[Cialug] Getting started as a sysadmin

[Matthew Nuzum]

Let me reply to my question:

If you are looking to get hired, you have two challenges: Look for what
skills are in demand now and learn them, and figure out what skills are
going to be in demand when you enter the marketplace.

Skills that should always be in demand are networking, esp TCP/IP and
routing, security and integrating with a Windows network. Virtualization is
a hot topic now and should continue to be a hot topic, but its hard to
predict where things are going to be. There's a lot of buzz around docker,
but VMWare seems to have staying power. Something that I know is big to
many businesses but is completely unfamiliar to me is storage. I don't even
know the technology de jour. Sadly, these things are expensive and you
probably won't get much experience without having an employer to sponsor
your education, which is why I know nothing about it. :-)

I went to Dice.com and did a quick search. You might want to browse through
these <https://www.dice.com/jobs?q=system+administrator&l=Des+Moines%2C+IA>
to see what looks interesting to you. Seems that one of the top attributes
they look for is "Good communication skills." Here's an interesting read
for a junior admin
<http://www.dice.com/jobsearch/servlet/JobSearch?op=302&dockey=xml/9/1/91db29ddb4377b62c7333a17a029238e@endecaindex&source=0&FREE_TEXT=&rating=&>.
I respect companies who look for juniors. That means they're willing to
invest in you. (as a side benefit, they get a good deal and they get
someone who's bought into their way of doing things) In my mind, it's the
opposite attitude of the company who wants a rack star sysadmin (see what I
did there?), where they want all the benefit and none of the risk.

On Tue, Feb 17, 2015 at 9:12 AM, Matthew Nuzum <newz at bearfruit.org> wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 17, 2015 at 9:08 AM, Tim Kromphardt <aaronmit at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Anyone willing to share what skills an aspiring system admin should
>> concentrate on?
>>
>
>
> Is your goal to get employed or do you just like learning new stuff?
>
> --
> Matthew Nuzum
> newz2000 on freenode, skype, linkedin and twitter
>
> ♫ You're never fully dressed without a smile! ♫
>
>


-- 
Matthew Nuzum
newz2000 on freenode, skype, linkedin and twitter

♫ You're never fully dressed without a smile! ♫