Is it too early to call IT dead

[openmarmot]

I've just came to the realization that I've been in the field for 17 years (started in high school). In that time I moved from awful desktop support jobs to awful sysadmin jobs. In my latest role I seem to be mostly just a name to put on grant proposals. All of the real work is outsourced either to AWS or to SaaS platforms (Office 365, Exchange moving to the cloud, accounting software, etc).

The Windows admins seem to be doing ok for now by migrating something to the cloud every time people catch on that they aren't very busy, but they are going to run out of things to migrate sooner or later.

The linux admins (such as myself) have a different problem. These days being a linux admin also means being a DBA (postgres and mysql at a minimum) as well as keeping up to date with AWS, web tech like CDNs, and several scripting languages. Because the more complicated tech is moving towards linux servers the linux guys are automatically expected to become experts.

I don't even know what happened to the DBAs. I've never worked for a company that had one. I'm guessing they all got laid off.

So my question is, is it to early to call the IT field dead? From what I've seen it is well past the glory days of big teams and big budgets, and not looking like it will ever recover.

[ankurdhama]

I guess what you are actually asking is - Is the Windows admin role dead?

[openmarmot]

The Windows Admin, DBAs, even networking guys. For awhile I was the only network tech for four hospitals. Every job since then networking is just something that was tacked on to my list of duties. Networking is just another field that does not need to be fully staffed out when most of your software is running offsite on someone's cloud