job hunting - dual-platform experience [closed]

Question

I'm on the market looking for a new job. Currently employed, I'm an IT supervisor who's burned out, and missing the hands-on days of sysadmin work. My current day comprises about 40% management, 60% hands-on admin work.

I have 15 years experience from desktop support on up. I've got the bulk of my experience in Windows, but also about 2 years cumulative experience in RedHat Linux. I've also got a working basic knowledge of OpenVMS. I also manage Netbackup, among other things. You might say "jack of all trades", all self-taught or from others.

I'd really love to work more cross-platform windows/linux. I'm getting calls for some positions but lots of windows stuff, or linux positions that feel like more than an honest stretch. I'm not interested in fibbing for a job. I have one potential employer talking with me, but they're 100% Windows. My heart says "no", though it's a good-looking opportunity so far.

I've just signed up for the Linux RHCE course so I can strengthen any weak points. Study Guides and CentOS, here I come ;-).

Any thoughts on building the linux skillset? Is the RHCE track overkill for me?
Any thoughts for job-search directions? What's the above skillset worth in your esteemed opinions? (major US metro area)

Answer 1

I think it largely depends on what you expect out of a role; I've got no Windows experience at all, the last version of Windows I used with any real earnest is Windows 2000. I wouldn't (and couldn't) go get a Windows SA role.

That being said; if you're looking at a production-operations role it's all largely the same approach independent of which platform you work on.

You still need to be knowledgable of:

• Deployment practices

• Capacity planning Security (you might not know how to construct an IPTABLES line, but you know what a firewall does and which ports you need to open)

• Working with third-party vendors

• Specifying hardware

• The development lifecycle and how to work with developers

• Troubleshooting

• Network infrastructure

• Email and how it works / why it fails

• DNS

• Working with a ticketing system

• Documenting procedures

Someone with practical experience of all of the above will be valuable no-matter what platform they're skilled with.

I don't know much about the US job market, but, perhaps there are some roles that will allow you to manage a large Windows platform but where the strategy of the business is expanding in to the open-source market and you'll be able to start honing your skills there to.

RHCE is a great qualification, but, it's a fairly hard exam if you're not hands-on experienced with the intricacies Linux and RHEL (no google and a pretty tight timeframe for completing the tasks).

I would think that some of the areas you may be light on skills (it doesn't say in your post, but if you're more accustomed to Windows) is probably Bash scripting and/or Perl. Every Linux SA job I've ever seen (or worked) has relied on these skills.

Good look, hope this helps

Andrew

Answer 2

Look on careers.stackoverflow.com for information on jobs and posting resumes/CV's. Good luck!