I always imagined that if I ever lost my job, it would be due to budget cuts, corporate restructuring, or maybe because I publicly pointed out that turning servers off and back on again does not qualify as a strategy. But no.

I was replaced by a 16-year-old.
With “AI-assisted systems administration skills.”
And he’s apparently doing twice the work I was doing.
For 20% of my salary.

Oh, and he’s still in high school.

This is fine.

---

Let’s Be Rational About This (While Screaming Internally)

Now, to be fair, kid’s got energy. He can configure Kubernetes clusters while eating cereal and uploading TikToks titled “#ZeroDowntimeChallenge.” He doesn’t stress during outages; he live-streams them. He doesn’t write Bash scripts—he has AI generate them faster than I can type #!/bin/bash.

Meanwhile, I spent half a decade developing the perfect 200-line script to automate Apache logs cleanup, only to watch AI do it in 12 seconds, offer three alternatives, write documentation, and then suggest improvements.

The AI even mocks me with comments like:

# Legacy workaround for backward compatibility with 2011 infrastructure.

I wrote that. I am that legacy.

---

“AI Isn’t Replacing You. Someone Using AI Is.”

That phrase sounded smart the first time I heard it at a conference. Now it feels like a diagnosis.

Young padawan SysAdmin doesn’t even memorize commands. Why would he? He just types:

“Hey AI, set up a redundant multi-region failover with automated traffic routing and zero-touch deployment.”

And AI replies:

“Sure. Estimated time: 4 minutes. Shall I include emojis in documentation?”

Meanwhile, I still have nightmares about manually editing httpd.conf over SSH at 3 AM because restarting the service risked downtime.

---

Productivity Through Not Knowing the Pain

He doesn’t fear breaking production because he hasn’t lived through breaking production. He doesn’t treat every push like he’s cutting wires on a bomb. He commits with confidence. Why? Because AI reviews it, tests it, containerizes it, and sends him a motivational haiku.

Meanwhile, I triple-check every semicolon like it might trigger thermonuclear war.

---

And What About Salary?

Apparently, “efficiency scaling with AI” justifies salaries optimized for “after-school employment level.”
His employment agreement includes phrases like:

“Working hours subject to homework schedule.”
“Extra compensation for TikTok tutorials that go viral.”

Mine included:

“Available 24/7 in case of any emergency.”
“Must respond to emails while on vacation.”
“No OT compensation.”

But hey, I got a cool polo shirt from the datacenter launch event, so that’s something.

---

Are We Doomed?

Let me be clear: yes, if we keep working the old way.
No, if we adapt faster than a caffeinated teenager with ChatGPT Pro.

We’re not losing to kids. We’re losing to the fact that AI has turned 20 years of hard-earned muscle memory into a ChatGPT prompt.

The job didn’t disappear. The way the job is done did.

---

What Now?

I could be bitter (I already am), but here’s the uncomfortable truth:

• The 16-year-old didn’t steal my job. He simply accepted the reality I tried to debate on LinkedIn.
• AI didn’t make my skills obsolete. It made my refusal to evolve obsolete.
• The future of sysadmin work isn’t hands-on—it’s brains-on. And prompt-powered.

So yes, we can still survive this. But we need to switch from “let me SSH into that box” to “let me architect, supervise, and leverage AI to do what humans used to.”

We need to let AI do the boring stuff so we can finally do the senior-level thinking we never had time for.

---

Final Thought (Before I Go Learn Prompt Engineering)

If a 16-year-old can do my old job with AI…
Maybe I should use AI to do his job and mine while sipping coffee and writing sarcastic blog posts.

Adapt or be replaced by someone younger, cheaper, and with better Wi-Fi.

Wish me luck. I’m off to rebrand myself as an AI-Augmented Systems Strategy Architect (Senior) before HR notices my age in decimal years.

---

Thanks for reading. If you liked this post, please share it before your intern replaces you with Python and vibes.