No certifications, no degrees, just good, old fashioned 15 years of experience.
this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2024
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None, anymore.
Eventually you end up with a resume/knowledge that sells itself.
I'm not talking about government jobs that require certain certs, though.
The only certification I have is from the Kansas City Barbeque Society, allowing me to act as a judge in BBQ competitions.
Things are probably different nowadays, but at least 15-25 years ago you could just apply for IT jobs and if someone lied about their skills it would hopefully show during the technical interviews. I don't know if that counts as getting in very early.
BBQ certs...never knew that was an option and now have something to truly live for!
No certs and degree isn't in CS. I just have lots of experience.
My pathway was basically:
- Got a low tier job as a glorified intern (paid)
- Switched jobs a few times, pay increasing each time. Chose interesting jobs.
- Left a low paying gov job for contract work. Got hired full time by one of my contractors.
- Have stayed at that job. Golden handcuffs.
"Choose interesting jobs"
THIS! A MILLION TIMES THIS!
The absolute best career choices I've made, in hindsight, were always from the interest in the work or quality of whom I was working with.
Took jobs for less pay, even turning down much higher offers, to choose the gig that was in the area I wanted to expand in.
Never accept just based on "it's a few bucks more". Unless it's twice the pay AND you have something else to gain from the role, always grab the better experience or less stressful spot.
Yeah I usually alternate between a nonprofit doing sexy stuff and an evil corporation paying ridiculous high salaries every 1-3 years
everyones just like, "10 years of experience"....nobody is hiring people without experience so people without experience cant get experience....i dont get it...
The job market is circular and full of automation
Yes, it's actually pissing me off reading these comments a little because it's not very helpful to tell me to get experience when I don't have any prior experience. That's why I have these certs and a degree man
German here, no certs aswell
I got in to IT by just writing on my CV what I know I can do and what I learned in my free time.
Some company interviewed me, I could convince them that I really know a lot of stuff and that got me in.
Ever since then all I had where the companies I worked at and that was sufficient
My certs have all expired, but when I started I didnt have any at all.
The thing that worked for me was to apply to small businesses(Look into local MSPs). Places that have ~20 employees have much less rigor about certs and will more likely test that you're amicable enough to mesh with the rest of the team. From there you can build experience and often get thr company to pay for your certs.
I'm certifiably insane, have a doctorate in frustration, and many studies published of "Oh, fuck, what is this? I don't have time for this now, I have shit to get done".
Good luck.
I got dropped out from university. I got a Microsoft Azure Fundamental cert since then, now I'm a mixed Windows/Linux sysadmin at an SMB. YMMV, I'm in Europe btw.
What's the pay like for system admins in Europe on an average? Asking for mid-level (5-7 years of experience)
Depends a bit where you live, but my guess is on average € 45-50k, with whatever local benefits there are. Which translates to between 3 and 4k a month, depending on whether a 14th month is included. But this can be a lot higher or lower depending on the location.
Hmm, not bad. I care more about WLB than money so this is fine.
I'm a self taught child of the 80s that loved to mess around with basic and serial modems when I could finally get 1.
Honestly, I got my first job by low balling the salary and knowing my shit enough to answer questions.
After 1 year I went to a new position paying double. And so on and so forth.
Just a lot of experience.
No certs just learning on the job + every IT/development class I could take in highschool
See a lot of "no higher Ed, just learned from experience." any tips on things to do to gain more experience in sysadmin adjacent skills?
I like to think I'm quite competent with Windows/Linux, been a computer geek since I was really young, in a senior "tech support" position, but the kind of things I do at work are usually less advanced then the random side projects I do for fun... I'm basically the Linux guy for our group but that's not saying much as the support is next to 0 until you get to an actual product role.
It feels like you'd have to have the job to get the experience, but maybe I'm just not aware of what/if there are any particular projects or things to do that could help with more sysadmin side knowledge.
To give a quick easy example, I have a friend who just started a server maintence type role at a different company and was tasked with setting up a Linux server, she ran into several snags trying to set it up with the documentation she was provided by the company, I asked what distro was it, and what commands was she running? Turns out it was just that she waa given instructions for YUM rather then APT (it was Ubuntu) lol
I did like one semester of computer science, does that count?
