By employed I mean get a job in the industry either offline or online. Ideally something that would highly likely remain in-demand in the near future.
By employed I mean get a job in the industry either offline or online. Ideally something that would highly likely remain in-demand in the near future.
I studied hard for a few months, got my A+ and network+ certs from CompTIA.
Got my first helpdesk job making about 47K. 3 years later I was making 85K as a sysadmin. Stay in Helpdesk for 12-24 months, keep studying, start to learn a major infrastructure brand, Azure, AWS, Red Hat Linux, Xen Server, Cisco, etc.
Stay aggro on salary, don’t be afraid to jump from job to job as long as you’re there for at least a year and you leave on decent terms.
And for the love of Tux, don’t settle for piss pay. I can’t tell you how many IT folks I’ve met already in the industry who are Sys admins/engineers/network admins, making 20%,30%,40% under the average pay in their area. Money isn’t everything, but it sure as hell ain’t nothing either.
And never forget: The company doesn’t care about you.
This right here. Every time I bring this up, some Lemmy person starts licking the corporate boot.
You’re here to provide a service and get paid. Jumping jobs is the fastest way to increasing your salary. Your first job is to gain experience. The next jobs is supposed to get you paid.
But even after you get a entry level job, I see a lot of jr techs stop learning. Yes, helping someone with their mouse isn’t glamorous. Yes, resetting email passwords isn’t what you took the test for. And no, chances are your job will not let you climb the ladder because you’re doing so well fixing basic end-user BS.
Don’t ever stop learning on your free time and be prepared to jump to hit the higher levels of salary.
Totally right.
All great advice, but I’m curious why you say you should leave on decent terms? As long as you don’t get fired, what’s wrong with being candid in an exit interview and potentially ruffling feathers by saying what you couldn’t before?
So this is definitely something that varies depending on your situation.
Depending on what country/state you live in, you may or may not have good employment laws protecting you.
On top of that, if you leave on solid terms, your former employer might put in an extra good word for you to your next one. I’ve even had one who offered to write a personal recommendation letter for my next employer.
It depends a lot on how much you are willing/able to play the game, and what the laws are in your region, and the nature of your employment type.
Leave on such good terms that you can use them as references and don’t have to fear them bad mouthing your skills.
Thanks. So is your advice to, basically, study networking?
Not only networking unless you just wanna be a network admin. But networking is one of the most important components, you need the basics to be a good sys admin regardless.
Understand IP addressing, subnets, DHCP, DNS, OSI model, basics of packet anatomy, basics of routing and switching.
Have a solid understanding of those things plus a few other networking subjects, you’ll be able to troubleshoot really well. Don’t be the sys admin who barely understands IP addressing, I’ve known that person…not good.