I was recently promoted to a jr engineer postion where the environment is about 90% Solaris.

I would say that this is my dream job accept for the fact that I haven't earned the title yet.

You have to understand that it may take years before you attain a level where you SHOULD even be considered for one of these positions. It's a combination of luck and opportunity that has gotten me this far.

I had been working in either desktop or customer support roles for the last 10years. The fact that the company I work for now was hit so hard by the recession forced many people to double and even triple the word responsibilities that they had been accustomed to. That's a good and bad thing. Good because you learn more than what your job description is.

This got me comfortable with Unix. When the opportunity arose that they needed a new unix engineer I jumped at the chance. I probably am not ready but I am hitting the books like nobody's business.

No one here can really tell you all the books you should be studying. Your companies needs are going to vary. The company I work for tends to have a very Oracle, websphere centric environment. So those are the additional skills I must have.

But there are time tested books that will really never go out of style in the foreseeable future. Unix shell programming (again based on your companies needs e.g. Korn, Bash) and Awk and sed skills. Of course the editor of your choice. I am loving the process of getting more and more comfortable of learning advanced editing with VI. But I must say I love emacs. It's actually more my style but this company is more of a vi shop. Not at a point where I want to edit my .profile on all the servers I have login's for.

The important thing is get comfortable with Unix flavor that your company uses. Then focus on the external things that will make your work more efficient. There are going to be a million ways to do the same things so tapping into and developing your own style is important.

Again I am fairly new at this so if there is anyone who needs a unix buddy, maybe we can travel this road together, just contact me and I would be more than willing to share my experiences and learn from yours.