Linux Training Is A Must, According To One Philadelphia Tech Manager
Jonathan Curry is a community manager and developer evangelist at Linode. Having worked in the hosting industry since 2008, he has expertise in a wide range of areas from customer service, to system administration, deployment and integration systems, data center management, and web and software development. After overhauling data center operations at a Dallas-based dedicated hosting company, Jonathan decided it was time for a change of scenery and moved to South Jersey to join Linode's cloud hosting team.
What sort of education is needed to successfully do your job?
"Linux training and experience is a must. Even without being a full-time system admin or developer, if I didn't know how to use Linux and servers that run on the OS myself, then I wouldn't even be able to point people in the right direction for the best ways to get their web projects off the ground, how to add a web site's capabilities, user capacity, etc. Colleges don't even require their computer science majors to learn Linux, so it's always a disappointment when interviewing somebody - especially students just out of college - to find out that they have never used the operating system. It's got to be learned."
What is the most relevant aspect of your education that applies to your day-to-day job?
"Soft skills I learned in school and my first jobs have been invaluable in advancing my career. As a younger anti-social tech geek, it was tough finding out that it's not enough to know all the answers if nobody else wants to work with you because you 'know' all the answers; so additional training and education in customer service and hospitality have been extremely beneficial."
What is the most fun aspect of your job?
"Travel - without a doubt - and being able to talk to Linode's customer base to find out what our service is doing for them. When meeting our customers, I find it fun to show them how we can help them build amazing tools, web sites, and applications on the Linode platform."
What advice would you give someone just starting out in the field of technology?
"It's very important that anybody wanting to enter IT consider a few things. First, they must identify the technologies they are most passionate about. Second, they must anticipate what they think will be the road map that their IT career will follow. With those two criteria met, they must evaluate the educational resources and certifications available for those technologies and find a reasonable balance of time, cost and benefit among them."
Christina Thompson is a freelance writer living in Philadelphia. Her work can be found at Examiner.com.
