Lemmy.World is looking for 4 new Systems operators to help with our growing community.
Volunteers will assist our existing systems team with monitoring and maintenance.
We’re ideally looking for chill folks that want to give back to their community and work on our back-end infrastructure. Must have 4+ years of professional experience working in systems administration. We are not looking for junior admins at this time. Please keep in mind that, while this is a volunteer gig, we would ask you to be able to help at least 5-10 hours a week. We also understand this is a hobby and that family and work comes first.
Applicants must be okay with providing their CV and/or LinkedIn profile AND sitting for a video interview. This is due to the sensitivity of the infrastructure you will have access to.
We are an international team that works from both North America EST time (-4) and Europe CEST (+2) so we would ask that candidates be flexible with their availability.
If you are in AEST (+10) or JST (+9) please let us know, as we are looking for at least one Sysadmin to help out during our overnight.
You may be asked to participate in an on-call pool. Please keep in mind that this is a round-robin style pool, so it’s alright if you’re busy as it will just move along the chain.
If you’re interested and want to apply, click here.
How about another approach?
There is no good reason for Lemmyworld to keep on growing to an extent that this kind of overhead is necessary. The idea of Lemmy is decentralization and not creating a new reddit instance. Close your registration, limit your amount of communities and let Lemmy grow in other directions.
The thing is. Not to grow. LW wants to get stable.
Understandable, but aren’t growth and instability related in this case? There are many instances with capacity that are already run by capable people. Just spread the load (ahem) across the Lemmy verse and only handle as much as you can. But maybe I’m missing a point, I just think that this would be the best for Lemmy in the long run.
I mean is that even up to them? People gravitate to the places with the most content, and right now that’s lemmy world. I think the only way they could combat that is to make lemmy world private, but it might lead to people not using lemmy at all instead of spreading out to other instances.
The other option I see is to make the instances more specialized and basically do away with generalist instances like lemmy world. So you have an instance focused on news with its own subcommunities, one for gaming, one for politics etc. But that could hurt usability. It’s not an easy problem to solve.
I agree with your points and like the idea of more specialized instances and also country related instances. I think it’s solvable if the different admins work together.
Lemmy.world doesn’t have to go private, they could just not accept more users and communities for a while. It wouldn’t change much since everyone will still be able to post and comment on Lemmy.world from all instances. New users would just have to choose a different instance that’s all.
For me that’s the whole point, I don’t see any benefit of a big instance, the Lemmyverse doesn’t need one.
Lol. I read the header as “Lemmy World PsyOp” and was like “well, that’s disappointing,” lol.
I spent 4-5 years running a high traffic server using Linux, nginx, apache, php and whatever we did with Python, and would be glad to help. This was in 2010 though, so….
I know, I meet all of the Soft skills, like four of the Systems knowledge, and maybe 0.5 of the Ideal Devops skills. But I have certifications, love 90s cartoons, and hate oatmeal raisin cookies - so I’m thinking I’m perfect.
I have the experience, but not the energy nor passion as I am almost burned out already. I hope you find some awesome people.
If it was a paying gig would you consider it? 5 to 10 hours a week, let’s say 10. What kind of salary would you expect?
Just curious.
So I’m a systems engineer in the real world for an (almost) unicorn (current valuation might even have tossed us over that magic number). My salary is on the lower end of the spectrum but I’m happy with it because normally the work life balances is dandy. My total comp is well into 6 figures USD. Oh and I’m fully remote.
Now, this is not something you can get out of highschool. I’ve been working with Linux for 10+ years, built (and maintained) entire AD forests, have a fairly deep understanding of networking and containerization, etc.
Again. You don’t start like me. You start getting a gig in front line help desk and answer questions. In your free time at work you learn (that’s never going to stop). Eventually your outgrow help desk and move into some other role (and keep learning). The people who are successful in this field A) can always be learning, B) have a means to destress/avoid burnout and C) have customer service skills.
Knowing this is a volunteer project, I’d never request renumeration. If I were contracting with a large company, I guess I’d charge 300-500 per day. That’s just based on quotes I get on LinkedIn, as I’ve never worked as a contractor. Also I couldn’t have it interfere with my main job, where I’m also on call, so it would be lower priority.
deleted by creator
I can’t tell if this career path is worth the stress but you’re describing a lot of money. And it makes me feel like this is worth it.
