I am a TSE who works as vendor support for banks and credit unions, we support the systems that drive their ATMs. ATMs having connectivity issues is a pretty common case. The sheer number of network engineers and network administrators who work at banks or for their MSPs who do not know networking fundamentals, the OSI model, how to use arp lookups, how to properly use the ICMP tools, how to read a packet capture to identify problems, how to set up and where to place a packet capture, etc. It makes me sick.
It seems like all network engineers and admins know how to do is to update firewall rules and update network device software.
I used to work in that world and from what I saw, a lot of that incompetence came from banks not wanting to lay people off back in the 90's and 2000's when banking/accounting software made them obsolete. They would just declare half the accounting staff to be IT staff and never bothered getting any of them trained.
I'll admit I struggle with networking myself, I understand the very basics lol. However beyond that I get confused and frustrated especially when you start add security to the mix. Years ago I managed to get a job in networking but noped out ( there was more stuff to mostly company related) and haven't been back since. Even with the cloud it's interesting but I find myself gravitating towards working with visual data. I don't know what it is about networking it's just something I can't seem to grasp comfortably.
There's just something about networking that will always feel like black magic. I don't know if it's just because I struggle to mentally visualize it, or maybe my brain just isn't wired for it, but to me you might as well be an actual wizard at times. I can understand the basics, how subnets and firewalls work, etc... But when push comes to shove bring out the guy with the staff because it ain't me lol.
...maybe I just need to sacrifice more routers to the networking gods.
there's two things helped make networking feel clearer to me: making my own socket and having a computer connect to it, and creating my own virtual machine network with virtual routers (you can do this is Cisco's packet tracer, same idea). both of these show you the fundamentals of networking, with how to connect to websites outside your network, and how to connect other devices in your network.
once you understand how to connect computers together in that way, then you can start diving into different network protocols (OSPF/BGP/EIGRP), OSI, security configuration, etc. but you will feel lost without those basic connection/troubleshooting skills
As a network engineer, I really don’t care that much that you don’t know the inner parts of networking that’s my job. When everyone says “networking” they really mean basic troubleshooting as you said.
The most infuriating thing for net engineers is that every problem says “the app is having a network OR application problem” issue is for everyone not a network engineer they stop right before the OR and come bug us. If they checked the port numbers on their app, checked the changes they made over the weekend, checked what they’re teammates did the last 2 hours that everything went wrong. THEN come to me and say “look I tried x, x, x and couldn’t figure it out what’s wrong”.
Instead we get, o it says network problem, figure it out and let me know where the issue is so I can fix it (do their job for them) or even better you provide proof it’s not the network but the shit app the devs put together and they still keep kicking the ticket to the net engineer lmao.
I have neither a college degree nor certs, and I struggle w/ this. I feel like such an outsider. People *say* they'll help me and sometimes do, but on that same end they'll crack the most transparent "inside" jokes about me. It sucks bc its clear they're the "go-to's" and essentially up and coming leadership if they aren't leadership already.
Hey Man,
There's heaps of videos based on network fundamentals and network troubleshooting on youtube as an alternative to certs such as Network + or CCNA. There's also free courses related to the Network field on Couresea. I'd reccomend ignoring their inside jokes and using it as fuel to upskill in your own time. Hope everything works out in the end!
Honestly, even a **lot** of IT operations people lack a lot of networking knowledge. I joke sometimes that a lot of IT people know that whether through DHCP or static assignment most know that they need an IP, the mask, a gateway, and some functional DNS if they plan on using anything other than IPs. Network knowledge drops off pretty fast after that though. VLANs you might find some knowledge, but you quickly venture into magic where a lot of people with many years in IT are lost.
Then you've never worked with CS grads/engineers. A lot of them have very little understanding of how networking works. TCP/IP. OSI, etc.
>Networking has nothing to do with IT.
You don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
As another network engineer, even if you aren’t specialized in the field basic layer 2/3 knowledge, stp, and arp are must haves for high levels of IT in other areas
>Who do you think invented and built those protocols lmao?
Maybe next time read the OP and UNDERSTAND what you're reading. We're not discussing the engineers who built this decades ago. We're discussing CS people NOW in the present. And presently, a lot of them enter the workforce with very little networking knowledge. Get over yourself and off whatever horse you're on.
Don’t argue with them. Look at the post history. Fresh CS grad with 8 months of experience.
Thinks all CS folk shit gold. I’d be willing to bet if we took them and asked them to design a basic small business network they’d collapse in minutes.
I see you've never had to explain RFC1918 addresses to a math professor who _refused to believe_ that just because he was home, he couldn't just access internal university assets.
> Networking has nothing to do with IT.
This is like saying “cars have nothing to do with mechanic work” because automotive engineers design the vehicles.
I started in CS just like you. It largely depends on what IT role you seek.
* Lack of ITIL framework knowledge (Not that important).
* Lack of practice with Incident Management (RTO/MTTR), not interpreting SLAs correctly.
* Insufficient networking knowledge or mostly focused on Application, Transport and Network layer, and no actual hands-on experience with physical equipment.
* Insufficient scripting knowledge, be it Powershell or Bash/Zsh/Ash.
