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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."
Believe me, you do not want to be a sysadmin of any kind whatsoever. You think you do, but you don't.
Upon entering college I got assigned work study with the IT dept. I was working with the two UNIX admins doing lowly stuff like changing aliases and updating dns records. This helped a ton because i got a chance to work on stuff that was terribly important while feeling my way out on the systems (there IS a difference between solaris and linux). Two years later and two unix admins later I was the full time admin and started getting the pay to prove it.
So I guess my answer would be to try and get a junior admin job if you can even if you don't plan on working with the comapny forever the experience you get doing the lowly stuff will let you get familiar with the systems as well as learning from hopefully experienced people and learning from their mistakes as well as your own.
--"Karma is justice without the satisfaction"
Certifications are useless! Unless its a Cisco or something... Education is worthless too! The one thing that has helped the most is experience. Get an entry level job and offer to help out on more complex things as much as possible.... Anyone with a BS and 100 certs will not be able to do the same job as someone thats got one year of practical experience.....
Isn't it odd how Liberal Arts majors seem to become Unix admins.
Adam
Bachelors of Music
Unix System Admin
That would be awesome. Pretty good money and all the pretty girls you could want.