What will be the demand for system administrators in the future?

Question

System administration

There is an opinion that cloud technologies are the "killers" of system administrators. What do users of the IT community think about this? What is the future of system administrators in 5, 10, 15 years? In what direction should a young system administrator (25 years old) develop in order to be in demand and highly paid in the future. There is little programming experience and a great desire for self-learning, perhaps it makes sense before it's too late to go to another branch in IT.
Thanks in advance for your reply

Answer 1

Admins in their purest form are no longer needed by anyone for a lot of money. Strive to become an SRE - to be responsible not for the operation of servers, but for the operation and availability of the service entrusted to you in all ways.
Cloud technologies can kill the segment of corporate admins, but not highload admins (and sre + admins too, even without highload registration) - admins are also needed in the clouds. Moreover, someone also needs to administer the "clouds", and they usually represent mincemeat from a heap of technologies that someone needs to deal with.
In addition, as practice has shown, admins have other methods for finding bottlenecks in services - more efficient per unit of working time. This is also worth keeping in mind.
And most importantly, admins are called system administrators for a reason - you must "systemically" understand how what you do works. The developer may not understand why his service is stupid sometimes. But in such cases, you must instantly understand, make decisions and do something so that it continues to work, even if in a limited mode.
In general, I can give 2 pieces of advice - do not understand specific software, but technology. If you understand a web server, you need not only to understand how to write configs for the server, but also to understand thoroughly how the http protocol works, so that when the next "nginx killer" appears, you can quickly figure it out. Understand the selected OS, try to understand what is happening inside it. The second advice is to stay away from the helpdesk (in the offices of small non-IT offices). It will be hard to shoot a new sphere. If you don't have enough experience - go to hosting support instead of HD.
And in 15 years, if you develop in the right way, you will no longer be an administrator, but something more (it doesn’t matter what you call it - a system architect, SRE, or just start leading). Here's how to start a career in 10 years, I will not undertake to speak.

Answer 2

So far ("killers" of system administrators.) can not cover their ass www.ferra.ru/ru/techlife/news/2012/08/01/dropbox-hack I think you should
not worry,
something to study in the appendage) the answer is unequivocal, of course it’s worth it,
what to study? what the soul lies in (love what you do and do what you love)
it is difficult to predict the trends in the demand for specialists in the future, but professionals in their field will always be needed, so it’s more appropriate to say not what, but how to study, tightly, and not one thing then, and the whole complex in the chosen direction.
It’s not too late to leave, but you don’t need to put off learning on the back burner :)

Answer 3

What do you mean by admin.
1. A person clearing a paper jam.
2. a person working for several offices able to set up the simplest servers.
3. a person involved in the design and support of highly loaded and vital business systems. (DB, routers, billing, etc. depending on the line of business).
I have been working as an administrator for more than 10 years, somehow I was lucky, I was always in the 3rd point according to my classification, and I am not afraid of the clouds, there are always services that cannot be transferred to the clouds.

Answer 4

habrahabr.ru/post/210106 and, for example, food for thought.

Answer 5

Whatever it was, but 97 percent of people in computers do not rummage at all. Therefore, admins will always be needed. Another thing is that some of the services may move to the clouds, so what's the difference? Access there will also need to be set and configured somehow.
And all the more so, clouds do not solve any local problems.

Answer 6

Admins will always be needed in the office, even if you need to manage the infrastructure in Azure / Amazon, you still need to understand what it is, how to prepare it, and how to manage and maintain it.
I now have two clients who have IT infrastructure in the office - thin clients, a network printer, a dumb switch, and a simple d-link class router for 50 bucks. The entire infrastructure lives in the data center, not even in Azure/Amazon/etc.
I don’t appear there for weeks - all the employees know how to fix a paper jam and replace the cartridge.
My last "admin" intervention a month ago - one call to the data center with a request to change the hard drive.