Sysadmin here. Thats what we used to be called. Then some fads came, some went. DevOps, SRE. Etc.
I have notes on particular areas I am focusing on, but I have a small set of general notes on this, and they seem to apply to you SWEs also.
Headline: Remember data is the new oil
Qualifier: It's really all about IP portfolios these days
1) Business Acument: How does the tech serve the business/client needs, from a holistic perspective of the business. (eg: sysadmins have long had to big picture finance, ops, strategy, industry, etc knowledge) - aka - turn tech knowledge into business knowledge
2) Leadership Presence: Ability to meet w/c-suite, engineers, clients, etc, and speak their languages, understand their issues, and solve their issues. (ex: explain ROI impacts for proposals to c-suite)
3) Emotional Intelligence: Relationship building in particular.
(note: this is the thing I neglected the most in my career and regreted it!)
4) Don't be afraid to use force multiplier tools. In this discussion, that means LLMs, but it can mean other things too. Adopt early, keep up with tooling, but focus on the fundamental tech and don't get bogged down into proprietary stockholm syndrome. Augment yourself to be better, don't try to replace yourself.
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Now, I know thats a simplistic list, but you asked so I gave you what I had. What I am doing (besides trying to get my mega-uber-huge-sideproject off the ground), is recentering on certain areas I don't think are going anywhere: on-prem, datacenter buildouts, high-compute, ultra-low-latency, scalable systems, energy, construction of all the previous things, and the banking knowledge to round it all out.
If my side-project launch fails, I'm even considering data-center sales instead of the tech side. Why? I'm tired of rescuing the entire business to no fanfare while sales people get half my salary in a bonus. Money aside, I can still learn and participate in the builds as sales (see it happen all the time).
In other words, I took my old-school niche set of knowledge, and adopted it over the years as the industry changed, focusing on what I do best (in this case, operations - aka - the ones who actually get shit into prod, and fix it when it's broke, regardless of the title associated).
I have notes on particular areas I am focusing on, but I have a small set of general notes on this, and they seem to apply to you SWEs also.
Headline: Remember data is the new oil Qualifier: It's really all about IP portfolios these days
1) Business Acument: How does the tech serve the business/client needs, from a holistic perspective of the business. (eg: sysadmins have long had to big picture finance, ops, strategy, industry, etc knowledge) - aka - turn tech knowledge into business knowledge
2) Leadership Presence: Ability to meet w/c-suite, engineers, clients, etc, and speak their languages, understand their issues, and solve their issues. (ex: explain ROI impacts for proposals to c-suite)
3) Emotional Intelligence: Relationship building in particular. (note: this is the thing I neglected the most in my career and regreted it!)
4) Don't be afraid to use force multiplier tools. In this discussion, that means LLMs, but it can mean other things too. Adopt early, keep up with tooling, but focus on the fundamental tech and don't get bogged down into proprietary stockholm syndrome. Augment yourself to be better, don't try to replace yourself.
----
Now, I know thats a simplistic list, but you asked so I gave you what I had. What I am doing (besides trying to get my mega-uber-huge-sideproject off the ground), is recentering on certain areas I don't think are going anywhere: on-prem, datacenter buildouts, high-compute, ultra-low-latency, scalable systems, energy, construction of all the previous things, and the banking knowledge to round it all out.
If my side-project launch fails, I'm even considering data-center sales instead of the tech side. Why? I'm tired of rescuing the entire business to no fanfare while sales people get half my salary in a bonus. Money aside, I can still learn and participate in the builds as sales (see it happen all the time).
In other words, I took my old-school niche set of knowledge, and adopted it over the years as the industry changed, focusing on what I do best (in this case, operations - aka - the ones who actually get shit into prod, and fix it when it's broke, regardless of the title associated).