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Comment by readingnews | Hacker News Reader

I am having a tough time... I am a systems administrator who also has experience teaching and coding, but I am looking at systems admins / engineering positions only. I consider myself highly experienced in Linux / Unix. A few years back, I could just word of mouth say I was looking and have offers. Now, nothing.

Lots of ghosting after the 2nd or 3rd interview. Very few positions for Sr. Systems admin / Engineer that I see as of late, much more "full stack or devops", but they really want a full time developer with a lot of front end experience. I do not really create web-applications, though. So it is tough.

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This describes me as well. I’m almost to the point of grinding leetcode and learning react or some such front end. I have no AWS-esque type skills or anything scaling/web related.

My last pref. review I was told “you’re the guy we ask to solve problems 10x harder than the other devs. Anyone can patch a bug, we always ask you to figure out the things nobody else can.” Which unfortunately doesn’t translate well on a resume or in an interview.

Especially in something like the current market, being a highly-regarded "fixer" (or whatever you want to call it) probably doesn't get you past first-level screens looking for specific skills/experience. One of the reasons networks are so important.

Build a small web project on AWS using Terraform, and Node/React running on a container platform with a full cicd platform.

I have your background and doing this increased my scope and kills significantly.

Do this, and get a certification or two in lower level AWS/Azure and you'll have a job within 2 months.

I will take this advice to heart. Thank you.

Agree with this notion. Being a "systems engineer" in the past was akin to a sysadmin- jack of all trades. Sure, with experience you specialise and you need to make that shine on linkedin and the like. But now any use of the word "engineer" relates to dev/full stack work, including understandings of cloud technologies.

However. If you _Are_ a seasoned "sysadmin", you can pickup the cloud stuff. It's a different paradigm but if you have skill, you can do it. Time to learn new stuff!

Have you considered being a deployment specialist? I'm not sure if that's the term everyone else uses, but we have had like 1 candidate apply and are desperate for more applications. It would require a lot of travel, or living near Sacramento, CA though.

You can email me in my bio for more questions, referral to this role: https://apply.workable.com/ccri/j/AF5E000507/

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