Hi sysadmins, I am thinking of doing a pretty drastic career change. I have 10+ years of experience in chemistry doing bioanalysis and a few years repairing breath alcohol analyzers. I have always considered messing around with electronics, networking, and computers/servers as a hobby and have been using various Linux distros as my main os for almost 20 years.
I have come to see my specialty in my line of work as a dead end. I’m pretty damn good at my job but I feel like automation is going to be taking over very soon, and I’m not that good that I think I’ll be in the top 10% that get to stick around and run the automations when the robots finally take over. So I’m considering doing a career change to IT/sysadmin.
What I’d like to know is what should I learn how to do to see if I’ll even like moving down this path? What can I set up at home, break, then fix that would give me an idea as to what the sysadmin life is really like?
I’m pretty sure I haven’t ever really done any sysadmin type work with my home setups, seeing as I build and set up services I want for myself and at the level I’m willing to put up with. For the most part I can be handed something already implemented and work within that space to keep it going and adjust it to what I want it to do or fit my set up. I can usually find my way through log files and error codes to figure out what the problem is and duckduckgo my way to a fix.
[…] and have been using various Linux distros as my main os for almost 20 years.
Matey. Get into any company that has linux junior positions. You already have more experiance in linux than 90% of the average (windows) Sysadmin.
For realzies now. Most will look weird at you if you ask them to edit a file in the shell or using a server VM that runs without graphical interface.
Get into a linux junior position and get started.
Learn lots and lots. After a few years moneywise you might be back your old job as experienced chemist.
I build and set up services I want for myself and at the level I’m willing to put up with. For the most part I can be handed something already implemented and work within that space to keep it going and adjust it to what I want it to do or fit my set up. I can usually find my way through log files and error codes to figure out what the problem is and duckduckgo my way to a fix.
Congrats, you’re more qualified than most of the people I’ve worked with.
I have techs I work with that keep wanting to climb the it ladder. I keep telling them to go deploy something at home. Build a network. Setup a separate DNS and DHCP server than your router.
If you work with Microsoft. It might still be good to spin up an AD domain just so you know what that’s like.
If someone walked in saying they did even those basic things, I think theyd be more experienced than most people that walk in the door.
You are right about automation. The big ones are Ansible and Teraform. If you want to get some training then you can look at some Red Hat courses.
I would look at some of the Red Hat certificates to boost your job chances. Like RHCSA or maybe some basic AWS/Azure cloud certs.
Thanks for the tip about ansible and terraform. I’m not quite at the point where I’m looking at getting certifications, mostly learning what I would need to be able to do to get those certifications. I’m 100% self taught with Linux, so I know what I’ve learned and I know there’s a bunch that I don’t know that I can point myself in the right direction, but I’m mostly concerned about the big hole that is how much I don’t know that I don’t know.
Sounds like you know at least enough for a junior admin job if you can find one. What you’re missing is the “street smarts” that only comes with experience. How things actually work in real life businesses, with real life users and salespeople and managers and C-levels throwing shit into the sauce.
Getting the job is going to be the hard part, for numerous reasons that have nothing to do with you personally. It’s a shitshow out there. Best of luck.
My story is quite similiar, though I was working in theoretical ecology. Turned out that I could handle the computers we were working with and their linux distros better than anything else. I went on for another 2.5 years and then quit. I aquired he LPIC-1 and LPIC-2 certificates from the Linux Professional Institute, worked as a pure Linux sysadmin for half a year and am now working as a sysadmin for Windows in Linux in my 5.th year.
Where I live you need at least some kind of certificate (or some on the job experience) and the will and ability to learn. In my experience most companies that are working with Windows will be quite happy to hire someone who doesn’t shy away from the terminal and/or cmd.I hear that, I find I enjoy troubleshooting my work over actually doing it.
