good advice.  i like this post.

On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 11:59 AM, Yaron <tclug at freakzilla.com> wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> On Mon, 13 Dec 2010, Jason Hsu wrote:
>
> > Are there other career paths I should consider?  I've heard that I
> > should consider becoming a systems administrator.
>
> First of all, let me say that it's very cool to see people discovering and
> getting into the more 'real' world of computing (:
>
>
> I've been a systems administrator in one form or another for, oh good god,
> about 17 years. Sure, I'm a lot more specialised now, and I guess my job
> title isn't actually "systems administrator" (it has "analyst" in it,
> whatever that means).
>
> There are a lot of things you should know before choosing this career
> path, but here is the single most important one:
>
>
> THEY WILL GIVE YOU A PAGER AND THEY WILL NOT BE AFRAID TO USE IT.
>
>
> Take that with all that implies. It's EXTREMELY high pressure, everyone
> wants everything done NOW, everyone's priorities are way more important
> than yours, and if it's at 4am after you've put in 12 hours straight
> fixing something else, that's just too bad. It's a 24/7 kind of thing.
>
> Course there are plus sides - if you work at a good place you will be
> compensated for all of that in the form of money/cool toys/pizza. And if
> you thrive on high pressure and challenges, you may well enjoy it.
>
> But my advice is to avoid the pager-related jobs, or at least have an
> exit strategy.
>
>
>
>
> -Yaron
>
> --
>
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