I've made quite a career out of knowing how linux works and not reinventing the wheels it provides. I read man pages. I sometimes run `systemctl list-unit-files` and say, "hmm what is that??" then go find out what it is. I've been at this for decades and curiosity keeps pushing me to learn new things and keep up with recent developments.
But how did you get your first Linux job? That's where I'm stuck at. Where I live, there's literally zero entry level Linux roles, and the literally couple of Linux roles that are available require you to have centuries worth of enterprise experience with Kuberneres, Openshift, Ansible, Chef, Puppet, Terraform etc...
I was a windows guy at a large auction site and started bringing linux in to my workflows and solutions. I'd already been gaining personal experience with linux and the BSDs, solaris, etc. That was my last "windows job."
I'd say there's really no "linux roles" out there. Entry level or not. Everyone collectively decided "devops" was a big bright beautiful tomorrow and made devs learn release management and made ops people get lost (or become the developer they never wanted to be). Everyone shifted their focus towards "as code" solutions because the SRE book said nobody should log in to servers or something. So we hire people that know the abstractions instead and assume nobody really needs to go deeper than that.
It sucks, but learning the abstractions is how you're gonna have to get started. If you're already a linux nerd then you may benefit from understanding what the abstraction is doing under the hood.
If I was starting out right now, I'd go work through Kelsey Hightower's 'Kubernetes The Hard Way' and build functional kubernetes clusters from scratch on a couple of the cloud providers. Do not copy&paste anything from the blog. Every line, every command, by hand. Type out those CSRs and manifests! Recognize what each component you're setting up is and what it's used for. Like "what is the CCM and what's it responsible for?" Or "What's going on with every step of the kubelet bootstrapping process? What controllers are involved and what are they doing?" Read EVERYTHING under kubernetes.io/docs. Understand the relationships between all the primitives.
If you already have some linux, networking, and containers knowledge to build on top of, I think you could work through all of that in less than 4 weeks and have a better understanding of kubernetes than 80%+ of engineers at any level and crush a kubernetes focused interview.
Thanks but my point still stands: there's no entry-level roles, whether it's "Linux" or a Linux-based "DevOps" role. I'm actually working in a windows-based mostly-DevOps type role, but we use almost zero opensource tools and it's very Microsoft centric.
The closest Linux-y roles that I might have a shot at getting into are "cloud engineer" type roles, with a heavy emphasis on AWS - and I hate AWS with a passion (just as much as I hate Azure).
Regardless, the biggest issue is getting that interview call - now in the age of AI, people are faking their CVs and companies are getting flooded with hundreds or thousands of junk applications, so getting that interview call - especially when you don't meet their professional experience requirements - is next to impossible. I could have all the Kuberneres certs in the world, but what's the point if I get filtered out right at the first stage?
Start introducing it where you are. I was an early advocate for the use of WSL2/Docker and along with that a push towards deploying to Linux initially as a cost saving as projects started shifting away from .Net Framework and into .Net Core and Node that were actually easier to deploy to Linux... WSL/Docker became a natural fit as it was "closer to production" for the development workflow.
It's not always possible, but there are definitely selling points that can help you introduce these things. Hell, scripting out the onboarding chores from a clean windows install (powershell to bootstrap in windows, then bash, etc for the WSL environment) with only 3-4 manual steps... and you get a new dev onboarded in a couple hours with a fully working environment and software stack, including an initialized database... You can raise some eyebrows.
Do the same for automated deployments on your existing projects... shift the testing environments to Linux as a "test" or "experiment" ... you can eat away at both directions.
Before you know it, developers can choose windows or mac instead of one or the other, and can use whatever editor they like. Maybe still stuck with C# or MS-SQL, maybe PostgreSQL for green projects.
I thought you were asking for advice. Sorry.
It’s been 17 years since I got my first Linux job in 2008. Where I live, that’s rare, 99% of the industry here is a 'Microsoft Shop,' and the biggest player in town is practically married to them.
I started out at a small Linux company working with Plone CMS. The pay wasn’t great, but it was the perfect place to learn Linux and Python. Since then, I’ve used Linux every single day, become a Java developer, and started a few businesses. Using Linux of course.
But lately, things are changing. Companies are realizing that when it comes to Data Engineering and Science, C# just can't compete with Python's ecosystem. Now that they need to pivot, they're looking for help, and there are very few people in this area with the experience to answer that call.
I was working in a Windows-centric environment and started using ProxMox as the hypervisor instead of Windows Server. This combined with my self. Hosting hobby (Proxmox mini PC cluster, network diagrams of vlans, self hosting my own blog website, having a handful of small tools in my git repos) was what sold my current company on hiring me, more than my resume of working in tech.
