I’m a SysAdmin and I’m drained. High school and college my story was similar, I got into C programming, wrote some annoying programs and installed them at school. Got Local admin on the windows boxes from messing around… Domain admin was the same password… Shit like that made it fun. I’d selfhost websites, games, etc, etc. I wrote a simple chat app in college to talk to the other guys in the class.
Now that I’ve been a Linux Admin for ~12 years I want out. On call, after hours work, stress of downtime, all of that is too much now, there no joy in selfhosting because its just more work.
I don’t want to be rich, I just want a good life, you know? House, kids, vacation once a year. This isn’t really possible these days like it was for my dad. I wish a cabin in the woods would work for me.
Question: how to get a job as SysAdmin in 2023-2024?
And suggestion: it sounds like it’s the current work environment. For example, downtime should be expected and planned for. You shouldn’t have to stressed about it, and you shouldn’t have tl work after hours unless you are well paid for it. So, maybe change employer? My 2-cents
Question: how to get a job as SysAdmin in 2023-2024?
We’ve been “moving to the cloud” for the last 4? years. We’ve all had training on it and most of us have accounts in “the cloud”. However, I’m supporting a legacy piece of healthcare software that they’re trying to move customers off. Dev’s have a POC that we COULD work in the cloud but it’s more a lift and shift then it is anything else. They’re going to have a HARD time getting Doctors, Hospitals signing on to be “in the cloud”, never mind the provinces. ALL health care data legally needs to stay in Canada so that’ll be fun too… Anyway, We’re not actually hiring your standard sysadmins, everyone they’re looking for needs cloud experience and they’ll be expected to at least support some ‘legacy’ software also.
it sounds like it’s the current work environment.
It is and it isn’t. I get ~$30 a day to carry the phone which is 1 week on 4 weeks off. If anyone calls me I get minimum 3 hours pay per day. This is on top of the 7h days if I worked that day. OT is a little weird math wise but I get 1.5* pay basically every time I’m called out. I’ve read this is MUCH better then a lot of places out there.
After hours work is planned but again, healthcare means I have to do it at 2-4AM usually. During the first year of covid was nuts. needed Director and in some cases VP approval for all work. why I have no idea, they don’t know what we do. It’s not so much the planned downtime that gets me, It’s when the unplanned stuff happens or I have to fight with a different team.
A couple months ago ~50% of our sql replication from one DC to another stopped working over the weekend. After an hour of fighting with the networking team I installed wireshark on both ends, wrote a quick while true nc to port 3306, captured this and showed them the packets were NOT making it to the other end. Going out A but not getting to B, it’s NOT ME. only then did they trace the fucking things to find a bad route on a device they were working on a couple hours before.
I’m a SysAdmin and I’m drained. High school and college my story was similar, I got into C programming, wrote some annoying programs and installed them at school. Got Local admin on the windows boxes from messing around… Domain admin was the same password… Shit like that made it fun. I’d selfhost websites, games, etc, etc. I wrote a simple chat app in college to talk to the other guys in the class.
Now that I’ve been a Linux Admin for ~12 years I want out. On call, after hours work, stress of downtime, all of that is too much now, there no joy in selfhosting because its just more work.
I don’t want to be rich, I just want a good life, you know? House, kids, vacation once a year. This isn’t really possible these days like it was for my dad. I wish a cabin in the woods would work for me.
The goat farmer meme is less a meme and more a dream as I grow older.
Question: how to get a job as SysAdmin in 2023-2024?
And suggestion: it sounds like it’s the current work environment. For example, downtime should be expected and planned for. You shouldn’t have to stressed about it, and you shouldn’t have tl work after hours unless you are well paid for it. So, maybe change employer? My 2-cents
We’ve been “moving to the cloud” for the last 4? years. We’ve all had training on it and most of us have accounts in “the cloud”. However, I’m supporting a legacy piece of healthcare software that they’re trying to move customers off. Dev’s have a POC that we COULD work in the cloud but it’s more a lift and shift then it is anything else. They’re going to have a HARD time getting Doctors, Hospitals signing on to be “in the cloud”, never mind the provinces. ALL health care data legally needs to stay in Canada so that’ll be fun too… Anyway, We’re not actually hiring your standard sysadmins, everyone they’re looking for needs cloud experience and they’ll be expected to at least support some ‘legacy’ software also.
It is and it isn’t. I get ~$30 a day to carry the phone which is 1 week on 4 weeks off. If anyone calls me I get minimum 3 hours pay per day. This is on top of the 7h days if I worked that day. OT is a little weird math wise but I get 1.5* pay basically every time I’m called out. I’ve read this is MUCH better then a lot of places out there.
After hours work is planned but again, healthcare means I have to do it at 2-4AM usually. During the first year of covid was nuts. needed Director and in some cases VP approval for all work. why I have no idea, they don’t know what we do. It’s not so much the planned downtime that gets me, It’s when the unplanned stuff happens or I have to fight with a different team.
A couple months ago ~50% of our sql replication from one DC to another stopped working over the weekend. After an hour of fighting with the networking team I installed wireshark on both ends, wrote a quick while true nc to port 3306, captured this and showed them the packets were NOT making it to the other end. Going out A but not getting to B, it’s NOT ME. only then did they trace the fucking things to find a bad route on a device they were working on a couple hours before.
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