Ask HN: How did you get started in tech and/or Linux?

#1

Post by indigodaddy » Sat, Oct 03, 2020, 9:24 AM UTC

I’m happy to be able to directly attribute my livelihood to Linux, which is kind of a cool thing to think about.

Would love to hear other anecdotes as to how others got into tech/Linux.

I’m 44 and got my start in 2009, after doing a myriad of other things, like carpentry, aircraft catering, etc.

After an injury, I was basically ruled out of any jobs that required consistent physicality, so I hunkered down and decided to just focus in on Linux full-time (I was already somewhat of a Linux hobbyist, but knew I had a lot of learning to do). After about 6 months of self study, I decided I wanted to work for a webhosting company, and that I really wanted to work in the hosting/server/datacenter/Linux environment. So NOC Technician is basically where it’s at for that sort of thing to get a foot in the door.

I was hanging out in an IRC channel for a local Linux user group, and lo and behold, there was a guy who worked in a local datacenter/hosting company. I got the manager contact from him, and basically called and emailed and bothered the hell out of him until he relented and said OK come work as an unpaid intern. I worked hard, learned and incredible amount there (they hired me on after a few weeks, albeit very cheaply of course)— DNS/network/webserver/troubleshooting, all the fundamentals, and there were incredibly smart and brilliant people there that I learned from. Those were very cool days.

From there I kept learning and have done fairly decently for myself. Good amount of luck on the way probably, sort of right situation/right timing... have worked at two very large ISPs/telecoms in Systems and Server Operations since then.

Wanted to share this maybe to also give encouragement to people just to keep trying and working hard and it can work out. Potentially also a good message in this hard time of the Coronavirus.

Would love to hear some other foot-in-the-door stories.

Re: Ask HN: How did you get started in tech and/or Linux?

#2

Post by austincheney » Sat, Oct 03, 2020, 9:57 AM UTC

I became a programmer because Travelocity couldn't hire competent front-end developers. I was hired on October 2007 as a designer. They had plenty of designers. After 3 months of doing very little work I was reassigned to a developer position and told to figure it out. I figured it out because I wanted to remain employed so that I could continue to pay my rent and feed my children.

In hindsight this experience has proven problematic. Many people who perform front-end development never seem to figure it out. They are dependent upon a collection of tools to do large portions of their job for them. This is incredibly frustrating because it exposes a very extreme and immediate sense of dependency that quickly leads to insecurity, which is a polite way of saying hand-holding possibly infantile. That is a wildly different perspective that often results in friction and sometimes hostility.

Re: Ask HN: How did you get started in tech and/or Linux?

#3

Post by p0d » Sat, Oct 03, 2020, 9:58 AM UTC

I was a church youth worker in the mid 90s when my friend gave me his Dad's old 386 computer which started my interest in computing. I went on to buy a second hand 486 for £200 which was a big investment for my wife and I at the time.

My curious nature resulted in me upgrading my 486. I lost a night of my life trying to add a cdrom when I didn't know what jumpers were :-)

I left youth work and got a job in a local school as the photocopy guy. I grew in confidence and was going out at night and fixing people's computers to support my wife and son and daughter.

I was also studying part-time. I had just enough qualifications to become the school IT Technician when the opportunity arose. I went on to be the school Network Manager and grew the school network from 50 to 500 computers.

I left the public sector and joined a Saas company. I eventually became their infrastructure lead. By this stage I was managing a team running a Xenserver infrastructure spread throughout several data centres in the UK.

I created a website called https://freeperiod.co.uk when I worked in the school. A room booking system for schools. I left my job at the beginning of this year and was taken on to an accelerator program. So Freeperiod has become a company and I am also doing consultancy work.

Underpinning all this is a love for Linux. Faith is also important to me and I believe God has given me the desires of my heart throughout my career. Where there has been an interest I have moved into that field. I also understand now that employers need good workers. If you have a good work ethic you will enjoy your work and may do well.

Re: Ask HN: How did you get started in tech and/or Linux?

#4

Post by rbanffy » Sat, Oct 03, 2020, 10:23 AM UTC

The first programmable device I had was a Texas TI-55 calculator. "Programmable" is a stretch, but it was "automatable". It had no conditional branching and the only unconditional jump it could make was for step 0 of the program. Still, I managed to make it solve 2nd degree equations within its 50 or so available steps. It took me a while to do it because the number of steps available was insufficient and I had to invert a sign and jump to 0 in order to give the second result. This was early 80's.

From then, I was hooked. I briefly had a Sinclair ZX-81 clone (all Brazilian computers were clones back then), and quickly moved to a very nice Apple II+ clone with a "programmable" keyboard.

I had some contact with mainframes - an IBM 4341 - and some Unix in college, but it wasn't until 2004 or so that I decided to move my main desktop to Linux. Linux has been my daily driver since then (even though my corporate-issue computers have been Macs for quite some time).