You can make almost any job into a Linux job. Use a linux VM on your desktop to solve a problem for the company. Things change once your employer knows its essential.
I've also seen Linux make inroads in "windows only" enterprises when it became essential for performance reasons. A couple of times, towards the start of a project, windows APIs were discovered to be too slow to meet requirements:
In one case, customer needed us to send a report packet every 40ms. But even when we passed "0" to the windows Sleep() function, it would sometimes stop our program for 100ms at a time. The sleep function on linux was highly accurate, so we shipped linux. Along the way 5-6 devs switched to, or got a second PC to run linux.
In another case, we needed to saturate a 10GbE link with a data stream. We evaluated windows with a simple program:
... but we found windows could only squeeze out 10% of the link capacity. Linux, on the other hand, could saturate the 10GbE link before we had even done any performance tuning. On linux, our production program met all requirements while using only 3% CPU usage. Windows simply couldn't touch this. More devs learned linux to support this product.while(1) send(sock, &buffer, len(buffer);Those companies still don't require linux skills when hiring, because everyone there was once a windows guy who figured it out on the job. But when we see linux abilities on the resume it gives candidates a boost because we know they'll be up to speed faster.
Lie and learn.
That's the way.
None of these are in high-demand right now in my experience. Despite being an expert in most of these listed, I haven't even had an interview in a couple of months.
Wish it were as easy as getting some certifications, but I don't think anyone has ever asked for one specifically in my entire career.
It's difficult to quantify the value of "I know the shit out of linux" to a prospective employer when they're looking for cog developer #471.
In my experience it's the network of people you've worked with that know how beneficial you are and want to work with you again (this is key) that will keep you in demand regardless of the market conditions.
Victim-blaming is not necessary in this hiring environment. In the last decade only small companies have been available to me which means there’s under five folks I can turn to directly for jobs, and all are not hiring now.
There could be a lot of reasons for that. The market in general is awful for hiring right now. Just broken.
Yes, that's what I'm saying. The rise of ATS seems to be a big part of the problem. Don't think I'm even being seen. There's also been an explosion of stacks, and if you didn't work with the ZYZYXX stack for the last five years, no chance, because someone else has.
Just lie. They don't know what they're doing.
Would consider it if I could even get an interview. Often I do have most or similar experience, but even that is not enough.
I got hired on as a 1099 to help implement some "Facebook clone but for your company's internal intranet" because they specifically needed a US citizen to do it for "compliance reasons" (energy company)
After coming to terms with their... questionable software stack (Apache on Ubuntu in which they rented AWS bare metal to then run ESXi???) they asked me if I knew anything about Azure, so they could broaden their cloud support
I had their entire stack transliterated and ready to run within hours the same day (their app really could just be on a VPS somewhere)
Despite this, I was told I'd have to apply for their Sysadmin job the same as anyone else. Okay. Fine
It later came back that I was pruned from even being shortlisted because "you don't have any Azure experience"
I ported your entire stack to it in mere hours but I guess not!
username to post correlation
I know right? One recruiter told me that they wouldn't interview me because I didn't have experience with Shopify. What kind of bullshit is that? What worked for me is putting as many keywords as possible and using ChatGPT to write what you did at your previous job. It's best when sprinkled with some hallucinations.
I wish it were broken, then it could be fixed.
I think it is changed. AI is today’s version of the computer, putting many out of long-held jobs while opening up new career paths for different skills.
~25 years of linux experience, 8-9ish professionally here, my beard is a bit gray. 2 interviews in the last 11 months of looking for me. I am not being picky. (I'm at a little more of a disadvantage- I've been exploring another, non-tech career path since covid, which now shows as a five year gap on my cv).
(Any leads out there hn?)
Same experience, first question is “Do you have a PhD?”, actually scrap that, they assume I have…..
Canonical is always hiring people who know their shit, downside is you have to believe in Launchpad and use their products.
and be willing to endure the hazing ritual they call an application and interview process
its not this the other way around??? with the amount of investment of data center in the western, it would need a tons of people to do that
Your resume isn't that good then, or your leaving out information about your situation.
I give 1-2 interviews a week right now for SRE jobs that pay mid 200s
Job markets bad but you should be getting some calls atleast
Frankly that is a pretty thoughtless response. Even if your anecdote were broadly applicable, it still doesn't logically follow that an employer giving lots of interviews somehow translates on the applicant side into "a better resume would get you interviews". In fact, the hiring process has become incredibly dysfunctional. The best conceivable resume is still unlikely even to be read by a human hiring manager when it's just one of literally thousands of others for the same role.
I'll disagree, it's important to know the extent of what the bad market is. No replies in months means something else is up.
The job market is bad but people are still getting jobs and interviews. Months of silence is not normal
Ive also been on the applicant side and got interviews and call backs, also a handful of recruiters reaching out to me
I invite you to try to get a mainstream developer interview right now. Cold, without network.
