Hello, from the other side...
Working in the Information Technology industry, aka "Tech"...
Happy Happy Fathers Day to all the Fathers and Father Figures. On this special day, I’d like to reflect on current events and catch up since the last update to Sincerely, Open Source.
When I first began writing, I was on the outside of the information technology industry looking in. Since then, I enrolled in Yellowtails’ Linux for Jobs program and and obtained the RedHat Certified System Administrator certification as well as the the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner- Cloud Quest badge. After completing the Linux for Jobs program, I started the Pro Core Plus apprenticeship based around a plethora of open source tools and technologies. To be honest I fully expected to be able to land a role as a Linux System Administrator. The more I learn about that job title, the info tech space and the state of hiring within the industry and country, obtaining a role as an Linux admin with little to no experience- in a year, is not probable for a number of reasons. In effort of remaining positive, the Yellowtail Linux program is a very solid start and effort of at least breaking into the space. I am proud to say that I have done so. Perhaps if I had more time to dive into the job search and learn all of the skills necessary like I’d like to, I could make the jump from nothing to sys admin but the recommended starting point for tech careers is the help desk. I currently work as a Service Desk Technician for Compucom, and it is remote!! I shall not and will not complain. The road to becoming a Linux Admin one day is well underway and with the securement of a job within the industry means that with a little hard work and elbow grease, I will obtain that goal. If I were to listen to Reddit communities about the IT industry, obtaining a entry level roles is pretty close to impossible so I am blessed to for the opportunity.
There are very legitimate reasons why I haven’t put in the time necessary to go from not knowing what Linux was at all, to becoming a Linux System administrator within a year. There were some personal matters that required attention and I thank God all is well in that regard and getting better. I also still dabble with real estate while I take the voyage into tech. My family has started real estate development efforts, starting with a fix and flip project. Ill be the realtor as we off load the asset and my mom, brother and sister will play other vital roles to make this effort a success. Its been a real HGTV show but I’m very proud of my mom for going after it. Of course I am still involved with spreading awareness of digital freedoms and I am proud to say that I am now a Board Member of the Digital Freedom foundation. I feel I have more authority to speak on our efforts as a collective and will certainly do so. Ill address this again in another post soon but we are running the Huion Challenge. The idea in gist is to use an open source tool to create the mascot for the Software Freedom Day. Participants of the challenge will be ranked and voted on to win prizes of Huion Creation Tablets and more. For more information and Sign up, check out the link below:
Happenings have not all been peachy, getting to this point. For example, the Pro Core Plus apprenticeship started for me in September, intended as a 8 week program. I still have not completed. The program is certainly a priority but so is my job and a few other endeavors. Both require learning in each passing day of something new. I certainly have to manage time a lot better and not waste time of the day. With that being said, I’ve cut a lot of recreational activates out of my day to day and the only thing I really do for myself is work out. As of late, I have found somewhat of a groove at work to where all of the workload isn’t as challenging because more and more tasks are becoming familiar. I am currently at the service desk of an Accounting firm so depending on what sector of industry your service desk is, that would determine the tools and tech you will become familiar with. We are a windows shop. We troubleshoot alot of MS Authenticator, Intune, AD, Azure, Office suite programs and hardware issues. Seems to be a good contrast to my Linux admin training thus far. This job has certainly provided context to my open source flag bearing. I get and understand both sides of the coin. I see that using open source tech may require a level of technical acumen that many simply do not care to gain. I am often amazed at the tickets that come my way but I’m becoming more compassionate by understanding where the user is coming from with their request. It may not be their job to be technically inclined, but mine is. I, myself, still need help with why my monitor isn’t working and it often is a simple fix so I definitely can relate to the person on the other side of the phone or chat. The attitudes users have still get me a little bit; working on human aspect of the job.
There have been bright spots of inspiration that indicate something is being done right in pursuit of getting to the next level in my tech journey. Some of the more heavy interviews I’ve had have been with Leidos and OVH Cloud. The Leidos gig was for a Storage Administrator position and the OVH cloud roles was for a Cloud support agent. If I’m being honest with myself, the storage role may have been a bit over my head, initially at least. I did a quick crash course in Storge in general in prep and realized storage was one of my favorite modules in the Linux program, logical volume management and such. We really didn’t go over RAID, SANs and similar so it was cool to learn for that week. I applied because I thought it was more Linux focused but it was not. The interviewer stated that they were a Windows shop at that. I didn’t realize the Windows experience that I actually had. They were impressed with the RedHat cert but it didn’t really help much. They were more focused on Windows/Azure cloud based experience and storage of course. The OVH cloud role would have been perfect as it is a Linux shop and open source based. I messed up both interviews by answering “no” to if I had windows server experience, which I do. I thought the question meant something else, smh. The feedback from OVH was that they went with someone that has a little more experience troubleshooting cloud servers… understandable. Experience interviewing is a wonderful opportunity to learn and know the fish are biting, just have to work on my bait a little more. I seem to be getting a lot of contact from recruiters so I have to thank the RedHat cert for that I suppose but most of the Linux roles require a little more experience than I have currently- certainly not entry level. I appreciate both interviews with those companies and will work on the feed back that I received. The major point of this blog is to sharpen those skills, which is a focal point of the self hosted series that I have not abandoned. As soon as I finish this apprenticeship, Ill be able to focus on that cloud vm troubleshooting and will look to use OVH as a host. I’m excited to learn that there is a open sourced based cloud provider so Ill look to lean into them for my home-labs.
That may be all I have in terms of updates for the page. Software freedom Day is September 20th so we’ll be having a monthly meeting on Jitsi to plan and prepare topics and events. Ill share the information when I receive it. The last meeting was in May, the next is June 28th. Check us out at the Digital Freedom Foundation page for more information about Software Freedom Day and the Huion challenge or send me a message. Until next time, bless.
