To the SysAdmins and Linux-Engineers here,
How you got into your job?
I'm a Linux-Fanboy by heart and love tinkering and fiddling with systems, so I want to work in the field?
Please tell me, how you got into your job, and how it is to work in the field.

It was May of 2000. I'd just flunked out of college, which I was attending to pursue a degree in Journalism, and on a whim, based on my affinity for computers, and this new thing called, "Linux" that I'd been playing with for a year or two, I opened the Yellow Pages to, "Computers" and started calling numbers, along if they needed help. The third or fourth one did, and within a week, I was a system admin, earning $6.50/hr and barely paying any bills.

I stayed there until November, when it just wasn't working anymore. I moved back home and started searching full-time. I took a job at a sandwich place for a couple months while I continued my search. After a number of disappointments, I agreed to talk to a guy about a job in Kansas City, a place I had only ever visited once, and didn't like at all. But I trained with myself that almost any place is better than my parents' basement.

So I drove to KC one day, got a hotel room, and interviewed for a night shift control room tier one support job, and got it. This one paid $14/hr, which to me was all the money in the world. So I moved to KC, got an apartment, and officially became an adult. It was February 2001, and I was 22.

From there I climbed the ladder, working in jobs with greater qualifications and higher pay, and jumping around companies, until by about 2004, I was a fully expert Linux/Unix user, and qualified for much better jobs. I could go into them, but I will not. Suffice it to say that by about 2010, I was earning good money and owned my home, almost entirely because of Linux.

Where do you live? @bahua

I applied without any working experience, had a very good click with my now-boss and was hired after a few days :)

No professional Linux experience or certifications or whatever by the way.

@gunslinger

USA.

I grew up in a small city in Illinois called Peoria, went to college in a small city in Iowa called Dubuque, lived for 14 years in a medium-sized city in Missouri called Kansas City, and now, as my profile says, I live in Denver, Colorado.

Your story sounds awesome man @bahua