This article is based on a panel discussion and follow-up interviews originally published by SearchCloudComputing (TechTarget). Speakers include Dave Rensin (Google), John Engates (Rackspace), Ian Andrews (Pivotal Software), and Brannon Lacey (Rackspace). Responses were edited for brevity and clarity.
The Sysadmin Role Is Under Pressure — Here Is What Industry Leaders Say to Do About It
The traditional IT systems administrator role is under significant pressure. The rise of cloud computing, infrastructure automation, and DevOps practices has eroded many of the tasks that once defined the job — from racking servers to managing on-premises configurations by hand. But the role is not simply disappearing; it is transforming. At a Rackspace roadshow in New York, four senior technology leaders offered candid, practical advice on what sysadmins must do to remain valuable.
Dave Rensin, Google: Learn to Write Software — There Is No Alternative
Dave Rensin, who leads Google’s Customer Reliability Engineering team and helps large enterprises migrate to Google Cloud Platform, was direct: sysadmins who cannot write code are heading toward a shrinking career window.
“If you’re not in your 40s or living out the tail end of your career, you’ve got to bite the bullet and learn to write software. You don’t have to be a tremendous software engineer, but you’ve got to write enough software that if you encounter a problem that annoys you, you have the skills to automate it away. If you don’t have that, you’re in kind of a dead end.”
— Dave Rensin, Head of Customer Reliability Engineering, Google
Rensin’s prescription is pragmatic, not academic. He is not suggesting that every sysadmin enroll in a computer science degree program. Instead, he points to the abundance of online learning resources for languages like Python or Go as a realistic starting point. The goal is functional automation literacy, not deep software engineering mastery.
His test for whether something can be automated is straightforward: if you can write a playbook for a task, you can make a computer follow that playbook. The mindset shift — from “not everything can be automated” to “how do I automate this repeatably and provably?” — is, in his view, the real barrier most sysadmins need to overcome.
He draws an analogy to the shift from procedural to object-oriented programming a generation ago. Engineers who refused to adopt OOP saw their opportunities narrow to increasingly niche work. The same dynamic is playing out now for sysadmins who resist learning to code.
John Engates, Rackspace CTO: Cross the Chasm from Admin to Coder
John Engates, then CTO of Rackspace, reinforced Rensin’s message with direct observations from his own organisation. The sysadmins who had risen to the top at Rackspace were uniformly those who had made the transition from pure administration to writing code.
“Every one of our top sys admins at Rackspace — the ones that have risen to the top — have crossed that chasm of actually going from being a sys admin to being somebody that can write a bit of code. You have to be able to automate code and be able to drive something like Cloud Foundry, instead of being a bystander.”
— John Engates, CTO, Rackspace
Engates was careful to distinguish between modern coding and the legacy scripting many sysadmins already knew. Shell scripts and Perl were a foundation, but the expectation has moved beyond that. Working side by side with developers — where coding practices naturally transfer — is one of the most effective ways to build these skills organically.
He also pointed to cloud provider certifications as a signal of where the industry is heading: most now include a coding or automation component as a prerequisite. Sysadmins who refuse to engage with code, he warned, will find themselves confined to a shrinking slice of the market.
Ian Andrews, Pivotal Software: Infrastructure as Code and Business Awareness
Ian Andrews, then VP of Products at Pivotal Software, extended the coding argument into the broader concept of infrastructure as code — and added a critical second dimension: understanding the applications your infrastructure supports.
“You used to have your sys admins sit in the cold corner of the data center and actually touch physical machines. In the public cloud context, that role is entirely gone, unless you’re employed by one of the big public clouds.”
— Ian Andrews, VP of Products, Pivotal Software
Andrews described a new stack of skills that define the modern infrastructure practitioner:
- Infrastructure provisioning via code: Tools like Terraform and AWS CloudFormation have replaced physical racking and cabling. Knowing how to write and maintain these scripts is now a baseline expectation.
