@scottalanmiller said in Topics of Systems Administration:
My first IT job (not software) was as a junior UNIX admin, pure admin, in 1994. Working for the "senior" (who was pretty junior himself I'm guessing looking back) who was also a pure admin. That was my first introduction to it.
By 1999 was doing pure admin on Windows. In 2000, mixed Windows and Linux with just the tiniest addition of application stack (roughly LAMP stack), but the role was nearly all OS.
IBM in 2000 was my first major place where they operated as little SMB silos and while SA was a major part of the day, it was very far from all of it and I had to cover absolutely everything including both CIO and CTO hats. So IBM was about the polar opposite of pure SA.
Worked for Microsoft and Dell in a pure SA role in 2004 and 2005. Then Wall St., pure SA there. Then hedge fund row, same thing. Then non-profit in San Fran, definitely pure SA as well.
IBM certainly felt like the outlier with loads of disorganization and low efficiency. And it showed, they had to close the entire facility for exactly those reasons. From little ten person companies to fortune 10, from grocery to wildly different finance to medical to non-profits.
I'm not saying it's the norm, it's obviously not. But "norm" is weird to define when the alternative is "not-SA". LOL But if we use "companies" as the base number, maybe 1% of companies, at most, will reasonable try to have a real SA role. But then again, only 1% of companies is big enough to have value to it. But those that do, hire a lot and pay a lot.
Just being honest, I have quite a few doubts of your employment history. It seems to change quite a bit to fit the scenario, and there are times where you are working 3 full time jobs for 3 different companies. You say you couldn't get a job after Citi because of a non compete, but they allowed you to work one to two other jobs while you were employed there? That doesn't make any sense.
