For those of you that don’t know, the hall I used to live on at MIT, putz (a.k.a. East Campus Second West) has a relatively recent tradition of “slugtalks” (warning, page is terribly out of date).
People have been asking me these questions lately:
- What does benoc do?
- Why is it one of the fastest growing employment opportunities in the world, and why do we need more actually smart, well-educated people doing it?
- Why aren’t we really called “sysadmins” anymore?
So last month I gave a pretty good slugtalk describing the modern state of my profession, what I do, and why you would want to consider joining this cabal of folks who keep the civilized world’s bits safe, flowing freely, and functional.
Topics Covered:
- History of the field
- Impact of the dotcom boom and scale explosion
- Systems management theory
- The “stack” and where we are in it — The rise of “Devops”
- Why would someone with an MIT degree do this?
- Admin lore: swearing and scotch
Into The Weeds 