We had a visit from a vendor the other day, one who sells high end Unix hardware. The meeting was informative, and overall went well. While I was walking the vendor out of the building, he turned to me and told me how learning his version of Unix would really help me as I matured in my profession. He continued to say how any company who needed a Linux admin could just grab a kid right out of college, because, according to him, it was no big deal. I understand his position as a vendor, and wanting to push his proprietary software. I also understand that he’s right that learning new things is good for any career, but he’s completely wrong on his perception of Linux.
Linux is a complicated operating system, but one that has grown exceptionally fast. After dealing with Linux for over a decade, you come to the understanding that Linux, like ogres and onions, has layers. As soon as you think you have a good solid understanding of something, you can peel it back and look at the layers underneath, and realize that much to learn, still you have. An understanding of the deeper complexities of a load-balanced Linux cluster is not something you just pick up over night. It takes knowledge of networking, the TCP/IP stack, arp caching, reverse arp, scripting, system utilization and fault isolation. It is true that a novice administrator can follow an instruction book to install the necessary software and get a cluster up and running, but it takes a senior sysadmin to fix it when it breaks. I’ve questioned before the future validity of systems administrators, but I’m confident now that choosing to be a Linux sysadmin is a great career path, if you dedicate yourself to continually growing.
The best place to turn for information concerning the field of systems administration is SAGE, the Systems Administrators Guild. SAGE is a special interest group of USENIX, the Advanced Computing Systems Association. SAGE publishes professional pamphlets and articles, and has defined a set of criteria for advancing from novice to senior sysadmin roles. SAGE also publishes a code of ethics encouraging members to maintain high standards of personal integrity, especially when dealing with sticky issues like privacy, social responsibility and law. One of the best benefits of a SAGE membership is access to the mailing list, which gives you a group of peers to bounce questions off and discuss relevant matters in open source. Joining SAGE is a great step in furthering your career as a sysadmin, and one that shows you take your field seriously.
Finally, one of the greatest signs of a mature systems administrator, no matter what platform he specializes in, is patience. Admittedly, this is an area I’m still working on, and probably will be for the rest of my life. It takes patience to write good documentation, it takes patience to throughly test a system before it’s put into production, it takes patience to ensure systems are patched on time, and that the patches are tested before they are put into production. It takes patience to know that the cool new thing might not be whats best for your environment. It takes patience to recognize that voice in the back of your head that says something that you are looking at is not quite right. And, it takes patience to smile and nod to vendors who speak condescendingly about your profession.
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