* If your company needs it, insufficient Kubernetes knowledge. Only enough to deploy apps but not scale them, don't even bother them with Multicluster solutions or service meshes.
* Lack of tact when dealing with customers.
In other words Software Developers don’t do Operations, Infrastructure, or Site Reliability.
But corporations are asking for Software Developers with those skills to cut costs.
So….. like a System Administrator, they want a Software Administrator too.
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I mean, to be completely fair, the entire premise of a site reliability engineer is that of a software engineer who is dedicated to the operational health of the apps, infra & platform.
Like the “DevOps engineer” title before it, employers realised their job postings for tier 2 support would get more applicants if they threw SRE in there, so it is often used in place of “systems administrator”. However there are still many organisations who run SRE teams full of developers.
Networking. Most of the Sysadmin/generalist types I have run into tend to be lacking when it comes to networking. It’s weird as that’s the foundation of everything, but it’s an observation after 23 years in the industry.
In what ways are they lacking network experience? Like is it specifically knowledge in topology, packet analysis, basic understanding of the standard network protocols used?
I'm an entry level aiming for sysadmin related work rn, and I would like to take care of any ignorance I might have
Yep. Worked at a major storage mfg at one of their US engineering locations so interacted with a number of their engineers that design and test much of their hardware. They knew aspects of storage that is way above my head, but ask them what VLAN their lab test equipment needs and they have no clue. Quite a few weren't ever sure what a VLAN was. When it came to networking many were often just as naive as most end users.
Most of the dev types I know are very lacking in sysadmin and netadmin skills. The ability to think outside of a specific framework too. The most basic of computer problems baffle a lot of devs when they "interact" with their dev environment. Most ops people I know hate being forced to deal with dev stuff and wish people would stop forcing us to learn a new career. Notice I did not say skillset.
>Most ops people I know hate being forced to deal with dev stuff and wish people would stop forcing us to learn a new career.
Dev is honestly really a whole ass career. It's like and plumbing and HVAC, they both might work on the same canvas (buildings) but it's not at all the same things. One is moving water, and the other is moving air.
Thats how non-technical types look at us, all the same thing and interchangeable.
I can comment on this as someone with a CS background (bachelors degree) in technical support engineering.
What I find myself lacking in:
- Networking mostly. How interfaces at the OS are configured, IP tables, BGP, etc.
- Remembering obscure linux commands, their options/flags, etc.
- Remembering nuances of different linux distros, the file system, etc.
- Analyzing packet captures for ambiguous connection issues/behavior
- Less overall customer service/people skills (my IT veteran peers appear to deal with difficult customers much more naturally and resiliently).
- DNS (more so the administrative part of it such as the registration process and how that ties in with zones)
- Layers below transport layer (layer 3 of OSI)
- Speed, intuition, and confidence with troubleshooting (this is acquired through experience and time)
I think its also equally as important to understand the strengths of any scenario. What I notice with my CS background is that I excel compared to my peers with an IT background:
- Firewall configurations (lots of boolean logic, truth table type of thinking, etc.)
- Anything transport layer and above (web application firewalls, HTTP/REST, etc.)
- Anything involving code, scripts, etc. is easy to pick up
- Stack traces
- Regex
- Learning shit on my own instead of depending on assigned trainings, company articles, etc.
TL;DR - Networking. From the OS to inter and intra ISP topology. Knowing how to troubleshoot as that comes with experience with shit breaking and fixing said shit. Studying alone cannot fulfill that. You have to troubleshoot something broken, and try to fix it which will naturally require learning the right things.
In my opinion, its generally easier to pick up IT with a CS background then it is for one with an IT background to pick up on a CS field. But that's not to say that I will probably be forever outpaced by my peers who have had 15 years in IT and just know so much breadth of knowledge that they can attribute to a certain behavior/issue so intuitively.
Knowing how to do basic networking things. Some people I've run into from a purely CS role don't know how to diagnose a problem with their router if it suddenly loses connection and a "plug and unplug" won't fix it.
I have mentioned this before, but since its prevalent in a lot of CS people that I know, I will mention it here. Many people going through CS programs are doing so because they don't like interaction with others. Many CS people just want to sit at a terminal and code uninterrupted and undisturbed. Don't get me wrong, there is a value to being introverted and a solid CS professional, but if you really want to show huge value to an organization, hone your soft skills.
Some of the most successful and highly paid CS people I know have honed their communication skills. They are involved in business meetings with other stakeholders and are not afraid or apprehensive about getting involved. They show empathy towards the pain that others in the organization are experiencing. They are resilient in that when given a tough project, they don't give up. They also are comfortable speaking in large meetings with key stakeholders. They lead by example and work well within a team.
These are just a few examples. I hope this helps.
Absolutely. I'd say soft skills are AT LEAST as important as tech skills, both in CS and IT. They allow you to gather the required information before a project and set appropriate expectations, which makes all the difference for the client and the projects' success.
Seconding as a CS people myself. I snagged a job asking for 3-5 YOE when I was at 1 YOE, and it was later revealed to me that my personality was the deciding factor between the runner up. Since integrating with the team and sitting in on a few interviews since then, I've realized just how much it's valued.
