Profession of a programmer - who is a programmer? Where do you study to be a programmer? What is the difference between a programmer and a system administrator (sysadmin)? What mistakes should not be made in the IT profession. A story about my own experience What is better programmer system administrator

In my nearly thirty years, I have risen to the rank of senior system administrator. I had about forty servers with linux on board. The company grew and expanded, but the tasks were reduced to building up the power of ready-made functionality.

And everything would be fine, but over time and for certain reasons, discomfort began to prevail over comfort.

Firstly, the support process itself, or rather its “permanent” nature or the absence of any finality. Small tasks, being executed, overlap each other ad infinitum and turn into a huge lump that constantly changes its size - the ratio of completed and uncompleted tasks. Which ultimately gives rise to questions: “What useful things have I already done, what else will I do, and what am I moving towards in the end?”

Second, interrupts. In the case of system administration, they stand out from all the problems and can throw anyone off balance. When you write code, optimize the service, and every half hour you are distracted by questions, urgent tasks and challenges - sometimes it is very difficult to return to work and time is wasted on it - you can sit for fifteen minutes, remembering where you were pulled from and what you did in general (In the book " Time Management for System Administrators” by Thomas A. Limoncelli is well written about this). As a result, interruptions form the statement “I am not allowed to work”! ..

Thirdly, the habit of working process. As you know, a person gets used to everything and what initially aroused admiration and ultimately brought general satisfaction becomes ordinary and boring. When everything is spinning and working perfectly, only you and at most the head of the department know about it, while users take it for granted and have no reason to be proud. But they notice any minor oversight, from which both the karma of the entire department and the internal state of the administrator suffer - you convince yourself against your will - "I'm a bad employee."

All this concerns service in general and such is his path. And I in it, on the sly, but lost faith.

What did I want? More immersion in more creative work, less influence from outside on small things, see the end result and get satisfaction from it. And that's all. Tired and aloof looking at our programmer department, reading habr or watching gifs on developerslife, I realized that if I can’t get it in the field of administration, it’s time to change profession, and since I liked writing code more and more, the choice didn't have to wait long.

The choice of language has always been a complete frustration for me. At work, I wrote in bash, because I needed to write in something, and its capabilities for system administration are more than enough. Perl - didn't like the syntax. For a very long time I tried to accustom myself to ansi C, I worked on two books, - Unix network application development (William Richard Stevens) and Programming for UNIX Most complete guide(Mark J. Rockkind). But I never found the application of the acquired knowledge, I still regret the time spent. According to the requirements, I would like it to keep up with linux, be universal, able to use both sys (for current scripts) and web (with a reserve for the future) and not vyryglazny in syntax. I went around Python for a very long time - its relative youth, low popularity, and, I don’t know why, its name slowed it down. Over time, watching giant companies that are increasingly using python in production, and by the time I decided to change my profession, I had already decided on the language, although there was not much to choose from.

For the first six months I read Mark Lutz, tried to write something, but the knowledge was fragmentary and I was afraid to apply it on combat servers, and I didn’t see any benefit in replacing bash with python. Time dragged on, and I liked my idea less and less. As a result, I convinced myself that if it doesn’t work out for me, others will succeed - we need courses, in a short time, with elaboration of practice and so that there is responsibility for the money paid. This will make it easier and faster.

I found a monthly Python course at a local institute and persuaded management to take them, although by the time I paid, I was already ready to pay for them myself. Within a month, everything fell into place. Everything accumulated before and deducted on the Internet has decomposed into shelves and has become understandable and transparent. No book can replace live teaching, where any inaccuracy or understatement can be clarified on the spot.

Then, as if in a knurled way, within six months, gradually and in my free time, I rewrote all scripts and all automation in python, wrote a statistics server for squid (python, wsgi). Already for my hard-earned money, I took courses through a webinar on OOP and django, since I decided not to even try to argue their need for my current employer. Rewrote everything with the new knowledge. Further, for the sake of broadening my horizons, I took another course on testing, but I didn’t like it - I left it as a fallback.

The next six months, in addition to direct duties, were spent on maintaining and optimizing the code I wrote and on finding work. I considered only full-time, - I could no longer administer, dreaming about new job and new opportunities.