For example, I put an ad here, and replied to five others. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45801184 No replies or enquiries.
I did a couple months ago. i did like 4 of them. you want me to screenshot my interview schedules or something? I'm not one of these "use your network people", im to introverted for that. I cold apply through companies sites.
I never had anyone reach out on these who's hiring things though. Also HN whos hiring has been a dead end for me on my job searches.
Is that resume the one your uploading onto websites and job portals? Unsolicited feedback OK or am i going to get hammered with downvotes? lol
Get rid of the cute formatting. Pictures, icons, "fun" section. Recruiters get 1000s of applications per job. It needs to be easily parseable by software and easy at a glance to see who you are. The top third is a sky diver. keep it to only 1 page. Your also not using a professional tone on your resume.
The skydiver is me, and parses fine. I could remove all personality, but would that really help? I was successful with this resume five years ago, not now.
Actually one person was quite excited about it recently, but he worked for a company that had zero money for developers. :-/
So, please put your money where your mouth is and get in touch for one of those SRE jobs, which I could certainly do with one hand behind my back. Am highly motivated.
Your trying to get a job as a linux admin or coder? Not a skydiver?
> and parses fine.
I tried to go to your github and copy and paste kept picking up weird characters until i gave up. You have images all over where there should be text. Three of your companies are images. You have links embedded.
> I could remove all personality, but would that really help?
IMO yes, because i think its hurting you. Your not even getting call backs. Resumes need to be efficient to look at and judge for a 25 year old recruiter that doesn't know CS.
Your competing with people who can put "Meta 2021-2025" in big bold letters up front. You have a giant image, then another 1/3 page of icons.
This isn't 5 years ago where hiring pipelines didn't have people in them and hiring managers were actively recruiting and trying to find people. I had one recruiter tell me they had to pull the job listing down after a day or 2 because there were to many applicants. No one has time for your personality and quirks.
Go to google docs, pick a resume template, write your accomplishments in detail, have some llm shorten it for you using business language. Put your personality on your blog
> Your trying to get a job as a linux admin or coder? Not a skydiver?
Someone who parachutes in to save the day, no matter the problem. One thing I've done multiple times is rescue broken systems built by B-players or worse.
> tried to go to your github and copy and paste
Huh? It's a link, you click it.
> Three of your companies are images. You have links embedded.
Those are the very oldest, just to show a wide range of experience. Before you said you wanted it shorter, now you want it longer with more detail. Please pick one.
> This isn't 5 years ago where hiring pipelines didn't have people in them
I'm not sure what this means. Feels a lot more automated today with everyone using an ATS.
> remove personality...
I'm not sure about this, but worth thinking about. The conventional wisdom for a long time is to show some personality to stand out, (and apologies) given by folks who know the difference between "your" and "you're" and understand links. I'm on the fence with this one.
My resume is meant to appeal to hiring managers, not recruiters it's true. Could see that being an issue, but recruiters have not been visible in the places I've been applying.
> Before you said you wanted it shorter, now you want it longer with more detail. Please pick one.
Shorter by taking the extra info and pictures out. Clearer by taking away pictures. These can be one line with a single bullet point.
> > This isn't 5 years ago where hiring pipelines didn't have people in them > > I'm not sure what this means. Feels a lot more automated today with everyone using an ATS.
I mean like people to actually even interview. We would sometimes have an opening and no people to even interview.
You can take the feedback or not. I have gotten interviews in the last few months, give a lot interviews and look at a lot of resumes. My point was, the job market is bad, but its not no interviews bad. It is competitive, there are fewer listing, pay is stagnating or even going down. The interview process it self is fucked up. But there are jobs out there.
Coincidentally I spoke to a recruiter here recently and she said Data Engineering is down now because of AI promises, and SoCal is slow as well.
My last job was in that so am pigeonholed, but I could do anything in the field, Linux preferred.
Maybe putting your email address in your public HN user details would help? :)
Help with what?
What I'd give to have someone who's Linux experience isn't using a Mac and using brew to install stuff.
I'm the only one with formal Linux experience on my team and I'm the only one who doesn't have to look up how to get to the logs...
K8s admin != Linux grey beard. SurprisedPikachu.gif
To be fair journalctl practically requires its own book
There's the argument that Systemd is an operating system unto itself.
raises hand
Been daily driving desktop Debian for dang-near a decade now (heh). I've also maintained a gradually-evolving app hosting service for clients for even longer, covering all kinds of stuff. Current architecture includes LXC and nginx. And, I've got BSD experience too.
Job market sucks for me too.