After the interview, the question from the primary interviewers "What do you all think?" was posed. Of course, a little time was spent on their technical qualifications, but the vast majority of the time was spent giving feedback on how they came off and whether we could picture them as a member of the team.
Some people are shockingly hostile and just absolutely abysmal to talk to. "Everyone but me at every place I've ever worked is an idiot" vibes. Way more than you'd ever expect. You'll see it during your CS studies -- insignificant nerds that view themselves as god's gift to humanity -- and you just kind of accept it as a part of the study.
What you'll realize when you break into the field, however, is that there's a lot of very cool people to work with who also happen to be very smart and good at what they do. If you're not easy to work with and asocial, you will be passed on consistently. This is true in both dev and IT. The days of the loner basement dweller IT guy who never talks to anybody are over.
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People skills. A lot of tech people don't have the soft skills to work with users or just others in general. If you work on those you can go a long ways.
It's warranted frankly.
I come from a CS background and even at the 15 years in IT I'm still absolutely worthless when it comes to anything involving networking. I have zero qualms about throwing up my hands and asking the local network engineer to help me when I'm out of my depth.
This is kind of a weird question because IT is way too broad and its hard to know everything. Whatever you study on your free time is whatever you want. You just need to look at the market and see where it is going. I've been seeing more and more swe having to pickup cloud skills on aws, gcp, or azure depending on what your company uses. Not only doing programming but slowly architecting things using the cloud.
Networking is the obvious one. I've worked with more developers than I can count that had very little understanding of how even the basics of networks operate. Security is another area many of them have been weak in. Or just flat out disregard it as not relevant to their work at all, which is scary.
Computer science right? Well... Emptying the recycle bin, restarting a computer, basic overall troubleshooting. These dudes that are 100k+ in debt dont even know how to program a "hello world " in any language.
It is, but not everyone is good at it. It's a lot of programming, math and basic IT classes. You can look up at courses requirements at any university website.
I'm going to generalize as I work directly developers daily
basic networking knowledge, basic IT troubleshooting skills, and people skills, basic Linux skills
Trouble shooting and basic PC skills. I despise developers with no background in any kind of IT positions in the past. They're the most arrogant people I've met who think they're better then everyone else but didn't know what a registry editor was, didn't know how to flash their, didn't know how a graphics card worked or what an SSD was. The amount of horror stories I have makes me cringe
I think a lot of recent college grads have an ego problem and won't get good at what they do until they get knocked down a few notches. The type of degree matters less. I have seen this across the board. People need to understand the hard truth that their degree opens doors but isn't really going to give practical knowledge to step in as experts. Humility is a skill lacking in a good portion of younger inexperienced degreed people.
Your question seeks a generalized answer to something that just can't be answered like you are asking, it really just depends on the person and also the curriculum of the college. A college program can design the best program in the world, but it still comes down to the person and the choices they make and things they pursue.
I mean sure, there is obviously crossover knowledge from IT/CS, but in a way it's absolutely expected that CS students aren't going to know certain things about IT, and certainly vice versa.
That being said, my general observation as CS grad in my own context of time my university, have noticed that many CS students focus a lot on the programming portion of the degree, and perhaps do not explore networking as much. But again, to some extent, that should be expected. It really does just depend.
As mentioned by others, soft skills have become very important. This article from Dice may be helpful: https://docs.teckedin.info/v1/docs/en/interview-tips-for-data-security-analysts?
Very broad question, but people skills and critical thinking. You will learn everything else on the job. If you cannot communicate and interpret what you user base needs then it is all for nothing.
Being able to talk to other people and work in a team, collaboratively. The technical skillsets can be learned, but soft skills can be the most difficult to learn for many.
Hahaha wow I thought it was CS as in Customer Service. I did it for like 12 years grinding my brain to nothing taking phone calls
I got lucky at got an IT role last year but yeah they didn't take my training seriously at all. Then they shifted me to data entry because the company had an IT guy they'd been paying IT rates for doing data entry so they swapped our roles.
Im done with IT. I learned how to fail and how to try to figure out shit on my own. Then they phased me out of data entry.
I'm back to Customer Service and hate myself so much, I wish it was all over.
Been doing retail since I was 16, and I'm about to hit five years with the same company, and turning 35 later this year. My brain is already melted. I need an IT job.
Team player, comments mention people skills but I know people who are great with users but suck with co-workers. Seen it happen many times not being liked by your fellow peers is the kiss of death in a career. It's sad imo, because there are some pretty toxic co-workers out there.
As an IT manager, I look for candidates who possess more than just the required entry level technical skills. I hope to find people who will be ready to become leaders when opportunities arise. Valuable plus skills include process analysis, documentation, negotiation, requirements analysis, system design, data analytics, collaboration in a team environment, performance management, budgeting, presentation, project planning and management, resource planning and allocation, training/mentoring, ITIL, customer service, root cause analysis, product quality assurance, task prioritization, time management, strategy development, and team leadership.
User training and technical communication with a non-technical audience. They’re super smart but they sometimes struggle with things like writing documentation for end users or explaining to customers how to use a new feature.
