2009/1/6 Blindraven <blindra...@gmail.com>: > Is there such a thing as a job that'd be willing to put someone > through the starter ropes with Linux in a Junior SysAdmin role and > whiz them of to places for certifications? (or not?) > Is this more of a dream then a reality?
Sorry. Can't help you on that one. > > I've heard time and time again people say employers prefer attitude > and willingness to learn then a piece of paper, But is this just > elitist fluff? As an employer, back when we were looking for a sysadmin we certainly valued self-learners and people who are enthusiastic about the technology much more than those who could only show that they went through the motions and got the stamp to show that they know how to answer questions in a uni exam, and will treat the position as a pure 9-5 day job (not that I want to over-employ my workers but I want not to have to do all the thinking and problem-solving for them). This doesn't mean I totally discard good papers. e.g. from what I heard about the RedHat certification it sounds like something which actually proves that someone knows their stuff (it has two separate hands-on exams with high pass mark). They'd still have to show me that they can come up with on-the-spot solutions for real-life situations, to prove that they can think on their feet. Same with uni degrees - they aren't a requirement in my view but couldn't hurt. > Does anybody have any advice on good places to look for these types of roles? > I'm talking novice/intermediate every.day administration, comfortable > with bare CLI etc. I don't know how much it helps you but try maybe finding a sourceforge/Google-Code/other open source project you can contribute to (maybe help maintain servers for a free project such as wikipedia/debian/centos). Good system admins also need to know/understand programming so it would help your resume if you could show that you took part in open source projects, and what contribution you made. There are tons of perl/shell-scripting opportunities. Also you can/should set yourself system admin tasks to play on your own computer or on some virtual environment (I see very sexy stuff about amazon) (e.g. "setup a mail+imap+ldap+http+backup+samba+http+printer+nfs+vpn+svn server with fail-over, monitoring, stats gathering, automatic deployment tool (everyone likes puppet these days but personally I'll try "rollout") and virtualization"). Just an idea. --Amos -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
