After many years as a system engineer in both enduser as well as field services I find that it's not very rewarding career being a unix engineer in either. I find that the best place if you want a career in is either application development or doing networks security.

As a network security engineer you have to learn new things all the time as new threats emerge but in reality once the corporation network is setup and running in production there is very little to do except every once in the while install some patch add some rules on the firewall, maybe every once in a while your network gets hit by a new worm and you are busy but most times I observe network engineers are quite free, and you most certainly won't see them arguing with application people over application performance problems as compare to the system administrator.

Also a system person in an enduser environ, you do not bring much value as compares to a application developer. What you are doing is just maintaining the existing infrastructure, sure maybe you rollout a new system every now and then but that's what your mgt expects of you anyways?

The application developer on the other hand brings in a lot of value in terms being able to understand the business needs and requirements and delivering those needs hence when it comes to getting bonuses better apraisals, pay increments the application guy usually gets more. You will find that in many environments the system and application are always fighting each other and very often the application guy will get the ear of the mgt to see things his/her way and thats the reality. In many environments I've been to i've observed that the applicaiton guy if he/she stays long will eventually become the Head of IT department.

In vendor field services environment here you get to touch many systems but the learning curve is very steep and competition is very intense and the work is like preassure cooker, you're busy all the time, doing standby's, upgrades for paying customers implementating new projects sometimes even handling more than 5 projects on hand concurrently But not all engineers are built the same, some are very good in storages, some good at servers, some network oriented but very few are all rounders, you won't have any applicaition developers to fight with instead you are competiting your careers with each other and only the very best engineers get rewarded.

One last thing, these days when corporations are outsourcing for cheaper services you will find that most often jobs that go are mostly system related , application usually not much affected.

my 2 cents

GET EXPERIENCE.....experience will give you the most knowledge. After two years in college I thought I knew a lot, but as soon as I got out in the real world, I realized how little I knew.

Get registered with a couple of staffing firms in your metro area as soon as you can. Its really good for finding temporary work that will be geared toward your interests. You know what you are getting into before hand, and it isn't permanent. I got a lot of experience very quickly by having contracts that were no more than 2 months long. Each environment was different and focused on something unique. It is a great way to find out where you want to specialize before you are done with school.

Here are some impressions from a european AIX admin:

I am a freelancer for more than 10 years now and my speciality is data center automatisation. My main occupation is to develop procedures (read: scripts) for all sorts of things admins would want to do in a (big) data center. For instance: if you want an always up-to-date list of all the SAN shares in all machines in a data center i'm the man to develop such a script.

The market is of course competitive, but: the business is relatively small. Once you are "on the tour" going from project to project you know many to most of the people doing the same in your area either from personal experience or from second hand knowledge because one of your colleagues has already worked with the guy.

As it is nobody is perfect and everybody has some things s/he won't know. Of course you can find it out by reading manuals and using google, but usually you have a colleague who can explain that to you because it his speciality. If you have shown adequate manners and are treating your colleagues generally nice they are inclined to help you out (which is usually faster than studying some manual). This social network works both ways: the colleague helping you out this day might well stumble upon something which is your expertise and you will return the favor.

I have seen a lot of "super-competitive" (read: anti-social) people in this business come and go. They usually do not last long. They do some projects, maybe getting a few euros per hour more than the others, but once the word gets out that they are not willing to participate in this netowrking they are left to their own resources - nobody is that good. Nobody compares well against a dozen of specialists willing to help each other - if only by asking the right questions over the phone. I have easily not one but 4-5 dozens of colleagues and former colleagues in my phone directory and several of them call me or i call them regularly.

Most of the times i find out what a project i get offered is like by asking around - this sometimes saves you months of frustrating work because you know where better not to go even if the payment is good.

Bottom line: a team beats an assortment of single specialists any time and real experts know that. Time spent on building such a team, on socializing with colleagues and taking time to help them so they will be willing to help you when you need it is well spent.

(By the way: about the same is true for the consulting companies i work for. Several have tried to press out more revenue from their specialists by all sorts of tricks. Invariably they went out of business when the word spread and many consultants (especially the real cracks) decided to not work with them.)

I guess that could be called a "friendly business".

I hope this helps.

bakunin

I would agree with a lot of the comments made here, but would like to add my own personal experience.

My opinion is don't let them judge you and sell yourself short to please others, instead look for people who are cool and you can work with.

The Unix forums are a good place to hang out and learn.