During this time, I passed about a dozen interviews for the position of junior. There are about a dozen in total. But everywhere it was required either django + frontend, or with experience from two years. There is no experience in production, and I didn’t have and still don’t have any desire to deal with the front-end. What is still strange, there weren’t many questions about the language, but there were a lot on theory - OOP, patterns, scrum methodologies, agile - which I naturally did not know.Continuing to bang my head against the doors of conference rooms and listening to the standard phrase "We will call you back", I continued to go through invitations.And in the end I was hired as a backend developer in a closed project.

I have been working at my current place of work for several months and I can sum up the results.

All in all, it took a year and a half. For some, this is a lot, but with all the courses, nightly homework, reading, writing and rewriting code, as well as with current tasks in a growing company, for me this time flew by unnoticed.

Of course, I got what I was striving for, although I didn’t rejoice at it for a long time - the feeling “I succeeded, I became a programmer” burned out very quickly, in about a week, and it was replaced by:

Working days with a wild load. I haven't strained my brain like this since my college days. As a result, poor sleep, thinking about the code in your free time, when, for example, you need to relax with your family, and general poor health, although now I seem to have gotten involved. The fact that so much time has passed, I realized already when writing this article. Time has accelerated greatly and now I am afraid that my whole life would not fly before my eyes just as quickly. Maybe it's time to learn to relax.

Fight against procrastination. Good system administrators have a lot more free time than they let on. Thanks to this, a lot of subscriptions, YouTube channels, specialized sites, jokes, jokes, many acquaintances on the network and interests are accumulating. Personally, I could spend up to three hours a day reading and watching all this. What I had to practically abandon in my current position, for lack of time. Initially, I just read fluently, then just read the headlines, and then completely unsubscribed. I learned not to respond to instant messenger messages at the workplace, so as not to be distracted and not to lose my thoughts. Now I am subscribed to only a dozen specialized sites.

Initially, I tried to tie these difficulties to my age, and at one of the interviews they told me that it was not profitable for the company to invest money in me and that I decided to change my profession too late. But now I can say that this is not the case at all.

The point is the profession of a system administrator. Work, the end result of which tends to absolute laziness, greatly relaxes life positions and aspirations, and communication with users and listening to their discontent strengthens antisocial principles even more. And here, someone like me begins to think about greater usefulness, which leads to the search for a more harmonious life, and someone is satisfied with everything and continues this difficult existence.

I noticed that recently a lot of familiar admins are starting to prepare for reprofiling or have already changed their profession. And development cloud technologies and the expansion of the influence of outsourcing companies, only reinforce this trend.

System administration is slowly losing its relevance and in the near future, this profession is likely to change, become a hot start and perhaps an internship for more and more new programmers and other all-round IT specialists. But not more.

The article turned out to be a bit philosophical. And it's not often that I write for this blog at all. Unfortunately.

September 2016 turned out to be a bright event for me. Clenching my will into a fist, I said goodbye to the work to which I devoted the last 4 years. And just in horror I realized that this is a road to nowhere.

I don’t know if it’s a midlife crisis (I’m already 31 years old this year) or the understanding that the family needs backlogs much more seriously in material terms, but the fact remains that I broke up with work and what I have been doing all these years. And now I can give you, dear readers, some parting words so that you do not repeat such mistakes.

So, as I already wrote, in recent years I have worked with someone whom I used to vehemently ridicule even on my blog. I worked sysadmin. Moreover, the position was with an "amazing" entry in the work book - a systems engineer. And only 4 years later I only found out that, it turns out, this is such a veiled name of enikeya in normal offices. Yes, in normal ones, because I can’t call the last office that word.

The beginning of 2013 will be remembered for a long time. I had a choice to get a job as an android developer, 1C programmer, or a system administrator in an office, about which I can’t say anything but swear words. Greed won. Since the developer offered me everywhere at first 25 thousand (Rostov-on-Don). I understand that a programmer, even before a year of work, is just a June. Moreover, I threw Android before, and 1C was engaged in so far as. But in a year the prospects would have grown. The skill would grow, and with it the salary level. But I took the path of least resistance, as I was offered 35 tyrov! On your hands! White! And that was the beginning of my professional collapse.

The office was small as hell. Peer-to-peer network, without AD or even a hint of LDAP at least on Samba. With ancient computers under no less ancient XP. One video surveillance server, one file dump and one gateway configured through one place on the 5th Centos ...

When I saw all this "economy", I had a reasonable question - why pay such an amount? I received the answer immediately - for business trips. It was me who was taken for commissioning work on business trips. I had video surveillance systems, servers and switching equipment hanging on me. In 2014, all this backfired on me - I spent almost the entire year in Sochi, starting from the Olympics, where I worked without sleep and days off for two months, and then lived without getting out in conditions in which guest workers would not always agree to be, due to the greed of the director offices.

