There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

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?

MajorHavoc ,

Yes. Yes it does.

Look for job listings that require command line Linux skill.

Three candidate pool who can get around on a Linux command prompt is growing, but it’s still pretty small. It gives you some advantage toward networking, Cybersecurity, systems administration, and cloud deployment.

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.

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.

ByteOnBikes ,

Depends. It/tech is a massive space so not certain if you’re applying to tech support or like server architecture. So some specifics would be nice.

One thing to point out:

I thought I was a freaking wiz kid at Windows because I knew about the registry and how to modify settings. But then I learned a lot of the “hacks” on the internet are bad for the enterprise.

On Linux, it’s even worse, with so many blog posts recommending sudo this, and install this app that. And if you don’t have a background of WHY, you can do a lot of damage. And with AI, it’s even worse. So many bash script kiddies asking AI to write the ugliest code I ever seen.

Now that Im a senior engineer, I realize I know nothing and leave much of the IT space to trained professionals.

scytale ,

This is very good insight and something that no one else touched on. OP if you see this, while being a power user on your personal linux machine does help with skills and getting you jobs, it’s still very different from administering an enterprise linux machine in a corporate environment. One thing you can do is set your own homelab and mini environment at home. This will get you more experience with actual administration and will be a great asset to disclose in interviews.

delirious_owl ,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

God help me if I ever end up with someone who just copies and pastes commands from chatgpt into a server

riskable ,
@riskable@programming.dev avatar

I interview developers and information security people all the time. I always ask lots of questions about Linux. As far as I’m concerned:

  • If you’re claiming to be an infosec professional and don’t know Linux you’re a fraud.
  • If you’re a developer and you don’t know how to deploy to Linux servers you’re useless.

So yeah: Get good with Linux. Especially permissions! Holy shit the amount of people I interview that don’t know basic Linux permissions (or even about file permissions in general) is unreal.

Like, dude: Have you just been chmod 777 everything all this time? WTF! Immediate red flag this guy cannot be trusted with anything.

communism ,
@communism@lemmy.ml avatar

Can I ask if the reverse applies, eg is having no idea how to use non Unix like OSes (like Windows) any kind of red flag? Kinda been considering trying to go into a tech career so that I can have a 9-5 office job (I’ve until recently worked in what would be considered “blue collar” jobs, recently switched to an education job, would be nice to just sit down in an office and use computers for a living). I’ve used (GNU/)Linux from a very young age (parents had an Ubuntu laptop), as my primary OS/daily driver since I was 13, and exclusively (i.e. got rid of my Windows partition due to Windows enshittification) since I was idk maybe 16 ish? So I’m pretty comfortable doing things in Linux. But I have a reputation for being a tech person among my friends and they ask me to fix their stuff sometimes and whenever it’s a Windows problem I literally have no idea how to use the OS lol. So are Windows skills and knowledge also expected for tech jobs or just Linux/Unix-like?

billgamesh ,

Depends on the tech job. A lot of corporate IT support jobs care a lot more about troubleshooting windows because that’s what the employees use

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.

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.

delirious_owl ,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

Well you just got dismissed early in the interview

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?

adespoton ,

When I got into IT, I had years of experience with Mac OS, UNIX, a bit of IRIX and VMS, BSD and even a bit of Linux.

And then I spent 10 years mostly managing a Windows shop. I still ran OpenBSD on the internal support servers, but had to support a full Microsoft stack for anything customer-facing.

What will increase your hiring chances is being adaptable and having a portfolio of success stories to reference during interviews.

GustavoM ,
@GustavoM@lemmy.world avatar

Even a simple “I know how to setup a network-wide ad blocker on docker by using my own image” can get you far, so yep.

delirious_owl ,
@delirious_owl@discuss.online avatar

Thats oddly specific. I think “I have experience with Linux” would be better

GustavoM ,
@GustavoM@lemmy.world avatar

This is a IT-related question – of course being “oddly specific” is a great idea. Even if the job in question does not use anything docker related.

ProgrammingSocks ,

On a resume you might format this like “Skilled in setting up networked Docker images”. Absolutely a valued skill and worth mentioning.

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.

BodilessGaze ,

It depends on the role. My first job was doing manual QE on Windows, and knowing Linux wasn’t much help at the time, but it did help me transition to a coding role in the same company a year later. I’m now doing platform engineering at a major tech company, but that has a high barrier to entry, which I suspect is the case for most roles that are Linux-focused. If you’re trying to get your foot in the door, I think you should look at job profiles for low barrier to entry roles (e.g. tech support) and try to work your way up.

jbloggs777 ,

Lots of good advice here. I’ll add that you could develop an understanding of IP networking and how it works on Linux, network interfaces, with containers, with iptables as well as stateful and stateless firewalls, CIDRs and basic routing, IP protocols and some common protocols like DNS and HTTP. This used to be pretty common knowledge in applicants 15 years ago, but very few have it today I find. DHCP and PXE boot is fun to learn too, and is still common in datacenters.

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.

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.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • [email protected]
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •