Ask HN: How did you get started in tech and/or Linux?
5 by indigodaddy | 3 comments on Hacker News.
I’m happy to be able to directly attribute my livelihood to Linux, which is kind of a cool thing to think about. Would love to hear other anecdotes as to how others got into tech/Linux. I’m 44 and got my start in 2009, after doing a myriad of other things, like carpentry, aircraft catering, etc. After an injury, I was basically ruled out of any jobs that required consistent physicality, so I hunkered down and decided to just focus in on Linux full-time (I was already somewhat of a Linux hobbyist, but knew I had a lot of learning to do). After about 6 months of self study, I decided I wanted to work for a webhosting company, and that I really wanted to work in the hosting/server/datacenter/Linux environment. So NOC Technician is basically where it’s at for that sort of thing to get a foot in the door. I was hanging out in an IRC channel for a local Linux user group, and lo and behold, there was a guy who worked in a local datacenter/hosting company. I got the manager contact from him, and basically called and emailed and bothered the hell out of him until he relented and said OK come work as an unpaid intern. I worked hard, learned and incredible amount there (they hired me on after a few weeks, albeit very cheaply of course)— DNS/network/webserver/troubleshooting, all the fundamentals, and there were incredibly smart and brilliant people there that I learned from. Those were very cool days. From there I kept learning and have done fairly decently for myself. Good amount of luck on the way probably, sort of right situation/right timing... have worked at two very large ISPs/telecoms in Systems and Server Operations since then. Wanted to share this maybe to also give encouragement to people just to keep trying and working hard and it can work out. Potentially also a good message in this hard time of the Coronavirus. Would love to hear some other foot-in-the-door stories.
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