you like solving problems. Putting together solutions that make your job or others jobs easier. Enjoy learning something new weekly if not daily, it maybe the job for you.

Sometimes that learning comes under the gun when something is broken and you have management breathing down your neck. There is a bit of stress in this job, but I would say its different then a normal job. Every job has timelines. Not every job you are responsible for the health of machines. Some of which is out of your control when they do fail. Or things in your environment cause them to fail.

If you donâ t mind what I call â Guilty until proven innocentâ . Always having to show itâ s not the server, disksystem, network, or whatever is thought to be causing the issue. And you end up pointing out that itâ s something that was supposed to happen or it was due to something they had done.

24x7 support even with a large rotation of people, as soon as you know something others do not. You become the front-line support. If you can hold your ground and not be pigeon holed into something and share you knowledge youâ ll be better off. If not, you may as well throw your rotation out the window.

I agree with A Clay to a degree on your hours should be predictable and should be close to 8x5. But if the environment youâ re in is changing. Eventually youâ ll be out growing your hardware. I guess it all depends on how much the company is willing to over buy out of the box or each time you upgrade. If they nickel and dime you with upgrades you could be reacting quite a bit. And generally after hours.

Salaries I guess vary greatly. I know some that are very well compensated; even those I would say are not paid enough for what is expected of them.

Iâ ve been doing unix administration for 8-9 years, 7+ of those years has been hpux.

[Patrick Wallek]

I, too, thoroughly enjoy being a sys admin. There's nothing I enjoy more than, work related at least, than getting a new server or new hardware in and getting it all up and running.

The others are correct in that it can be tough and there can be some long hours. I also agree 100% with Clay in that you should be able to get your servers to the point where you don't have to work much beyond normal business hours, unless it is planned.

Yes there are unexpected things. But you should be adaptable.

You also need to look beyond the technical stuff. In addition to sys admin stuff, I also do budgeting, maintain all the support contracts for our HP-UX equipment, work with vendors getting quotes for new equipment, recommend new solutions as applicable, help with disaster recovery, etc.

The main thing is, enjoy what you do.