[nycbug-talk] Hypothetical: the end of the sysadmin/systems engineer/DBA?

[Matt Juszczak]

> build process and you fix the build process.  Now doing this right is
> a high skill task, trouble shooting a box has become a low skill task
> and the middle get squeezed a bit smaller.

So where are the lines drawn?  If someone who has experience only in the 
things you specify, like running fdisk, debugging broken servers, basic 
installs, etc., then I agree that type of skillset is going to be less and 
less in demand.  But what about people with more knowledge?  Knowledge in 
LDAP, CF Engine, Puppet, Apache - those sorts of tools, and even more 
important, standardizing servers (central authentication, central 
authorization, sudo in ldap, etc.).  Are these going to be automated as 
well?

Think about this: will there be a time when competitors no longer compete, 
because major providers will automate the instance creation of 
environments (for instance, Amazon may choose to make a one-click 
environment that uses puppet for configuration, openldap for 
authorization/authentication, postfix for email, and a few other tools for 
things like monitoring).  Would competiting tools (like exim, for 
instance) be run out of demand as more and more people go to these "one 
click" approaches and choose not to replace them?

-Matt