[ale] What are your thoughts on system transparency?

Wed Feb 28 08:27:08 EST 2024

I was told that if I wasn't in Management by the time I was in my forty
that IT companies would think I wasn't a good engineer, and I almost bought
that.  At 56, I am a team lead, and it SUX!!! I am not a cat herder, and I
find it funny that people will lie to your face, my kids do a better job at
lying than the people I manage. I also hate that, I have to make sure we
are on time and on task.

So, when things started going to Cloud, I was worried that Sys. Admin were
a dying breed, kinda like what Dave Richie was talking about because of the
install of a Sys. Admin, you need either DevOps or a Full Stack Engineer,
but with the way AI is coming up, I see those going away.  The other thing
I am seeing is that datacenter engineering positions are coming back as
many are moving back from the cloud to on perm because cloud costs are like
rolling a D20, where on perm is a steady pricing guide. The other thing I
am seeing, so many of the young tech only study for the cert and can't do
basic troubleshooting or fixes. A lot of my time as a team lead is getting
on a call, going through dmesg, df, journalctl, and reading the error. When
you point out a simple fix, here's how to do it. They are looking at me
like I created fire. I am not kidding. Then when I ask how I know that, I
telling, I have notebooks of notes from the years where is I seen something
like that, I wrote down like my peers of the time took me too, in case it
happens again. I have also seen companies that have laid me off to get
three twenty something for my salary, have to rehire over and over because
the kids couldn't understand how I manage a small group of systems,
networking, and storage. ( I mean small it was 325 devices when I was laid
off ). One of them told the company it was impossible to take care of all
those by themselves. I laugh and stroke my grey beard that I have earned.
You can be either grass or bamboo in your career, I choose grass, so that I
can bend with the wind. Because sometimes in IT, it is a hurricane.

OS are changing, RHEL used to be great but with each new release it's
becoming a microos, a JeOS so they can run containers. Hard drivers are
missing. I see it with SuSE, they have a MicroOS.

I am watching what happens because the whole AI worries me because I have a
12 year old daughter who is learning to code, she wants to design games. I
don't want to tell her that when she is in college, that skill set might be
done by machine.

I still have 15 years before I can retire, despite having kids late in
life, but I know I will be active.

I am a jack of all trades and master of none.  One thing I started lately
so that I can have a piece of mind, Youtube video. I am playing with a
Small Board Computer, learning the in's and out's, and I am trying to teach
others. If it weren't for User Group, I wouldn't have the means to meet
others. If it weren't BBS, I wouldn't have the means to ask questions and
learn. The internet is because a weapon, so I will do what I can to help,
teach. Steve Litt, all I can say is share, as some has state, we thought we
didn't need Cobol or Fortran Programmers, but we still do. We might not
need a lot of Sys Admin, but will always need a few, those that can be Jack
of all trades are the one that will last.

On Wed, Feb 28, 2024 at 7:22 AM Leam Hall via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:

> Well, let's take Ed and Steve's notes together.
>
> What I would like to see, though I don't have the brains to do it myself,
> is a secure OS (written in Rust?  https://os.phil-opp.com/ ) with a
> Linux-ish ABI. That lets a lot of existing software easier to port over,
> but with increased security. Steve brings up a good point that I haven't
> given a lot of thought to, and that's increased visibility. So let's design
> the OS with that in mind.
>
> Then the issue becomes all of the other stuff. The OS is different than
> the distribution, and we need to build the OS culture to have the same
> level of security and visibility for all the other software that goes on
> it. Of course, we also need to look at the stuff *under* the OS, there
> seems to be a lot of hardware and driver options for vulnerabilities.
>
> A more transparent and secure system is greatly needed, but I'm not aware
> of a community that is doing it.
>
> Leam
>
>
> On 2/28/24 05:22, Ed Cashin via Ale wrote:
> > Yes, I think that pain drives change.  High-profile attacks on important
> > computer systems are making more people understand that complex
> dependency
> > chains that nobody can audit is highly problematic.  (A real audit is
> often
> > possible but impractical because of system complexity.)
> >
> > There certainly appears to be a window of opportunity starting to appear
> > for a charismatic leader or movement to introduce an alternative that is
> > transparent and simple enough to audit.  I don't know whether anything
> will
> > take advantage of that opportunity.  The pain would have to be great
> enough
> > to spur people to abandon current behavior, and the solution would have
> to
> > be attractive enough.
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Feb 27, 2024 at 10:18 PM Steve Litt via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
> >
> >> Leam Hall via Ale said on Tue, 27 Feb 2024 13:54:21 -0600
> >>
> >>> While I personally like it, a lot of sysadmin jobs are going away.
> >>> It's easy to click a few buttons and spin up a new cloud instance. Why
> >>> trouble-shoot something when you can just destroy it and start over?
> >>
> >> I see your point. Why waste time. The only thing is, what if you spin
> >> up your new cloud instance and get the same symptom? Nowww you have to
> >> troubleshoot, so the question is, in this situation where you must
> >> troubleshoot, what do you think of system transparency (a system or
> >> subsystem with accessible test points and adjustments AND the ability
> >> to see its sub components and how they connect to each other)?
> >>
> >> SteveT
> >>
> >> Steve Litt
> >>
> >> Autumn 2023 featured book: Rapid Learning for the 21st Century
> >> http://www.troubleshooters.com/rl21
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> >
> >
> >
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> --
> Software Engineer          (reuel.net/resume)
> Scribe: The Domici War     (domiciwar.net)
> General Ne'er-do-well      (github.com/LeamHall)
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-- 
Terror PUP a.k.a
Chuck "PUP" Payne
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