I worked at the IT help desk with a company called Genworth, but then I took the Yellow Tail Tech program, and now I’m a Linux System Administrator for Canadian Banknote.
How’s things been going so far?
We’d had a couple of interviews with them, and they liked what I showed them in my resume; they wanted to move forward with hiring me. My first day is on the 2nd of October.
During the interview, did you feel like Yellow Tail Tech prepared you for those interviews?
Yes, definitely.
Yellow Tail Tech definitely prepared me because we had to do three mock interviews, and they were very similar to what the interview with Canadian Banknote was like.
They have, like, the first interview with personable questions, a little bit of technical questions, and then the second one was mostly technical, really getting into the nitty-gritty of how to use Linux.
And thanks to the program, I was able to answer his questions pretty accurately, good enough for me to get the job.
You had a full-time job then, while you were going to class at Yellow Tail Tech. How did you manage your time?
Yes, it was a lot.
I would get off work at like 4:30, and then a few hours later, I’d have to go to class. But it wasn’t every single day that I had to go to class, and I usually spent my time on the weekends studying.
That way, I still had some time.
Was it tough coming in without having any Linux experience and everything?
It was a little bit tough starting.
I did take one class in college that taught me the essentials of Linux, like simple commands like chmod or how to change into a different directory.
I had just a little bit of background with the usage, the syntax of Linux.
And that helped me a little bit, but after the first couple of weeks, it was all new stuff from Yellow Tail Tech, and I was learning. It was a lot of information, but I think it was manageable.
Do you have any study tips that you could pass on?
My study tips would be to just find a spot in your schedule where you’re available for like an hour or two, just to go over the syntax of commands.
And also just actually logging into the terminal and practicing working on a Linux machine, cause practice makes perfect, really.
After you got your certification, you went into the Procore apprenticeship. How was that experience for you?
I loved that experience because it put me into a real Linux environment.
I could work with a bunch of different applications all at once—we worked with Ansible, Foreman, Bala, Qwiklabs, GitLab, just a little bit of everything.
It helped me prepare for the real Linux world by having a little bit of everything.
Were there a lot of questions about those applications when you were doing your interviews and stuff?
They said that they mostly use Puppet, and I didn’t have any Puppet experience, but he was OK with training me with it.
He also used Nagios. I remember he said that was one of the ones we studied at Procore, and he uses Nagios at his job.
Using Puppet instead of what, would that be the substitute for? Like, for what?
The Docker and Podman, I think.
How is your financial life going to change, or is it? Is it going to be better?
Definitely gonna be better. I’m almost doubling my salary with this new job.
Is this a remote position, or are you going into an office?
It’s mostly remote, but he said I would have to come into the office on occasion when they need me, maybe for a meeting or something.
Any tips that you can offer, either on the job search itself or tips for those interested in getting into IT?
I would say if you’re interested in IT, definitely just go for it. You’re going to make the right decision.
As long as you decently understand computers a bit, and you want to learn more about it, and you’re interested in learning about computers and Linux itself, I would definitely say you should go for it.
You can do it. I think anyone can do it if they put in the right amount of time and effort into it.
And for job searching, I would say: just always apply to something every single day.
Put in a few applications each day and try to get the ones that newly pop up on the feed, because those are the ones that don’t have many applicants yet.
You’re more likely to get looked at instead of applying something that already has like 50 people.
It’s a lot less likely for you to get the job if there’s a ton of applicants. But if you’re first, you have a better shot.
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