Tech stacks, job skills, and the art of production systems maintenance

Hi, been coming back to this sub recently and reading through many of the same old posts. I see things like, but not limited to:

* [Pure Windows Admins are not viable](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/e0npjf/one_of_the_most_important_skills_in_this_industry/) * [how to interview](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/dw4ec7/some_thoughts_on_the_interview_process/) * [old man yells at cloud](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/e0texd/im_feeling_like_a_dinosaur/) * [The Cloud Cometh part 2 Azure boogaloo](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/dvxc30/bad_gut_feeling_about_azure_and_microsoft_push/) * [an actual positive post!](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/dzm3xs/once_a_young_sysadmin_and_now_an_old_unicorn_how/) * [IT professional shocked billion dollar cloud company wants top talent](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/dzav4k/change_in_industry_devops/)

So, basically this sub hasn't changed much all in all. However, I still like to come back and see what others are doing in the IT world. I just wanted to come back and give my thoughts again.

**The Cloud:**

The Cloud is real, it isn't going away. It is the future for many many reasons. Think of it this way and just simply it. Classically building out a DC takes months to years. You must find physical locations, real estate, power/electrical, HVAC, physical security, order every piece of hardware and then rack and stack them. That just takes so much time and effort, plus if you need to change or expand it takes even longer. While in the cloud I can run a few automated commands and double my infrastructure instantly. This mere feature of the cloud is invaluable. Remember when people called virtualization a fad? That bare metal would always reign supreme? I have worked in on prem or hybrid environments my entire career until recently. I now work for a pure cloud company and it is amazing. I don't have to patch most apps, the SaaS vendor does it. Also, SaaS apps are platform agnostic, meaning they can be ran on pretty much every platform. I also get the benefit of all that infra is no longer my problem and frees up my time to concentrate on more important things and different tasks.

I get that a lot of Orgs have huge struggles right now migrating the cloud, mostly around legacy tech and tech debt. However, it isn't impossible and you should be learning and investing in these things.

**Coding:**

Learning how to write code benefits you so much. You learn how systems work, APIs work, frameworks and all the things that go along with it. PowerShell is based off of .NET, and you should be learning .NET at some level when you dive into PowerShell. Just like Python can bridge to many other languages, it allows you to learn other things. These lower level APIs that interact with the OSes also give you more insights into how the vendors/devs created the OS to begin with. It literally has zero downsides to learning how to write code. Once you start, do not stop, because you might find yourself a few years later with tons of spaghetti code spread across 100s of scripts, and that is not the best way to run an enterprise. Now that you have your coding skills down, learn about tools and processes that execute code, version control it, consolidate code into a working reusable code library and so forth. Then look at building some applications. Flask and Django are great for quick Python based headless web servers, or things like a Lambda function in AWS.

**Platforms:**

The whole you must be platform agnostic to be smart is also a bad piece of advice, but some people on this sub love to give their unilateral advice from their small scope of IT. If you go back to what I wrote in the coding section, it really boils down to learning systems. To me, everything is a platform. Cisco is a platform, AWS and Azure are platforms, Linux, Windows and macOS are platforms. Conceptually they share similarities, but in practice they are vastly different. I have worked with a few Windows only people that were quite brilliant. They could do work in Linux or Python, even though it did take them longer, and this is not because they actually trained themselves a ton to use Linux or Python. It is because when they dove into the whole PowerShell/Windows automation stack they took the time to learn systems, not just copy/paste code, or script everything as some sort of one off. It is one thing to be good enough at coding to make some piece of automation work, but it is an entirely different thing if you fully and completely understand how it works. I have definitely written working code in my life that I did not fully understand, and I feel a lot of people do this all the time. I try not to, but deadlines are deadlines and requirements are requirements, but I typically take the time to try to learn the underlying tech. If anyone tries to tell you that only certain platforms make the smartest tech professionals they are simply talking out of their ass. There is no best platform, there is no best language, these are concepts that are relative to what you are doing and what your Org requires. That being said, you should always be learning and expanding your skills. When you get to this level you don't really see Windows or PowerShell, you just see a platform that works well with in the Microsoft Ecosystem, and they are just tools to means to an end. Just like if you want to build some web apps, why would you not use Linux and Apache or some other lightweight web server? Those are tools with means to an end.

**Interviewing/Top talent jobs**

I cannot really tell you how many off the wall things I have seen in this sub regarding these topics. Just to clear this out of the way, all the top tier billion dollar tech companies can afford top talent, and yes they expect it. you will be asked to develop some sort of code, and they pay top tier salary for it. Google builds all their own software internally, so if you end up in the IT org there is a strong possibility you are going to develop software. Google also pays very well and gives their employees great overall compensation. They want the top 1% of professionals working for them. If this is your dream job, then you will have to accept this sort of mindset, and start upping your skills.

Interviewing is a two way street, and it starts with leadership defining the job req. If they do a poor job of classifying the req then you are already off to a bad start. Also, you must accept what they are looking for and go with it. If they want to hire two junior IT/admin type jobs instead of another Sr position to help you out, then so be it. That is not your decision, accept it and move on. Then, yes, you will probably have to mentor these new people. They are new to the field just like you were at one point. No one is born with the innate knowledge of computer systems, it must be learned over time. I have witnessed adults getting all upset because management did not hire the skills or person they wanted. This is extremely immature and unprofessional.

When Interviewing, assuming you have come to terms with the above, start to scope things out accordingly. Ask questions for the job in question. Get to know the candidate and so forth. In the end you will want to find the best fit just like every human on this planet is trying to find a job that it is a good fit for them.

As for when you are interviewing, the only things you can control in this universe is yourself. You can make tons of excuses and validate them anyway you wish, and that is completely up to you. My best advice I can give is always be learning and don't be an asshole. You'll be successful if you follow those two rules. Also politics != asshole-ness. you can run the jewels with everyone in your org as far as politics go, but you never have to be an asshole about it