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Ask HN: Is moving from ops to dev a sensible move for increased job opportunity?

2 points by butwhy ↗ HN
As someone who has worked as a linux sysadmin for a few years, I'm seeing fewer ops jobs being advertised. I guess this could come down to automate or adoption of cloud services. I still see lots of dev roles around, so is it worth considering a switch to venture down a career path that has lots of jobs available in the long-term?

6 comments

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byoung2
10 years ago, every company I worked for had a sysadmin, but in the last 5 years, I've seen the trend move toward cloud services like AWS and developers doing light sysadmin duty as well. My company is up to 35 people now, with 10 devs, but no sysadmin. If we hire one, we would still have 10:1 ratio of devs to admins. If we're typical, you'll see an order of magnitude higher number of dev jobs than sysadmin jobs out there, and they will likely be later stage. I would try to make the switch.
coned88
Where are you looking for jobs?

The normal Linux systems administrator role eventually will go away. Many people don't believe it but it eventually will because it's a job that can be automated away.

The use of Linux as a systems is not going to go away. The need for people who know Linux is ever growing. A bit of a conundrum.

You are only seeing two polar extremes here and it doesn't actually reflect what the market represents. Competent linux sys admins are moving into devops and sre type positions where they are taking on more development responsibility. Focusing on automation and building tools that facilitate developers rather than transactional systems administration duties of the past.

Many companies now hire developers and devops/sre candidates from the same pools.

So there's a middle ground for you. If you still like linux then I'd suggest you really hone up on your scripting and really learn your networking and Linux internals and move to one of the mentioned positions. They are a plenty.

butwhy
I am not super super keen on the devops thing and even that can be automated eventually. Once someone has done the bulk of the scripting to get a deploy process streamlined and then the environment is configured with auto-scaling etc, then there isn't a huge bulk of ongoing work to do, I think.

Even with that middleground, devops jobs are still going to be in much less demand than dev, right?

bitshepherd
As a reformed sysadmin, I suggest giving devops a closer look. It's less of the handwavy voodoo buzzword it was a few years ago and has taken root in many orgs as a means to enact real change on the status quo, not only technologically but culturally.

It's still engineering, so that part isn't going away. Just pay no mind to the rainbows and glitter, unless that's your thing.

butwhy
It has a higher barrier of entry though. I've been unemployed for a while and not qualified for most of the devops jobs I see. If I'm going to skill up, why not do it in something with best job prospects?
neduma
There is always always need for security and networking(SDN level) skills. Blend your devops/sysadmin/dev skills with security and networking skills. You will be in hight demand.