Re: [orca-list] Ot: does anyone have a certification from the Linux foundation?

[austinAustin quesada <austin arq gmail com>]

Thank you all so much. This gives me some great ideas on where to get started.

On 3/9/16, Geoff Shang <geoff quitelikely com> wrote:
> On Wed, 9 Mar 2016, Willem van der Walt wrote:
>
> > 1.  Do not expect to be able to work directly on the server with a screen
> >
> > reader, make sure you have a good understanding of all the remote access
> > options available to you.
>
> +1.  This is not just true for us, but for sysadmins in general.
> Nowadays, many servers are located either in data centres or in cloud
> providers like Amazon.
>
> > 2.  As a blind person, make sure you understand how to do admin without a
> >
> > GUI.  In the case of Linux, you can do most things without a GUI and
> > often,
> > it is as simple as editing a configuration file with a text editor.
>
> Again +1, for general sysadmins, not just us.  GUIs take up lots of disk
> space and RAM, and if a business is paying for virtual machines by
> capacity, this is a big chunk of money. No self-respecting sysadmin or
> employer is going to take a person who can only work with the GUI
> seriously.  Employers often set sysadmin tests as part of the employment
> process, which will give you a chance to shine if you know this stuff.
>
> > 3.  There are some situations where you will need sighted assistance.
> > Once, one disk in a raid configuration on a machine with a hardware raid
> > controller, went dead and although I could find some code indicating which
> >
> > disk it was, the only way of knowing which physical drive to take out of
> > the
> > machine was to look at the lights showing up at the server itself.
> > I found that obtaining sighted assistance was easy enough once you are
> > trusted by your superiors to know what you are doing, as then, you do not
> >
> > need a sighted person with knowledge.  A secretary can tell you about the
> >
> > lights, or read you an error message just as well as one of your sysadmin
> >
> > buddies.
>
> If you are working with hosted hardware, unless your company also has a
> camera with a feed employees can access, everyone will need sighted
> assistance at the hosting facility anyway, or to send someone out to the
> data centre to take a look.  No-one should make too much of a big deal
> about this.
>
> I've just finished a 3.5 year stint working remotely for an American
> company, initially hosting our own boxes and then migrating to Amazon EC2.
> The only times I ran into accessibility issues were when machine BIOSes
> needed to be modified (these could be accessed but the cursor didn't track
> very well), and one instance when we were installing an appliance and the
> installer needed to be accessed via VNC.  In both instances, getting a
> fellow admin to do the graphical stuff was no problem.
>
> Personally, I found my inability to read organisational charts, network
> diagrams and screenshots submitted with support tickets more of an issue
> than the actual admin work.
>
> Certification will help you, but not as much as actual experience with
> specific software.  I'm currently looking for work, and although I don't
> have a computing-related degree (or any degree actually) and no industry
> certification, I've been able to land interviews on the basis of my work
> and software experience, even when disclosing my blindness.  I'm heading
> out in a couple of hours to a second interview with a subsiduary of IBM.
>
> Here are my recommendations:
>
> 1.  First, figure out what exactly what you do know.  Tinkering around
> with Bash, Apache or Bind can be enough to teach you something about it.
>
> 2.  Take a look at job postings for the kinds of positions you think you'd
> like to secure.  Linux sysadmin positions are usually pretty specific
> about the kinds of software they'd like you to know about.   See how your
> skill set matches up, and learn up on some of the more commonly mentioned
> software if you have the time.
>
> 3.  Learn at least the basics of programming in at least one scripting
> language.  Sysadmins are usually expected to be able to cobble something
> together in shell script, Python or Perl, or sometimes Ruby.  You may need
> to write a script to cobble two pieces of software together, or to
> generate data that would be tedius to do by hand.
>
> In a job interview this week, I was asked to write a program in my
> language of choice that would listen on a TCP port of my choosing and send
> back the IP address of the remote connection when connected to in Morse
> code.  I'd never programmed anything that listens on a port or that
> encodes to Morse, but I knew enough Python to allow me to Google my way to
> the info I needed, and I coded something up in about 40 minutes or so.
>
> I have another interview process going with Amazon and they want me to
> take an online coding test as the first part of the hiring process.
> Hopefully there won't be any accessibility issues.
>
> A real world example from my job was the fact that we wanted to import
> rate data from Level 3 into Freeswitch, but Level 3 sent out its rates in
> an Excell spreadsheet.  I wrote code that could read this and spit it out
> in the format we wanted for Freeswitch.  I don't think this ever got
> deployed but it was a good learning experience.
>
> 4.  If you can spare the cash, set yourself up a VPS and experiment with
> it.  Try configuring web servers, databases, whatever you want.  You can
> always reinstall it if you make a mess, and it will give you the feel of
> admining a remote production system.
>
> 5.  Join LinkedIn.  Fill out your profile as thoroughly as you can.
> Include a photo.  List all the skills you currently have.  Connect with
> people you know, especially people who already work.  Get people who know
> your abilities to endorse your skills.
>
> Many sysadmin jobs are advertised on LinkedIn, and often you can simply
> apply through LinkedIn itself (using the iOS app is a breeze nowadays).
> Even if you need to apply on a company's website, you can use LinkedIn's
> Resume Builder at http://resume.LinkedInLabs.com to turn your profile into
> a lovely (and accessible) PDF document.  Finally, recruiters search
> LinkedIn looking for candidates.  I've been contacted three times about a
> job by recruiters who found me, two of them resulted in follow-up
> (including the Amazon gig).
>
> 6.  By all means get certified if you have the time and energy.  You can
> add it to your LinkedIn resume.
>
> Finally, if you don't have much work or software experience, look for
> junior or entry-level jobs.   Employers are more concerned about you
> having the basics and an understanding of specific concepts, rather than
> necessarily being skilled up on the *specific* software they use.  For
> example, they may want you to be familiar with monitoring systems and list
> several of them, even though they only use one and it may not be the one
> you know.  They will expect you to learn at least some things on the job.
>
> Just my thoughts.  Good luck!
>
> Cheers,
> Geoff.