The truth about sysadmins

Stereotypes about system administration are a dime a dozen. Here's the truth about what it's like to
be a sysadmin.

Extraído de https://opensource.com/article/17/7/truth-about-sysadmins

Acesso em 19/08/2019

You've probably heard many stereotypes about system administrators and the job itself. Like most
stereotypes, they have varying levels of accuracy, so it's worth digging a little deeper if you're
considering a career change. Here's the truth about are some of the things you may have heard about
network and system administration.

1. Sysadmins are strangely focused

As this xkcd comic suggests, sysadmins tend to be proud of the work they do and devoted to
producing results. These days, that means service availability, rather than high uptime for any given
server, but the principle stands. The job itself seems to attract (or possibly create) people who are
dedicated to their job metrics. This can be a good thing, but as the comic hints, there are other
important things in life that warrant attention, like maintaining your relationships with family,
friends, health, and other interests. Most sysadmins do, or they aren't sysadmins for more than a few
years.

2. Sysadmins are on call

Being on call is part of life for most sysadmins, and it's sometimes a point of pride. If you're not
willing to be on call, being a sysadmin probably is not for you. Less obvious is that sysadmin
culture has steadily shifted away from a hero mentality. A pager (or other alert system) going off is
not an opportunity for grand theatrics, rather it calls for a zero-blame, lean, iterative improvement in
process or technology. The older truism is that if everything is working, a sysadmin is invisible.
That doesn't mean that if something is not working the sysadmin who responds is visible, rather it
means that a flaw in the overall system has been exposed that the team can work to improve.

3. Sysadmins are invisible (the good ones)

It's true that sysadmin jobs typically don't pay as well as software developer jobs for similar training
and experience. If making the most money or having the higher profile of shipping customer-facing
features are important to you, you might be happier as a software developer. However, despite the
fad-like headlines, DevOps and lean methodologies really are consistently improving organizational
effectiveness and reducing the classic friction between operations and developers. As Nicole
Forsgren of Chef has explained, soon sysadmins won't be seen as progress-blockers but as valuable
allies. Working in operations has become a more pleasant job than it used to be, and it is set to
improve even more.

4. Sysadmins and open source go hand in hand

Being a sysadmin allows you to make your living from and contribute in multiple ways to open
source software. When proprietary Unix flavors ruled, it wasn't clear this is how it would turn out,
but now it's almost a foregone conclusion that you'll work with open source software like Linux,
BSD, and even open source Solaris. The field's luminaries are often people who've created a new
open source tool or contributed hundreds of patches or support. You may also find your employer
relatively relaxed about (or even supporting) spending your work time contributing to sysadmin-
relevant open source projects, whereas your software engineer peers may have more of a challenge.
Also, you'll likely have the opportunity to make recommendations to your employer about which
software to use and when it is worth paying for open source software support.

5. Sysadmins are cool with constant change

Whether you are just getting started or making a career change, if you stick with system
administration, you can expect things to change. Server operating systems moved rapidly from
multiple, proprietary Unix flavors to almost entirely Linux. Server hardware quickly evolved from a
variety of distinct CPU architectures and exotic interconnects to almost entirely x86_64. Next came
the wave of virtualization, followed by containerization to more efficiently use individual server
machines too powerful for individual services. And no one can ignore the continuing wave of
migration from on-premises hardware to rental hardware in the cloud. All these trends are likely to
continue and deepen, even as new trends form. As generalists, sysadmins have been able to
transform along with the job, and you'll need to be prepared to do the same.

6. Sysadmins can write code

Increasingly the sysadmin's focus is on software. As hardware has become thoroughly
commoditized, abstracted, and rented, being a sysadmin today has less to do with deep knowledge
of hardware and more to do with the layers of software less understood by software engineers, e.g.,
the operating system, virtualization, containers, networking, and so on. Sysadmins don't spend
much time working with hardware anymore, and if that is your primary interest, be prepared to shop
around more carefully and compromise on other aspects of the job. While a sysadmin isn't a
software engineer, you can't get into the career intending to never write code. At a minimum, being
a sysadmin has always involved writing small scripts, but the demand for interacting with cloud-
control APIs, testing with continuous integration, etc. means that sysadmins will increasingly be
called to write code.
1. Leia a introdução do artigo e aponte o tema sobre o qual ele discorre:
a) as últimas inovações no mercato de tecnologia para aministradores de sistemas;
b) estereótipos sobre analistas de sistemas para profissionais que consideram migrar para essa área;
c) as principais dificuldades enfrentadas por analistas de sistemas com o Unix;
d) obstáculos enfrentado pelos sysadmins na progressão de suas carreiras.

2. Leia o título de cada seção do artigo e associe-o à sua respectiva tradução:

( 1 ) Sysadmins are strangely focused

( 2 ) Sysadmins are on call
( 3 ) Sysadmins are invisible (the good ones)
( 4 ) Sysadmins and open source go hand in hand
( 5 ) Sysadmins are cool with constant change
( 6 ) Sysadmins can write code

( ) Os bons administradores de sistemas são invisíveis ;

( ) Administradores de sistemas não veem problema em mudanças constantes;
( ) Administradores de sistemas possuem um foco diferente sobre as coisas;
( ) Administradores de sistemas conseguem escrever código;
( ) Administradores de sistemas estão sempre de prontidão;
( ) Administradores de sistemas e software livre andam de mãos dadas.

3. Leia o resumo de cada um dos parágrafos e assinale S caso ele esteja de acordo com o que está
escrito ou N caso esteja em desacordo, justificando a discrepãncia:
1) A devoção quase obsessiva que muitos administradores de sistemas têm pelo seu trabalho faz com que
muitos deles percam o foco em coisas importantes, tais como o relacionamento com a família, amigos, saúde
e outros interesses. ( )
2) Em outros tempos, os administradores de sistemas viam a si mesmos como heróis quando nenhuma falha
no sistema ocorria. Hoje, no entanto, essa cultura mudou, e quando eles não são chamados para atuar, isso
significa que estão operando um processo ou tecnologia enxuto e iterativo, em que ninguém precisa ser o
culpado de nada. ( )
3) O trabalho dos analistas de sistemas é tido como superior ao dos desenvolvedores de software, sendo mais
bem remunerado. ( )
4) Administradores de sistemas tendem a evitar softwares livres e utilizá-los apenas em casos extremos,
devido às inúmeras brechas de segurança que acompanham o seu uso. ( )
5) Administradores de sistemas são adaptáveis às diversas mudanças de tecnologia, tais como sistemas
operacionais de servidores, hardware de servidores, virtualização e operações em nuvem.( )
6) Administradores de sistema têm um foco maior em hardware do que em software, já que o universo dos
softwares tende a se estabilizar e a se tornar mais familiar, enquanto que o de hardware traz a todo momento
novidades que desafiam a adaptabilidade dos sysadmins. ( )