Breaking in

headsplice · 07-25-2002, 11:14 AM

I'm a student. I'm work with computers. Yay.
However, I would love to work in the network security field. I know my way around the *nixes, but, I have extremely limited experience with admin work. Can anyone suggest a direction to head (from books to someone to contact to a school that I could go to, I'm not picky at all)? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

yours,

-der Kopf

MaggieL · 07-25-2002, 12:41 PM

Yeah, you might want to consider a career in some other field where there are jobs available. :-)

Undertoad · 07-25-2002, 06:50 PM

Eventually there will be a need for more admins!

I became a sysadmin after doing tech support - a good corporate route.

Then, as an admin, I basically mentored this other young dude for a year until he knew enough to call himself an admin; he got a nice cushy high-paying job by leaving after he felt he knew enough to put admin on his resume. (The punk doubled my own salary.)

A lot of admins come up that way - help out the admins in place until they get their shot. Sometimes the main admin leaves and they walk right into the job. Sometimes, I'd wager, they're the only ones besides the departed admin who know the root password.

The one thing you don't want to do, even though it sounds like it might be a good idea, is to completely lie your way into an admin job and try to figure it out from scratch. Some sysadmin duties are fairly simple techie-wise, and most computer-savvy people could work out what needs to be done by following the admin guides and man pages and whatnot. But there are a lot of things that you just need some experience seeing. The politics can be troublesome too.

There's another key problem with being a sysadmin. Y'see, the best sysadmins are completely invisible. The systems run perfectly, databases are humming along, hardware problems get straightened up quick, many processes are automated. So in many organizations it becomes a catch-22. You appear to be doing nothing. You appear unnecessary.

The ideal solution to this, in my experience, is to <i>engineer difficult and unforseeable problems that only you can solve through diligent, after-hours work.</i> I've never really done it, but when adminning, I've been sorely tempted to. "The disk is dead! The backups are off-site! It would take true genius to recover this data tonight!" <i>Step aside from that console - I'm here to save us all with my incredible understanding of filesystems! Please allow me to enter the secret commands that only I know. PRESTO, your data has returned.</i>

Ahem. Back on track, if you're a student maybe a good bet is try to get some hours of real work out of the computer center, or whatever they call it where you are. Ask experienced folks if you can help out, look over their shoulder. Offer to write scripts for them... that'll work for sure! With actual experience you'll be way ahead, guaranteed.

07-25-2002, 11:14 AM	#1
headsplice Relaxed Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Minneapolis Posts: 676	Breaking in I'm a student. I'm work with computers. Yay. However, I would love to work in the network security field. I know my way around the *nixes, but, I have extremely limited experience with admin work. Can anyone suggest a direction to head (from books to someone to contact to a school that I could go to, I'm not picky at all)? Any help would be greatly appreciated. yours, -der Kopf __________________ Don't Panic

07-25-2002, 12:41 PM	#2
MaggieL in the Hour of Scampering Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Jeffersonville PA (15 mi NW of Philadelphia) Posts: 4,060	Yeah, you might want to consider a career in some other field where there are jobs available. :-) __________________ "Neither can his Mind be thought to be in Tune,whose words do jarre; nor his reason In frame, whose sentence is preposterous..."

07-25-2002, 06:50 PM	#3
Undertoad Radical Centrist Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: Cottage of Prussia Posts: 31,423	Eventually there will be a need for more admins! I became a sysadmin after doing tech support - a good corporate route. Then, as an admin, I basically mentored this other young dude for a year until he knew enough to call himself an admin; he got a nice cushy high-paying job by leaving after he felt he knew enough to put admin on his resume. (The punk doubled my own salary.) A lot of admins come up that way - help out the admins in place until they get their shot. Sometimes the main admin leaves and they walk right into the job. Sometimes, I'd wager, they're the only ones besides the departed admin who know the root password. The one thing you don't want to do, even though it sounds like it might be a good idea, is to completely lie your way into an admin job and try to figure it out from scratch. Some sysadmin duties are fairly simple techie-wise, and most computer-savvy people could work out what needs to be done by following the admin guides and man pages and whatnot. But there are a lot of things that you just need some experience seeing. The politics can be troublesome too. There's another key problem with being a sysadmin. Y'see, the best sysadmins are completely invisible. The systems run perfectly, databases are humming along, hardware problems get straightened up quick, many processes are automated. So in many organizations it becomes a catch-22. You appear to be doing nothing. You appear unnecessary. The ideal solution to this, in my experience, is to <i>engineer difficult and unforseeable problems that only you can solve through diligent, after-hours work.</i> I've never really done it, but when adminning, I've been sorely tempted to. "The disk is dead! The backups are off-site! It would take true genius to recover this data tonight!" <i>Step aside from that console - I'm here to save us all with my incredible understanding of filesystems! Please allow me to enter the secret commands that only I know. PRESTO, your data has returned.</i> Ahem. Back on track, if you're a student maybe a good bet is try to get some hours of real work out of the computer center, or whatever they call it where you are. Ask experienced folks if you can help out, look over their shoulder. Offer to write scripts for them... that'll work for sure! With actual experience you'll be way ahead, guaranteed.

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