I am wondering what kind of career moves I have available to me because I am over the bullshit of desktop support. I have been brushing up on my Linux skills, learning docker, and doing a whole bunch of networking-related things. At this point, I am 46 years old. Would it benefit me to go back to school to learn a skill to help me advance beyond this role? I just don’t know what to do. There are many options, none of them truly low cost and all of them involving a significant amount of risk.

I get that there is no avoiding risk when making a career change so late in life. I was looking at training for Java or Oracle and it isn’t cheap. Maybe given my experience I could teach A+ or Network+? I don’t know. I’ll welcome any ideas right now.

    • Meow.tar.gz@lemmy.goblackcat.comOPEnglish
      9·
      1 year ago

      The hard part is convincing somebody to hire me without formal production experience. I am in the classic Catch-22 situation: How do I get experience if nobody will give me the opportunity?

        • banjoman05@beehaw.orgEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          I had zero “production experience” when I got hired for my first UNIX/Linux sysadmin job. I however had years of experience hosting my own Linux systems for desktop and server projects. If you don’t have experience, make it.

      • PancakedWaffle@lemmy.worldEnglish
        51·
        1 year ago

        Go look on upwork for some gigs at your current hourly rate. Once you do one or two the interviews will go much smoother.

        Highly recommend this Linux admin path for you. Knowing from personal exp the pay in support desk vs devops, you might 4x your pay inside 3 years.