FSF looking for Sys Admin

travis at scootz.net travis at scootz.net
Thu Dec 16 09:47:00 EST 2004


> More to the point, I'm lacking the undergraduate college degree they're
> looking for, and probably have a bit less experience as a sysadmin than
> I'd be expected to. Unfortunate, since it looks like something that
> would be really cool other than that.
>
> Does anyone have any experience with hiring, such that they could tell
> me how screwed I am if I ever leave my current job, since I dropped out
> of college to take it? At the moment, I'm quite happy, and planning on
> resuming studies (although not full time) relatively soon to finish a
> degree, but if I were to quit my job today and start looking, how
> difficult would it be to move into some IT or programming (mostly web)
> position given a lack of degree?

At some point your experience is better then some thing hanging on your wall.

I dropped out of NHTI's CPET program because it didn't fit my needs. To
much electrical engineering stuff I wasn't interested in, and way to
strong a focus on WinNT. Let me give you a bit of my work history.

I dropped out of NHTI and started helping an old teacher friend doing
theatre in high school. This didn't pay anything but it gave me some
management experience that looked good. I was also the assistant state
director of ETA for about 3 years. During this time I looked for tech work
but didn't find much and became a janitor (a much better job then people
make it out to be). This paid the bills while I looked for more tech work.

I eventually took a pay cut ($10.50hr down to $7.50hr) to do tech support
at MV.Com. But I did this to get my foot in the door. Luckally I was still
able to live at my parents house. After about 7ish months there I got a
job at MediaOne working at the NOC (for the internal network, not the
customer network). That gave me HUGE experience and they sent me to
training. I was there for one year (making 32k/year) then got promoted to
night supervisor and got bumped up to 42k/year.

With rumors of the AT&T merger looming and my future uncertin I decided to
look for employment elsewhere. With the training and spare time I had
working at the NOC I taught myself a lot of useful skill, setup my own
personal server, and hosted a few friend's sites. I ended up landing a
sweet job at BURST! Media as a linux admin making 62k/year. I got a small
raise (up to 65k/year) and a small title change (Computer Security/Linux
Admin) after a year. But this was during the bubble bursting (hah, while I
worked at Burst!) so I didn't expect much for a raise.

Two things I learnt from that job.. 1. Open office sucks and 2. don't
trust ANYBODY. There was a LOT of backstabbing going on at that company.

Anyway, layoffs happened shortly after 9/11. I was unemployed for 9
months. The market sucked and I took a job at Mailways. I snail mail junk
mail company where I would load up reel to reel tape from big warehouse
companies (think BJs) of customer address and print out THOUSANDS of
labels, sort them by region and send them down the shoot to the poor
people downstairs that had to put the lables on the mailings. All while
stepping over the dead birds on the floor and setting mouse traps (no
joke). I made $10/hr there. WOO HOO.

After about 8 months there I left to work at Net Technologies (HI BEN). I
made about 41k/year there doing just about anything and everything. That
was another good real life learning ground.

After a year there I moved on to my current job at Colospace. Where I'm a
"Data Center Tech" but I really just manage the Manchester data center, I
walk to work it's so close. I make 42k/year, and again, do a little of
everything.

There was also a summer working for my uncle's sign shop (Jutras Signs).

I've never felt that me not having a degree has hurt me in any way as my
work experience shows a diverse range of skills. If anything I've
encountered a wider range of equipment and OSes then I ever would at NHTI.


More information about the gnhlug-discuss mailing list