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Would being a Linux "power user" increase my chances of getting a job in IT/tech?

I’m trying to get a job in IT that will (hopefully) pay more than a usual 9 to 5. I’m been daily driving Linux exclusively for about 2 1/2 years now and I’m trying to improve my skills to the point that I could be considered a so-called “power user.” My question is this: will this increase my hiring chances significantly or marginally?

bionicjoey ,

I’ve hired for junior positions on a sysadmin team and Linux as a hobby is the number 1 thing I look for. It moves your resume to the top of the stack.

Quazatron ,
@Quazatron@lemmy.world avatar

It will. Keep in mind that, depending on the type of job, you’ll have to keep learning new tech just to keep up: virtualization, containers, orchestrators, automation, backups, logging, auditing, scripting and God knows what else. It’s a good starting point to get you the jobs that the Windows crowd won’t touch because of the command line.

superkret , (edited )

Yes, because you’re already familiar with the command line. But for a job in the professional Linux world, also try out RHEL (not Fedora), and familiarize yourself with best practices in patch management. There’s a lot more to it than just dnf upgrade if you have applications depending on specific versions of packages, CVEs need to be mitigated ASAP, downtime needs to be minimized and reverting a borked upgrade (including the installed database) needs to work 100%.
Also, get familiar with containerization, SELinux, VMWare hypervisors, a version control system, the LAMP stack and Samba.

dino ,

Good advice here, although I would recommend going for debian instead, get a grasp how different package managers in linux do the same thing.

  • Containerization
  • KVM
  • webserver apache/nginx yatta (ceritifcate handling, god I hate this)
pastermil ,

My personal experience: Absolutely!

I’ve always landed on jobs/projects that involve Linux server. Generally startups with not much expense to spare would go for this route. However, even bigger companies would opt for enterprise Linux.

I wouldn’t say that will work on every IT jobs out there, but when it does, you know you’re in for a fun ride!

MyNameIsRichard ,
@MyNameIsRichard@lemmy.ml avatar

To give yourself a better chance, learn things like:

  • Bash scripting
  • Docker
  • Docker Compose
  • Kubernetes
  • Oauth2 and and an authorization server like Keycloak
  • Build and deployment tools like Jenkins

Also learn how to deploy database and web servers manually.

It sounds like a lot but they’re things you’ll be expected to use.

dino ,

No, dont learn docker, learn containerization and what tools can be used for it. No to Kubernetes that comes much later and/is VERY specific. No clue what keycloak is, but it sounds useful. Never hear about Jenkins. Id rather say get a grasp on python and skim what tools are used to administer servers -> ansible and puppet maybe.

Creat ,

It highly depends on the job. Some companies run fully on Windows, no exceptions. There it obviously would not help. But many still either host various services on Linux, or buy hosting/cloud commuting that is Linux based. There it might even be necessary.

It also depends on what you mean by “power user”. I would generally advise you to look into the server side of things. In my work, there are zero Linux machines that have a GUI of any kind installed. t The 50 or so Linux machines are all administered through SSH and Shell.

dino ,

This! Also if you company only employs windows machines … run.

istanbullu ,

yes

pimeys , (edited )

Exactly this. Having an interest and a hobby to an open source system will make you better in your job and a much more interesting candidate to hire.

Source: started with linux in 1995 as a kid. Never having issues finding great jobs.

Edit: I did not mean being a devops here, but finding an interest in open source software and learning a highly lucrative programming language while going. You can get pretty far with Rust or Go in the modern startups, C or Java in enterprises. Being very good with Linux drives this interest.

slazer2au ,

Honestly, it depends on the business.

If I were the hiring manager we are a 80/20 split on win vs Linux servers. You may be top tier on 20% of our systems but we have automated about 85% of the tasks on those boxes. The other 15% is being covered by the windows people.
How do I justify hiring you to do 15% of the work of the others?

In order to be paid above average, you need to be good at something others find hard. But don’t pigeon hole yourself to one thing.

Being good at windows and Linux will make you a more attractive hire. As a Linux daily driver you should have no excuse to not know virtualisation or containers. Run up some qemu VMS or some LXC containers to expand your skillset.

digdilem ,

Put it this way - it doesn’t hurt.

Nothing fully replaces real world experience with the exact software and technologies your potential employer uses, but having demonstrable ability to use and understand linux is very transferrable. Ultimately it comes down to the interviewers and what they’re looking for, and to the more technical of those, choosing linux as a daily driver shows you’re more interested in understanding how computers work and that you have a degree of problem solving ability.

Read some adverts of the jobs you want to get, being realistic that you may need to start low to get that experience, and build ability in what’s wanted, especially the bits that are marketable.

velox_vulnus ,

No, it won’t. Corporations in today’s time have this entitlement that you should know everything beforehand. You need a lot more than that. Oh, you don’t know Ansible? Don’t understand Terraform? Can’t fix a Docker config? Haven’t used AWS? Rejected, next?

stoy ,

What education do you have in the area?