Yes, I learned a lot. I studied Cisco at the CCNA level, I already wanted to rise to CCNP, but changed my mind. I learned a lot of related technologies such as radar tuning (yes, radar) and a lot of other things. I learned so much about FOCL and all the switching equipment that I could safely go to telecoms to work after that. And at the same time, I was dumb. From monotony, from routine, etc.

I abandoned this blog. I quit programming. I've gotten used to the idea that I'm just a sysadmin. I get paid and that's it.

But every year the anxiety grew. First, on the new year 2015, I received the first news from Superjob that, as it were, I need to retrain from system administrators at the age of 30. Then everything was on the rise.

I watched technology digests and literally went nuts from what happened in these 4 years. Xamarin, in iOS development went to SWIFT, many new frameworks appeared on the web, Rust appeared and immediately made a call to C ++. Yes, and the latter has undergone changes - C ++ 14 was released, which began to resemble more java.

There were a lot of changes. And it all passed by. And when two more admins, much older than me, got a job in the office, then I realized what a dead-end branch it was. And he quit.

And, absolutely no regrets. And to you, dear readers, I can simply convey from my own experience what I encountered after my dismissal.

So, in the hands of a work book with such a "disgusting" entry, two resumes - for a programmer and a system administrator. Here is the input. And then it started.

For the sake of interest, I began to send out a resume of a system administrator, while along the way I read books on what I had missed in the past. The result was, to put it mildly, not so hot. No, I've been invited to many places. I went through interviews often. But behind my back I often heard: “God, the man is 31 years old and he came as a system administrator!”. But there were still a lot of places where a resume flew into the shredder with a diagnosis - “Grandfather. Old strongly for this post. Moreover, the network is heterogeneous in such organizations. There are also virtual servers on ESXi, web servers running on Apache and Nginx under Debian and Centos 7, a bunch of PBXs on Asterisk, complex forests of AD, MS SQL Server 2014, Exchange, perfect bash and powershell scripts, Cisco, Huawei, Microtik - not to mention everything. And experience for all this from 3 to 6 years. But not older than 30 years for the applicant. So who amuses himself with skills, often the main document will go against you - a passport. So at least in Rostov is the case.

There was a circus with the programmer in general - they often saw that he had worked as a system administrator for the last 4 years and immediately resumed in a shredder or started to hysteria. There are more than 100 1C franchises in the city, but almost all of them had one thing as a standard for hiring as a programmer - to be an intern. And don't care how much experience you have - no experience at all or 10 years behind you. And then the question arose about the salary, which is traditionally not in French. As for other programmers, there is nothing for ASP.Net except for the web and a tiny share of C#. And even C#, which I knew version 4.0, was already using 6.0. Re-teach even him. Although on the blog I conducted webinars on it (or rather, on 5.0). But it was easier with him, but again, age did not pass into the team. Young guys under 25 are sitting and a 31-year-old uncle fills up with them ...

However, I did not fall into pessimism at all. I was looking for a lot of things related and a week after the dismissal I found java job developer. Yes, the salary is gray. But the entry “software engineer” will shine again in the labor record. And one thing I know for sure - never again in the system administration with a foot. Yes, and age will not allow).

I hope that this article with such moans was interesting and useful to someone. Most importantly, always evolve. The world does not stand still. And IT - even more so. Otherwise, you run the risk of being left behind, as I once was.

Hello friends! Today we will talk about such a profession as a system administrator. Since our century is the century of technological progress. Machine Age. It is impossible to imagine even the most seedy company without a computer! The director of the enterprise, in the accounting department, in the offices of the heads of departments, and even ordinary employees - everyone has computers at their workplaces.

Corporate mail, news, the market, the bank - all these benefits of the modern workforce undoubtedly help to survive in the cruel world of business. But how do you make it all work together? How to make employees not “in contact” and “classmates” sit in work time, but did business? How to protect confidential information from a work computer from hackers? That's why there is such a profession as a system administrator.

If you ask Google who this is, he will answer something like this:

System admin - an employee whose job responsibilities include ensuring the normal operation of the park computer technology, networks and software, as well as providing information security In the organisation.

In the people, such a specialist is simply called "admin" or "sysadmin".

So let's take a look...

What does he do

The duties of a system administrator include ensuring the stable operation of computer equipment.

