| So what were sysadmins before the term DevOps was invented ~5y ago? Unless you are arguing that people never did large scale automation
of processes around deploying systems and software until this term existed... In my personal vocabulary - there were always 2 kinds of sysadmins: - Real sysadmins- which is now the term 'DevOps' - IT System Technicians - which is what sysadmin is being perverted into The old-style breakdown typically depended on how systems/development minded the company was - with more forward looking companies seeing their sysadmins as the former category and people who "administered" e.g. 'tended to' the IT "system", and the reactive companies who viewed IT as some foreign expense to be managed viewing their sysadmins as advanced IT techs who were 'admins' (in the administrative assistant sense) for the various 'systems' (e.g. computers)
that they purchased. As someone who always operated in the mindset of the former category,
but unfortunately has operated mostly in the latter type of company,
it is difficult to make the transition into 'DevOps' roles since this term
has been subsequently invented to describe the work that I always did,
using tools that I would have written from scratch myself in the old days,
or deployed myself in the current days, but unfortunately due
to crappy management and backwards modes of thinking, don't have the proper
'current' job-title on my resume (e.g. sysadmin) |
If you talk to someone about their day and it revolves around tickets, they are the techs that you're talking about. The real "sysadmins"/devops understand systems and own things.
It's ok to realign your title with function. Every company handles this sort of thing differently. I was a "Computer Systems Programmer 3" for two years. In that organization, that rank was roughly equivalent to a Staff Engineer. My resume says "Lead DBA", as that was my primary function... the formal title assigned was just whatever was available when I was promoted... the title description was written for mainframe people!