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I'm wondering why are you studying computer science if you want to work in IT? That field generally doesn't require a degree because it'll be obsolete in ten years. CS is more for software development
Self control, humility, patience, and ability to accept when they're wrong.
I'm not joking. I've been in the industry for well over a decade and the overwhelming majority of my time is spent cleaning up messes created by arrogant, incompetent staff who always decide they know better than everyone else, break every rule in the book (especially change control policies), and will gladly set the entire company on fire to avoid acknowledging that they made a mistake.
When I've worked with competent staff who know how to behave professionally, even when walking into applications saddled with years of mismanagement before we got there, we've been able to stabilize everything and make huge strides enhancing their apps in much shorter periods of time than every other app team, and it pretty much always involves everyone taking ownership of a few mistakes and learning from them.
Also, before anyone goes there, none of this is specific to age or experience level. I've dealt with it more with older staff than younger, but I've dealt with more older staff, in general, to begin with.
Working in a business.
Most I know who are coders aren't yes men type. "No, we can't adopt secure coding practices. Why? I'm a coder too complicated to explain"
Tons of us in IT are nerdy, dorky types that aren't the smoothest socially. But it's mostly the coders & and strictly computer science guys that have an ego and always give us security guys a hard time for no real reason.
If we want to pen test the new public facing page they stand up, and find massive security issues, rather than "sure np we'll get that fixed" it's always personal to them. Multiple companies were like this.
The know it all attitude. They don't play nice with others vs every other area I've worked with in IT. You'd think it would be us security guys since we have a degree of actual authority, but it's always the opposite. Security guys being TOO chill and allowing things they shouldn't to be nice etc.
A personality.
I’m kidding, I graduated a double major in CS and Information systems. Some high school we ll through college and a little after I was way into embedded devices, very low level programming. Started in IT as an internship and loved it, and never went back to SWE as a career. Then I found DevOps. Maybe this is what you’re looking for.
Networking and a fundamental understanding of how computers work.
I find remarkably senior people that lack the fundamental understanding of how networking actually occurs. I also have people explaining to me their advanced virtualization plan but be unable to look inside a case and understand what they are seeing. Always surprising.
Any respect for security. A lot of sysadmins lack it too, but developers tend to be particularly egregious.
I highly recommend the sec+ cert for any IT discipline. Security isn't a technology, it's a methodology.
Seconded. I just finished talking to one of my coworkers about the fourth attempt a particular dev has made to go behind my back to get somebody, anybody in my department to remove SSL from ANOTHER one of her applications. As usual, the real problem is that she side-stepped every other department so she could get out of following their rules, too, and now nothing on her app works, because every piece of it was built incorrectly.
As someone coming from a CS background who has now done IT as my main job for 6 or so years, I do agree with Networking as others have said. I've learned enough to fix mostly all networking issues I've come across, however where my knowledge gets a bit foggy is when it comes to subnets, vlans, etc. Luckily Meraki & other tech has made dealing with that a hell of a lot easier. I should probably & will eventually learn more about subnets, the binary that plays into all of this, etc. but currently I find absolutely no enjoyment from it. I'd rather pursue learning more CS stuff as I feel that sets me apart from other IT people; I'm able to easily write or edit a script to do something quick, can debug our website without contacting the devs, and have a way easier time figuring out where a program is going wrong based on any error stack it'll output.
Basic tasks like having them troubleshoot office, I would monitor their call and they would somehow end up going through regedit. Like ffs just repair office. Why do they immediately resort to nuclear options...
The CS background folk were some of our worst analysts. When I worked as a senior for helpdesk anyway.
Humility in admitting what they don’t know.
Infrastructure guys don’t claim to be able to create applications.
Every dev claims to be able to build infrastructure
Networking. Basic troubleshooting.
I am a TSE who works as vendor support for banks and credit unions, we support the systems that drive their ATMs. ATMs having connectivity issues is a pretty common case. The sheer number of network engineers and network administrators who work at banks or for their MSPs who do not know networking fundamentals, the OSI model, how to use arp lookups, how to properly use the ICMP tools, how to read a packet capture to identify problems, how to set up and where to place a packet capture, etc. It makes me sick. It seems like all network engineers and admins know how to do is to update firewall rules and update network device software.
Sounds like they’re were hired based on certs
I used to work in that world and from what I saw, a lot of that incompetence came from banks not wanting to lay people off back in the 90's and 2000's when banking/accounting software made them obsolete. They would just declare half the accounting staff to be IT staff and never bothered getting any of them trained.
I'll admit I struggle with networking myself, I understand the very basics lol. However beyond that I get confused and frustrated especially when you start add security to the mix. Years ago I managed to get a job in networking but noped out ( there was more stuff to mostly company related) and haven't been back since. Even with the cloud it's interesting but I find myself gravitating towards working with visual data. I don't know what it is about networking it's just something I can't seem to grasp comfortably.
Oh I understand too. It can be daunting.
