When I was trying to break into a Linux sysadmin role, everyone wanted 5y experience. No one seemed willing to train a new recruit (who had a homelab and wrote fairly complex Bash scripts). I got one line for a second interview at the same time that I got a job offer at a (mostly Win) job. I took the one that was a sure thing (I was unemployed at the time).
The paradigm of “we only want seasoned people” is a killer. There’s almost no investment in training new people today.
AI might be able to do the jobs of junior professionals in some years, but they won’t be able to train up experience, and there won’t be anyone left to cover when shit hits the fan after the old guy leaves.
Be it lawyers, software, civil and other engineers, doctors, scientists, teachers, sysadmins.
If they are not making the necessary investments into young people then those companies will be paying for it later.
My list of companies that gave me a hard time when starting out, are going to be getting special offers of at least 50% higher prices if they need my experience later.
Even from a selfish point of view, it’s not a good call for orgs to systematically shun the newcomers. The kind of candidate that has a homelab will train proactively and bring in state of the art practice in the process. It’s their loss.
I was in a similar boat myself some years back. Maybe 2013-2014 ish. Had been working for years in Windows admin and wanted to get into Linux admin. Homelab, loads of scripting experience. Couldn’t even get my foot in the door. Every single company only wanted graybeards. I eventually gave up and went back to school to get into software dev. The sysadmin scene was just so brutal and seemed like it was shrinking everyday. I have no idea what things are like now, but it was bleak back then
I’ve seen job postings that require more years of experience in a language than the time it’s been in existence.
That said, LinkedIn and Indeed seem to want 0-3 years of experience so they can pay less than basic living costs. Having 22 years of professional experience that required snap judgment calls, included a lot of automation and involved both internal and external client management makes me too expensive to consider … and I’ve never made more than $47K.
