Comments on: We Heart Data Center Engineers

By: Daniel Golding

Daniel Golding — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:45:36 +0000

Stacey,

Check out the Marist datacenter institute for an example of the 2-year degrees they are talking about – basically datacenter technicians, doing stuff like HVAC maintenance, running cross-connects, racking/stacking. The salaries that the NYT talked about, though, are totally exaggerated.

By: Stacey Higginbotham

Stacey Higginbotham — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 03:01:59 +0000

Daniel, I think the BLS classifications may be misleading you. I tried to highlight only the stats related to the category of jobs that focus on the people who design, install and manage the hardware and networks in the data center. The BLS calls them network and systems administrators and analysts, but the description next to the title explains why I chose them. That being said, I realize the NYTimes was talking about more than this subset, but the broad engineering data from the BLS doesn’t break out engineering that way.

Plus, the NYTimes article did mention a few technical certifications and two-year programs as being on the rise because of the increase in data centers needing folks to manage them. I don’t think this dilutes the power of a degree or PE certification, though :)

By: Daniel Golding

Daniel Golding — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 21:35:52 +0000

Um, no. Stacey, I think you missed the point of the NYT article. Its not about network engineers or system administrators or software developers. Its not about the guys using open source software or “computer and network administrators”. The article is referring to the electrical and mechanical engineers who design and operate the physical facilities that are then filled with servers, routers, switches, and other such accountramenss. The average system administrator with a CS degree is completely unqualified to design a datacenter and largely unqualified to operate one. The datacenter engineers that the article talks about are degreed engineers with, in many cases, state PE certificates.

Oh, and hi, Vijay!

By: vijay gill

vijay gill — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:16:08 +0000

“These days, we’re moving from programming to pipes.” Almost, thats last generation tech. These days, we’re moving from pipes to programming the pipes.