Infosec is a good choice if you have the ability to think analytically and to learn new things faster than average. Demand for such jobs is probably going to be growing for a while still.
That barrier to entry is no joke tho. I’m still trying to get myself to a point where I can confidently put my hat in the ring for infosec roles
deleted by creator
describing a lot of money
If you’re in IT for the money, you’re gonna hate it or yourself before long. Lagom.
deleted by creator
Survivorship bias. the IT market is a lot more saturated now than it was 20 years ago. This person got in somewhere good early on and rode that career train. These opportunities rarely exist today unless you arre a charismatic super talented genius. I would not bet on most people being able to ever pull those kinds of numbers before burning out. Being a money chaser is not worth it in today’s world, value your health mental wellbeing and personal life equally if not more than your bank account. Live well below your means and learn how to save/invest, and find a life/career path you can feel good and satisfied in even if its not paying a whole lot. You r quality of life will skyrocket and you will have enough $ to feel secure. I worked years in industrial trade, made good cash, it wasnt worth it in the end. Just my 2 cents.
Yeah it’s hard to gain the high value skillsets these days, and I think it’s one of the reason those of us that have been in it for decades are able to do fine now. I got lucky where early on in my career I got in with a company that was small and had enormous growth over a 10 year span.
I’m similar paid to the person in question and am also an independant contractor. I make similar due to my experience level and rather unique combination of skills so I just cut my hours way back and typically work a few hours a day. So burnout is a non issue. I take no work where I’m on call or “first responder” and I make sure it’s always written into the contract that way.
It took 25+ years of busting ass to get here, although I have no regrets, and I recognize I am incredibly lucky to have the circumstances play out this way.
This person got in somewhere good early on and rode that career train. These opportunities rarely exist today unless you arre a charismatic super talented genius.
Not really true. It takes a bit of knowing your worth, advocating for yourself in interviews, and job hopping as needed for pay raises every year or two while continuing to build your skills both on the job and outside of it. IT isn’t an industry that lends itself to job stability and high pay if you stay in a role long term, and stagnation can certainly be a factor if you decide to stop learning things.
Also. it’s still very possible to get in, but focus these days is DevOps, automation, virtualization, and more recently, AI. You won’t make bank in some shitty low tier helpdesk role.
A good start would be certification path to pick up some straightforward “guaranteed to get you work” kind of certs like:
- Linux+
- Network+
- VMware VCP-DCV (and later with experience maybe VCP-CMA)
- Any Redhat cert
- Security+ if you’re interested in cybersecurity and/or federal work (USA, not sure about other places)
Alternately, getting a few programming languages under your belt is totally doable for free with Youtube and other online courses and then doing your own projects with public repositories on Github for prospective employers to see. Getting a foot in the door with dev is gonna be very luck of the draw though.
You definitely wont’ start out making a wage that high on the Ops side, but finding a foot in the door at between $25 and $30 an hour shouldn’t be hard once you get some bare minimum experience under your belt.
College grads may have an easier time, but I wouldn’t know, I dropped out and went the certification/experience route some 15+ years ago.
Any Redhat cert
Pick up the Oracle cert. It looks like Oracle is gonna be more valuable than RedHat for a while.
I’d say IT sysadmin work sucks unless the company runs proper shit and has a handle on it, which is more than often beyond your influence in the position. A lot of times the company doesn’t want to hire enough people, and overworking yourself will never be enough to get everything done. So you spend your days trying to handle the highest impact tasks coming from management and above, constantly being pulled in different directions, and never really feeling like you got anything meaningful accomplished. IT priorities also often conflict with business priorities, and if not handled right you will be caught in the middle of this and all your decisions will be scrutinized by the interested parties.
$300/day @ 8 hours = $37.50/hr / $78k/yr $500/day @ 8 hours = $62.50/hr / $130k/yr
Which are imo on the low end of U.S. tech salary. Considering a contractor also has overhead like healthcare, business expenses, any time spent in administration take home would potentially be lower.