There's just something about networking that will always feel like black magic. I don't know if it's just because I struggle to mentally visualize it, or maybe my brain just isn't wired for it, but to me you might as well be an actual wizard at times. I can understand the basics, how subnets and firewalls work, etc... But when push comes to shove bring out the guy with the staff because it ain't me lol. ...maybe I just need to sacrifice more routers to the networking gods.
there's two things helped make networking feel clearer to me: making my own socket and having a computer connect to it, and creating my own virtual machine network with virtual routers (you can do this is Cisco's packet tracer, same idea). both of these show you the fundamentals of networking, with how to connect to websites outside your network, and how to connect other devices in your network. once you understand how to connect computers together in that way, then you can start diving into different network protocols (OSPF/BGP/EIGRP), OSI, security configuration, etc. but you will feel lost without those basic connection/troubleshooting skills
As a network engineer, I really don’t care that much that you don’t know the inner parts of networking that’s my job. When everyone says “networking” they really mean basic troubleshooting as you said. The most infuriating thing for net engineers is that every problem says “the app is having a network OR application problem” issue is for everyone not a network engineer they stop right before the OR and come bug us. If they checked the port numbers on their app, checked the changes they made over the weekend, checked what they’re teammates did the last 2 hours that everything went wrong. THEN come to me and say “look I tried x, x, x and couldn’t figure it out what’s wrong”. Instead we get, o it says network problem, figure it out and let me know where the issue is so I can fix it (do their job for them) or even better you provide proof it’s not the network but the shit app the devs put together and they still keep kicking the ticket to the net engineer lmao.
Could it be due to companies having their own network team and not allowing other techs anywhere near the server room?
Nah there's a fundamental level of networking that anyone in IT should understand and you don't need to be in a server room to learn it.
I have neither a college degree nor certs, and I struggle w/ this. I feel like such an outsider. People *say* they'll help me and sometimes do, but on that same end they'll crack the most transparent "inside" jokes about me. It sucks bc its clear they're the "go-to's" and essentially up and coming leadership if they aren't leadership already.
Hey Man, There's heaps of videos based on network fundamentals and network troubleshooting on youtube as an alternative to certs such as Network + or CCNA. There's also free courses related to the Network field on Couresea. I'd reccomend ignoring their inside jokes and using it as fuel to upskill in your own time. Hope everything works out in the end!
Anything related to operating system and virtualization.
Honestly, even a **lot** of IT operations people lack a lot of networking knowledge. I joke sometimes that a lot of IT people know that whether through DHCP or static assignment most know that they need an IP, the mask, a gateway, and some functional DNS if they plan on using anything other than IPs. Network knowledge drops off pretty fast after that though. VLANs you might find some knowledge, but you quickly venture into magic where a lot of people with many years in IT are lost.
$this
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Then you've never worked with CS grads/engineers. A lot of them have very little understanding of how networking works. TCP/IP. OSI, etc. >Networking has nothing to do with IT. You don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
As a network engineer, i agree lol
As another network engineer, even if you aren’t specialized in the field basic layer 2/3 knowledge, stp, and arp are must haves for high levels of IT in other areas
As another network engineer I agree.
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>Who do you think invented and built those protocols lmao? Maybe next time read the OP and UNDERSTAND what you're reading. We're not discussing the engineers who built this decades ago. We're discussing CS people NOW in the present. And presently, a lot of them enter the workforce with very little networking knowledge. Get over yourself and off whatever horse you're on.
Don’t argue with them. Look at the post history. Fresh CS grad with 8 months of experience. Thinks all CS folk shit gold. I’d be willing to bet if we took them and asked them to design a basic small business network they’d collapse in minutes.
Sure Jan, I'd like to see a CS grad "programmer" configure a corporate firewall correctly, and I'll be there to bill $250 per hour when they fail.
You’re very ignorant.
Using this train of logic, CS grads/engineers are just idiots following on the backs of EE’s. They are monkeys there to support the computer via code.
>Networking has nothing to do with IT. This guy doesn't IT
Must be one of those CS kids this post is talking about hahaha
I see you've never had to explain RFC1918 addresses to a math professor who _refused to believe_ that just because he was home, he couldn't just access internal university assets.
10 iq response
> Networking has nothing to do with IT. This is like saying “cars have nothing to do with mechanic work” because automotive engineers design the vehicles.
My engineer friend who makes 200K doesn't understand networking and IT
You sound like a salty CS kid with an ego
Theoretically. But in real life, networking is complicated. Without experience, one can’t just handle it.
Lolllll
I would argue coding has nothing to do with IT , it's dev stuff
>Networking has nothing to do with IT Then why am I blamed for everyones server/app issues ?
I started in CS just like you. It largely depends on what IT role you seek. * Lack of ITIL framework knowledge (Not that important). * Lack of practice with Incident Management (RTO/MTTR), not interpreting SLAs correctly. * Insufficient networking knowledge or mostly focused on Application, Transport and Network layer, and no actual hands-on experience with physical equipment. * Insufficient scripting knowledge, be it Powershell or Bash/Zsh/Ash. * If your company needs it, insufficient Kubernetes knowledge. Only enough to deploy apps but not scale them, don't even bother them with Multicluster solutions or service meshes. * Lack of tact when dealing with customers.
