Good to see another sysadmin input on this thread. Any bits that you would advise us younger (not that much, 30 yrs old) sysadmins about what to expect from the future?
So my biggest bit of advice is to get out of the tech sector as much as possible. One of the great things about ops is that there literally is not an industry that doesn't employ us. I've worked for non-profits, education, farms (you'd be amazed some of the data needs agribusiness has), and now aerospace. I've even gigged for food service (a local brewery paid me in beer...)
The advantage of this is that gets you out of some of the myopia that the tech sector has a tendency to instill, as well as broadening your geographical opportunities beyond the few tech hot spots. It also teaches you the three most important words a sysadmin has to learn to say: "I don't know". A sysadmin who can't say that immediately when it's true is going to have problems (after all ops is about 85% reading documentation), and figuring out how to get data from a barn to a datacenter will teach you to say it quickly.
Another piece of advice: if you haven't already, work in a datacenter, at least once, for at least a year, before you quit in disgust (everybody does). No datacenter sysadmin is happy, but it's a huge resume buff and it teaches you a lot.
The advantage of this is that gets you out of some of the myopia that the tech sector has a tendency to instill, as well as broadening your geographical opportunities beyond the few tech hot spots. It also teaches you the three most important words a sysadmin has to learn to say: "I don't know". A sysadmin who can't say that immediately when it's true is going to have problems (after all ops is about 85% reading documentation), and figuring out how to get data from a barn to a datacenter will teach you to say it quickly.
Another piece of advice: if you haven't already, work in a datacenter, at least once, for at least a year, before you quit in disgust (everybody does). No datacenter sysadmin is happy, but it's a huge resume buff and it teaches you a lot.