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How Did You Become a UNIX Administrator?
xylix asks: "I figure there must be a number of UNIX admins among the Slashdot readership and I am wondering how you got into that field to start with. The reason I am asking is that I really want to be a UNIX admin but don't know how to get from here to there. What kind of education did you have(CS or other)? How did you start out (as a junior admin or moving laterally from another position)? What certifications are useful?"
"I am an English teacher now but am a techie at heart and spend all my time coding and using various Linux / BSD distros. I figure I am capable of handling a junior position, but most ads I see for *nix admins are looking for several years of work experience (on specific platforms), CS or EE degrees (I have a BA in philosophy) and perhaps years of experience in a specific industry (financial, wireless, transportation...).
I have been told by a couple people that at 33 I am far too old to start ANY kind of tech career (with no previous work experience). Anyone out there with experience to counter that? I know the job market is tough right now, but I am thinking long term."
Grow a beard.
Grow your hair into a long pony tail.
Avoid the sun at all costs.
Bash windows.
Develop a god complex.
Ding you have just leveled up to Unix Admin.
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
The rest was natural.
I asked my closed-source vendor about ubiqitous computing.
He answered "Oh no! You-not-be-quit-us!"
Not a mainframe and not COBOL, you ignorant little man.
I'm making a comfortable living now as a UNIX admin, and I owe it all to the number of reboots and crashes in WinNT. I couldn't stand it anymore, so I went to CompUSA and bought SuSE Linux 6.1 and installed it that very day. I vowed to myself that if I couldn't do it in Linux, I'd die trying or do without. I quickly learned how to do most basic sysadmin type tasks, and got a job testing software at a local company (Novell!) and NFS interactivity between their software and Linux. From there I went to a Jr. SysAdmin position at another local company, where I picked up Solaris, and FreeBSD. I soon thereafter migrated to FreeBSD for myself (couldn't be happier), and picked up another new job! This time I got to experience HP-UX 10.20 and 11i, and Tru-64. This job only lasted a short time before I was head-hunted to work for yet another company (finally in real sysadmin pool, not a jr. anymore) for my FreeBSD and Solaris experience.
The bottom line is don't stop learning and take every opportunity to move up you can get. The rewards are satisfaction and an endless increase to your skill set. Good Luck!
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy, and taste good with ketchup.
heh, I had a interview for tech support and walked out with a programming job. 4 years later Im making $50,000/yr and Im 21. Go figure.
Sig? Hah, I don't need no stinking sig!