I've made quite a career out of knowing how linux works and not reinventing the wheels it provides. I read man pages. I sometimes run `systemctl list-unit-files` and say, "hmm what is that??" then go find out what it is. I've been at this for decades and curiosity keeps pushing me to learn new things and keep up with recent developments.
None of these are in high-demand right now in my experience. Despite being an expert in most of these listed, I haven't even had an interview in a couple of months.
Wish it were as easy as getting some certifications, but I don't think anyone has ever asked for one specifically in my entire career.
It's difficult to quantify the value of "I know the shit out of linux" to a prospective employer when they're looking for cog developer #471.
In my experience it's the network of people you've worked with that know how beneficial you are and want to work with you again (this is key) that will keep you in demand regardless of the market conditions.
~25 years of linux experience, 8-9ish professionally here, my beard is a bit gray. 2 interviews in the last 11 months of looking for me. I am not being picky. (I'm at a little more of a disadvantage- I've been exploring another, non-tech career path since covid, which now shows as a five year gap on my cv).
Yes, that's what I'm saying. The rise of ATS seems to be a big part of the problem. Don't think I'm even being seen. There's also been an explosion of stacks, and if you didn't work with the ZYZYXX stack for the last five years, no chance, because someone else has.
I got hired on as a 1099 to help implement some "Facebook clone but for your company's internal intranet" because they specifically needed a US citizen to do it for "compliance reasons" (energy company)
After coming to terms with their... questionable software stack (Apache on Ubuntu in which they rented AWS bare metal to then run ESXi???) they asked me if I knew anything about Azure, so they could broaden their cloud support
I had their entire stack transliterated and ready to run within hours the same day (their app really could just be on a VPS somewhere)
Despite this, I was told I'd have to apply for their Sysadmin job the same as anyone else. Okay. Fine
It later came back that I was pruned from even being shortlisted because "you don't have any Azure experience"
I ported your entire stack to it in mere hours but I guess not!
I know right? One recruiter told me that they wouldn't interview me because I didn't have experience with Shopify. What kind of bullshit is that? What worked for me is putting as many keywords as possible and using ChatGPT to write what you did at your previous job. It's best when sprinkled with some hallucinations.
Frankly that is a pretty thoughtless response. Even if your anecdote were broadly applicable, it still doesn't logically follow that an employer giving lots of interviews somehow translates on the applicant side into "a better resume would get you interviews". In fact, the hiring process has become incredibly dysfunctional. The best conceivable resume is still unlikely even to be read by a human hiring manager when it's just one of literally thousands of others for the same role.
I did a couple months ago. i did like 4 of them. you want me to screenshot my interview schedules or something? I'm not one of these "use your network people", im to introverted for that. I cold apply through companies sites.
I never had anyone reach out on these who's hiring things though. Also HN whos hiring has been a dead end for me on my job searches.
Is that resume the one your uploading onto websites and job portals? Unsolicited feedback OK or am i going to get hammered with downvotes? lol
Get rid of the cute formatting. Pictures, icons, "fun" section. Recruiters get 1000s of applications per job. It needs to be easily parseable by software and easy at a glance to see who you are. The top third is a sky diver. keep it to only 1 page. Your also not using a professional tone on your resume.
Been daily driving desktop Debian for dang-near a decade now (heh). I've also maintained a gradually-evolving app hosting service for clients for even longer, covering all kinds of stuff. Current architecture includes LXC and nginx. And, I've got BSD experience too.
Despite its standard Homebrew warts, I've been using Homebrew on Linux for years now for my dev boxes and it's been great.
It's good for getting the latest versions of packages, both for things that aren't in the distro and even to override distro packages. So far almost everything Just Works alongside the distro packages (at least for Ubuntu LTS).
I have been doing backend/infrastructure coding for years and have been thinking about trying embedded work but am unsure how to break into that area. Curious if you (your industry) would be interested in someone with a lot of Linux/systems experience but not in the embedded space?
A lot of work here is working on vendor provided BSP (which can range from esoteric mix of ancient kernels/bootloaders to top-quality community maintained mainline kernels) to work on your custom board/product.
In demand? In the age where people are being completely replaced by their AI fellow colleagues, it logically doesn't follow that the Linux admin skills won't be or aren't already. The heck, I hate to say this but most of my colleagues right now are less competent than the AI models. What AI model can spit out in the matter of working with it in minutes, given the correct prompt, they can't solve in 3 months.
1- use the consent-o-matic extension, or
2- open in incognito mode, accept whatever, then when closing the session all the cookies they gave you go away.
