Doing a PhD in humanities and enjoy it. I’ve recently really started to enjoy Linux, self hosting, and messing around with various lab stuff.
There are not as many sysadmin job these days because so many on-prem deployments have moved to the cloud. Consider becoming a cloud version of a sysadmin (whatever they’re calling it now…). Every platform offers lots of free learning resources and has a certification process.
Maybe look into cloud dev-ops
If you want some actual useful skills for a business, learn some cloud.
Azure has a free tier for students that you can renew every year you are still a student.
Can’t hurt to know a thing or two there. Even if it is just to help move back on-premise
https://www.heise.de/en/news/IDC-Many-companies-want-partly-out-of-the-cloud-10001934.html
What I would do is get a lot of experience with a lot of different systems.
If you’re enjoying self hosting and setting stuff up, go to something like TurnKey Linux and download a handful of applications that you’re interested in using.
Spin up virtual servers on a proxmox server, install the turnkey Linux systems, and then learn how they work. Get ldap running on your home network. Set up an nginx reverse proxy and get a certificate so that you can go to a duckdns internal name spaces instead of IP addresses.
Find use cases for your home network system and then find how to make the systems you have available work for those use cases.
And for the love of god, find yourself a cheap Windows server license and virtualize one of those and integrate it into the mix.
Host a WordPress or Joomla on IIS, set up a pihole for your home DNS on Ubuntu server.
Run a jellyfin server and download a bunch of public domain movies to it.
Hello, find yourself some Kiwix images that you like and figure out how to get https and nginx names running on them.
The more you play around with the technology, the more you’ll find out what you like doing and what you don’t like doing and what you’re good at and what you’re not good at and that will help you understand where you fit and wear your talents lie.
Once you know that I’m sure you can put those talents to use for gainful employment.
2 years of help desk minimum
Find a VAR. listen to the needs of your partner, talk to the VAR and set up sales calls.
Get pricing. Find out if they offer multiple year discounts.
Set up a ticketing system.
Fix the VARs quotes and forward them to your partner, wait for approval.
Follow up in a week.
Follow up in 2 weeks, explain that the quotes expire.
Work late Friday night patching for a 0-day, missing out on date night.
Find out Broadcom bought your homes plumbing and pay 3x what it cost to install to use it for another year.
Your kid got a call from Microsoft and now you can’t access email, fix that ASAP.
Cooking! Everybody’s gotta eat. Sorry first thing that came to mind.
AS 900
Programming is the biggest skill you can learn, as it helps with automation and separates you from install clickers. You don’t have to be advanced, just the basics helps troubleshooting when you understand how software flows from the inside.
Sysadmin and programming are different skill sets. I have yet to see a person that can do both reasonably well.
do learn
I’ve an idea.
You idea to tell me, you know it?
You list an education qualification in your post which has nothing to do with your stated intention. Yes, you’re learned and probably smart but why do you want to be a sysadmin?
Have you ever coded anything? Do you want to learn that? Do you want to use your humanities degree to be a caring supporter of stupid system users? Are you even aware of the credo of the bastard operator from hell?
Sorry…saw your post and just wanted to take a piss…you’ll be fine if you want to do that but it’s probably not just like “installing linux” on a computer.
Why the rudeness? My post says I enjoy managing my home stuff and am considering it as a backup job opportunity other than my PhD. Nothing unclear there.
It probably the fact that the industry is getting flooded with people who think working in IT is a easy get rich job.
In reality it sucks and the pay is mediocre. It is something you get into because you love it. There is no easy button like a lot of people want.
Thanks for explaining their response.
I hoped my post was clear, I’m really enjoying self hosting and managing servers. Just thought I would see what else I could do to educate myself and provide another opportunity
work on how to explain things to users. I’m good at layman’s terms, but not at writing out technical stuff for documentation and billing.
It probably the fact that the industry is getting flooded with people who think working in IT is a easy get rich job.
It certainly was 20-25 years ago. Zero formal education besides high school would land you a job 5 times the minimum wage working mostly in air conditioned comfort. Upward mobility was built in, and many of us have leveraged that for even higher paying positions with the gained experience and continued learning of the tech on our own.
Don’t mind my jaded fellow IT pro. The job eats at you if you’re in a bad position, which I’m guessing he/she/they/drag is.
In a small way I can see they’re trying to help (even if the delivery stinks), as IT isn’t just something you can dabble in and then pivot into it at this point in time. If you want to work in IT you really have to want it and make it a priority simply because the competition is fierce and getting started is grueling and will potentially burn less dedicated people out.
To support that point it’s worth pointing out that the entry level of the industry is both very saturated and generally very unsatisfying help desk work. Without dedicated experience in system administration and/or formal education in IT you’re most likely only going to get a help desk position, and that’s if you’re lucky.
That’s not the end of the road though, at that point you’ll need to absorb as much knowledge as you can, get some certifications to show you know what you’re doing (which certs will definitely change by the time you get there.). Once you have them you can leverage those certifications into a better position. That position might be a junior sysadmin if you’re lucky, but in my experience those positions want years of experience in sysadmin tasks.
As the saying goes: The hardest part of getting into IT is getting a helpdesk position, the second hardest part is getting the hell out of helpdesk.
That’s the general roadmap. If you have more specific questions feel free to ask away.
I’m on mobile so it’s hard to respond to everything you said. Thank you for a detailed response and for being kind!
I am totally unaware of the field other than my uncle describing how difficult it can be. Thanks for explaining more.
Sounds like trying to find work at my libraries help desk might be a good step? I lost some hours on another university job so that could help and be a learning experience.
Maybe I can ask what could I be teaching myself at home that could transfer to a desirable skill?
I’ve worked with some languages (Java and python), docker, VMs, some managed switch and vlan stuff, and I guess generally managing multiple servers on and off site (house).
Thanks again! Their response as the first one I get in the community was upsetting and you made it better :)
I’m happy I could help, I hate to see current industry workers forget what it was like to wonder and be uncertain before taking the plunge. Gatekeeping is an unfortunately common part of IT.
It sounds like you have a solid start in terms of homelab work, I’d definitely talk to your local library and get some real workplace experience. Homelab experience is easy to disregard when hiring unless you can show your work too, so network diagram charts or a splashy data visualization page on a server you can access remotely will help in interviews. The library experience is actual workplace application of knowledge so that’s much harder to ignore and should be a priority.
I wish you all the best, I’m sorry your first encounter with the community was a territorial greybeard. As ever, I remain happy to help if you think of more questions.
