[olug] [OT] IT degrees

[Dave Thacker]

On Thursday 02 April 2009 16:54:29 Jason Zeisler wrote:
> Hi guys. New to the OLUG scene, but I have been following the emails for
> the last couple of weeks. I hope to make it down to Omaha from Sioux City
> some night for a meeting. The Sioux City group disappeared as far as I
> know. My question:
> What do you guys, especially those of you who have/are involved in
> hiring, think of on line tech degrees? I would love to get a job as an *nix
> administrator or programmer and I am looking on continuing my education
> with an online computer science degree. Any words of wisdom?
>
> Thanks,
> Jason Z.
>

I can't evaluate online schools.  I've had some people swear by them and 
others swear at them.  Here's some things I'd would recommend as self 
training for System Administration

-Get an O'Reilly Safari account.  For 20 bucks a month, you can keep 10 books 
open on your shelf, for 40 bucks, unlimited. I'll follow up with my favorite 
books over the weekend. 

-Look for free software projects that involve system administration, or a 
project that needs administration help.   Do testing, do documentation. 
(Shameless plug: The Ubuntu Nebraska Loco Team is looking for some volunteer 
admin help) 

-Virtualization and "clouds" are going to drastically change the sysadmin's 
job in the next 5 years.   A lot of these tools are free or have free 
versions.  Grab some cheap hardware and experiment with them.  Get three 
o'clock in the morning comfortable with them .   Break them and fix them. 

-Get fluent in perl and python.   Perl is the biggest freaking box o' tools in 
the world.  Google uses python.  'nuff said.  Why do that?  Because someday 
you may need to ftp a text file from 144 dumb as rocks SCO servers and parse 
the output to make sure daily backups are running.  

Good Luck!

Dave Thacker





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