Re:Ask HN: Is this true?
by tptacek on Saturday March 20, 2010 @03:58PM
(#1206897)
I spent the first part of my career as a "server guy" (along with networks). I ran tech at a popular ISP in Chicago called EnterAct.
I spent the next part of my career as a developer, first at a security company, then at a streaming multicast company I founded, then at a network managment company.
I spent the next part of my career as an almost full-time security researcher for hire, with a pronounced focus on high-end enterprise technology (SAN, WAN compression, replication, database, storage).
Looking at it from all three angles, I'd say: there's definitely something to this. Being a programmer gave me insight into how systems worked. Being a security researcher gave me even more insight (I had projects that were literally months spent reverse engineering equipment firmware and building protocol test suites).
I'm confident that after all this "insight", I knew more about how, say, iSCSI worked than any SAN administrator in Chicago.
So, how would I have done as a manager of a SAN array? Terribly!
The things that actually matter in administration --- understanding the processes that need to be in place to make changes, understanding what kinds of changes will occur, understanding what's a typical kind of failure that will just take a couple hours to diagnose versus what kinds of problems mean that your vendor is putting engineers on an airplane --- those things you learn by being in the operational/engineering role.
To excel in the operational/engineering role, you need to dedicate yourself to the things that matter for that role, and not allow yourself to get distracted by shiny things. Developers and researchers: prone to distraction by shiny things!
What I don't think is true is that strong tech people are predisposed to one of these roles or the other. Could I be a strong ops/engineering person again? I think so. But I know I can't do it while I'm doing this job.
I spent the next part of my career as a developer, first at a security company, then at a streaming multicast company I founded, then at a network managment company.
I spent the next part of my career as an almost full-time security researcher for hire, with a pronounced focus on high-end enterprise technology (SAN, WAN compression, replication, database, storage).
Looking at it from all three angles, I'd say: there's definitely something to this. Being a programmer gave me insight into how systems worked. Being a security researcher gave me even more insight (I had projects that were literally months spent reverse engineering equipment firmware and building protocol test suites).
I'm confident that after all this "insight", I knew more about how, say, iSCSI worked than any SAN administrator in Chicago.
So, how would I have done as a manager of a SAN array? Terribly!
The things that actually matter in administration --- understanding the processes that need to be in place to make changes, understanding what kinds of changes will occur, understanding what's a typical kind of failure that will just take a couple hours to diagnose versus what kinds of problems mean that your vendor is putting engineers on an airplane --- those things you learn by being in the operational/engineering role.
To excel in the operational/engineering role, you need to dedicate yourself to the things that matter for that role, and not allow yourself to get distracted by shiny things. Developers and researchers: prone to distraction by shiny things!
What I don't think is true is that strong tech people are predisposed to one of these roles or the other. Could I be a strong ops/engineering person again? I think so. But I know I can't do it while I'm doing this job.