Why SysAdmin’s Can’t Code

I’ve been more “devops” then SA for the past 10 years and some of us can code and at a very decent level.

Having said that author states they’re the first to admit they can’t code. That’s true, and I’ve even heard it from very competent that coders.

If you say you can code to a software engineer that can open the door in interviews to obnoxious, dick measuring obscure code questions which frankly isn’t fair.

The trend is for ops roles to be a lot more code heavy and if I’m interviewing a true software engineer for a devops role it would be unfair to ask some obscure BGP routing gotcha or delving deep into Linux internals no normal person would encounter on a daily basis.

Just my person gripe..

I haven't had the peers to know if I'm a strong coder, but the last time we filled a position, I'm certain none of the candidates was a strong coder. I tried to get each of them to just read a 200 line NON(!)obscure perl program, and no one seemed to make a serious effort. I'm a peer, not a manager, but I suspect we were trying to get a Bay area employee at Research Triangle Park prices.

Do traditional sysadmins even exist anymore? But if they do, the answer is probably because those that can code become software engineers.