Eloy.universities in the 1980s: writing the majority of internet standard RFCs and their implementations
universities now: moving away from Microsoft cloud is really hard okay? 🥺
Chris Siebenmann@eloy @gnomon Also universities in the 80s: one of the biggest places computer stuff was happening, especially Internet/networking stuff. Universities today: a lower-paid backwater for exciting Internet, networking, Unix etc stuff.
In the 70s and 80s, a university job looked like a decently paid place you could continue interesting work after a CS degree, and better than many outside computer programming jobs (hello IBM mainframes). Today, the exciting jobs are outside of academia.
maswan@maswan @eloy @gnomon My view is that management is somewhat forced by what staff they can recruit and what that staff can operate (which at a large scale is forced by budget, which is forced by politics¹). Increasingly I think universities (and lots of other places) will be forced to rely on existing solutions instead of building their own.
¹ as mainstream tech salaries get ever higher it becomes ever-harder for 'second tier' organizations like universities to pay competitively.
@cks
@eloy @gnomon Yeah, but this is also a geographical issue. While we can't match US tech giant salaries, we're not far behind the local IT sector (but with some better benefits like 7 instead of 5 weeks vacation etc).
The bigger challenge for us lately is how to sell the position, gotta call it devops and not sysadmin, and stuff like that. Operations seem to be very low-valued in the modern world.