- Version control: Git or an equivalent source control system is how infrastructure environments are built, updated, and audited. Sysadmins who do not know version control are effectively unable to participate in modern infrastructure workflows.
- CI/CD for infrastructure: Automated testing, canary deployments, smoke tests, and blue-green deployment strategies — once the exclusive domain of application developers — are becoming standard practice for infrastructure teams as well.
- Application awareness: Perhaps the most undervalued skill. Andrews observed that it is still common for ops and development teams never to have spoken directly about what applications are doing and why. Sysadmins who understand the business purpose of the applications they support can contribute meaningfully to architectural and operational decisions.
On the DevOps question, Andrews was realistic: the word gets used loosely, but specialisation will persist. The difference is that specialists must now be able to participate in cross-functional conversations. A sysadmin who cannot discuss application behaviour cannot contribute to those conversations, regardless of how deep their infrastructure expertise runs.
Brannon Lacey, Rackspace: Security Is a Natural Adjacent Career Path
Brannon Lacey, then GM and VP of Applications and Platforms at Rackspace, highlighted an often-overlooked pivot point for sysadmins: security operations.
“Sys admins and network admins make really good analysts in a security operation. Security is becoming a growing tidal wave… I’ve got a SOC filled with ex-sys admins and network admins; it’s the best foundation.”
— Brannon Lacey, GM and VP of Applications and Platforms, Rackspace
The reasoning is sound: security operations require a deep understanding of how systems and networks behave normally, so that anomalies can be detected and investigated. That foundational knowledge — built through years of hands-on systems and network administration — is genuinely difficult to acquire any other way. Moving into a Security Operations Centre (SOC) role or a managed security service provider (MSSP) context is a natural and increasingly well-compensated path for experienced sysadmins.
Lacey’s broader summary was concise: learn the business implications of your IT decisions, learn the application and coding side, and learn security. All three together produce a profile that is extremely difficult to replace.
Practical Steps for Sysadmins Looking to Evolve
Synthesising the advice from all four speakers, here are the concrete actions sysadmins can take today:
- Learn a scripting or programming language. Python and Go are commonly cited as practical starting points. Focus on automation use cases rather than abstract programming concepts — write scripts that solve real problems you encounter at work.
- Adopt an automation-first mindset. Every time you perform a manual task, ask: how would I automate this? If you can write a runbook, you can write the code to execute it.
- Learn infrastructure-as-code tooling. Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, Ansible, or similar tools are now standard in modern infrastructure roles. Hands-on familiarity is expected, not optional.
- Get comfortable with Git. Version-controlling infrastructure definitions is standard practice. If you are not using source control for your configurations and scripts, start now.
- Study CI/CD concepts as they apply to infrastructure. Understand canary deployments, blue-green deployments, automated testing, and pipeline-based delivery for infrastructure changes.
- Learn what the applications on your infrastructure actually do. Request time with developers and product managers. Understanding the business purpose of the software you support makes you a more strategic contributor.
- Consider a security specialisation. If coding feels like a stretch, security operations is a high-demand field where deep systems and networking knowledge is a significant asset. Security certifications and SOC analyst roles are a well-trodden path for experienced sysadmins.
- Pursue cloud certifications. AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure all offer certifications that validate modern infrastructure skills and typically include automation and coding components.
The Bottom Line
The sysadmin role is not disappearing — it is being redefined. The engineers who will thrive are those who treat their deep systems knowledge as a foundation to build on, rather than an identity to defend. Coding, infrastructure as code, security, and application awareness are not threats to the sysadmin profession; they are its next chapter. The window for making that transition is open, but it will not stay open indefinitely.
Original source: SearchCloudComputing, TechTarget (searchcloudcomputing.techtarget.com). Speakers: Dave Rensin (Google), John Engates (Rackspace), Brannon Lacey (Rackspace), Ian Andrews (Pivotal Software).