Software Development or System Administration?
If we speak about new generation of specialists, there is a tendency that new admins possess not only basic knowledge and skills to work with computers, they can service networks and whole systems. A new-generation system administrator often has fundamental knowledge of programming, knows several programming languages.
It also happens that small firms, not having a sufficient budget, hire a specialist who performs all the duties included in the profession system administrator vs programmer. This can be clearly seen in such a direction as 1C, where the leadership of a small firm hires a new employee with the calculations, which allows in the face of one person to get once two valuable employees. In this case, the system administrator will be engaged in the service of networks, to ensure their life cycle, maintain their performance. At the same time, such a specialist will develop the DBMS. That is, will take on all responsibilities for configuring, designing, developing and maintaining the IT infrastructure of the enterprise. This approach is fundamentally wrong. Throwing on the shoulders of one person all the responsibilities, you must understand that qualitatively perform them, even if he really wants to. Sooner or later in the work will be committed serious errors, and then have to spend a lot of money, effort and time to correct them.
Programmer, systems administrator – professions, as many managers believe, for the young. It seems to them that already after forty years of age a person is not able to react on time to changes in IT, does not get enough knowledge, is guided only by his previous experience. Indeed, in many companies, it is difficult to find a programmer or sysadmin who is over 40-45 years old. In fact, such specialists do not leave so early. They settle down in fairly reputable and large companies, find their niche and feel great in a professional and well-established team. It is not only the scale of the company that makes a huge difference, but also the region. A programmer or a system administrator is a kind of multi-armed Shiva, for whom almost nothing is impossible. He is engaged in any task which is put before him by the management. This is why promising young specialists try to move to big cities, to give themselves completely to their profession, instead of doing numerous jobs for themselves and the guy from the neighboring department.
In some moments, these professions overlap even in large companies, where all the responsibilities of each specialist are clearly divided. Thus, admins must understand at least the basic level of programming, and programmers should have some knowledge of how to properly configure the server.
If we talk about the level of wages and the prospects for career growth, then who in this regard is better – a programmer or sysadmin? Naturally, programmers get a salary, which is much higher than the salary that receives the admins. The complexity of the profession lies in the fact that the system administrator, coming to work, can drink coffee, to judge the gossip in the office, to talk about life with colleagues. Programmers are almost always deprived of such pleasure, since they are wholly occupied with the task at hand. And if they have an 8-hour working day written into their contract, they are often forced to work such an 8-hour day without lunch, rest or any distractions. As for the nature of work, it used to be thought that programmers were complete introverts. Today the situation has changed dramatically. You have to have almost unique communicative skills, because you have to work in different directions, and you have to find a language with people who do not understand programming or even computers. Naturally, this is very stressful, but there’s nothing you can do. You have to somehow explain certain stages of your work to your bosses, find out details of software changes in a company which audits the accounting. In general, you have to find a language with almost everyone in the company, in order to get the maximum amount of necessary information, and this can be quite difficult.
Of course, applying for a job as a programmer, but having knowledge only in system administration, you must be prepared for the fact that the management will set the task, which is impossible to cope with a person without some knowledge. Therefore, before any beginning it is necessary to clearly understand what tasks will have to perform, and be prepared for work of any complexity.