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.
3. Nope
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What Iâm not going to talk about:
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Chef. Itâs awesome. I talk about Chef all the time.
DevOps. Some of this will start to sound a little DevvyOpsy though.
Gender and diversity. Itâs 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. Itâs 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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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 ânoâ
The higher those costs, the greater the risk of failure for new
products, services, and features
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9. The Generation of âNoâ
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Sysadmins rewarded for protecting investments
Hoarders of information
BOFHs
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10. Shoulders of Giants
Progress in a ďŹeld doesnât 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 ďŹeld
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craft
commercial
engineering
Mary Shaw at CMU âProspects for an Engineering Discipline of Softwareâ
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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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17. Challenges to Moving Forward
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Unskilled workers hold organizations back
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Investing in training and professional development
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
Theyâre not âmugglesâ, theyâre users, customers
Change the way we engage with others
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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 ďŹeld
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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 workďŹow for everyone, including dev if you have it
Itâs important to have history - not just for code, but for your conďŹg
ďŹles 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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Itâs a skill that you can learn, itâs not magic, and it canât be limited to
people who have âsoftware engineerâ in their job title
Pick a language, learn it. bash counts. PowerShell is awesome.
Increase efďŹciency, 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 ânoâ 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 âwhat
ifsâ weâve 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 doesnât 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 otherâs work,
formalize the process with a tool like garrett
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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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40. â˘
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Cost of bad behaviors
We can work on getting to Yes
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41. â˘
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, itâs just not evenly distributed
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44. Next Steps
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Changing our ďŹrst principles
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Finding our value proposition when we arenât the guardians of large
expensive systems - weâre 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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