I’m trying to decide whether it would be worth spending an additional 2 years upgrading my associates to a bachelor’s in CS or not.
I don’t see much of a demand for the RHCSA in my area (Toronto, Canada) but I see that basically every job posting has a degree requirement.
I’d be 25 by the time I finish school with the degree but I honestly just want to start applying for jobs I don’t want to waste time.
I have the A+, CCNA and LFCS. I get my associates next week.
I’m aware that I’ll probably get a bunch of responses of people saying “I don’t have a degree or certifications!” but I’m genuinely confused as to how you’re in IT without either of those things unless you knew someone or got in very early so some elaboration would be nice.
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No certifications, no degrees, just good, old fashioned 15 years of experience.
None, anymore.
Eventually you end up with a resume/knowledge that sells itself.
I’m not talking about government jobs that require certain certs, though.
The only certification I have is from the Kansas City Barbeque Society, allowing me to act as a judge in BBQ competitions.
Things are probably different nowadays, but at least 15-25 years ago you could just apply for IT jobs and if someone lied about their skills it would hopefully show during the technical interviews. I don’t know if that counts as getting in very early.
BBQ certs…never knew that was an option and now have something to truly live for!
No certs and degree isn’t in CS. I just have lots of experience.
My pathway was basically:
- Got a low tier job as a glorified intern (paid)
- Switched jobs a few times, pay increasing each time. Chose interesting jobs.
- Left a low paying gov job for contract work. Got hired full time by one of my contractors.
- Have stayed at that job. Golden handcuffs.
“Choose interesting jobs”
THIS! A MILLION TIMES THIS!
The absolute best career choices I’ve made, in hindsight, were always from the interest in the work or quality of whom I was working with.
Took jobs for less pay, even turning down much higher offers, to choose the gig that was in the area I wanted to expand in.
Never accept just based on “it’s a few bucks more”. Unless it’s twice the pay AND you have something else to gain from the role, always grab the better experience or less stressful spot.
Yeah I usually alternate between a nonprofit doing sexy stuff and an evil corporation paying ridiculous high salaries every 1-3 years
everyones just like, “10 years of experience”…nobody is hiring people without experience so people without experience cant get experience…i dont get it…
The job market is circular and full of automation
Yes, it’s actually pissing me off reading these comments a little because it’s not very helpful to tell me to get experience when I don’t have any prior experience. That’s why I have these certs and a degree man
German here, no certs aswell
I got in to IT by just writing on my CV what I know I can do and what I learned in my free time.
Some company interviewed me, I could convince them that I really know a lot of stuff and that got me in.
Ever since then all I had where the companies I worked at and that was sufficient
My certs have all expired, but when I started I didnt have any at all.
The thing that worked for me was to apply to small businesses(Look into local MSPs). Places that have ~20 employees have much less rigor about certs and will more likely test that you’re amicable enough to mesh with the rest of the team. From there you can build experience and often get thr company to pay for your certs.
I got dropped out from university. I got a Microsoft Azure Fundamental cert since then, now I’m a mixed Windows/Linux sysadmin at an SMB. YMMV, I’m in Europe btw.
What’s the pay like for system admins in Europe on an average? Asking for mid-level (5-7 years of experience)
Depends a bit where you live, but my guess is on average € 45-50k, with whatever local benefits there are. Which translates to between 3 and 4k a month, depending on whether a 14th month is included. But this can be a lot higher or lower depending on the location.
Hmm, not bad. I care more about WLB than money so this is fine.
I’m certifiably insane, have a doctorate in frustration, and many studies published of “Oh, fuck, what is this? I don’t have time for this now, I have shit to get done”.
Good luck.
Just a lot of experience.
See a lot of “no higher Ed, just learned from experience.” any tips on things to do to gain more experience in sysadmin adjacent skills?
I like to think I’m quite competent with Windows/Linux, been a computer geek since I was really young, in a senior “tech support” position, but the kind of things I do at work are usually less advanced then the random side projects I do for fun… I’m basically the Linux guy for our group but that’s not saying much as the support is next to 0 until you get to an actual product role.
It feels like you’d have to have the job to get the experience, but maybe I’m just not aware of what/if there are any particular projects or things to do that could help with more sysadmin side knowledge.
To give a quick easy example, I have a friend who just started a server maintence type role at a different company and was tasked with setting up a Linux server, she ran into several snags trying to set it up with the documentation she was provided by the company, I asked what distro was it, and what commands was she running? Turns out it was just that she waa given instructions for YUM rather then APT (it was Ubuntu) lol
I did like one semester of computer science, does that count?
Honestly I just google shit until I understand it. Linux has great documention, and where it fails you can just read the source code.
Same, I do mean moreso building particular skills that businesses are looking for.
If it helps, 80% of the work i do when wearing my sysadmin hat is just ensuring that all of our systems are communicating properly.
I’m a self taught child of the 80s that loved to mess around with basic and serial modems when I could finally get 1.
Honestly, I got my first job by low balling the salary and knowing my shit enough to answer questions.
After 1 year I went to a new position paying double. And so on and so forth.
No certs just learning on the job + every IT/development class I could take in highschool
I have a WordPress site that I’ve been writing deep-dive linux articles on for about 10 years. Its more useful than any certification.
Portfolios showing experience are always more valuable than any sheet of paper.
Tbf, your blog is also just digital paper. :P
I mean if I wrote a literal paper, like 20 pages, then that would be the same, yes
I mean a certificate is 1 page and doesn’t tell you anything.
In my anecdata (TO), all the sysadmins I know have a CS degree. I don’t know many. Personally I haven’t professionally been a sysadmin per se but I’ve done cloud infrastructure design, development and maintenance at scale and I do have a CS degree. A CS degree from a good school teaches a lot. Not so easy to get these days with the higher prices of everything.
