The document discusses how jobs in IT are changing as technology evolves. It describes how the field has progressed from a craft to a more commercial and engineering-focused discipline. It argues that many IT jobs still have aspects of the early craft stage, and that workers need to acquire new skills like coding, version control, testing and documentation to help the field progress further. The future will require enabling new technologies rather than just maintaining expensive legacy systems, and IT workers need to adopt a more collaborative approach focused on saying "yes" to new ideas.

1. Our Jobs Are Changing
Mandi Walls
LISA 2013
November 6, 2013
Thursday, November 14, 13

2. whoami
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Mandi Walls
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Sysadmin
Technical Practice Manager
at Opscode
@lnxchk
Thursday, November 14, 13

3. Nope
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What I’m not going to talk about:
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Thursday, November 14, 13
Chef. It’s awesome. I talk about Chef all the time.
DevOps. Some of this will start to sound a little DevvyOpsy though.
Gender and diversity. It’s a thing, and other folks have the science.

4. Yep
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What I am going to talk about
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The future.Yours, mine, ours together.
The world. It’s big and changing.

5. Why I Care
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Truth is, I work for a vendor
I talk to our customers and community every day
What I see in the industry worries me
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6. Evolution of the Field
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7. Legacies
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Protect expensive, specially-purchased systems
Run stuff
Fix things
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8. Monetary Investment
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Gear costs money: machines, networks, storage, electricity, cooling
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Cost impacts attitude, behavior, creates a culture of “no”
The higher those costs, the greater the risk of failure for new
products, services, and features
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9. The Generation of “No”
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Sysadmins rewarded for protecting investments
Hoarders of information
BOFHs
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10. Shoulders of Giants
Progress in a field doesn’t happen when everyone has to start from scratch
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11. Specialization
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Over time, complexity bred specialties
Networking, storage, datacenter operations, web operations, IT
Federation of tasks can create positive outcomes and negative
outcomes
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12. Evolution of Practice
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Three stages of the evolution of a field
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craft
commercial
engineering
Mary Shaw at CMU “Prospects for an Engineering Discipline of Software”
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13. Craft Stage
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Talented amateurs
Use of intuition, what “feels like it will work this time”
Early tools built mostly for their own use
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14. Commercial Stage
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Market expansion, greater demand
Standard procedures start to emerge
Practitioners are more carefully selected and have some training
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15. Engineering Stage
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Practitioners begin to apply scientific principles
Principles emerge
Experimentation becomes more sophisticated
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16. Where Are We?
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17. Challenges to Moving Forward
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Unskilled workers hold organizations back
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Investing in training and professional development

18. Bringing individuals up to speed is a tough job
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19. In the meantime, the ground under our feet is changing
We have to continue learning as well
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20. Why Does it Even Matter?
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21. Digital Economy
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Increasing: more of day-to-day life is lived, or augmented, online
Expanding reach: more non-technical people engaging with tech
Globalization: developing economies without technical legacy
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22. Reach of Technology
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In many countries, connectedness is near constant
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Users expect all services to perform at a certain level
The systems behind these services are increasingly complex and
interconnected
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23. Engagement of Non-Specialists
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Barrier to entry lowered to engage more consumers
They’re not “muggles”, they’re users, customers
Change the way we engage with others
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24. Globalizing
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Emerging economies leapfrog over legacy infrastructure requirements
Individuals find new ways to use technology to better their lives
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25. Ubiquity
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Escaping technology takes work
The growth of technology mean more opportunity for more people
Unlikely uses for technology fuels improvements in quality of life
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26. What Do We Enable?
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Projects like Nano Ganesh from Tata Indicom
Indian farmers use mobile technology to water crops
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27. What Do We Enable?
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Companies like Cemex
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28. What Do We Enable?
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Changes to education, healthcare, safety
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29. There is No Place for BOFHs in
this New Technological World
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30. How Do We Enable Ourselves?
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Self awareness
Organizational awareness
Participation in the field
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31. New Skills
Borrowing practices from software engineering
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32. Learn To Touch Type
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Dude.
Seriously.
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33. Version Control
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PTSD from that one time you checked something in with RCS and
forgot to leave a local copy
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Modern tools like git integrate with other systems, deployment tools
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Create a single workflow for everyone, including dev if you have it
It’s important to have history - not just for code, but for your config
files on your systems
Pull early, push often
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34. Learn To Code
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Scariest slide in this talk
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It’s a skill that you can learn, it’s not magic, and it can’t be limited to
people who have “software engineer” in their job title
Pick a language, learn it. bash counts. PowerShell is awesome.
Increase efficiency, repeatability of your work - the maturation of tools
brings the whole profession forward
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35. Working in the Cloud
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The cloud is our fault. Say “no” enough times, your organization will
stop asking you for things
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The commoditization of the hardware layer will catch up with us
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Use the cloud to learn new things you might need in your job
Utility computing brings new challenges and shines light on the “what
ifs” we’ve been talking to others about for years
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36. Document Systems
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Foster transparency and trust by documenting your processes
If your team doesn’t have (or like) wikis, use something like sphinx
Give everyone access, no hiding and hoarding
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37. Testing and Code Review
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A set of still emerging tools, like serverspec
Builds trust in your processes when you know your change works
If you have multiple people on a team, check each other’s work,
formalize the process with a tool like garrett
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38. Common Thread
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Be proactive
Say Yes
If you can’t say Yes, ask questions before saying No
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39. Where Do We Go
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Cost of systems
Now mitigated by the cloud and other services
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Cost of bad behaviors
We can work on getting to Yes
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Cost of information hoarding and reinventing the wheel - the
opportunity cost of repeating work
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We can be open and share our knowledge
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42. We can build amazing things, but not by ourselves
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43. Our future is here, it’s just not evenly distributed
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44. Next Steps
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Changing our first principles
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Finding our value proposition when we aren’t the guardians of large
expensive systems - we’re the facilitators of large amazing ideas
Rejecting the pull of the BOFH
Refocusing systems work on enabling the organization to do great
things
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45. Why?
Because some day we are going to be running the O2 systems on starships
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