How do define a Senior Unix Admin?

[ponetguy2]

Hello Everyone,

I thought this is a good topic to discuss. I am currently on a mission to find another company to work for as a Unix Admin. I've been working with Unix for over five years. How do we know if we are senior level unix admin? Is there an unwritten rule among Unix geeks on how to identify a senior unix admin?

Please enlighten me.

Thank you in advance,



Carlo Reyes

Technology/Systems - Delivery
Networks and Infrastructure

Chicago Customer Technical Support

 

[ksheehan]

Carlo,

In my 20 years experience (15 as a Unix Admin), I've found that the word "Senior" is relative to the person you are talking to about it.

If you've got 5 years experience, you easily could be considered a Senior Unix Admin. But that all depends upon what you were doing, what you were working with/on, etc.

As for me, I've been a "Senior Unix Admin" now for over 10 years. Maybe someday I'll get a promotion?

Kev

 

[ponetguy2]

Hello Kev,

I work with electronic trading servers running on sun solris 8 and windows 2000 servers. i would like to say that 80% of the servers are on sun solaris. i monitor over 200 servers world wide. we use sun management console to watch these machines (it sux, i liked hp alot better). i've written a few scripts, but i would'nt call myself an expert in scripting. as for backup and recover, we use raid 1. one of my colleagues wrote a script and we've been using it since. it is basically automatic, unless a hd crashes. lol



Carlo Reyes

Technology/Systems - Delivery
Networks and Infrastructure

Chicago Customer Technical Support

 

[rzs0502]

I've found that it depends from company to company.
I work with IBM AIX Unix systems (primarily) and at ,y previous company, we had a handful of AIX servers and did not use some of the more advanced features, hence most guys were 'senior'.
At the new company, we have over 400 Solaris and AIX servers.
I still specialize on AIX but here we run clusters (HACMP), more advanced backup methods, Hitachi SANS, Replication NIM (Network Information Management) etc. etc.
So in this environment, one would have to learn a lot more to become 'senior'.
So I would say it takes knowledge of all the technology that exists in your environment, keeping abreast with the latest developments in the Unix/Linux world, and one of the most important things in a large corporation is following and enforcing standards & procedures and not forgetting the change control. (we've had senior mainframe guys escourted out of the building for not complying with the latter).
And at the risk of started a debate here - if you have a choice, go AIX


"If you always do what you've always done, you will always be where you've always been."