This stage includes:

1. installation and configuration (and sometimes even purchase) of computers,
2. component and peripherals(printers, scanners, etc.)

When doing this, the main thing is to lay computer communications so that even the most sophisticated worker does not pull out the plug with his foot and pour coffee system unit.

The most difficult thing in the work is to explain to the beautiful blonde secretary of the chef that it is not necessary to pin the mouse wire with buttons to the table, even if it interferes a lot)))

• Setting up programs and ensuring their stable, reliable operation will be, perhaps, the most time-consuming work. Software can be completely different, depending on the specifics of the enterprise. For example, from the usual Microsoft word & excel, to the ORACLE DBMS and accounting programs.

The main problem in the operation of the software is, unfortunately, precisely the human factor, since usually the complaints of employees to the system administrator begin with the words: “I clicked on the wrong place and everything suddenly disappeared somewhere.” To synchronize the work of programs and set the correct protection "from fools" - that's, consider, half of the work of a system administrator.

• Also, the system administrator must know and be able to correctly configure access settings so that each employee can turn on only his computer, his profile, run only those programs that he has access to according to his status in the campaign. If the work of employees is connected to the Internet, then the system administrator will have to configure access settings during world wide web so that neither “in contact” nor “classmates” so beloved by office workers are accessible from work computers.

The system administrator is a very significant figure in the company, like a horse on a chessboard. It seems that he is not the most important person, but without him it is absolutely impossible. Sometimes it is enough to complete courses for the administrator to become the master of office computers. And after all, computers tend to break down, both for an ordinary employee and for the general director.

You can learn more about what the system admin does by watching the video.

Pros of the profession

Almost complete independence can be attributed to the incomparable advantages of the work, because it is almost impossible to find a person in the company who will understand computers at the system administrator level and will check your work. It is the system administrator who is the “virtual director” in the campaign, therefore, having correctly configured the equipment and given valuable instructions to the “office plankton”, you can safely spend gray working days, indulging in social networks or absorbing today's youth online games. In addition, solving problems with the technique of superiors and senior management (top manager, Chief Accountant, personnel officers, etc.) will provide good connections and help you move up the corporate ladder.

Paperwork, again, for representatives of this profession is an order of magnitude less than for other workers. As practice shows, until at the end of the month, the year, the heads of departments, subordinates, intensively write reports, balance accounts and sum up - system administrators in their office twist twisted-pair soldiers.

The obvious advantages include the salary of system administrators. According to the site “job.ru”, companies are willing to pay an average of $1,200 to $3,000 for services of this kind.

The disadvantages (cons) of the profession include:

1. Uneven and sometimes high workload. Through the efforts of negligent users, computers fail and break with enviable regularity in almost any enterprise.
2. Misunderstanding and sometimes absolute unwillingness to understand how the system works at all. The mouse is buggy - the system administrator is to blame. The site does not work - the system administrator is to blame. The power supply has burned out - the system administrator is to blame. And go and prove that the voltage in the mains does not depend on you!
3. Limited opportunities for career growth. If the company's activities are not related to the provision of services in the field of information technologies, then there is nothing more to count on except for an increase in salary.

Characteristic

What qualities are necessary for a good system administrator?

• First, he must have a good technical education. Knowing what is a system unit and what is a monitor and how to reinstall the operating system will obviously not be enough.
• Secondly, a good system administrator must speak English at a level clearly superior to the basic one.

Most programs and especially technical description they are attached specifically in English and gaps in knowledge of the language can be costly, and in a reputable company there is nothing to do without knowledge of a foreign language.

• And, finally, thirdly, sociability, the ability to find an approach to colleagues at work will provide the system administrator not only with additional cookies for coffee, but sometimes with a good bonus.

If you are used to working independently, speak English well and know how to find an approach to people, this job is for you. Yes, and wages will allow you to provide not only yourself, but also your family to please, and in our information society a person with this kind of profession will never be left without a job.

Regards, Alexey!

Today I want to touch upon the problem of choosing professions and talk about one of them. I think everyone has faced this issue and found a suitable solution for themselves. Someone followed the lead of their parents, someone was guided by their own, and someone never found his calling. I would like to talk about such a profession as a programmer.

I think everyone knows that these are people who sit at a computer all day and write something there. But why is everyone pestering them with all sorts of stupid questions like: "Won't you look My computer? It froze for some reason!" But who came up with this stereotype that a programmer and a system administrator are one and the same? These are two different professions!!! The programmer writes programs for you in special languages, and the system administrator (in the common people, the system administrator) understands why and why they hang. The system administrator also repairs computers, which, in principle, a programmer should not do, although he must know how he, a computer, works.

