It's not that bizarre, you write software mainly used by systems administrators. I used to work with one of the guys who wrote apache, and now work with a guy who wrote most of one of the popular NOSQL engines. And they both work as systems administrators. Not "useradd" systems administrators (although they are technically in that part of the org chart) but more like what Google calls "SREs." Rather than explaining what it is, this guy's google groups post does a better job:
If they just want you to add user accounts, that's weird. But SRE style jobs are where a lot of guys who write famous open source systems software end up.
from the google groups post:
"Yes, sysadmin skills are essential here, however we also require a very strong skillset in development, automation, high-level systems architecture, networking, statistics and general problem-solving."
Google says something like that for every job. From what I know about SREs, the "programming" you do is basically shell scripts to automate sysadmin stuff. Programming, sure, but the most boring type possible.
Yeah, SREs don't do all that much hard-core programming, but they need a skill that's almost harder: the ability to quickly evaluate whether a change is likely to bring the system down or otherwise cause reliability problems. SREs get consulted very often by engineers for questions like "Do we have enough capacity to burn 15% more CPU for the next week?" or "Is this change likely to cause an unacceptable risk of serving bad pages to users?" They also do code & design reviews.
In that respect, the job description is pretty accurate. You do need a strong skillset in development, automation, high-level systems architecture, networking, statistics, and problem-solving to perform well as an SRE. You need to be able to think on your feet and evaluate the suggestions that engineers are throwing at you before somebody does something stupid, as well as the ability to figure out how to avoid having problems recur.
"SREs don't do all that much hard-core programming"
On the contrary, some of the code I've seen written by SREs has been among the most delicate, finely tuned, and "hard core" (by my definition) I've seen.
That's because the odds that a sysadmin is an absolute nut for delicate, finely tuned, hard core code are orders of magnitude larger that the odds for a standard programmer.
It's not required, but that pedantic nature seems to help make a good sysadmin.
Personally, I cannot stand the type of programming which is encapsulating a bunch of "BUSINESS LOGIC" in code. I.e. "apply this much tax unless we are in florida or new york, then apply this much. except on the day after christmas..." or even worse, "restrict these parts of the site to the accounting department, except for gary because he's in fiance, too" etc.
You know how Clark Kent's boss, in the first Superman movie, says "A good reporter doesn't get great stories — a good reporter makes them great."?
Same thing with programming. If you are given enough freedom to do the job right, and you can find a way to motivate yourself, there are no bad programming jobs.
Zed Shaw himself has bragged about a system he wrote which does the kind of business logic you mention -- except by his description it's a meta-programming system that can add rules almost as fast as they can think them up. That sounds like some sort of constraint solver, which is among the fanciest kind of programming around.
I actually find that pretty interesting because it allows me to learn about different types of businesses I otherwise wouldn't be exposed to. I guess the key is to work in a field you're interested in.
"This role is in no way fitting for failed developers, it is for developers/engineers that have outpaced their career path. One that has a deep understanding of how things work: a complete systemic view of general site architecture."
Ah, nice downvotes, I guess a good lesson to not comment on smartass one liners who can later edit out the entire theme and content of their original post.
The original post I commented on: "Maybe because you write software used by sysadmins?"
http://www.sage.org/lists/sage-members-archive/2005/msg02937...
If they just want you to add user accounts, that's weird. But SRE style jobs are where a lot of guys who write famous open source systems software end up.
from the google groups post: "Yes, sysadmin skills are essential here, however we also require a very strong skillset in development, automation, high-level systems architecture, networking, statistics and general problem-solving."
sounds like a description of zed!