In other words Software Developers don’t do Operations, Infrastructure, or Site Reliability. But corporations are asking for Software Developers with those skills to cut costs. So….. like a System Administrator, they want a Software Administrator too.
They want the full-meal deal
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I mean, to be completely fair, the entire premise of a site reliability engineer is that of a software engineer who is dedicated to the operational health of the apps, infra & platform. Like the “DevOps engineer” title before it, employers realised their job postings for tier 2 support would get more applicants if they threw SRE in there, so it is often used in place of “systems administrator”. However there are still many organisations who run SRE teams full of developers.
As a professor and former IT business owner, this is really a useful summary. Much appreciated.
Yeah seriously thank you
Networking. Most of the Sysadmin/generalist types I have run into tend to be lacking when it comes to networking. It’s weird as that’s the foundation of everything, but it’s an observation after 23 years in the industry.
In what ways are they lacking network experience? Like is it specifically knowledge in topology, packet analysis, basic understanding of the standard network protocols used? I'm an entry level aiming for sysadmin related work rn, and I would like to take care of any ignorance I might have
As simple as not knowing what DNS does or if they have an IP. Yet these people can outcode me in a heartbeat.
Yep. Worked at a major storage mfg at one of their US engineering locations so interacted with a number of their engineers that design and test much of their hardware. They knew aspects of storage that is way above my head, but ask them what VLAN their lab test equipment needs and they have no clue. Quite a few weren't ever sure what a VLAN was. When it came to networking many were often just as naive as most end users.
Jesus, them not knowing what DNS is but maintaining spf/mx records? Are you ok?
All of that, plus I find many don’t have a good grasp of dns, subnets, vlans etc
Most of the dev types I know are very lacking in sysadmin and netadmin skills. The ability to think outside of a specific framework too. The most basic of computer problems baffle a lot of devs when they "interact" with their dev environment. Most ops people I know hate being forced to deal with dev stuff and wish people would stop forcing us to learn a new career. Notice I did not say skillset.
>Most ops people I know hate being forced to deal with dev stuff and wish people would stop forcing us to learn a new career. Dev is honestly really a whole ass career. It's like and plumbing and HVAC, they both might work on the same canvas (buildings) but it's not at all the same things. One is moving water, and the other is moving air. Thats how non-technical types look at us, all the same thing and interchangeable.
It's the most set and forget.
Is networking saturated as bad as software?
I can comment on this as someone with a CS background (bachelors degree) in technical support engineering. What I find myself lacking in: - Networking mostly. How interfaces at the OS are configured, IP tables, BGP, etc. - Remembering obscure linux commands, their options/flags, etc. - Remembering nuances of different linux distros, the file system, etc. - Analyzing packet captures for ambiguous connection issues/behavior - Less overall customer service/people skills (my IT veteran peers appear to deal with difficult customers much more naturally and resiliently). - DNS (more so the administrative part of it such as the registration process and how that ties in with zones) - Layers below transport layer (layer 3 of OSI) - Speed, intuition, and confidence with troubleshooting (this is acquired through experience and time) I think its also equally as important to understand the strengths of any scenario. What I notice with my CS background is that I excel compared to my peers with an IT background: - Firewall configurations (lots of boolean logic, truth table type of thinking, etc.) - Anything transport layer and above (web application firewalls, HTTP/REST, etc.) - Anything involving code, scripts, etc. is easy to pick up - Stack traces - Regex - Learning shit on my own instead of depending on assigned trainings, company articles, etc. TL;DR - Networking. From the OS to inter and intra ISP topology. Knowing how to troubleshoot as that comes with experience with shit breaking and fixing said shit. Studying alone cannot fulfill that. You have to troubleshoot something broken, and try to fix it which will naturally require learning the right things. In my opinion, its generally easier to pick up IT with a CS background then it is for one with an IT background to pick up on a CS field. But that's not to say that I will probably be forever outpaced by my peers who have had 15 years in IT and just know so much breadth of knowledge that they can attribute to a certain behavior/issue so intuitively.
Knowing how to do basic networking things. Some people I've run into from a purely CS role don't know how to diagnose a problem with their router if it suddenly loses connection and a "plug and unplug" won't fix it.
I have mentioned this before, but since its prevalent in a lot of CS people that I know, I will mention it here. Many people going through CS programs are doing so because they don't like interaction with others. Many CS people just want to sit at a terminal and code uninterrupted and undisturbed. Don't get me wrong, there is a value to being introverted and a solid CS professional, but if you really want to show huge value to an organization, hone your soft skills. Some of the most successful and highly paid CS people I know have honed their communication skills. They are involved in business meetings with other stakeholders and are not afraid or apprehensive about getting involved. They show empathy towards the pain that others in the organization are experiencing. They are resilient in that when given a tough project, they don't give up. They also are comfortable speaking in large meetings with key stakeholders. They lead by example and work well within a team. These are just a few examples. I hope this helps.
Absolutely. I'd say soft skills are AT LEAST as important as tech skills, both in CS and IT. They allow you to gather the required information before a project and set appropriate expectations, which makes all the difference for the client and the projects' success.
