Is this true?
thaumaturgy: It depends on what you mean by "good" programmers or "good" server guys. Up to a certain point, yes, there are plenty of people that can do both well enough to get most jobs done.However: unless the guy you're hiring happens to be an active developer for the operating system that you're expecting to him to admin, then there's a pretty low chance that he could be considered an expert in both fields. Each field is just too deep and broad, and requires too much time to maintain current knowledge in.A programmer can probably figure out a particular sysadmin problem, and a good sysadmin can probably figure out a decent approach to a programming problem, but while they're figuring it out, you're paying them and potentially also paying for downtime or a slower development process.