Honestly I just google shit until I understand it. Linux has great documention, and where it fails you can just read the source code.
Same, I do mean moreso building particular skills that businesses are looking for.
If it helps, 80% of the work i do when wearing my sysadmin hat is just ensuring that all of our systems are communicating properly.
So funny that almost nobody got certs working in IT, same for me basically, I have a BA in Business Administration and thats it. ^^;
No certificate now but if I was starting out I would get Red Hat certifications. Also Azure certs.
IMHO, a CS degree doesn't help you at all for sysadmin work but having a bachelors degree does. It is stupid but many employers have a bachelor's degree as a minimum requirement...regardless of what it was in.
I have a WordPress site that I've been writing deep-dive linux articles on for about 10 years. Its more useful than any certification.
Portfolios showing experience are always more valuable than any sheet of paper.
Tbf, your blog is also just digital paper. :P
I mean if I wrote a literal paper, like 20 pages, then that would be the same, yes
I mean a certificate is 1 page and doesn't tell you anything.
In my anecdata (TO), all the sysadmins I know have a CS degree. I don't know many. Personally I haven't professionally been a sysadmin per se but I've done cloud infrastructure design, development and maintenance at scale and I do have a CS degree. A CS degree from a good school teaches a lot. Not so easy to get these days with the higher prices of everything.
PhD in Quantum Optics
Still waiting for the day my education pays off.
none, I was just blessed with the role against my will because no one else was around
No higher education, no certifications, just 10 years of experience on different IT job positions, raging from junior web dev to big DevOps projects.
In my experience (I'm in EU/PL) what matters most are actual technical skills and ability to demonstrate them on interview. I changed my job like 5 times and each time I aim for slightly more advanced work and slightly better revenue.
I'm fresh off the school bench myself, and work is now requiring us to take RHCSA, RHCE and Terraform certs. As we are consultants this is the only "proof" customers will trust when they choose us for various jobs.
So far so good though, starting with RHCSA and it's really good practice, especially for getting to know the ins and outs of the Linux system(RHEL). The learning material (the official stuff from red hat) is also very thoughtful, with theory, quizzes, guides and labs.
Best of luck 🙌
No relevant degrees, just lots of demonstrable experience and projects.
I have an unfinished Software Engineering degree. While studying, I started a small businesses to do some freelance IT work on the side and one client offered me a full-time job, so I put the studies on hold and then never looked back. Been climbing through different positions and companies since then. Experience is valued much higher than a diploma, especially in an industry that evolves too quickly for education to keep up. I quit the industry recently to start teaching, because there is huge need for teachers that can teach programming, and working with people is much more rewarding than a big paycheck (imo).
In all of my job interviews, I've been asked more about the company I started while studying, than the degree that I quit. So I guess my tip is to start your own thing or start teaching. Having your own business with a license also makes it way easier for big companies to hire you for contract work.
My rhcsa expired and I only have experience beyond that. Your task right now is to find a job and the easiest way to do that is to leverage your network. If you don't have a network, you need to prove that you can commit to a long term plan and learn a skill. Most people do that with degrees. Unfortunately a lot of people have degrees and technology is getting more competitive. That's where you see school competitions and certifications. If you don't want to do that, you'll need to be able to speak competently to the role.
Unfortunately right now I do not recommend platform/devops/sre for anyone breaking into the field. If I create an application today, it's server less or bring your own dockerfile on a provided machine image. So what are you administrating? Legacy shops will be around for decades, but the future here is layered architecture not os tasks.
I have a Sec+ but that's just a job requirement; the only parts of the test that I've actually used were public/private key cryptography, and even then I was just dumbing it down to explain to end users. Otherwise it's all just experience.
Degree requirements are mostly there to satisfy HR (and can probably be waived in most cases), IT is realistically a trade profession.
Where I live, a lot of smallish companies look for people with experience rather than certificates or degrees. I‘m a hobbyist turned professional and it shows. I cant talk any of the jargon but I handle servers well and I make short work of most small company IT problems. That and the ability to think in business processes works well.
Nothing current.
But I know what I know and I am very upfront with things I need to learn. One of those two things must be getting me positive results.
Wait! I have ITILv4. Go me.