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Comment by WhitneyLand | Hacker News Reader

No. Developers do not necessarily need any experience as a sysadmin and I would advise against moving productive developers into this role for the purpose of misguided training.

The argument about understanding how code scales beyond one computer is fallacious. In fact it's quite easy to learn and practice all kinds of distributed high scale architectures without getting up from a desk.

I will agree it's important to understand the people and work connected to your job. It's probably a good idea to eat lunch with the sysadmin, or QA, or UX person.

Would also agree its important to have respect, empathy, and collaboration others, but it doesn't mean you need to switch jobs.

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I strongly disagree with this, from experience. There is no difference between a "developer" and a "sysadmin" in a healthy shop in 2016. It's all the same job. Until you actually put something into practice in a hostile environment you have no idea what rakes are going to be in that yard. I would be a bad developer if I did not understand how the systems my code runs on worked. I would be a bad sysadmin if I couldn't marshal my systems through code and fully and completely understand the software that would be run on them. (As it happens, I'm not too shabby at either, and it's additive.)

The mindset that you are describing is why that "devops engineer" that gets hired so very often ends up being burnt at both ends being the savior of the team because, unlike the developers, he or she does understand both sides of the equation and is able to solve the problems that the incurious developer cannot. I would strongly urge that you reconsider.

And, for your own sake, please excise the word "fallacious" from your vocabulary. It will help you, I promise.

Thank you for re-wording the 3rd paragraph before I could complain about it :-)

I maintain that the sentiment was not wrong.

...also, man, don't tell me you're on Hacker News while you're camping...

>There is no difference between a "developer" and a "sysadmin"

Ridiculous. Many developers have specialties that take years to gain proficiency. If there were no difference we could just replace a math PhD doing computer graphics with a sysadmin. Sometimes it's possible, but the blanket statement does not hold up.

>I would be a bad developer if I did not understand how the systems my code runs on work

I agree, but so what? Becoming a sysadmin is not the only way to do that. You shouldn't confuse what you've seen work, with being the only way something can work.

>[your] mindset is why "devops engineers" get hired and very often end up being burnt at both ends

You’re reading way too much into this. I never said a sysadmin rotation couldn't be helpful for some. I said devs don't necessarily have to do it to be great at their jobs. I wouldn't pull a dev who was, in the zone so to speak, being highly productive into a sysadmin role misguidedly thinking it would have no impact on delivery.

>[sysadmins are] able to solve the problems that the incurious developer cannot

I never implied I wanted “incurious” devs who couldn't solve problems to the extent they needed a “savior” as you put it. Maybe you are projecting your past experiences onto others based on overzealous inference? I didn't say what you suggested, and I don't believe it.

> please excise the word "fallacious" from your vocabulary

What are you talking about? The definition is “based on a mistaken belief”. I claim the argument that devs cannot understand scale out architecture without being a sysadmin is based on a mistaken belief. Why are you so against that word?

> Why are you so against that word?

Because, to be frank: it makes you sound like a tool. That's what 'greglindahl was referring to in his post, 'cause I said exactly that before I edited it to assume good faith and be nice about it. But leading off your reply with "ridiculous" confirmed that you're okay with that. I'm not gonna play this game with you; I'm having way more interesting and way better conversations in this thread with people who don't wanna dance that dance. Haveaniceday.

That's unfortunate it came across that way. I did not intend to do anything other than make a good faith (and maybe passionate) argument.

There is value in having breath of experience as it allows you to produce solutions that either have less impact in metrics you might ignore or to better fulfill requirements that are difficult to observe without having been in the field.

Should a //everyone// be in other roles full time? Depends.

Should a //everyone// have had exposure to expand their knowledge? Yes, absolutely. It should also be refreshed so they don't forget.

Most adults from time to time are exposed to this for 'common day to day tasks'. Either in the form of being an assistant to someone else doing a task or in directly doing it themselves.

If you just talk to a formula 1 race car driver, does it make you a good driver if you never drive yourself? I don't think so.

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