Title: I’m happy to be able to directly attribute my livelihood to Linux, which is kind of a cool thing to think about.<p>Would love to hear other anecdotes as to how others got into tech&#x2F;Linux.<p>I’m 44 and got my start in 2009, after doing a myriad of other things, like carpentry, aircraft catering, etc.<p>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&#x2F;server&#x2F;datacenter&#x2F;Linux environment. So NOC Technician is basically where it’s at for that sort of thing to get a foot in the door.<p>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&#x2F;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&#x2F;network&#x2F;webserver&#x2F;troubleshooting, all the fundamentals, and there were incredibly smart and brilliant people there that I learned from. Those were very cool days.<p>From there I kept learning and have done fairly decently for myself. Good amount of luck on the way probably, sort of right situation&#x2F;right timing... have worked at two very large ISPs&#x2F;telecoms in Systems and Server Operations since then.<p>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.<p>Would love to hear some other foot-in-the-door stories.
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