The market is softer right now but will probably rebound in a couple years.
I also have the desired skill set and experience far surpassing what they’re asking for but not the time or energy to do this since my work already demands 60+ hours a week and on-call from me. Yes I’m American.
To answer your pay question; around 4-500 would be the average pay for 10 hours this position in the working world. Since the fediverse instances have next to zero reliable income (donations can’t be counted as reliable) I understand this is a difficult if not impossible bill to pay. This is why they’re asking for volunteers whose work schedule is more sane and therefore have the energy and time to commit. I wish I was available to do so, maybe if my current job search is successful at finding something more chill.
oof its like you’re either me or i’m you. hope you find your way past the burn out or out of it if you end up sinking into it. i’m going on like 3.5 years of battling it and there are better days and worse days, but i have no idea what else to even do. managing infra and writing code have been my entire career up to now.
I’m about 1.5 years into it. Lost most passion for the job, but there are flashes of motivation here and there. Considering trying to move into full time development, but that would take a lot of effort. Tired of keeping up with the kubernetes ecosystem too.
Oof Kubernetes. Awesome community and powerful tech but the rate of change is insane. Like 6 months of CNCF is like 10 years of Red Hat + Java.
Ah, alright, not quite me - I’ll be 14 years deep in November. Honestly, one of the things that kept me motivated over the years was moving around - I stayed at the same company, but I started out doing QA (by hand, no automation), then got moved to handle release management, then moved to IT as a general Linux admin and spent a few years doing that, made friends with an infosec manager and he offered me a spot on his team working remote and doing container/docker security which morphed into a cloud security thing after he left the company (I hated the cloud). A couple years back I moved back to non-cloud/non-infosec work doing automation stuff with Ansible mainly, and for the time being only for our on-prem infrastructure (this may change in the future and I’m not really looking forward to it all that much).
At this point, nothing is really helping get my head back into the game 100% but I can still put out work and I’m just trying to find the joy in small victories and chasing the high you get when the code you wrote works flawlessly. I’m blessed to have a solid management structure above me who a) know me, b) like me (and the feeling is mutual, they’re all great people), and c) are happy with my output.
I don’t envy you working with kubernetes - my time in container security came during the early days of large companies trying to move to turning everything into microservices. It was a wild west kind of vibe and I basically had free reign… nowadays, I don’t think I’d enjoy any of that in its current form.
I have great soft skills and I write pretty well, but outside of that my skillset is basically a degraded/decayed technology one because I’ve been treading water for a while now and not actively keeping up with all the shit in our sector that changes on a constant basis.
I’ve also seriously weighed moving into development, but I’m not sure if that’s just going to fix anything for me. I like writing Python, but I don’t know how that would feel full-time. Sucks, man.
14 years deep in November.
Since July 1996 here, amateur/volunteer since ~93.
not actively keeping up with all the shit in our sector that changes on a constant basis
Learn the stuff that doesn’t change as fast for a foundation, and go from there into stuff that tickles the coding fancy. Let the mayfly tech be handled by caffeine-addled thrill-chasers, while you just build stuff and sleep well.
That’s basically where I’m wedging myself in now. Ansible and Python, higher value but lower stress projects. Bigger wins, but ones that are able take the time needed to put them together, test, and refine.
It’s almost a back-to-my-roots kind of thing for me, but with a fresh twist in terms of approach. I’m basically writing automations that make life easier for ops guys, to boil it down to it’s essence.
Tired of keeping up with the kubernetes ecosystem
Yep. You can either do the work, or spend many times that on people to do the work in kubes.
I totally hope you’ll get enough admins to help out. Alas, I’m way to short on time to commit to this now. After 28y sysadmin and developing on Unix and Linux, I could use some project that is useful, but alas, no time to spare now. (Maybe later)
deleted by creator
I’m curious what the backend looks like based on your requirements here… Ansible is always a red flag for me that your servers are pets not cattle. Just maintain a golden image, especially since you mention kubernetes. And if you’re using self managed kubernetes USE REMOTE ETCD. Trust me, it will save you so much time and drama.
