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."

Comments

Re:How I did it

[ackthpt]

Yup, yup! =)

Those were the days when you defined yourself as a Geek, you stayed up all hours exploring kernels, writing C progs (with names like: foo.c, bar.c, fred.c and of course xyzzy.c), writing shell scripts, telling people there wasn't enough space and they needed to buy you a couple more drives all the while hiding all your neat stuff on your own partition, because it was neat! All this while taking classes in (ugh) Cobol and RPG because they were the languages you had to take.

Now people have this whack idea of an 8-5 job and wearing ties.

Re:How I did it

[toupsie]

Funny you mention it, that is exactly how it is for me. I used to work hard before I became a sysadmin. Once I did, I grew a beard, starting wearing blue jeans and T-Shirts then I started getting raises because I started to "look like a computer expert".

Re:How I did it

[Surak]

You forgot to mention the part obout growing your hair long. This is a prerequisite.

Furthermore, you must learn important acronyms like "RTFM". Especially RTFM. (Note: British Unix Admins should also know "RTBM").

Also, wearing hiking boots is not a bad idea, especially since you never know when a mountain is going to suddenly spring up in the server room.

And you should probably squint a lot, too...I'm not sure why, but it seems to help.

Re:How I did it

[piecewise]

Yikes....

Eating Taco Bell at 2 am in the morning should be paid for through workman's comp.