[Tutor] Python jobs with no work experience

[Mats Wichmann]

On 4/19/22 12:50, Leam Hall wrote:
> David,
> 
> There was a point where we didn't have a lot of money. For a while I
> worked as a security guard, but that didn't really pay the bills. My
> wife went into the military to support us, and I found out about Linux.
> 
> I could barely afford a 386 computer; a friend loaned me a single speed
> Mitsumi CDROM and my wife let me get "Slackware Unleashed" which had a
> Linux CD in it. The computer and I hung out in the closet. When my wife
> got an assignment to Italy, there were no jobs on base but I found an
> Italian ISP that had just fired their only Unix guy. They gave me free
> dial-up access and a little bit of cash to cover the phone bill, I
> worked a few hours a week as a Linux guy. When something stumped me at
> work, I'd take the problem home, pour through "Essential System
> Administration" and the man pages, and then come back the next day with
> a solution. The internet wasn't quite a thing back then.
> 
> When we came back to the US, a place needed a few hours of SCO Unix
> work. I did that, and continued to learn, until a newspaper hired me as
> a Solaris admin. I kept learning and finding more challenging jobs, and
> later on I decided that being a programmer would help me fix the issues
> the operations people had. I worked my career and have been a full time
> programmer for few years. It took me six years to go from playing with
> DR-DOS to earning a full time living as a Linux/Unix admin, but I pay
> our bills and sent my wife through college with zero debt.
> 
> Mats is right, some places work hard to say "no" to well qualified
> candidates. But it just takes one "yes" to get started.

I agree with the other comments, this is a great story.

and yes, it only takes one to say yes (sure wish I could find that one,
sigh).  There's a very sharp guy I worked with for several years - we
were both "contributed" to a consortium project by our (different)
employers.  His company basically went away, and he got a job with the
organization that hosted/operated the consortium and remained assigned
to the project.  Then later he lost that job in a downsizing, but after
some months he found a job with, of all things, a jewelry store in the
new city his family had recently moved to, they needed a Linux
syadmin/app developer/all-around-everything-tech.  Doesn't seem like the
place for a senior tech guy, but he was very happy with that job (I
don't know if he's moved on though I used the past tense there).  So not
only does it only take one, but the one can be in a quite unexpected place.