I wouldn’t be interested unless it’s paid so I am just throwing that out there for y’all to consider.
Or just run everything in containers and use stock ubuntu or aws Linux or whatever.
This made me laugh. Configuration management systems like ansible, chef, salt, and puppet only exist because people wanted to manage a large numbers of systems and keep them consistent and replaceable, i.e treat them like cattle instead of pets. They were born out of the pets vs cattle analogy.
I realize containerization has taken that a step further but it’s funny to hear someone talk about these tools like they’re something archaic.
If you want to replace them why would you not use a golden image? The same thing goes for VMs, not only containerized. You can sit there and wait for ansible to run, or just have your image come up immediately with what you need. It makes it take longer with 0 benefit.
And where do you think the golden images come from? The steps must be reproducible, versioned, audited, scripted and in the third hands of outsourced minions with 8 or 12h time lapse.
The golden rule of CICD does it survive if you’re visited by truck-kun?
Probably more accurate to say “mutable” vs “immutable”.
Harder to have pets in immutable if it’s actually immutable.
I read it as Lemmy World PsyOp at first and thought there’s some conspiracy bullshit happening on the instance. lol. Good luck on your search!
Lemmy World psychological operations, the secret communist agenda of the administration team!!! leaked!
i knew it!
Glad to know I wasn’t the only one, lol.
I did as well! After I read your post I went back up to review the post headline
Very cool! Would be nice to have folks from different timezones to help with outages that currently occur mostly when everyone in the team is sleeping. Good luck!
Out of curiosity, will you be able to weed out bad faith volunteers? I am sure there are a variety of interests that would be more than willing to pay a junior admin to be a Lemmy Sysop and it’s not like the candidate will volunteer that information.
We are not looking for junior admins at this time.
deleted by creator
Without going into details to avoid giving out ideas, think the concept of script kiddies for example. Doing harm for no reason. Or with more experience doing harm for personal gain
Someone acting in bad faith is someone doing something with ulterior, negative intentions.
This could mean joining an admin team with the goal of breaking the site. Joining a sports team with the goal of sabotaging their matches.
In one word: Fraud. Deception.
Some one who operates in bad faith seeks to gain advantage by lying to get in and cause turmoil afterward.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=cegalOZqmEo
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
I think they’ll be fine, the form asks for a CV + video call + lemmy user name and optional github profile.
I’d be surprised if a bad faith candidate got through that. A probation period could work here, where their access is a bit restricted at first
Hum, I hate to be that guy, but the good (experienced) bad actors have multiple profiles curated exactly for this reason. There’s a reason why companies require proof of identity and a background security check.
I’d love to help out one day but right now my experience is just hosting random things for fun that I find on github
Look forward to talking to you!
wow nice, hope you get some qualified folks! regrettably I dont have time or I’d toss my hat in the ring
I’m a noobie sysadmin so I don’t have enough experience yet. Hope you guys find some people to help out!
Sysop… reminds of the good ol’ BBS days. What a great time that was.
I operated a few in the nineties. Sacred Grounds running pcboard BBS software. Kinda miss those days, it was great 😃
It was certainly iconic. Felt like the glory days of computers, networking, and user groups. I always got that excited feeling like when you’re a kid and anything is possible! It was before extreme specialization, and you literally could learn everything. It was a time when we felt like we had something special before the masses were even aware of it.
Then ISPs popped up, and we ditched our modems and BBS’s for IRC and Usenet. Still before the masses were aware. Still a special time.
Then, eventually, corporations got wind of a new market to target, and the masses moved in. They used ridiculous names like portals, email chains, properties, social media, etc., and everything went to shit fast. It felt like something special was taken away from those of us who were at the beginning. It lost that special feeling and turned toxic in no time.
Some embraced it, but more rejected it and would not dare join Facebook or MySpace or wherever corporate, ad-infested places the lemmings amassed. Instead, we created niche places a bit too technical for the sheeple to follow. We became rebels of conformity. And then, we became old and obsolete.
It was a concurrent evolution and devolution as we were thrown toward the modern-day internet.
Regardless of how it turned out, I am very thankful and glad I was a part of that early, amazing culture!
