The future of the sysadmin

We often come across the opinion that the profession of a system administrator is out of date. As the justification for such estimates, such arguments are called the development of robots and "cloud" technologies that will replace the system administrator in the near future. At the same time, for example, it is not specified that on the side of the provider, the "cloud" also needs administration.

In fact, there is no need to seriously talk about the degradation of the profession. It does not die away, but develops, becoming more and more complex and universal. Therefore, for today's system administrator, several attractive and interesting, from the point of view of remuneration, ways of professional development open at once: system admin responsibilities

DevOps engineer is a specialist who combines the functions of a developer, system administrator, tester, and information security specialist. DevOps encompasses all parts of the project. In modern conditions, with the growing relevance of loaded systems and applications, containerization, microservice architecture, this profession is becoming more and more in demand.

Information security specialist. Today, such specialists are already in demand in many large corporations and in any IT company. They are necessarily present in the staff of banks and telecommunications companies. Very often it is the former system administrators who come to this profession, who have sufficient initial knowledge in the field of information security.

CTO, CIO. A system administrator who has perfectly mastered the IT infrastructure and has leadership qualities may well rise to leadership positions. Opportunities are open for such specialists to lead an IT department of a company or an IT company.

Starting your own business. A good sysadmin may well start working for himself, providing administration services within an outsourcer. This path attracts with freedom and the prospects for large incomes, but is also associated with the risks inherent in entrepreneurship.

In addition, you can simply remain a good system administrator, constantly developing and increasing the level of competence in your profession. Such specialists always remain in demand, and employers compete with each other to attract them specifically to their company.