The IT/Sysadmin sector does have a risk with knowing enough to be dangerous.

Daily driving Linux is great to get used to the command line, but is different from running servers.

If you have no experience with running Linux servers, I would be focusing on that part, rather than daily driving at this point.

Running a server requires a bit of a different mindset to that of just using a desktop.

You need to be far more restrictive about installing software on the server, be more cautios of reboots, and in general focus on stabillity.

You also need to familiarize yourself with Debian/Ubuntu and Red Hat/Fedora based distributions, their package managers, apt and dnf, the general layout of the system, they are mostly similar, but they have their own flavours, especially when it commes to the config files.

Learn the basics of vim, it will allways be installed on a server, I prefer nano but can use vim if needed.

A big part of my job when I was a Helpdesk technician combined with a Linux sysadmin was storage, I had to set up VMs in vSphere and Nutanix and give them the correct ammount of storage, sometimes also expand the storage on a server, and work with mountpoints.

Play around with LVMs, learn the concepts of PVs, VGs and LVs, learn how to expand them, how to move an LV from one PV to another inside a VG, learn how to mount them.

Learn how to set a manual IP, this can change from version to version of a distribution.

Learn to get annoyed at YAML files.

Understand how to secure a system, I’ll admit that I never really had to do this as all servers I worked on was behind strong firewalls and not accessable from the internet, but I did my best with what I had.

LifeCoffeeGaming ,

This is a great response, would heed its points especially the yaml files.

stoy ,

Just make a template, once done you can easily do it while blasting Scooter, get pissed when it breaks due to a change of interface names, switch to Sabaton while you battle it out. After that you go to the local zoo and watch some Lynx just relaxing all day and ask yourself where it all webt wrong.

hawgietonight ,

If your goal is to make yourself more valuable to employers/clients the best path is to specialize in some critical and niche enterprise tech. People that are good at stuff businesses were lured into using get paid very well. In my case it was SharePoint, but that’s just an example.

Knowing your way around the OS is taken for granted in these positions, so you have one piece of the puzzle, which is great, but you need the other pieces.

But be careful, if I have to choose between two experts, one with basic win+linux and the other only linux, I’m choosing the former.

dino ,

Very bad advice, getting your niche might pay off for a certain job in a certain time period and makes you clueless and worthless in any other job other timeframe.

Rather focus on general overview and tools instead. I can imagine how you brain is melting away dealing your whole work day with only sharepoint, rofl.

hawgietonight ,

Well, it was addressing the pay issue, and it is the most secure path to higher paid position fast. Moving on to new stuff comes naturally and the industry will push you to their next hotness, so not really a problem.

kionite231 ,

I had the same question. I have rather good understanding of Linux and command line however at my job where Ubuntu is used other people easily caught up with me. They still don’t know much about what exactly a command does but they know when to run it so IMO it doesn’t matter how much Linux you know the only knowledge matters which you could use to have your job done quickly and efficiently.

flamingo_pinyata ,

Specifically for a job of Linix sysadmin, probably yes. If you can afford it do a certification, it will help you stand among other candidates with no work experience.

For other IT jobs it’s not so relevant. Linux is technically on the servers but the infrastructure is hidden from you by multiple levels of abstraction.

utopiah ,

Yes if

  • the environment you would work on is Linux based, obviously (which it often is when servers are involved, even with Microsoft due to Azure cloud and containers)
  • you master the command line, i.e you know a bit of e.g bash, can write your own scripts that do basic functions
  • you understand how the OS works, i.e permissions, services, package managers, etc

but not really if you are mostly clicking through buttons of the window manager and/or would work in a Microsoft environment with its own set of tools, conventions, etc.

Which brings up obvious suggestions :

  • do improve your mastery of the command line
  • apply to jobs that put Linux forward (but that might bias to a sysadmin position, which might not be what you prefer)
massive_bereavement ,

I had a job offered based on the fact that if you know bash, you can translate that to powershell, as translating knowledge is easier than learning from scratch.

utopiah ,

Makes sense to me. I would also assume that if one can program in bash they can program in pretty much anything. Yes it will take some time to adapt but a lot less than somebody who can’t program in any language in any environment.

That being said, I would advise against starting in an environment that is possibly alienating and exclusive. Microsoft does everything it can in order to lock-in users but also developers. They find bridge, like PowerShell or WSL, then IT relies on certifications specific to their ecosystem. So if OP is fine with such practices they could start there but I’d suggest to keep that only if more direct alternatives are not available.

digdilem ,

True. Learning your first programming language (or scripting language) is usually the hardest.

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