How would you use $4000 to benefit your IT career?

Tax season is here! and lucky for me and my education expenses (which boosted my tax return by 2500!), I'll roughly get around 4K back from the government...and I'm going to invest all of it into some form of IT training/certifications.

My Plan: Right now my goal is to become a Linux Sys Admin or Engineer. I'm thinking about putting the money into Red Hat training, so I can get the RHCSA and RHCE (I already have the Linux+/LPIC-1). After looking at indeed.com and simplyhired.com, there are a lot of companies looking for RHCE's (not so much RHCSA)...so I'm hoping with my 1 year of Linux technical support experience, Linux+, LPIC-1, RHCSA, and RHCE..some company might take a chance on me.

Anyways...How would you use 4K to benefit your career?

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Comments

onesaint

It's been on my radar for the last 5 years, I've just been busy with other things. I'm going after it this year to validate what I've been doing with my current company. I don't think it will hurt and looks good when *nix is relevant to the position.

That said, looking over indeed.com shows >=100K positions in the US as about 140 for RHCE and 1088 for MCSE. Just food for thought.

ETA: I think the RH certs are what most certs attempt to be. The base validation of the candidate's ability. If you have an RHCE and land the interview you looking for, the questions you will be asked, I think, will go well beyond your cert skills and instead rely much more on experience.

YuckTheFankees

onesaint wrote: »

It's been on my radar for the last 5 years, I've just been busy with other things. I'm going after it this year to validate what I've been doing with my current company. I don't think it will hurt and looks good when *nix is relevant to the position.

That said, looking over indeed.com shows >=100K positions in the US as about 140 for RHCE and 1088 for MCSE. Just food for thought.

ETA: I think the RH certs are what most certs attempt to be. The base validation of the candidate's ability. If you have an RHCE and land the interview you looking for, the questions you will be asked, I think, will go well beyond your cert skills and instead rely much more on experience.

Well there are definitely going to be more MCSE jobs compared to RHCE, there are more jobs involving Windows than Linux...

And I truly think the RHCE could help you as much as experience during the interview, it cover's a lot of material. I'm not saying you could pass the RHCE with no experience and land a job, but I bet you could do pretty well in a technical interview.

tpatt100

We actually got a tax return this year but that was because I was unemployed for half a year ...Usually we pay a few hundred at tax time. My wife was like "ohh 4200 tax return!" I was like pointing to the TurboxTax screen and said "but yeah we made 53K less than last year lol".

techinthewoods

Turgon wrote: »

It's lab based, like the Novell SuSE practicum which no one on TE has posted about for over 5 years. Companies like Redhat because being vendor based they can bash the vendor to get support as opposed to the open source linux/unix versions which many practioners find superior, like my assistant in 2001. He hated Redhat, it installed with drool and was easily rooted, so he went for OpenBSD.

I just dont see what the recent buzz is about Redhat certification. There was one in 1999-2001, then it tanked. Most UNIX/Linux fiends are not cert centric anyway. I worked on HP-UX in 1994-1995 and installed AIX from 5.25 floppies in 1998!

Thank you for the information. If not Redhat certifications, what certifications would you recommend for linux sytems administration instead?

techinthewoods

ChooseLife wrote: »

Like many other advanced certifications, RHCE is designed to complements real-life experience, not substitute it.
I do not want to discourage anyone from taking a certification, just feel it's better be warned.

Typically RHCE as a requirement means "we need someone who knows RedHat well" and "we run Linux in production". Our company runs Linux in production. I am not a hiring manager, rather a server administrator, but I personally will not take a chance on someone who has RHCE without proven track of production experience and regardless of how impressed HR is, will vote against such candidate. And vice versa, for someone who has the experience, I won't care what Linux certifications they have. Some other company may take their chance, but generally Unix admins are not big on certifications and even if it is changing in the recent years, I don't feel there is a major shift in that regard.

Thank you for the reply. This seems like a catch 22. If unix admins in general won't hire someone without a proven track of production experience, how does anyone ever enter the unix/linux field?

QHalo

That's just it. You have to almost luck your way into it. But aside from that I think starting with something like Linux+ LPIC1 and trying to find an organization that runs it on the desktop to get your feet wet supporting it, would be helpful transitioning to server side. I'm sure someone will disagree but I would equate it to learning Windows server management. You didn't just start as a Windows Server admin, you started in desktop support and then as you got more experience moved into the server side. So if you're bent on gettin RH certified, start with RHCSA instead and find a place that runs it on the desktop.

onesaint

YuckTheFankees wrote: »

Well there are definitely going to be more MCSE jobs compared to RHCE, there are more jobs involving Windows than Linux...

And I truly think the RHCE could help you as much as experience during the interview, it cover's a lot of material. I'm not saying you could pass the RHCE with no experience and land a job, but I bet you could do pretty well in a technical interview.

Agreed in both cases. My post was more directed at Turgon's statement about the up tick in RHCE interest. I do see what he means though regarding the lack of interest. The RHCEs I know are usually Sr. SAs and JOATs, if you will. They usually have certs in other areas and just see the RH stuff as a part of their cert road map.

techinthewoods wrote: »

Thank you for the reply. This seems like a catch 22. If unix admins in general won't hire someone without a proven track of production experience, how does anyone ever enter the unix/linux field?

