Memset is the only company I have ever worked for that actively encourages it’s staff to learn and try new things, and will pay for training and certification in technologies that interest individual members of staff. It works out well for my employers because they’ll get back an employee whose has been properly certified in a particular discipline. That’s not to say that we’re not already experienced in using these disciplines, but it’s nice to get recognized by the vendors that make it all possible.
I’ve been thinking long and hard about what I’ve wanted to do now I’ve been given the chance. Back at MPC, which promised the Earth but delivered only dirt, I had wanted to take a course on learning Maya – to help me provide better application support to the artists on the floor, and possibly take my career further in another direction other than just systems administration. That never happened. The best I got was a subscription to Safari Books Online.
But prior to MPC all my previous employers operated a bugger-all training policy[*] and I had to learn what I wanted to learn in my own time. Pretty much my entire career to date was formed from self-learning. I bought my own books (or borrowed from libraries), bought my own software and hardware, and just had to teach myself how to do things.
Windows seems to be the way forward despite the massive proliferation of Linux. I’ve been using Linux since around 1994 when the kernel was seriously pre -1.0 and was very experimental. Windows Server came into my field of version back in 1998 and I’ve been using it on and off since then. That’s the problem – it’s been on and off. When I suggested to one of my former employers that we use an email ecosystem that was not Exchange, they bulked at the idea – management wanted Exchange and management was going to get Exchange. The IT department hadn’t much experience with it, so they paid a consultancy firm to come in and do all the work setting up Domain controllers, Exchange, and all the bits and bobs that go with it. I dread to think how much was paid to these consultants to do the work. All I know is that the mail server I managed under Linux and running Exim had survived a major version upgrade and move to new server without any hassles. Exchange and Windows Server was a lot more problematic and we didn’t have the in-house experience to manage it ourselves.
All throughout my career, Windows experience has been in great demand by potential employers. Good Windows system admins can earn considerably more than Linux sysadmins in some cases and there appears to be no let down in the demand for Windows servers and VPSes. So it seemed logical for me to pick a Windows 2008 Server certification that should take me up to MCITP (Microsoft Certified IT Professional) at a minimum. And that’s what I’m hoping to do over the next few months.
I had considered an official Linux certification such as LPI or RHCE, but it’s a popular choice here and almost everybody else is doing a certification in LPI. Perhaps that’s something I’ll do after my MCITP, but for the moment I think the benefits that MCITP would bring to my employers and to my overall career development is the way to go right now.
[*] Thankfully not literally.
