When Unix Stops Being Fun
Joshua Tinnin
krinklyfig at spymac.com
Sat Oct 2 23:45:47 PDT 2004
On Saturday 02 October 2004 08:50 pm, Dave Vollenweider
<metaridley at mchsi.com> wrote:
> This has nothing to do with technical problems, but rather it's more
> of a request for moral support. This may seem disjointed, so bear
> with me.
>
> I've been using FreeBSD for over six months now, but I've been using
> Unix-like operating systems for almost two years. I started with Red
> Hat Linux back when Red Hat was making and selling their
> "consumer-grade" version of Red Hat Linux, then switched to Debian
> before going to FreeBSD last March. I now also run NetBSD on one of
> my machines.
>
> Through all this, I've developed a passion for this type of OS,
> seeing the elegance, performance, and sheer power of Unix. This has
> affected me to the point of me changing my career path. Before I got
> into these OSs, I wanted to get into radio. Now I'd rather either be
> a system administrator or run my own consulting business for entities
> that use these types of OSs. But herein lies the problem I've been
> having lately: while searching around for what I'd need to know to
> become a system administrator, I came across this page:
> http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/8/13/131727/462 and I'm
> overwhelmed by the sheer amount of knowledge I'd have to gain. It
> took me almost two years to get to where I am today, and it looks
> like I've barely scratched the surface of what I'd need to know. But
> now, I feel like instead of learning things on my own for fun, I have
> to learn other things I don't really have a need to learn for myself
> or that I want to, just so that I can apply that to oth er peoples'
> situations. The result is that lately learning these OSs has become
> more of a chore than a fun hobby, and I'm still intimidated by what I
> need to learn to get to where I want to go. It almost seems like
> it's not worth it.
>
> Now, being that I know there are some very experienced people on this
> list, I'm betting that I'm not the only one that has experienced
> this, that learning new things in Unix-like OSs becomes more of a
> chore than something to do for fun. My question is, what advice
> would you have for dealing with this?
Well, I can only tell you about my own experience, but perhaps it will
help. I have always been a techie, getting my first computer at the age
of 14 - an Apple IIe. Learned some Basic, some peeks and pokes and even
some assembly. But I found that I also liked music, and tended more to
that side of things for the latter half of my teens and into my 20s,
though I never went to college (started a few times, but didn't know
what I wanted to do). Somehow I ended up doing web design for a band in
my mid 20s, and even though the band broke up, I was good enough at it
that it became my career in 2000, right when the dot-com bubble started
to burst.
I was 30, just starting my career with no degree but making $50k (not
great, but not bad), and worked for three different failed companies in
the course of a year and a half. Most of this time I was using Windows,
but I used various flavors of *nix during the course of my work, mostly
Red Hat, plus I installed SuSE at home and used it occasionally. My
specialty was front-end web development - I found it increasingly
difficult to find work from 2001 onward, especially because I had no
strong programming skills, but could do JavaScript and some other
scripting, and I also didn't have credentials as a graphic designer,
even though I could do it by gut instinct (which sometimes isn't good
enough).
Eventually I came to hate doing web design, partially because I couldn't
find paying work, but mostly because it's not the right discipline for
me anyway - it sort of fell in my lap, and I made a go of it. I've been
bouncing around between low paying jobs since then, wondering how the
hell to get my career started again without going back to school for
four years to get a computer science degree, when I discovered FreeBSD.
That was last spring.
I now know exactly what I want to do, which is to get that computer
science degree and then some, specializing in systems administration,
and to go into teaching at the college level. First, I know this is a
hard road, especially at the age of 34, but I am tired of not *really*
knowing my stuff, so to speak. I've been a techie my whole life and
even made some money at it, but I've gotten by without having the deep
knowledge required to really understand the workings of an *nix OS such
as FreeBSD, which I very much want to do, and plus it's time to get
serious. I've also found that the systems administration/network end of
the spectrum is what suits me best, but I don't care about getting paid
big money as much as wanting to teach others (and, concurrently, also
have the time and resources to devote to projects such as FreeBSD).
It's not a particularly glorious career choice, and if I were a bit
different I might want to really go for the corporate path and a fat
salary, but honestly I'm happier not working in that sort of
environment.
YMMV.
- jt
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