Oh that's an easy problem to solve, just use: https://docs.brew.sh/Homebrew-on-Linux :p
Despite its standard Homebrew warts, I've been using Homebrew on Linux for years now for my dev boxes and it's been great.
It's good for getting the latest versions of packages, both for things that aren't in the distro and even to override distro packages. So far almost everything Just Works alongside the distro packages (at least for Ubuntu LTS).
Am available shortly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45801184
Desktop experience is pretty much irrelevant to the parts of Linux that makes money.
Is it pure Ops. Or also coding? I've managed Linux servers for nigh 20~ years at SMB's and personally. Kubernetes is misery
25 years of Linux experience here, 19 professionally. Email's in my profile, happy to help answer questions.
I have 30… first installed Slackware from a dozen or two floppies. :-p
My man.
And embedded Linux!
I’ve had a hell of a time finding good embedded Linux devs.
I got insanely lucky to hire two this year.
What are you looking for? Yocto experience? Experience writing drivers? C/Rust/C++? Hardware / FPGA experience as well?
I have been doing backend/infrastructure coding for years and have been thinking about trying embedded work but am unsure how to break into that area. Curious if you (your industry) would be interested in someone with a lot of Linux/systems experience but not in the embedded space?
I'd start from this - https://www.coursera.org/specializations/advanced-embedded-l...
I studied under him at the university. He's also active in open source communities around embedded space.
Thanks!
I've had a hell of a time getting into embedded linux professionally. I don't have that specific job experience on my resume, but lots of related open source work, writings, kernel work etc -- I can do this, I just can't prove it very well.
What would you recommend I do? Looking for any more devs?
Isn't linking to commits enough to prove it?
Is embedded Linux that different to regular Linux?
Edit: I mean, Vizio TVs literally run systemd.
A lot of work here is working on vendor provided BSP (which can range from esoteric mix of ancient kernels/bootloaders to top-quality community maintained mainline kernels) to work on your custom board/product.
So Linux kernel config/building/patching?
Linux kernel + bootloaders + firmware
The Linux kernel side is mostly device trees, device drivers and the like.
u-boot is very famous as a bootloader in the embedded space
Firmware for board bring up and devices
It’s the “embedded” part that people struggle with.
I can find systemd script gremlins all the live long day.
I can’t find anyone who can write device drivers for custom peripherals, then hook them to user space utilities in a sane way.
The the hackaday community might be a good place to train/find such people, although the are more focused on non-Linux bare-metal code I expect.
I guess you are aware of the consulting companies in this space? Baylibre and Denx (now NABLA) come to mind. Probably more Linux embedded companies on the FOSSjobs wiki. Looking at people/companies contributing to related areas of the Linux codebase is another option.
https://baylibre.com/ https://nabladev.com/ https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/Resources#employme...
The guy in the photo is clearly qualified. Dual monitors is hard enough on Linux, that man got triple!
He installed an open source NVIDIA driver for a graphics card from 2014. He earns 7 figures.
the 50b of revenue that nvidia just booked last quarter. dont they all get deployed on machines that run linux?
So sick of these “Accept all cookies” / “reject optional cookies” dark patterns, sites that do this should be banned
Yes but :
1- use the consent-o-matic extension, or 2- open in incognito mode, accept whatever, then when closing the session all the cookies they gave you go away.
consent-o-matic failed on this site
That’s why I gave you the other option :)
ProTip: Raise your rates. The "typical salary ranges" are laughable, even in 2008 Dollars.
I'm curious if these are somehow informed by real job postings. if so, I agree it's pretty obvious why these are in high demand (of employers).
there is a high demand for finding intelligent life on mars.
Rising rates is what high demand means.
The article no doubt misspelt "wishful thinkers", of course.
3 * 0 = 0
I just tripled my rates!
probably customers, too
In demand? In the age where people are being completely replaced by their AI fellow colleagues, it logically doesn't follow that the Linux admin skills won't be or aren't already. The heck, I hate to say this but most of my colleagues right now are less competent than the AI models. What AI model can spit out in the matter of working with it in minutes, given the correct prompt, they can't solve in 3 months.
> Linux engineers
I know Linux and majored in Engineering in college. Do I count? Lol
[flagged]
Unless you're running Alpine Linux or similar of course. Nowadays the GNU tools make up a small (if important) part of a Linux distro. There's also alternatives.
Still has nothing to do with Linux. Look at "Skills Employers Seek in 2025." What does Docker or Kubernetes have to do with Linux?
Typically, Docker and Kubernetes run container images based on Linux and run them on top of Linux servers. I can say from my experience using Kubernetes to run Docker containers that having separate Linux experience is very helpful
4 decades on and there are STILL people trying to get everyone to say “GNU Linux”.
Everyone knows Linux is the kernel. Nobody CARES.
Everyone says GNU Linux. The target is called x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.