Working in IT without a proper IT education

This is something that is on my mind every now and then and that greatly contributes to me having the imposter syndrome.

The genesis: where it all started

Back then when I was studying in France, I didn’t really know what I wanted to pursue in terms of career. I knew what I liked: IT, English and Psychology. Here’s what pretty much went through my head at the time:

IT: “I love it, but what exactly should I be doing in IT? I do like programming, but do I want to become a programmer? I like hardware, but what of it?” Basically, because IT was and still is such a big field, I just didn’t know what to do of it.

Psychology: “I find human psychology fascinating! But what kind of job am I supposed to get when I’m done studying? I have enough problems of my own, I don’t see myself giving counseling to other people. My shit is already enough to deal with.”

English: “Well. I like English. I’m good at it. Maybe I could become a teacher (spoiler alert: I did not) or a translator! (spoiler alert²: I did not)”

So that’s what it came down to: I chose English, for better or for worse. Yeah, sure, I have a better English accent that “normal” French people but that’s mainly because I studied pronunciation. Ever since I left Dublin in 2013, I think it’s safe to say that my English niveau has dropped significantly compared to when I graduated.

And imagine this: I met the Austrian woman who became my wife in Dublin, which then led me to move to Austria myself! Me! With my famous love of the German language (sic)

And because knowing how to speak proper English isn’t considered a great skill when living in a German-speaking country, well… let’s just say my options were limited. I did not really want to back to a call-center and take 25-30 calls a day from people who didn’t know how to plug their monitor to their computer. That was fun to some extent but I had had my fill.

Instead, I… went to a company to work in the customer service department. What else was I supposed to do at the time with close to no German skills and nothing else but knowledge in English? I was certainly not going to try and teach! No, sir! That interest had left me by the end of my first year studying the language in university! So here I was, not really knowing what to do with the rest of my professional life, like many of us out there.

When everything changed

And then… drum roll… I found myself watching some videos from a website called CBT Nuggets which was – and still is – a source of teaching material for all things IT. Mind you, I already had a good interest in Linux, having used it for many years for personal reasons. I didn’t have a deep knowledge of it, though. Watching some of these videos that dealt specifically with Linux administration awoke something in me.

Why wouldn’t I learn more about Linux? Hell, why wouldn’t I learn about system administration? That sounds like fun!

And this is how I got myself into the idea of 1) learning more about Linux and about system administration and 2) trying to get myself a job.

At the time, I was starting to get really tired of my job. I had managed to become a team leader (a position I had never imagined I would ever get, much less be interested in having) and because I’m already such a stress ball in the first place, this didn’t go well for me. This was the last straw: it was time for me to leave and just go for it. And I did. I resigned from my position and starting to study more with the hope of passing the LPIC-1 exam. I failed it, by the way. It was close (-ish) but I failed it. I was hoping for an exam that had less to do with memory and more to do with how-to. I was wrong.

That wasn’t the end of it, though. Before taking that exam, I had applied for a job in the company in which I’m still currently working. Part of the job description had to do with working in a Linux environment and I figured that I should at least try to go for it. The idea being that I would try to get “promoted” to working as a junior Linux administrator, hopefully within the first year.

The first IT job that counts

Imagine my surprise when that actually happened. I’ve now been working for a bit more than a year as a System Operations Engineer, learning everything as I go from system administration to monitoring, scripting and networking. I’m not close to the skill-set my colleagues have, no. But this is a work in progress. That’s what I tell myself almost every day. I have to. It’s really difficult to just be working with people who actually studied that shit and have years of experience in the domain. I sometimes still feel like this was just a mistake and that I don’t belong there. Just because I do not yet have their skills.

It’s challenging, but worth it

It’s not easy every day. On the positive side though, I absolutely love everything I’m doing. When one year ago I was afraid of executing the simplest of commands on my terminal while connected to a machine in production,I’m happy to report that things have much improved. I still have stress. This is not going to change from one day to another and not even from one year to another. It’s a process. Still. I wouldn’t want to do anything else but that now that I’m in this role. How many people do you know can boast about doing something they love professionally? I know a few, but it’s not a majority.

So… I consider myself happy and lucky, because I am.