Hi All,

This is general question, I need your guidance on deciding career path. (Windows Admin - AD/Exchnage/Lync or Linux Admin or VMWARE Admin). I am looking for high package and long term technology.

I am RHCE certified, I have MCSA : Messaging certification also. I had worked on Linux systems - Redhat for 1 year. Now I work on Microsoft Lync/OCS technology. I have no experince on Exchange and companies recommend Lync with exchnage technology, but I have experince on OCS\Lync only so moving to exchnage will take time and I am feeling that without strong experience on AD, Exchnage I can not make long term career with this single OCS\Lync technology. So I am thinking to move Linux technology where I have an opportunity to work on - Linux firewalls, linux storage, linux NIS, LDAP, Apache, VSFTP, SAMBA, linux virtualization, Linux routing, Linux Mail system....please add if I am missing anything about linux system administrattion.

Is linux system admin salary higher than windows administrator?

Please guide me to make correct decision on above query, Your suggestions are important for me and will help me to decide direction.

Thank you in advance for replying.

Baba Dedge

Here's a couple of thoughts.

Salaries are usually, not necessarily always, commensurate with abilities along with the demands of the work. And then there's the work -- I can tell you that working with Unix and Linux systems is vastly more rewarding than dealing with Windows in any form (and the work is not physically taxing and they give you money, too -- that's a little joke, but not really).

If you work solely with Windows, well, you're kind of stuck forever with Windows. If you work with Linux systems you can also work, with little trouble, on similar systems (such as Solaris, HP-UX, IBM Linux, AIX, etc.) -- that kind of makes for broader opportunities.

What's most important for you to do is satisfactorily answer the question, "What do I want to do with myself?" to your own satisfaction -- you've probably got a few decades ahead of you and it's a good thing if you get up in the morning and happily go off to do whatever you do rather than dreading walking into the building.

Now if you decide that Linux is for you, one thing you left off your list is shell programming (AKA "scripting"). Much of what you'll be doing is writing little (or big, too) shell programs to do useful work; that also implies a thorough knowledge and comfort with utilities, editors, regular expressions, programming (with, oh, AWK, Perl, Ruby and other of the same ilk), network administration including a good knowledge of Apache HTTPD, probably PHP and almost certainly one or more of the relational data base management system; e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL, maybe Oracle. C or C++ wouldn't hurt and neither would Java. If you are already comfortable with these, well, so much the better -- keep on learning, it will never fail you to be as versatile as you possibly can (they give you more money that way, too).

I suppose the bottom line might be that I've worked on and off with computers for about 50 years and I've never gotten bored. But then, I wouldn't allow Windows on the property if I didn't have to (and then only in VirtualBox).

Hope this helps some.

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Salaries vary all over the world.

I think over the course of a lengthy career you may find that you will touch upon any of the varieties of career paths you have cited, provided you persist in the same general area of interest/expertise.

Right now if you are working or have an opportunity for Linux administration, then take it and learn from it as much as you can, but continue to strive to expand you knowledge on all topics which you feel are relevant to your job title. Same goes for Windows/Microsoft.

You obviously have put in some great efforts to gain a good amount of knowledge, so therefore look to leverage this knowledge that you presently have.

If your concerns are merely highest salary for now and forever, there's little anyone can tell you to answer your question.

If your concerns are in order to avoid pigeon-holing your career with irrelevant talents, it is "a" concern however if you always look to learn new things and maintain some level of industry awareness, you'll likely do fine and be capable of adapting as you progress in your career.

My further opinion is that the capability to learn and adapt are very important. To cite a friend of mine, "a college degree means that you are capable of learning", because there are situations where persons work in professional roles, but got to those roles by duration and initiative within a given company that made the opportunity available to that person given their experience in the relevant technology at the time. Their point being that if a forced career change did occur to a person who did not have a degree, they might suffer from being thought of as having limited experience only applicable to the last job they were in and nowhere else.

To simplify that, if all you were to do everyday was to program hard drives from a fixed system configuration utility which never changed, never required you to know any more than how to plug in the drive, power the system, and hit RETURN a bunch of times, and if the company closed you were looking for a job; how would prospective employers evaluate your talent? They likely would see it as very limited. Whereas if you told them how you learned how to rewrite the configuration utility and had taken over responsibility for updating it, and cited the challenges you had overcome as you progressed in doing this, it would likely paint a more palatable picture to that next employer as to whether or not you were adaptable and could learn new things.

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Sometimes salary is based on seniority and years of experience not the actual proof on a document that shows certification.

After 14 years in my area of expertise I made top dollar; however it took about 7 to 10 to prove the skillfullness. Some Employers are extreamly demanding and insist on proof.
Climbing that later was rewarding but it took time-

The Microsoft Software Developer that I communicate with has mentioned in passing that he finds his work a somewhat redundant pratice and it seems as tho he is very limited.
This in my mind is most undesirable and don't see a future with a potential to move up into a corporate position. This is just a for example as this gentlemen I speak of is one in many-

In the end the final decision is really yours but if I were you with your credentials I would think twice before making Microsoft your new employer-

Don't take the first offer that you are given.
Can't explain that in much more depth but that years of practice and wisdom have shown me not to-

The Linux Foundation might be a good website to visit and observe-
http://www.linuxfoundation.org/

http://www.indeed.com/q-Linux-jobs.html
http://www.careerbuilder.com/Jobs/Keyword/Linux/

I wish you the best in your decision and hope that your new job is rewarding

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Excuse me, but I think you have missed the whole reality of commercial enterprise.

You want someone to pay you big money to do stuff as their employee. That requires
1. That what you do has a high value.
2. That what you are doing is the coming thing.

Right now, the best money is in IOS applications, Cloud admin, and a few niches like that. you need to have been doing it for 1 year plus. In 2-3 years, that will have shifted, and money will have moved. The linux sysadmins here are not earning what they were, or they're not getting big increments. If you start learning 'cloud control' or IOS, html5 or whatever is coming, you'll have the degree but no experience when you're looking for a job. I didn't want to work days and learn nights so I stayed away from IT. My son is earning twice what I earned in IOS.

What do you want to do

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thank you very much all for sharing your experience and inspiring me. sorry I have no experience/knowledge on linux software development. I have experince on linux systems and network administration. I am interested in linux server and network administration which will require knowledge of shell scripting also. I think there is lot of scope like linux iptables, linux proxy, linux mail servers - sendmail/postfix etc, linux apache, ftp, linux SAN, Samba, ldap, NIS, Linux/Unix server os - Sun Solaris, IBM AIX, Redhat Linux, Centos, Suse Linux, EMC storage, FreeBSD, HP UX.

I had searched on indeed.com and I got lot of results of openings for linux system admins with good+ package(it is based on 3/4+ yrs experience).


Thank you again all.

I dont think with single year of experience with Linux you will have high pay of salary.Salary & increment is based on your performance and what skills you posses rather than your certification .If you want to pursue high level of salary learn any of these platform with additional with linux like Storage (or) Vmware .

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