news.ycombinator.com• Apr 1, 2026• 1 min read
I, SysadminMy title has changed a bit over the years. Trends have changed, tech stacks have changed. But I know what I am. I haven't changed.DevOps, System Engineer, Cloud Engineer, Platform Engineer. Cut through it all, and I still am and have always been a sysadmin.A lot of people look down on the "Systems Administrator" title. Employees don't like it because it doesn't have "engineer" in the title, and employers hate it because it implies the absolute godhood of the one who wields it.Us sysadmins hold the keys. Maybe that's why some compare us to janitors. But possessing keys is about where the similarities stop. Janitors clean messes up. Sysadmins know what the messes are for. Some messes we untangle. Others we step around. It comes with the territory. We plug things together that were never designed to be plugged together.And by what can be by God's will alone - they work. Most of the time. And if it's not working, the sysadmin is honor-bound to come running at any time of the day, to get to