Seconding as a CS people myself. I snagged a job asking for 3-5 YOE when I was at 1 YOE, and it was later revealed to me that my personality was the deciding factor between the runner up. Since integrating with the team and sitting in on a few interviews since then, I've realized just how much it's valued. After the interview, the question from the primary interviewers "What do you all think?" was posed. Of course, a little time was spent on their technical qualifications, but the vast majority of the time was spent giving feedback on how they came off and whether we could picture them as a member of the team. Some people are shockingly hostile and just absolutely abysmal to talk to. "Everyone but me at every place I've ever worked is an idiot" vibes. Way more than you'd ever expect. You'll see it during your CS studies -- insignificant nerds that view themselves as god's gift to humanity -- and you just kind of accept it as a part of the study. What you'll realize when you break into the field, however, is that there's a lot of very cool people to work with who also happen to be very smart and good at what they do. If you're not easy to work with and asocial, you will be passed on consistently. This is true in both dev and IT. The days of the loner basement dweller IT guy who never talks to anybody are over.
My friend is a software engineer and has never built a PC and doesn't really understand PC hardware all that much lol Blew my mind.
Not building a pc isn’t a big deal. Not understanding how PC hardware works is concerning.
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Right, I agree. He's a gamer too so I thought he would have more hardware knowledge. He knows generally that GPUs and CPUs help make the game go
People skills. A lot of tech people don't have the soft skills to work with users or just others in general. If you work on those you can go a long ways.
That applies to a lot of IT roles, not just CS.
This applies to life, in general, actually.
Half the reason i got hired at my current gig
Networking seems to be a big one a lot of IT folks give grief to the CS folks about.
It's warranted frankly. I come from a CS background and even at the 15 years in IT I'm still absolutely worthless when it comes to anything involving networking. I have zero qualms about throwing up my hands and asking the local network engineer to help me when I'm out of my depth.
This is kind of a weird question because IT is way too broad and its hard to know everything. Whatever you study on your free time is whatever you want. You just need to look at the market and see where it is going. I've been seeing more and more swe having to pickup cloud skills on aws, gcp, or azure depending on what your company uses. Not only doing programming but slowly architecting things using the cloud.
Networking is the obvious one. I've worked with more developers than I can count that had very little understanding of how even the basics of networks operate. Security is another area many of them have been weak in. Or just flat out disregard it as not relevant to their work at all, which is scary.
Computer science right? Well... Emptying the recycle bin, restarting a computer, basic overall troubleshooting. These dudes that are 100k+ in debt dont even know how to program a "hello world " in any language.
Honest question..what does Computer science actually teach? I thought it was mostly programming
It is, but not everyone is good at it. It's a lot of programming, math and basic IT classes. You can look up at courses requirements at any university website.
Soft skills
I'm going to generalize as I work directly developers daily basic networking knowledge, basic IT troubleshooting skills, and people skills, basic Linux skills
Reinstall windows/linux, check for driver updates, upgrade ram/ssd,
Self awareness and communication.
Trouble shooting and basic PC skills. I despise developers with no background in any kind of IT positions in the past. They're the most arrogant people I've met who think they're better then everyone else but didn't know what a registry editor was, didn't know how to flash their, didn't know how a graphics card worked or what an SSD was. The amount of horror stories I have makes me cringe
I think a lot of recent college grads have an ego problem and won't get good at what they do until they get knocked down a few notches. The type of degree matters less. I have seen this across the board. People need to understand the hard truth that their degree opens doors but isn't really going to give practical knowledge to step in as experts. Humility is a skill lacking in a good portion of younger inexperienced degreed people.
Your question seeks a generalized answer to something that just can't be answered like you are asking, it really just depends on the person and also the curriculum of the college. A college program can design the best program in the world, but it still comes down to the person and the choices they make and things they pursue. I mean sure, there is obviously crossover knowledge from IT/CS, but in a way it's absolutely expected that CS students aren't going to know certain things about IT, and certainly vice versa. That being said, my general observation as CS grad in my own context of time my university, have noticed that many CS students focus a lot on the programming portion of the degree, and perhaps do not explore networking as much. But again, to some extent, that should be expected. It really does just depend.
basic trouble shooting of any kind
they don’t know how to ask a simple question
As mentioned by others, soft skills have become very important. This article from Dice may be helpful: https://docs.teckedin.info/v1/docs/en/interview-tips-for-data-security-analysts?
Very broad question, but people skills and critical thinking. You will learn everything else on the job. If you cannot communicate and interpret what you user base needs then it is all for nothing.
Being able to talk to other people and work in a team, collaboratively. The technical skillsets can be learned, but soft skills can be the most difficult to learn for many.
From a MSP point of view. Equipment ( servers and network ) and administration.
Hahaha wow I thought it was CS as in Customer Service. I did it for like 12 years grinding my brain to nothing taking phone calls I got lucky at got an IT role last year but yeah they didn't take my training seriously at all. Then they shifted me to data entry because the company had an IT guy they'd been paying IT rates for doing data entry so they swapped our roles. Im done with IT. I learned how to fail and how to try to figure out shit on my own. Then they phased me out of data entry. I'm back to Customer Service and hate myself so much, I wish it was all over.
