Where is the system administrator profession heading?

Question

linux

Hello. I am 30, I do not live in the capital, since my student days I have worked as a system administrator in various offices, and have been engaged in various near-IT activities. Recently, I have been working as a junior Linux administrator in hosting, I like the job.
I would like to ask the respected community, including experienced administrators, about where our profession is heading, what will happen to it in N years, what skills and specializations will be in demand? I understand that in the modern world everything is changing quite quickly, and we cannot say with certainty about the future. But still, you don't want to spend your youthful years on a profession that will disappear in the future or something like that.
Here, for comparison, the profession of an ENT doctor comes to mind, for example - this doctor will always have patients with the same diseases, except that the methods of treatment will be different. And the profession of a front-end developer - if at the beginning of the 2000s it was possible to make good money using a not so large amount of knowledge and lack of competition in the market, today in this profession everything is exactly the opposite - there is less money, there is much more competition about the amount of knowledge. (Maybe of course I'm not quite right)
And what about system administration in general and linux admins in particular?

Answer 1

Choose what the soul lies more. IT Ops will remain forever, no matter what clouds hover over us. There are still a lot of organizations that do not trust otherworldly offices to store their data and maintain their IT infrastructure (and they do it right). Especially in light of the development of laws and methodologies for reporting leaks, etc.
IT Ops, in my opinion, is more interesting (it’s like that myself), since the tasks are more diverse. But in DevOps, for example, they pay more money. Although a lot of DevOps has also arrived in IT Ops now - Infrastructure as a Code, ansible/chef/puppet, storage of configs / playbooks in VCS, that's all. And it does result in fewer people being needed to manage vastly larger infrastructures. But the qualifications of these people should also be higher, and some kind of programming background is also needed. Because even in IT Ops there is a lot of automation that needs to be written by hand in Shell, Powershell, Python, depending on where it is customary.
A separate money segment is DBA. Oracle, PostgreSQL, MariaDB - there are few pumped DBAs, and they are expensive. On the other hand, the market where DBAs are required is rather narrow. And so that there are no problems with finding a job, qualifications must be high.
There is also NetOps, i.e. network engineers. But it’s sad there now - despite the fact that for work in operator networks, for example, such qualifications and knowledge of the features of a heap of vendor hardware are needed (rarely does anyone build networks that are homogeneous in the sense of a network hardware vendor, mostly a hodgepodge - Cisco / Juniper /Mikrotik/Dlink/Huawei), but salaries there (in Moscow) are 90-100 thousand. At the same time, night / weekend shifts are practiced and all that. You can find great places where a network engineer will earn a larger amount, but in general - something like that.
To summarize - in IT Ops the entry threshold is lower in general. That is, you can find a job where serious qualifications are not required, but there will be money, respectively.
DevOps - the entry threshold is higher, because DevOps implies the execution of a very specific set of tasks, and it is unlikely that they will hire a person from the street to complete them, hoping that he will "figure it out along the way" (but in IT Ops or even NetOps in small and medium-sized offices can still roll). Qualification is required higher, but more money.
DBA is still more difficult than with DevOps. The market is narrow, high qualifications are needed, but salaries are also high, higher than DevOps, according to my observations.
Now it’s time to go to pure NetOps ... Well, takoe ... There are large offices where you can earn good money with this, but all the same, high qualifications are required, and money is not paid much relative to the required amount of knowledge. Here is IT Ops + NetOps - yes, you can find a good job here. But for this you will have to read one and a half times more books than IT Ops separately and twice as many as NetOps separately :-)

Answer 2

All sorts of branches are separated from the system administrator, such as helpdesk, security, database administrators, DevOps, and so on. Nothing special will happen to them, but the branches will be separated in the future. Choose whichever you like better or stay in "generic-computer".

Answer 3

Moves towards virtualization for both client and developers. I remember a friend told me a couple of years ago that soon system administrators would not be needed, because. everything goes to the cloud. I then laughed and said: And who will unfold the cloud?
PS Linix, in my opinion, is quite on horseback))

Answer 4

everything is going to devops,
but we have a front-end account at the beginning of the 2000s, so here you need to look at the volume of the market and how much you are ready to bite off from it
at the beginning of the 2000s, he was there a million rubles and now ten lyam dollars
more money more competition for them

Answer 5

Everything will be the same. Networks, resources, access...

Answer 6

Forget virtualization, it's dying.

Answer 7

I agree with the opinion that you can leave the system administrator in all sorts of branches. But now it is obvious that Admins should be well versed in Information Security issues. Know about the existence of all its aspects and be well versed in at least one aspect of information security, such as Network Security.
Vladimir, as soon as you dig into the world of information security, you will understand where Growth is next! :) Good luck.
> And what about system administration in general and linux admins in particular?
It all depends on the industry you work in. everywhere We need sensible and experienced administrators. But in some places it's just "Swamp" and your talent will die there and be born))
Conclusion: Therefore, sometimes you need to change the place)

Answer 8

Well, my career "swept" to Application administrator, where my skills as a system administrator came in handy

Answer 9

I have now asked myself the same question. The system administrator profession is currently moving towards the abyss, with the advent of all sorts of cloudy things. Of course, there are vacancies, for salaries almost the lowest in the IT market. Yes, and those vacancies that are, all in Moscow, if you are not from Moscow, then bypass. So in your place, if you are not friends with programming, it is better to think about leaving IT.