Questions about Linux as a professional career

Comments, suggestions, compliments, etc
Post Reply
vitiin
Posts: 2
Joined: 2015/02/03 09:28:08

Questions about Linux as a professional career

Post by vitiin » 2015/02/03 10:10:47

Hi everyone,
I'm a second year student of Computer's Engineering and I'd like to ask you a couple of questions.
I came to this forum because my questions are about Linux system administration in general and CentOS in particular. As you may imagine, I'm currently thinking about my professional future. I've been interested in Linux since I was a kid and it's one of the subjects I'm interested the most of computing field.
As far as I know, RHEL is the main distribution on the enterprise field, so focusing my learning in RHEL-like distributions such as CentOS or Fedora may be a good approach. I guess many of you work on this field so my first question is: Is it worth? not talking about money but your feelings about it (demand, toughness, stress and so on). Secondly I'd like to know if CentOS is a good point to start working on this direction. I've read that RHEL certificates are quite valuable (expensive and difficult too) in order to look for a job.

Any response, additional thoughts or advice is really appreciated.
Thank you very much and please forgive any typos (English isn't my first language :) ).

aks
Posts: 3073
Joined: 2014/09/20 11:22:14

Re: Questions about Linux as a professional career

Post by aks » 2015/02/03 17:16:34

Yes, Linux sysadmin work is worth it. It comes in many forms though. Let's call them junior, intermediate and advanced. Most people (with no or limited commercial experience) start off at the junior level, which I feel is a lot more "grunt work", but would lay the foundation to progress.

Toughness: Yes some things can be really subtle and tough. Personally I find them very rewarding.
Demand: Depends on where you're working and what you're doing. Some places want people to be available 24x7, some don't. In some places, some thing have to happen "in the next 5 minutes" and some things don't. So that depends on the job you end up in.
Stress: A combination of toughness and demand....

As for the RHEL certifications, it probably depends on where you live. Personally I found them not to tough. I don't bother with them anymore, as I found a lot of employers at my level expect me to be "better" than what the RHCE offers. I suppose you could go for the even more advanced certifications, but that costs a lot more.

One piece of advice, don't just learn the Redhat/CentOS way, branch out and look at other distributions too.

vitiin
Posts: 2
Joined: 2015/02/03 09:28:08

Re: Questions about Linux as a professional career

Post by vitiin » 2015/02/04 17:11:44

Thank you very much aks, I take your advice :)

Post Reply