[greenbit]

I don't think they're extinct at all. Maybe in businesses where the product ('service' if you will) is highly or completely network oriented, you can get the fusion of back-end/network-facing that seems to be attracting the term DevOps, but in a lot of businesses where the products are actual products, it seems useful to keep the distinction between engineers who develop product and the SysAdmins who keep the company infrastructure intact. Granted the latter model gets blurry when the product is something that, once delivered, will be in contact with the wild internet - but the difference is still there, in that sure the engineers need to worry about some of the traditional SysAdmin concerns, but the actual SysAdmins are the people that are going to "come in" when it's your company's own computers need attention. And that's worthy of some appreciation. Thanks for all you do, SysAdmins!