Thinking About Becoming a SysAdmin
 

Now that I'm about to finally have my high school diploma, I'm looking into continuing education, and becoming a system administrator is looking like something I'd be interested in. I know Freebase is one, and that JWB is on his way to getting certified, so I just want to know how to go about it from people in the know (e.g. college courses and such).

Dude, **** living in an area where the economy almost entirely revolves around the military. Looking at listings for any jobs involved in IT, almost if not all of them are involved in some way with the military, which would require me getting a security clearance. Thankfully I've never been convicted of anything other than reckless driving that one time, but that sounds like a giant headache all by itself.

Well there's your opportunity to move out of bumfuck Slay$herland.

TIL I have two more degrees than Batlord. I have two degrees.

Story. Now.

Ran a stop sign I didn't see. Bicycle cop flagged me down. Tried to lose him in heavy traffic. Failed.

:rofl:

For Sysadmin, you really just need experience. Certs can help, and some sort of relevant IT degree that isn't programming can also help, but really your big thing will be experience, otherwise you're not going straight to Sysadmin with zero experience, but an entry-level position where you work your way up, assuming you show competence along the way. Granted, some companies let HR write their requirements and often times this includes the necessity for a 4-year degree. In the face of experience, you probably don't want to work for someone who values a piece of paper validating rote memorization that is inevitably lost after a while, over someone who has built and maintained networks and systems enough to know better than what, but how and why.

The education part of it is nice and all, but it's not the foot in the Sysadmin door when there's a lack of experience unless you get really lucky and/or know someone on the inside where you want to work.
Certs, they're nice too, but again, without practical experience, it's not much of an assurance. Believe me, knowledge is only as good as your proven ability to use it efficiently in this field.
Experience, however, trumps both of the above. I have a 2 year degree and zero certs. But 6 years experience prior to my first job in the corporate sector. That was the kicker.

So, with the above (barring any oddities that may happen or not happen), you're looking at something like this:

1. Get the education, pay for the certs and either get lucky or know someone and skip past the entry-level stuff. (and possibly f*ck up big time because you had no clue what you were doing as it relates to a myriad of environment variables)
2. Do the above but start at the bottom and prove your worth.
3. Spend a chunk of your life getting mandatory experience in the military and getting free education and certs afterward, but what you sacrifice in not needing to work your way to your goal in the corp sector, you lose in time on the outside in the corporate world.

If this were 2003, I'd tell you to join the Army because we did a lot of cool sh*t. It's not like that anymore in any branch regarding Sysadmin type IT. My best friend is in the military now and it has gone from 25 Bravos configuring entire networks and setting them up to support thousands of users to 25 Bravos requesting tickets from civilian contractors and military overlord style IT echelons. The hands-on that was, is no longer. At best, you might be able to fool a civvie on your resume', but for a mandatory 6 years wasting your life thinking you were going to be doing real Sysadmin stuff, the only thing you'll get these days is a free education and none of the experience.

With that said, if you can pay for 2 years of tech school as a systems/network guy, using tuition assistance if need be, you'll probably save yourself a lot more time just doing that, and then getting your foot in the door at a company large enough to move up in. If you take to the field and have a logical approach to troubleshooting and aren't an idiot, you'll probably be far better off in that situation because your experience will translate to corporate no matter where you go and when you're already in a company, it's a lot easier to move a hotshot up than pulling someone else in.

I already knew I'd be having to do internships and entry level ****, so it that what you're talking about with experience? And it's nice to know I won't necessarily have to shell out for an actual bachelor's degree, as I'm looking at an associate's at the local community college.

But as all the jobs around here are military ones, would they be more stringent about education level, since the military is after all a bureaucracy-choked bastard?

Pull your socks up, cut your hair and join the ****ing army. Best thing for ya.

Why don't you join the army? And why would I cut my hair when they'd just do it for me, free of charge?

Hell no I don't trust the military.

You're one weird republican.

And you, yer suspect.

Wow. Good luck.

Make sure to include your post count from here on your rez.

i gave up on my dream of getting into the IT field to pursue my dream of unloading trucks and posting on mb

in all seriousness though, you better live close to civilization or get some reliable transportation. there's **** all in terms of IT jobs out here

edit - also thought about joining the military, but i have a fear of commitment. and when i say commitment, i mean muslims.

Luckily I live right next to the world's biggest naval base, so there seems to be no shortage of IT jobs around here. The only other jobs in my vicinity would either be backbreaking work in the shipyards or my current fast food career.

Its Panera isnt it?

BK i

$$ is money,honey.

you live around norfolk? all this time i thought you were stranded in the hills like me.

Portsmouth, but it's all the same area, so same thing really. I'm fifteen minutes from downtown Norfolk.

This is true.

When I joined in 08, the Army was still heavily reliant on Soldier-run equipment. We got the stuff, we hooked it up, we configured it.

Nowadays, it has drifted to a civilian run overlordship.

It's a lot more difficult nowadays to find yourself in a spot in which you'll be working as a systems administrator. Then again, I'm not a 25B but I've worked with many. They just know a little bit more, but don't get the chance to expand on that knowledge depending on where they are in the world.

This doesn't mean that you will not get experience if you join the military, it just means you won't get as in depth into it nowadays like you would have years ago.

The military is still a great option, but it will be highly dependent on your attitude and your willingness to learn things outside of what the military crams down your throat.

