[ale] Breaking into the field [Inquiry]

[Edward O. Holcroft]

Arie,

As am ageing sysadmin with no programming skills I can tell you that is my
biggest shortcoming. I blame starting my sysadmin life as an MCSE for that
lack of vision.  I have to go to the dev guys every time I need something
more involved than an ugly bash script. I did a course in Python a few
years back and it helped a lot, but still, I'm tool old and mostly too busy
too build meaningful coding skills now. The difference between a mediocre
sysadmin, like me, and a great one, is the ability to hack code together on
the fly to solve problems that don't yet have solutions.

Coding skills I label as "just-in-case" knowledge. my day-to-day sysadmin
stuff, much of which has changed in meaningful ways over the decades, I
level as "just-in-time" knowledge, meaning, I only learn it when I need it.
I would hire someone that can hack a decent bash script together but with
only rudimentary knowledge of say, Apache. If you wait too long, you end up
never learning the "just-in-case" stuff. The sysadmin side is not that hard
to pick up as needed, but coding is not something you cannot quickly
"figure out" one day when you realize you need it. Well not me anyway, so
maybe that's just my own bias coming through.

Anyway, that's my 2c on what's more important. Learn to code to at east a
basic level of proficiency - that's the base of your pyramid. The sysadmin
stuff is the layers on top.




_________________________________________

*Edward O. Holcroft*
IT Operations Manager

*Madsen, Kneppers & Associates, Inc.*
Construction Consultants & Engineers
11695 Johns Creek Parkway, Suite 250
Johns Creek, GA 30097

*O*  770.446.9606  |  *F*  770.446.9612  |  *C*  770.630.0949  |
eholcroft at mkainc.com

www.mkainc.com

On Fri, Sep 22, 2017 at 11:52 AM, Arie vW <willigen.van.a at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>
> Some of you may know me from the Sunday meet-ups at Harry's Pizza. I am
> looking for input on how I might land my first Linux related job. My end
> goal is to find myself in the role of a Junior Systems Administrator
> somewhere within a few years.
> With no technical background, my research has indicated that I must start
> at the bottom, ie. Help Desk. It was also recommended that I look for any
> position within a web hosting company, since nowadays these companies tend
> to run Linux under the hood.
> I am striving to learn as much as I can about Linux server implementation
> and maintenance and wanted to reach out to see if anyone had any
> suggestions on how I might get my foot in the door somewhere, or any other
> insightful pieces of advice.
>
> Thanks for you time,
>
> Arie
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
>
>

-- 
MADSEN, KNEPPERS & ASSOCIATES USA WARNING/CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This 
message may be confidential and/or privileged. If you are not the intended 
recipient, please notify the sender immediately then delete it - you should 
not copy or use it for any purpose or disclose its content to any other 
person. Internet communications are not secure. You should scan this 
message and any attachments for viruses. Any unauthorized use or 
interception of this e-mail is illegal.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20170930/33aebfc8/attachment.html>