Re: [PLUG] OT: (outta sight!) making IT in Philly?

["William H. Magill" <magill@mcgillsociety.org>]

On 08 Mar, 2006, at 14:07, Ronald Kaye Jr wrote:
> I want to know the same thing. I want to break into the Linux world
> My background is novell, windows server, admin/engineer, etc,
> and I have taught several Linux classes using RedHat, Fedora,  
> Slackware,
> and starting thursday night ... SUSE.
>
> rk
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Floyd Johnson" <fljohnson3@isp.com>
> To: <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 08, 2006 1:59 PM
> Subject: [PLUG] OT: (outta sight!) making IT in Philly?
>
> > (I risk getting blasted for asking the same question twice.)
> >
> > I'm starting to believe that those who have made a career with  
> > Linux are
> > more likely to be sysadmins than proggies. If that is correct, how  
> > did
> > you make a start of it, given no professional experience in Linux
> > administration, in this metropolitan area? If not, how does one "get
> > connected"?

By definition "a Linux professional" IS a System Administrator. One  
who deals with the operating system (Linux), not a programmer who  
writes production code in Cobol or C. (Perl programming doesn't  
count, it's expected of a SysAdmin.)

As a now retired Unix SysAdm (30 some odd years), my experience is  
that there is very little "*nix" work in the area. It is a dominantly  
Windows market today. (The only thing smaller is the OS X market.)  
The IT market in Phila has shrunk considerably in the past 5-10 years  
as most of the larger operations with many positions have downsized  
significantly ... thanks mostly to the disappearance of "big-iron"  
and its replacement by X86 based platforms.

That is not to say there is none, just that most all of it is  
strictly word-of-mouth referrals from lists like this one (PLUG),  
when one of the few positions open up.

Additionally, Linux SysAdmin work, like Unix SysAdmin work in  
general, has nothing vaguely like a "career path" structure at most  
companies -- you are it ... and are expected to do everything, from  
SysAdmin and Networking work to programming, on-call 24x7x365. In a  
big shop, you have a staff of one and can sleep somewhat regularly.

Put another way, many, if not most, of the positions available expect  
you to "hit the ground running" and be able to run the entire  
operation from day one. This means that finding a location that is  
willing to take on an apprentice or trainee level new-hire is quite  
difficult.

There does seem to be a fair amount of contract work around. But it  
too is mostly word-of-mouth referrals.

T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
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magill@mcgillsociety.org
magill@acm.org
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whmagill@gmail.com


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