Comment Re:"IT workers" vs. programmers not finding work? (Score 2) 398
What about VMWare or Hyper-V?
You may be right about companies like GE and Erie, I guess I don't know. What I can tell you is that if my company posts a position for a Windows help desk or admin position, we get plenty of resumes. Enough that I think that there are just a lot of people available with those skills or at least claiming to have those skills. Good Linux admins are harder to find. Unfortunately when somebody puts "experience with..." on a resume, I take it as code for "I have very limited experience with...".
Whether or not H1-Bs are making it harder for you, I think you would be well served to branch out into other areas and/or start participating in meetups/user groups to network. Given the movement towards cloud services, I think there is going to be less demand for the traditional sysadmins anyway. There will be a need but it's going to be in larger data centers and it's going to require more specialized skills.
If I were a sysadmin today and trying to enhance my marketability, I'd be seriously looking at getting information security experience and certification.
You may be right about companies like GE and Erie, I guess I don't know. What I can tell you is that if my company posts a position for a Windows help desk or admin position, we get plenty of resumes. Enough that I think that there are just a lot of people available with those skills or at least claiming to have those skills. Good Linux admins are harder to find. Unfortunately when somebody puts "experience with..." on a resume, I take it as code for "I have very limited experience with...".
Whether or not H1-Bs are making it harder for you, I think you would be well served to branch out into other areas and/or start participating in meetups/user groups to network. Given the movement towards cloud services, I think there is going to be less demand for the traditional sysadmins anyway. There will be a need but it's going to be in larger data centers and it's going to require more specialized skills.
If I were a sysadmin today and trying to enhance my marketability, I'd be seriously looking at getting information security experience and certification.