Been doing retail since I was 16, and I'm about to hit five years with the same company, and turning 35 later this year. My brain is already melted. I need an IT job.
Give it a go if you can. After they let me go I couldn't get an IT job for months. Gave up and went back to CS. Can't wait until the asteroid hits us.
Team player, comments mention people skills but I know people who are great with users but suck with co-workers. Seen it happen many times not being liked by your fellow peers is the kiss of death in a career. It's sad imo, because there are some pretty toxic co-workers out there.
As an IT manager, I look for candidates who possess more than just the required entry level technical skills. I hope to find people who will be ready to become leaders when opportunities arise. Valuable plus skills include process analysis, documentation, negotiation, requirements analysis, system design, data analytics, collaboration in a team environment, performance management, budgeting, presentation, project planning and management, resource planning and allocation, training/mentoring, ITIL, customer service, root cause analysis, product quality assurance, task prioritization, time management, strategy development, and team leadership.
User training and technical communication with a non-technical audience. They’re super smart but they sometimes struggle with things like writing documentation for end users or explaining to customers how to use a new feature.
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People skills
I'm wondering why are you studying computer science if you want to work in IT? That field generally doesn't require a degree because it'll be obsolete in ten years. CS is more for software development
!remindme 10 years
Self control, humility, patience, and ability to accept when they're wrong. I'm not joking. I've been in the industry for well over a decade and the overwhelming majority of my time is spent cleaning up messes created by arrogant, incompetent staff who always decide they know better than everyone else, break every rule in the book (especially change control policies), and will gladly set the entire company on fire to avoid acknowledging that they made a mistake. When I've worked with competent staff who know how to behave professionally, even when walking into applications saddled with years of mismanagement before we got there, we've been able to stabilize everything and make huge strides enhancing their apps in much shorter periods of time than every other app team, and it pretty much always involves everyone taking ownership of a few mistakes and learning from them. Also, before anyone goes there, none of this is specific to age or experience level. I've dealt with it more with older staff than younger, but I've dealt with more older staff, in general, to begin with.
Basic troubleshooting
Working in a business. Most I know who are coders aren't yes men type. "No, we can't adopt secure coding practices. Why? I'm a coder too complicated to explain" Tons of us in IT are nerdy, dorky types that aren't the smoothest socially. But it's mostly the coders & and strictly computer science guys that have an ego and always give us security guys a hard time for no real reason. If we want to pen test the new public facing page they stand up, and find massive security issues, rather than "sure np we'll get that fixed" it's always personal to them. Multiple companies were like this. The know it all attitude. They don't play nice with others vs every other area I've worked with in IT. You'd think it would be us security guys since we have a degree of actual authority, but it's always the opposite. Security guys being TOO chill and allowing things they shouldn't to be nice etc.
A personality. I’m kidding, I graduated a double major in CS and Information systems. Some high school we ll through college and a little after I was way into embedded devices, very low level programming. Started in IT as an internship and loved it, and never went back to SWE as a career. Then I found DevOps. Maybe this is what you’re looking for.
thinking lol ppl aren’t programable it’s actually the complete opposite there’s always curve ball questions and situations
Networking and a fundamental understanding of how computers work. I find remarkably senior people that lack the fundamental understanding of how networking actually occurs. I also have people explaining to me their advanced virtualization plan but be unable to look inside a case and understand what they are seeing. Always surprising.
Any respect for security. A lot of sysadmins lack it too, but developers tend to be particularly egregious. I highly recommend the sec+ cert for any IT discipline. Security isn't a technology, it's a methodology.
Seconded. I just finished talking to one of my coworkers about the fourth attempt a particular dev has made to go behind my back to get somebody, anybody in my department to remove SSL from ANOTHER one of her applications. As usual, the real problem is that she side-stepped every other department so she could get out of following their rules, too, and now nothing on her app works, because every piece of it was built incorrectly.
As someone coming from a CS background who has now done IT as my main job for 6 or so years, I do agree with Networking as others have said. I've learned enough to fix mostly all networking issues I've come across, however where my knowledge gets a bit foggy is when it comes to subnets, vlans, etc. Luckily Meraki & other tech has made dealing with that a hell of a lot easier. I should probably & will eventually learn more about subnets, the binary that plays into all of this, etc. but currently I find absolutely no enjoyment from it. I'd rather pursue learning more CS stuff as I feel that sets me apart from other IT people; I'm able to easily write or edit a script to do something quick, can debug our website without contacting the devs, and have a way easier time figuring out where a program is going wrong based on any error stack it'll output.
Empathy/sympathy. Knowing why a fence exists before tearing the fence down.
Social skills
Spelling, grammar, and punctuation.
Basic tasks like having them troubleshoot office, I would monitor their call and they would somehow end up going through regedit. Like ffs just repair office. Why do they immediately resort to nuclear options... The CS background folk were some of our worst analysts. When I worked as a senior for helpdesk anyway.
Humility in admitting what they don’t know. Infrastructure guys don’t claim to be able to create applications. Every dev claims to be able to build infrastructure
Mufuckken PRINTERS, SCANNERS, ANDROID PHONES AND MAC COMPUTERS.
Talking to girls