[TriLUG] Linux Careers in the Triangle

Thu Jul 23 10:42:37 EDT 2015

       I am going to reply below some of your questions. Be prepared
that my replies are mine; nothing I say is remotely close to the
opinions of the club and/or more knowledgeable members.

On Thu, Jul 23, 2015 at 10:10 AM, Greg Pubill via TriLUG
<trilug at trilug.org> wrote:
> Hi TriLUG,
>
> As a recent arrival to the group I would like to ask for any
> suggestions/comments/advice from senior members which may help focus my
> Linux career path.
>
> I'm at a stage where I have recently completed my degree, which took me a
> while, my daughter is in college herself. I have worked with several Linux
> distros but I don't feel I've gotten so much experience out of if because my
> responsibilities were install, edit config files and ship it out. So this
> was a little repetitive.
>
> If you were on my shoes; where would you go next?
>
> For example, would I want to learn programming (C, C++) or; would I want to
> focus on cloud computing (Hadoop, OpenStack...) or maybe web development?
>
     I see all our monkeying with computers divided into carefully
separated groups which tend to merge at random times:

1) Maintaining the system and services, which includes config files,
patches, and so on. Most of the time that can be a drag, so I like to
think on how to make it more automagic so a lazy guy like me can be
doing something else. That can be done with things such as
puppet/salt/chef/ansible and git/svn on the back. But, you also need
to know what those machines and services are up to, so you need some
monitoring like Nagios on the loose.

Scripting, be it bash/ ash/ bourne, perl, or python (to name a few) required.

2) Designing and deploying new systems. Someone tells you they need a
new website or dev box. Or you decided on your own (initiative) the
mail server really should be separate from the web server. Or decided
network storage is a neat idea after all. How do you go about doing
that? Do you have or can create some guidelines?

Once again I am a lazy ass and don't want to build the machine from
scratch and configure it by hand. So, I would want to grab some juju,
packer, kickstart, or preseed and let them get the machine up and
running enough so I can feed to puppet/salt/chef/ansible. Or maybe a
cloud solution makes more sense for the job.

Scripting, be it bash/ ash/ bourne, perl, or python (to name a few) required.

3) Dealing with customers: to some degree, you will always have to
deal with customers, be them the secretary or who signs your paycheck.
And you have to make them feel they are not idiots and figure out what
they really want when they do not know. And then show how amazing you
are. So you need ticketing systems, metrics, and good presentation and
people skills.

4) Programming is done in many levels. On the low end is people like
me writing stuff in Python/Bash or having to know enough php/whatever
to figure out why a program is not working. On the high end you have
those who develop drivers, interfaces, and serious applications and
databases. They -- the serious developers -- tend to make more money
than the others, but you have to like doing it.

5) Securing the playground. People keep trying to break in or just are
careless. So you need to make sure people can get to where they need
seamlessly while keeping the undesirables out. And that means testing
and breaking and learning from that.

A lot of jobs require some of the above, so what of the above do you
like the most? Also, do you want to be the guy who keeps things
running or the guy who creates new things?

Now, the trilug has one/more servers; you might want to get involved
in that to log some hours and learn/teach something in the process. Or
volunteer to do a presentation. Or go to an event. And network a bit,
get others to know you.

> I have more time these days, my contract recently ended. I could use this
> time to prepare for a cert, or audit a class, or follow some online training
> course to sharpen my skills.
>
> Any thoughts you can share would really help me personally, and who knows it
> might even serve to help others thinking about careers in Linux and open
> source.
>
> Greg
> --
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