Re: Ask HN: How did you get started in tech and/or Linux?

#5

Post by oaw-bct-ar-bamf » Sat, Oct 03, 2020, 11:18 AM UTC

Got my first PC in ~2001 Mainly used for playing games.

First contact to programming was through the computer course at school.

Decided that I want to pursue a degree in computer science and studied the same at university.

After getting the bachelors degree I applied for jobs and am happily employed now since 5 years.

So all in all the most boring 'foot in the door' story you could imagine.

Re: Ask HN: How did you get started in tech and/or Linux?

#6

Post by ragingrobot » Sat, Oct 03, 2020, 12:40 PM UTC

I'm 41, and have been using it for over 2 decades.

It's always been a hobby. I work in a non-tech field, I have just liked it better than alternatives, and like the tinkering bit.

It started about 1993, as a freshman at Bronx Science. The school's internet terminals ran AIX (IBM X Stations with these nice big 21" CRTs). Senior year, a friend gave me a CD from Walnut Creek. That was Slackware. Started playing with it, and liked it. I was using a custom built 486 I bought at a computer show. However, things were far from easy as documentation back then was hard to find.

From there, first year of college (1998), I moved to Red Hat (at 5.1) and with the help of a guy on IRC got the Sound Blaster drivers compiled, X running, and everything else I needed. The college computers at the time ran VAX (not so Unix-y) and Digital's OS/F, so again I felt right at home with a Unix-like OS.

From there it was a wrap. Haven't touched any proprietary system since. In between there's been periods of using BSD, and a lot of "distro hopping."

Twenty three years later, I'm almost back where I started - Fedora. Still a hobbyist, still tinkering.

Re: Ask HN: How did you get started in tech and/or Linux?

#7

Post by polygot » Sat, Oct 03, 2020, 1:44 PM UTC

I had an old iMac G3 when I was a kid, and I was searching for a file or an app in Finder (I don't remember which), and I accidentally double clicked on an applescript file because it froze for a few seconds. The rest is history.

Re: Ask HN: How did you get started in tech and/or Linux?

#8

Post by kleer001 » Sat, Oct 03, 2020, 11:56 PM UTC

Step Dad got a 286 in 1989. Spent lots of time on that DOS machine.

Linux in University and then again on/off during my last 20 years in my industry. Though I wonk at a windows place now I try not to think about it too much. The rest of the place and how awesome it is more than makes up for a poopy OS.

Linux at home finally a year and a half ago when my disposable income was up to the challenge of buying a state of the art machine. Wish I had done it earlier. It's a blast.

Re: Ask HN: How did you get started in tech and/or Linux?

#9

Post by derekp7 » Sun, Oct 04, 2020, 10:53 AM UTC

I came back home from a 2-week summer camp, at 13 years old, to an IBM PCjr. Was told "We spent a lot of money on this setup, it better not be collecting dust in a few months".

From there I learned DOS, Basic, general "administration". Got a job in late high school at the small company where my Mom worked, helping out with various office tasks (filing, running the postage meter, counting inventory). They had a few PCs, and a "main" computer system (some sort of Data General "mini" I believe). They had a PC consultant that would come in for various tasks, for $350 an hour. They quickly found out they could get the same work from me for $3.50 an hour.

Eventually, the company that supplied their central computer (with a bunch of ASCII terminals hooked up) migrated over to a Unix system (AIX on an IBM RT), I saw that the interface was somewhat similar to DOS but different, and went to town. Learned the vendor's app export functions, started producing custom reports using grep/sed/join/awk in shell scripts, became a "local hero", realized I have a hero complex, so I kept pursuing tasks that would help feed my ego -- further learned C programming, and the rest is history.

Today I'm a Linux systems/network engineer that does a lot of programming on the job (now they call it devops), and also filling in as a pinch hitter for some of the development teams whenever they need someone that knows system level programming and C. Also put out a few full-stack apps using node.js on the back end with plain html5/javascript on the front end (not really into modern frameworks, that is a hole I need to fill in).

Re: Ask HN: How did you get started in tech and/or Linux?

#10

Post by politelemon » Sun, Oct 04, 2020, 10:53 AM UTC

It's actually embarrassing. I used to be a full on Win/Mac user in various phases.

I had a coworker who was a contributor and we'd have healthy debates (promise!) about our choice of OS. I decided I'd one-up him, by learning all the finer points about the 3rd remaining OS well, I'd be able to render him speechless! So I installed Linux on a computer and started using it, settings up my dev environment, applications etc. It didn't take long for me to forgot about the original reason for doing it. I only remembered years later and I didn't forget to thank him sincerely for sending me down this path.

I never thought about OSS, freedom, etc, mainly because a premise of being in those closed ecosystems is to be brand loyal. But now it's become very important to me.