Backstory: I have a Bachelor's of Science in Microbiology/Biotech. After 2 years in the field, and talking to my superiors and my other contacts, I have become a bit unsatisfied with my career choice, specifically regarding money and opportunities. I started getting into “computers”/Linux in junior year of college, and considered changing majors to CS; however, I decided to stick with my chosen field because I had already taken many of the required courses and wanted to get into the job market and start building my life. I got a good paying contract position in the discipline I was most interested in (drinking and waste water treatment). After 2 years in the field, and talking to my superiors and my other contacts, I have become a bit unsatisfied with my career choice, specifically regarding money and opportunities.
The Issue: I know several professionals in the field, and have discussed salary caps for a lab manager or worker positions with a bachelors degree. It seems that a rough salary cap is around 75-80k per year. I make roughly half of that now. There is an option to make ~25-40% more than that if I pursue my education further, but I feel like I can reach that point with fewer years invested into IT. Additionally, I feel like my interest in science has died down in recent years, while my interest in Linux and IT has increased a lot.
My Experience: I am starting to enjoy Linux more and more. I have been following the book "A Practical Guide to Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6th Ed". I haven't delved too deeply yet, but I have experience setting up Arch Linux to the point of a usable desktop system (I am using it on my desktop system currently). I have also set up a CentOS server as far as getting SSH working. I recently obtained a few old desktop computers that I will be reworking into a home server setup for fileserver and learning purposes.
The Plan: My father-in-law got a degree in physics, but never used it - he worked in a startup and built Unix/RHEL sysadmin skills, and he now makes a 6-figure salary as a server architect. I always talk computers with him, and I'm the only person in the family that understands a word he says about his job, so he enjoys talking to me. He has said that if I want to start studying for certifications, he will help me study and provide me with problems and examples. Based on information from him, and from here and /r/sysadmin, many IT professionals go the job tour route, and earn fairly significant raises by ping-ponging to a new position after a year or two, all the while earning great resume-building experience. If I decide to switch my career, I will study hard to learn as much as I can about as many apps/systems as I can, and work towards certifications if they are deemed necessary.
The Question: I am here to ask, does Reddit think it would be a strong career choice to start studying hard for certifications to attempt to break into something like a Jr. SysAdmin position? I have an added benefit of a knowledgeable family member that can teach me tips, tricks, and proper implementation of my knowledge to real-world IT environment. Is there a preferred route to take for gaining knowledge, certain certificates to aim for? Would it be smart to take some courses at my local college? Is there a good job website to use to see what the most commonly requested skillsets are for systems administrators? And finally, which hypervisor should I start my home servers on, that will yield me the most usable experience in the real world? (I am planning to operate several CentOS VMs, since I have experience with the operating system and it is closest to RHEL)
I’m looking forward to all the positive and negative comments. Don’t hold anything back, Reddit, I want to hear the blunt truth. Thanks for taking the time to reply!
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