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Todd Walton wrote:
> On 6/2/05, Lan Barnes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
>>Experienced only -- sorry to have to say it.
> 
> 
> For as long as I can remember, this has always been a problem. 
> Everybody wants experience, no one wants to give it.  I'm currently

I made my own experience to get my foot in the door. How? I ran my own
webserver, mailing lists, etc. on a Linux box with a 24/7 dialup modem
ppp connection. I gave accounts to my friends and set them up with
webpages. I ran a big mailing list which had 5000 people and 50+
postings per day. In doing so I learned a lot about email servers. I
started an ISP (consisting of 4 dial-in modems running SLIP) and a 28.8k
connection to the net. It only lasted a summer but I learned a lot and
it was something on my resume. All this got me my first sysadmin job.
The rest is history. Nobody said it has to be paid experience.

How can you get experience with SCM? Offer free SCM services to open
source projects. Read the book on Subversion, register freescm.org and
host a subversion repository for anyone willing to trust their code to
you. It doesn't have to have 100% uptime, just don't  lose their data. A
daily backup to CD would suffice. Then you can walk into an interview
and say "As the founder of freescm.org I manage the source code
repository for 50 open source projects consisting of $x lines of code
with $y checkins average each day and have made $y releases." With some
real ammo like that you might actually fool someone into thinking you
are an SCM expert and get yourself a job! :) Just a wild idea. But
something along these lines is surely the way to go.

> I did so well today, and worked so
> efficiently, that they didn't need me to come back tomorrow.  I worked
> a lot faster than the lady was expecting me to, and everything got
> done.  I deprived myself of a full day's worth of money.

Sucker! ;) Learn from the wisdom of Dogbert:

http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20050515.html

> The point being: there is **way** too much emphasis placed on
> experience, in my experience.  I saw a job listing for Linspire help
> desk that wanted a bachelor's degree in computer science!!  If I had a
> bachelor's degree in computer science I would *not* be manning the
> phones, thank you very much.

When the supply is greater than the demand they can require such things.
But I too would be pretty depressed if I got a degree only to work help
desk.

- --
Tracy R Reed
http://ultraviolet.org
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