The good thing about the army for me, is it got me interested in aspects of I.T. and telecommunications that I never knew about before.

The army paid for my Security Plus cert, gave me a clearance, and if and when I decide to get out, I can get paid to go to college.

I don't think Batlord should join the army. I bet he's the kind of guy who would fuck a person in the ass and not even have the goddamn common courtesy to give him a reach-around.

This is also a huge problem in our military.

To much butt-f*ckin, not enough reacharounds.

It's a sad life I live.

Well, internships will be good to get you in the door at an entry-level position. From that position, you can then work your way up. Simply being in that position for long enough and demonstrating ability will be both the experience and the confidence for you to be promoted. But don't try and jump ship to a higher position in another company until you've got a couple solid years in you with enough hands on.

Yea, an associates of applied science is good for getting the basics in terms of the knowledge at a bird's-eye view, and it's better than nothing when going into an entry-level position. It probably won't be enough to get you from where you're at right now, directly into a sysadmin position, but you'll have the background to work up to it.

Well... what kind of military jobs are you talking about? Jobs as a civilian contractor? If that's the case, yea, you're not going in entry-level. You'd actually be in a contractor agency. But if you're referring to looking up IT jobs in job websites and seeing things about the military, well... those are just advertisements to join the military and get a particular MOS. If you wanted to go the Sysadmin route in the military, you don't need anything except to be able to score high enough on your ASVAB. After that, they'll teach you what you need to know to do your job, and you'll do it for 6 years (Army, anyway) wherever they want you to do it, including deployments, etc. That's just joining the military.

I assumed I wouldn't just be able to jump into a 70K job after two years of school, so I'm prepared for eating **** for a while. I'll be 29 as of Saturday, so I guess it's time to pick a direction and just start walking before I can talk myself out of it.

I was just checking out local job websites to get a feel for the market around here, and they weren't just military jobs. Like I said, Hampton Roads' economy is based almost entirely around the military. Without it we'd pretty much be a rinky dink longshoreman's town nobody'd ever heard of.

So anything not ****ty like fast food is most likely going to be involved somehow or another with the military, whether by actually joining the navy, working the shipyards, or whatever. Likewise, it looks the same for IT jobs.

By all means, it's a worthy road to travel if you enjoy doing the work, no matter what it takes to get there.

Just make sure it's something you really want to do. A lot of times, you don't really figure that out for a while because you never know what it really involves, but if you're keen on solving problems and finding solutions, it's a good field to be in. Just beware... if you do your job too well and are too proactive, you can end up bored as f*ck and just surfing the internet all day while enjoying the smell of your own farts.

1.) If I wait to figure out what I most want to do, I'll never do anything -- like I've been doing since flunking out of high school -- as what I really want to do involves doing nothing. I'm serious when I say that my dream is to live on a tropical island where I can run my own off-the-grid ex-pat beach bar and be Jimmy Buffett without the guitar. Whether or not I have time to figure out what I want to do, it's beyond past time to at least pick a general direction.

2.) I'm not necessarily a computer tech head, or even the greatest problem solver (though that conclusion is mostly derived from my experience as a burger flipper who sucks at making twelve sandwiches at once), but a field involving computers is still the only thing I can see myself enjoying to any extent. Even if being a sysadmin isn't the right fit for me, the educational and experience path it would lead me down would probably at least point me in a direction that would suit me.

P.S. If you know IT-type jobs which suit a socially awkward introvert, then I'm all ears.

3.) I need to surround myself with fellow nerds. I can't take any more of this spending my working hours with low class anti-intellectuals. Nothing wrong with those people in general, and I've enjoyed the working comradeship I've developed with some of them in the past, but we're just not the same people and have nothing to talk about past smoking weed and bitching about our ****ty jobs. I don't think believing in evolution is that high of an expectation for a coworker.

honestly i dunno if sysadmin is even what i was studying for... here the job ads i see seem to call it network administrator. basically i was studying maintaining and troubleshooting company networks.. which for the most part translated to working with windows servers and clients and cisco networking equipment and protocols.

mostly it's learning arbitrary details about specific software + learning how to apply that knowledge to general troubleshooting. which i would guess you could do tbh batlord.. it just comes down to whether you are disciplined enough to force yourself to get it down.

i was originally interested more in computer science but they told me in terms of getting a job i was better off learning this. for computer science you really want a bachelors and possibly even more. so out of cheapness/impatience/low expectations, i settled. actually, truth be told, even computer science is a compromise for me... i prefer the biological sciences.. i just don't know how to pragmatically make that a career at this point without going into the medical industry, which doesn't interest me at all. mostly cause i just dislike being around sick people. but i can usually at least find some interest in anything that involves logic and science and engineering... assuming that i can grasp it. so i thought computers seemed like a safe choice in this era... cliche as it may be.

but even those basic IT jobs are mostly in cities that are too far from me atm. there is one place sorta nearby hiring people with software engineering skills, so i might just go that route instead, but first i have to brush back up on my programming first cause i really didn't focus on that for the majority of my time studying. and i have to learn a language i'm unfamiliar with.

basically it was good moving out here to go to school cause it's cheap as ****. but now that it's time to find a job i'm wishing i was back in fl. or at least charlotte or somewhere like that. after i leave this place i'm done with the country/small towns for a while.

Batlord in the army...bahahahaha! He wouldn't last 5 minutes.

Batty, Freebase is on point with needing experience. Work your way up bruh.