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Profession: System Administrator

Often from the older generation, we hear magical words about "the only entry in the work book." Indeed, one had to meet absolutely stunning stories: a locksmith — a top-level locksmith — a shop foreman — a shift supervisor, a chief engineer, and a plant director. This cannot fail to impress our generation, which changes work once, twice, but what's there - sometimes even five, or more. We have the opportunity not only to change the company, we can change the profession and quickly learn it. This is especially noticeable in the IT field, where there are very bizarre career transfers and cardinal shifts along the career ladder, both up and down. 

Watching this process, we realized that the directory of professions is in demand not only by students choosing a university, but also by adults choosing a path. Therefore, we decided to talk about the main specialties that are in demand in the IT field. We start with the system administrator closest to us. 


It's like that

Who is it?


A system administrator is a specialist who configures, improves, and supports the company's IT infrastructure, including hardware, peripherals, software, and network connections. True, a very formal definition?

What the system administrator does depends on the size of the company, field of activity, experience and skills of the administrator. Instead of giving a definition, it is better to highlight specific types of system administrators.

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  • Network administrator - a specialist who is involved in setting up and developing physical and logical networks in the company, as well as managing billing, accounting and traffic control systems. It is in demand in data centers, telecoms, banks, corporations.
  • Information Security Engineer is a specialist who ensures the security of IT infrastructure at all levels. It is in demand in companies that are sensitive to attacks and penetration into the network (and this is fintech, and banks, and industry, etc.). 

Accordingly, deciding to become a system administrator, it is better to immediately plan in which direction you will develop, because you cannot feed a family in an enikey position and you will not make a career.


Where is it needed?


I would say that everywhere, but it will be a lie. For some reason, the leaders of small and medium-sized neatish businesses believe that everything can be “shoved” into the cloud, and the system administrator can be an exclusively enikey. Therefore, companies often suffer severely from a lame IT infrastructure (or rather, an IT mess), but they don’t hire a system administrator. If you manage to get into such a company, then in 99% of cases you need to consider working in the company as experience and move on, and only in 1% of cases you can convince the boss, become indispensable and build the perfect IT environment with well-designed architecture and competent management (here directly from a real example I describe!). 

But in companies where IT is a key area of ​​activity (hosting, developers, etc.) or closes the operational work (deliveries, online stores, banks, retail, etc.), the system administrator immediately becomes a sought-after specialist who can develop in one or several directions. As automation continues to take over companies, finding a job as a system administrator for entry-level and intermediate levels will not be difficult. And when you become a trained specialist, companies will fight for you, because there are a lot of enikees, and there are very few professionals, like everywhere else. 

At the time of writing the article on the Habr Career service, 67 vacanciesrelated to system administration. And you can just see that the range of “specialization” is wide: from a technical support employee to an information security specialist and DevOps. By the way, work in technical support at the start very quickly, efficiently and deeply pumps a number of skills that are valuable to the system administrator.

average salary


We will look at a salary again on "Habr Career" . 

Let's take the average salary without highlighting skills for the “System Administrator” and for “DevOps” according to the data for the 2nd half of 2019. These are the most popular specialties in the Administration section, and the most significant. Compare.
Specialist level
System Administrator
Devops
intern (intern)
25 900 rub.
no interns
Junior
32 560 rub.
69 130 rub.
middle
58 822 rub.
112 756 rub.
senior
82 710 rub. 
146,445 rubles
lead
86 507 rub.
197 561 rub.

The figures, of course, are given taking into account Moscow, in the regions the situation is more modest, but, which is typical, the proportions are approximately the same. And this difference seems to me fair, because DevOps are really more advanced in skills (if we are talking about canonical devops, and not about those that have the same name).

The only thing I would not want to recommend is to take the Devons Jones after high school. Theoretical guys who did not know either dev or ops look very mediocre at the start, develop poorly due to a lack of understanding of where to go and the indicated money is definitely not worth it. Nevertheless, on narrow specializations, there should be more experienced admins who have passed fire, water, copper pipes, bash and PowerShell scripts. 

Basic Professional Requirements


The requirements for the system administrator differ from company to company (someone needs to own 1C, 1C-Bitrix, Kubernetes, a specific DBMS, etc.), but there are several basic requirements that are likely to be needed in any company. 

  • Knowledge and understanding of the OSI network model, the main protocols.
  • Administration of the Windows and / or Unix operating system, including group policies, security management, user creation, remote access, working with the command line and much more.
  • Scripting bash, PowerShell, which allows you to automate and optimize the routine tasks of system administration. 
  • Repair and maintenance of PC, server hardware and peripherals.
  • Work with the configuration and routing of computer networks.
  • Work with mail servers and telephony servers.
  • Installation of office programs and applications.
  • Network and infrastructure monitoring. 

This is a base that must be mastered at a good, confident level. And this is not as simple as it seems: behind each item there is a mass of chips, secrets of skill, the necessary software tools, instructions and manuals. In a good way, work with self-education with full employment at the main job for at least a year.


