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16 years ago
General
A while ago I was looking through Craigslist for job opportunities and I found an advert for an IT networking position. It was the usual fare, except in the middle, it said "If your experience with networking is at LAN parties or home networking, don't even bother to apply."
Now don't get me wrong, I understand why they said that. They don't want every two-bit yahoo that can plug LAN cables into a switch and the switch into a router to think they can do the job. That's fair. I think they could be less snarky about it, but it's fair.
But as I sat at my desktop system, telnetted into my Debian server trying to troubleshoot a problem with the RSA key used between the remote name control client and BIND so that the init script would finally work right, it just struck me as funny. And as I sat there, troubleshooting the auto-update between the DHCP server and BIND so that it would store and resolve local addresses on my dual-subnetted network, it made me chuckle
Sure, my home network is probably the exception and not the rule. Hell, I know it is. It just frustrates me and aggravates me that I have such a wealth of hands-on knowledge with what could be considered advanced Linux networking... but because it's not in a work environment, I am completely unsuitable for employment.
Someday, I hope this discrimination against the self-taught is overcome.
Now don't get me wrong, I understand why they said that. They don't want every two-bit yahoo that can plug LAN cables into a switch and the switch into a router to think they can do the job. That's fair. I think they could be less snarky about it, but it's fair.
But as I sat at my desktop system, telnetted into my Debian server trying to troubleshoot a problem with the RSA key used between the remote name control client and BIND so that the init script would finally work right, it just struck me as funny. And as I sat there, troubleshooting the auto-update between the DHCP server and BIND so that it would store and resolve local addresses on my dual-subnetted network, it made me chuckle
Sure, my home network is probably the exception and not the rule. Hell, I know it is. It just frustrates me and aggravates me that I have such a wealth of hands-on knowledge with what could be considered advanced Linux networking... but because it's not in a work environment, I am completely unsuitable for employment.
Someday, I hope this discrimination against the self-taught is overcome.
There are so many positions out there, that I'm sure my generation of jack-of-all-trades people can learn quickly and excel at. But we are never given the chance because companies are too busy setting up barriers to weed out the lazy no work ethic people who think it is a privilege to do the bare minimum and get paid for it.
Ugh. Sorry, dunno why I'm suddenly standing on the soap box.
Just wish more employers would go back to being more interested in what you can do instead of what you did do.