I just realized there are a lot more developers than there are sysadmins

I’ve always thought of developers as being comparable to sysadmins. Sort of an item of a comparable magnitude. But I just realized there are a lot more Dev personnel than there are sysadmins.

Specifically, I went to a Node.JS meetup in Los Angeles, and it was a joint meetup with UUASC-LA (a LOPSA affiliate). It was like a 20:1 ratio for Web dev types to sysadmins.

I realized, well, you can have one server that has hundreds or thousands websites on it. And one sysadmin can administer tens or hundreds of servers.

But it takes lots of developers to handle those thousands of websites.

Therefore developers far outnumber sysadmins.

I don’t have any hard numbers on this, but looking around my own office, the theory bears out – I am one sysadmin supporting 5 developers. I am outnumbered!