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What does a Unix System Administrator do?

Which job is better: a Unix System Administrator or a Java Developer?

  • I have an engineering degree in Computer Science and I am fairly good in Java Programming. However, for the past two years I have been working as an Unix System Admin and have got pretty good at that too. Now, I am about to change my job and have been wondering whether to shift to becoming a Java Developer or remain as an Unix Admin. Please advise.

  • Answer:

    It depends on what you like and what you want. In my understanding, usually developers are paid better than Unix admins. Also, after certain years of experience developers can easily move to a different role, like one can move to product manager or people manager role. As a unix admin, unless company size is huge there are only 1 or 2 guys working as a sysadmin. So working as a people manager role could be slightly delayed. Also, most of the senior members in the company, especially VP onwards, rarely you will find sysadmins or ops guys. Having said that, be true to be yourself. Chances to excel in career are high if you work in the field you like the most. Also, in the field of IT every job is painful, so choose the pains which you find most attractive to deal with. Nowadays a new field has emerged as dev-ops. I feel it is best of both worlds. It is difficult to find people who can do decent coding and have fair enough system level exposure. Currently it is a hot role in industry and is in huge demand. Not sure about the future though. From reading your question and its description, it could be a good career choice. And I totally agree with 's answer, you have to work on more languages though. Caveat: I am DevOPs/System-engineer, and I love my field the most. So my opinions could be biased.

Ashish Gupta at Quora Visit the source

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Not a lot of devOps people can code and not a lot of java people understand OS internals well. Try Ops or DevOps jobs where you can combine your OS knowledge and programming knowledge together to create value to an organisation that typically uses Unix OS to run their java applications. But dont be stuck with only java. Go explore stuff like python, Perl, scala or erlang and carve a niche for yourself. Whatever it is, you gotta love programming and use it to your advantage.

Suraj Kumar

These two jobs are quite different. Work in NetOps is quite "transactional", and you will often be called upon to put out fires and deal with emergencies.  At other times, the work will be almost "boring", as you're improving operational systems, installing and configuring new hardware, testing stuff in the data center, etc.  Many NetOps people end up wearing several hats, as they are dealing with networking, storage, OS, database (a good netops person often has DBA skills as well as a strong Unix/Linux background), doing installs and app deployments, etc.  In many environments, netops people also have to know how to manage cloud installs, and sometimes have to interface cloud worlds with local worlds. Skilled NetOps people are highly valued - and in many places well-paid - as they are often all that stands between a reliable website and one that has frequent outages. Software work is more project-based.  Your work will be more methodical and "regular".  It will have occasional "rush to get the project out the door" flurries, but most of the work will follow a regular office work pattern. A lot of the choice depends on your personality.

Greg Kemnitz

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