Interview advice - from intermediate programmer to jr. sys admin
I have been a programmer for a long time and am now unemployed. I have no degree and no certification. I've had some experience with unix as a desktop environment. I've maintained my home LAN in various forms using various linux and bsd distros. I've been thinking of trying to move to system administration for a few reasons.
One of my concerns is how to present myself in a job interview. I can't think of anyone to ask for advice, because it would reveal that I'm thinking of changing my career.
Reasons for transitioning that I think an interviewer would not like if I revealed them are:
* My career as a programmer has been declining
* My programming jobs have involved less and less actual programming. It's more finding where to make some little 3 line change.
* I'm often not all that interested in the thing that the the program is actually meant to do, e.g. I'm not fascinated by accounting.
* I would enjoy being a systems programmer, but don't have the background because of the jobs that I've had. Being a systems administrator might allow me to gain experience that could be useful while studying systems programming outside of work.
Reasons for transitioning that an interviewer may or may not like:
* I find I am usually more interested in the actual technology that I am using, than in the the thing that the program I'm developing is supposed to do.
* I have enjoyed maintaining my home LAN and experimenting with various operating systems.
* I want to learn about network protocols, hardware and operating systems.
I understand that programming and system administration are different skill sets, and I can't just automatically perform the role of a system administrator just because I did minor system administrative tasks while being a programmer. So, I was hoping I might be able to get a Jr. sys admin job.
I'm afraid that I will appear as a desperate unemployed programmer thinking that he can take a system administration job until he can switch back to programming. Do you think the positive reasons I gave would sound like good reasons to an interviewer? Advice?
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