[Cialug] Linux Jobs

[Aaron Porter]

On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 9:53 AM, Todd Walton <tdwalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> I asked this same question once on the KPLUG (San Diego) mailing list.
>  Some of the guys there had gotten Unix jobs at their university way
> back when, and a surprising number had gotten into it by starting
> their own ISP or similar business, in the early days of the Internet.
> Both of those options seem unrealistic today.  Both have "matured"
> into professionally run jobs, though I could imagine being a student
> lackey or intern, if you were attending university.

I fall into this category... starting an ISP back in the very early
90's. The good ole' days... a couple of 486-DX33's, stacks of modems,
a CSU/DSU and the Æleen Frisch book. Then again, from 1993-2001 or so
just being able to get an httpd up and running was a very marketable
skill.

We also had a LUG in school with the specific focus of professional
development -- took the standard list of campus IT services (web,
mail, samba, appleshare, database hosting) and always managed to stay
a few very meaningful steps ahead of the support curve. We ended up
getting a couple of the liberal arts departments to move their
websites & filesharing onto our (built from scraps) network both
because we didn't charge-back like the central IT did and because our
performance, uptime and support were better. At least 8 of our members
(myself included) got jobs after school directly from our experiences
and reputation in the LUG.

Today, if you're hell-bent on being paid to develop your skills I
frequently see companies hiring datacenter tech type people. In our
organization that can be a rapid growth position. But if you're
willing to forge ahead on your own -- computers, network access, etc
are so much easier to come by than they used to be. VMs on home
systems or hosted are another great development for the aspiring
admin. Sit down, imagine all of the moving parts on the type of
network you'd like to work on and start building them. Scrape together
parts for a 1U or two... find a cheap place to host them. Convince a
couple of friends to move their websites & mail domains over. Not that
hard to do, and you can point to the system you run with happy users
and a visible internet presense. I know not every company's excited to
hire the self taught but some are, and they're usually a blast to work
for.