Heterogeneous networks. In my case I was hired on for DBA / Windows admin. Most of the back end was (is) RH based, that required me to learn Linux. In my case, I've been able to work with the Sr. Software Engineer who is an old Unix guru (svr4, codes in C, Lisp, and all that) picking up everything from squid to Xen. Another way, is to land a position like YuckTheFankees has, as a Linux support rep. with an LPIC cert or something like it. Being a home user and doing lots of dabbling (labbing) helps too.

techinthewoods

QHalo wrote: »

That's just it. You have to almost luck your way into it. But aside from that I think starting with something like Linux+ LPIC1 and trying to find an organization that runs it on the desktop to get your feet wet supporting it, would be helpful transitioning to server side. I'm sure someone will disagree but I would equate it to learning Windows server management. You didn't just start as a Windows Server admin, you started in desktop support and then as you got more experience moved into the server side. So if you're bent on gettin RH certified, start with RHCSA instead and find a place that runs it on the desktop.

Well I was bent on it, until reading this thread and finding out that apparently one can't get hired without provable production experience, and can't get provable production experience without getting hired. lol

onesaint

techinthewoods wrote: »

Well I was bent on it, until reading this thread and finding out that apparently one can't get hired without provable production experience, and can't get provable production experience without getting hired. lol

Don't get discouraged. There are ways in. Indeed (noted: doesn't show all jobs) has some 31K jobs with the phrase "Linux support" in the $40K range and more above that. So there is definitely opportunities out there.

techdudehere

If you really want Linux experience, you can get it easily. Lots of ISPs use Linux and the smaller ones cannot pay much. There are also a lot of consultants that only have Windows experience. Offer your services when they need some Linux assistance. Build Linux servers for non profits who currently have no server structure or file storage in place. You might have to start small or do some work in your spare time to get the experience for the better opportunities.

ChooseLife

techinthewoods wrote: »

Thank you for the reply. This seems like a catch 22. If unix admins in general won't hire someone without a proven track of production experience, how does anyone ever enter the unix/linux field?

It would be a catch if RHCE was required to get RHCE. All I am saying is that RHCE as a requirement in a job posting usually indicates a certain level of technical expertise plus experience sought by the employer.

Normally Unix/Linux server admins start just like Storage admins, Network engineers, Security specialists, or other specialized professionals - by getting some exposure to the technology while working in an adjacent role, and then doing more of it.

Some years ago I worked in tech support and tried to break into system administration. I had quite a few years of Linux experience running it on home servers, but that was not good enough to hire the youngster to look after production servers. I started volunteering for a non-profit and helped them with Linux/Solaris servers. At the same time I got hired a junior sysadmin for a 100% Windows shop. A few years later, after gaining some invaluable sysadmin experience and securing my manager's respect and trust, I started introducing Linux (and VMware) servers at work. This incentive provided me with the chance to officially mention production Linux experience. Still, at that point nobody would hire me as a full-time Linux admin, but my resume started enjoying increased interest from companies with mixed environments. These companies did not need Linux experts, but were looking for people with some experience in a specific set of technologies. I picked the positions with a potential for significant exposure to VMware and Linux, and some time later found myself working almost exclusively on Linux.

This may not necessarily be the optimal way, but it highlights three common ways into the Linux administration field: volunteering, starting Linux projects at work, shifting to Linux within the company... Lately, desktop Linux support started emerging as a trend, too...

HTH

Turgon

ChooseLife wrote: »

Like many other advanced certifications, RHCE is designed to complements real-life experience, not substitute it.
I do not want to discourage anyone from taking a certification, just feel it's better be warned.

Typically RHCE as a requirement means "we need someone who knows RedHat well" and "we run Linux in production". Our company runs Linux in production. I am not a hiring manager, rather a server administrator, but I personally will not take a chance on someone who has RHCE without proven track of production experience and regardless of how impressed HR is, will vote against such candidate. And vice versa, for someone who has the experience, I won't care what Linux certifications they have. Some other company may take their chance, but generally Unix admins are not big on certifications and even if it is changing in the recent years, I don't feel there is a major shift in that regard.

Totally agree. Anyone linux or UNIX certified let loose on production systems without significant production experience is a terrible accident waiting to happen.

Turgon

techinthewoods wrote: »

Thank you for the information. If not Redhat certifications, what certifications would you recommend for linux sytems administration instead?

Perhaps the Novell certs. I would do UNIX as well. Look at Solaris, HP-UX, AIX. But the mainthing is to get some work experience with these platforms. Convince someone who knows what they are doing who likely has no certifications in this stuff, to trust you enough to connect and configure these platforms with some supervision thats the main thing.

UNIX/Linux has never been certification happy. Thats the genre of setup.exe windows, Novell, Cisco.

Turgon

techinthewoods wrote: »

Well I was bent on it, until reading this thread and finding out that apparently one can't get hired without provable production experience, and can't get provable production experience without getting hired. lol

That situation applies to lots of genre's in IT. There are still ways in by aquiring experience on the fringe. Some companies need people and will make exceptions providing you can convince them that you are careful. Find them and do that.

YuckTheFankees

Great discussion so far. It's nice to hear so many different points of view.