And where do they teach to be a programmer and a system administrator (sysadmin)?

Promising technical education for working with databases and networks can be obtained in almost every technical university. Programmers and developers are trained in the specialty "Software computer science and automated systems», « Applied Informatics and mathematics", system administrators - in the process of training in the specialty "Computers, complexes, systems and networks", information security specialists - in universities where there is a specialty "Organization and technology of information security".

For information, I will list the leading universities in Moscow in the indicated specialties:

MIPT (GU). Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology ( State University) NRNU MEPhI. National Research Nuclear University MEPhI Bauman. Moscow State Technical University. N.E. Bauman MGIET (TU). Moscow State Institute of Electronic Technology (Technical University) M.V. Lomonosov. Moscow State University M.V. Lomonosov

This list of universities can be continued for a long time. Only the faculty "Informatics and Computer Engineering" is in the 41st university.

The exams that you need to pass for admission to this profession are as follows: Russian Mathematics Computer Science/Physics Possibly English.

The most important thing is to pass mathematics, computer science / physics well. These are still technical universities! But there are exceptions for every institution. To do this, you need to search for a very long time. in the Internet and understand, but it is best to choose several universities for yourself and go there for the Open Day doors. There you can talk with the rectors, and with the students, and learn everything.

But, it seems to me, in order to enter, and then work in this specialty, you need to love very much to study(this is the main "minus" of this profession), and very much like to delve into pieces of iron.

So, what are the "pluses" of this profession: 1) High wages. 2) Good knowledge of TECHNICAL in English. 3) High and a highly developed intellect. "Cons": 1) Huge pressure on the eyes, because all day at the computer. 2) Completeness, because it is a sedentary profession. 3) Loneliness. Why? Because all day you sit alone in a closed room. This profession is suitable for those people who are more comfortable being alone in life. 4) Constantly need to learn new languages ​​or new components, because. almost every year there is an improved version of programming languages. 5) By the age of 35-40, this profession is boring ...

I talked with many acquaintances working in this specialty, and they all unanimously repeat that they are tired, bored. And it's terrible when your favorite work starts to bother! And they say that there is no place in this profession women. What nonsense? There are female programmers just as good men, only they are not hired for this position. It is very difficult for girls to break through ... I think everyone understands why this is so.

This profession is very interesting and promising, only few people manage to achieve something good in it, because you need to be completely cut off from home, relatives and go headlong into work. Few can agree to this. And this is another "minus" of this work.

I myself am torn between it and the profession of a journalist, which will be discussed in the next article.

Job Responsibilities system administrator.
To perform the functions assigned to him, the system administrator performs the following duties:

1. Planning of information infrastructure, internal network structure.
2. Organization and ensures the smooth functioning of the local area network. Monitoring the use of a local area network.
3. Installing network software on servers and workstations, configuring systems and software on servers.
4. Provides protection against unauthorized access to information, viewing or modification system files and data, as well as interworking security.
5. Organization of access to local and global networks, including - the Internet; exchange of information with other organizations using Email.
6. Registration of users, assignment of identifiers (logins) and passwords.
7. Maintaining the working state of the server software.
8. Support for corporate web server and internal web servers.
9.Installation and setup network services. Keeping them in working order.
10. Setting up a security system, planning a general security policy.
11. Training and consulting users when working in a local area network, the Internet, using e-mail, maintaining archives.
12. Downloading and subsequent installation of updates to the server operating systems and software.
13. Logging of system and network events, events of access to resources - for further analysis.
14. Virus protection. Updating anti-virus databases.
15. Development of instructions for working with network software and providing them to users.
16. Setting limits for users on: use workstation or servers; time; degree of resource use.
17. Makes a plan for archiving data. Installing and configuring the system software Reserve copy. Saving data on removable media.
18. Setting up alerts about critical events. Installation and configuration of monitoring software. Identification of bottlenecks, response to critical events, hacker attacks.
19. Keeping a log of data archiving and media usage.
20. Development of a scheme for post-accident recovery of the local area network.
21. Holding test checks and preventive inspections of computer equipment for the purpose of timely detection and elimination of faults.
22. Drawing up an application for the repair of a faulty one, as well as the purchase of a new one and the modernization of an outdated one hardware equipment servers and workstations, as well as network equipment.