Learn and understand this joke.

Important personal qualities


A system administrator is a specialist who cannot be isolated in a company and professional environment. He constantly has to communicate with people on the phone and in person, so he will have to overcome introverted traits. The system administrator should be:

  • stress-resistant - to cope with inappropriate user behavior, a huge amount of work and communication with management;
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If the company has requirements for language skills and they apply to specialists, then the system administrator must comply with these rules (for example, the company provides outsourcing services for foreign companies). But in general, the system administrator must understand the basic commands and system messages in English - for most this is enough.

However, if you want to grow in a career, receive international certificates, including Cisco, and be the first to understand advanced technologies, you will need English at least Upper Intermediate. I highly recommend making this investment in professional development, it’s not some fantastic level, it’s quite possible to master even without language skills.

Where to study


The profession of a system administrator is interesting in that there are no specific training requirements for entering a specialty, since a system administrator is not taught at a special faculty as such. Initially, it all depends on you - on how much you are ready to independently master the theory and practice, work with operating systems (Windows and Unix), peripherals, security. In fact, your computer should become your training laboratory (and even better, if you have a separate machine for such tasks, so that the process does not interfere with the main work and study).

To say that a system administrator is a profession without training and the destiny of self-taught people is simply criminal in our time, because we see the level of well-paid system administrators. So there is a basic “classic” set that you will need.

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  • Cisco . , Cisco Certified Entry Network Technician (CCENT) — - Cisco Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) Routing and Switching — . Cisco , . — . «» , , , ;-)
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System administrator is a specialty that requires constant training in new technologies, security tools, IT infrastructure management systems, etc. Without continuous immersion in new materials, you will quickly lose your skills and value in the market.

You will not be able to get around the basics and become a cool professional - without knowledge of the architecture of the PC, server, understanding of the principles of application and service software, operating systems, nothing will work. Therefore, for system administrators, the thesis “start from the beginning” is more relevant than ever.

Top Books and Learning Tools


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  3. . , . «Unix. »,
  4. «Python UNIX Linux» — .

In addition to books, vendor manuals, built-in help of operating systems and applications, instructions and regulations will come in handy - as a rule, they can easily find all the information you need. And yes, they are often in English and very poor in Russian localization.

Well and, of course, Habr and profile forums are an excellent help for system administrators of any level. When I had to study the science of Windows Server 2012, Habr turned out to be a great help - then we met even closer.

The future of the system administrator


I have heard about the degradation of the profession of a system administrator and the arguments in favor of this thesis are more than weak: robots can cope, the clouds guarantee work without a system administrator, etc. The question of who administers the clouds, for example, on the provider's side, remains open. In fact, the profession of a system administrator does not degrade, but is transformed towards complexity and universality. Therefore, if you chose it, several paths open before you.

  • DevOps or DevSecOps - specialization at the intersection of development, administration and security. At the moment, attention to DevOps is only growing and this trend will continue, developing towards containerization, loaded applications and systems, microservice architecture, etc. Learn all this while it looks like a high-priority future. 
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  • Start your own bissnes. For example, to engage in system administration and company support as an outsourcer. Then you can build your schedule, plan profitability and employment, provide those services that you have come out especially cool. But this is not an easy way, both in terms of recruiting and retaining a customer base, and in terms of management, finance and law. 

Of course, you can go both to telecom, and to development, and to sales managers of technically complex products (by the way, an expensive option!), And to marketing - it all depends on your personal inclinations and understanding of specialization. And you can remain a cool sysadmin and do all those listed for wages and skills. But for this, your aspiration and your experience and understanding by the leadership of your company of the importance of IT infrastructure must come together (and this is already a real rarity). 

Myths of the profession


Like any profession, system administration is surrounded by myths. I will gladly scatter the most common ones.

  • Sysadmins - a working profession. No, this is an intelligent, complex work with multitasking and workloads, because in the modern world, IT infrastructure means too much in any company.
  • Sysadmins are evil. No, ordinary - as the character of the owner of the profession. But they are really annoyed by users who cannot describe the problem or, what’s good, consider themselves to be almost hackers, and before they call for help, they exacerbate the problem completely.


    Not evil, but dangerous!
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But in general there is a share of jokes in every joke and in general sysadmins - the guys are colorful, interesting, with a peculiar manner of communication. You can always find a common language with them.

Main tip


There are no miracles and you will not become a super system administrator if you sit in a small office and do basic work. You will certainly burn out, be disappointed in the profession and will claim that this is the worst job in the world. Therefore - develop, change work, do not avoid interesting and difficult tasks - and you yourself will not notice how you become a real sought-after and highly paid professional. 

PS: in the comments, we always wait for advice from experienced system administrators and stories about what helped you in your career, how you came to this job, what you love about it and what doesn't. How is it, system administration in 2020?

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/undefined/

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