Unless you're running Alpine Linux or similar of course. Nowadays the GNU tools make up a small (if important) part of a Linux distro. There's also alternatives.
I've made quite a career out of knowing how linux works and not reinventing the wheels it provides. I read man pages. I sometimes run `systemctl list-unit-files` and say, "hmm what is that??" then go find out what it is. I've been at this for decades and curiosity keeps pushing me to learn new things and keep up with recent developments.
That's the way.
None of these are in high-demand right now in my experience. Despite being an expert in most of these listed, I haven't even had an interview in a couple of months.
Wish it were as easy as getting some certifications, but I don't think anyone has ever asked for one specifically in my entire career.
It's difficult to quantify the value of "I know the shit out of linux" to a prospective employer when they're looking for cog developer #471.
In my experience it's the network of people you've worked with that know how beneficial you are and want to work with you again (this is key) that will keep you in demand regardless of the market conditions.
~25 years of linux experience, 8-9ish professionally here, my beard is a bit gray. 2 interviews in the last 11 months of looking for me. I am not being picky. (I'm at a little more of a disadvantage- I've been exploring another, non-tech career path since covid, which now shows as a five year gap on my cv).
(Any leads out there hn?)
There could be a lot of reasons for that. The market in general is awful for hiring right now. Just broken.
Yes, that's what I'm saying. The rise of ATS seems to be a big part of the problem. Don't think I'm even being seen. There's also been an explosion of stacks, and if you didn't work with the ZYZYXX stack for the last five years, no chance, because someone else has.
Just lie. They don't know what they're doing.
Would consider it if I could even get an interview. Often I do have most or similar experience, but even that is not enough.
I got hired on as a 1099 to help implement some "Facebook clone but for your company's internal intranet" because they specifically needed a US citizen to do it for "compliance reasons" (energy company)
After coming to terms with their... questionable software stack (Apache on Ubuntu in which they rented AWS bare metal to then run ESXi???) they asked me if I knew anything about Azure, so they could broaden their cloud support
I had their entire stack transliterated and ready to run within hours the same day (their app really could just be on a VPS somewhere)
Despite this, I was told I'd have to apply for their Sysadmin job the same as anyone else. Okay. Fine
It later came back that I was pruned from even being shortlisted because "you don't have any Azure experience"
I ported your entire stack to it in mere hours but I guess not!
I know right? One recruiter told me that they wouldn't interview me because I didn't have experience with Shopify. What kind of bullshit is that? What worked for me is putting as many keywords as possible and using ChatGPT to write what you did at your previous job. It's best when sprinkled with some hallucinations.
its not this the other way around??? with the amount of investment of data center in the western, it would need a tons of people to do that
Your resume isn't that good then, or your leaving out information about your situation.
I give 1-2 interviews a week right now for SRE jobs that pay mid 200s
Job markets bad but you should be getting some calls atleast
Frankly that is a pretty thoughtless response. Even if your anecdote were broadly applicable, it still doesn't logically follow that an employer giving lots of interviews somehow translates on the applicant side into "a better resume would get you interviews". In fact, the hiring process has become incredibly dysfunctional. The best conceivable resume is still unlikely even to be read by a human hiring manager when it's just one of literally thousands of others for the same role.
I'll disagree, it's important to know the extent of what the bad market is. No replies in months means something else is up.
The job market is bad but people are still getting jobs and interviews. Months of silence is not normal
Ive also been on the applicant side and got interviews and call backs, also a handful of recruiters reaching out to me
I invite you to try to get a mainstream developer interview right now. Cold, without network.
For example, I put an ad here, and replied to five others. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45801184 No replies or enquiries.
I did a couple months ago. i did like 4 of them. you want me to screenshot my interview schedules or something? I'm not one of these "use your network people", im to introverted for that. I cold apply through companies sites.
I never had anyone reach out on these who's hiring things though. Also HN whos hiring has been a dead end for me on my job searches.
Is that resume the one your uploading onto websites and job portals? Unsolicited feedback OK or am i going to get hammered with downvotes? lol
Get rid of the cute formatting. Pictures, icons, "fun" section. Recruiters get 1000s of applications per job. It needs to be easily parseable by software and easy at a glance to see who you are. The top third is a sky diver. keep it to only 1 page. Your also not using a professional tone on your resume.
What I'd give to have someone who's Linux experience isn't using a Mac and using brew to install stuff.
I'm the only one with formal Linux experience on my team and I'm the only one who doesn't have to look up how to get to the logs...
K8s admin != Linux grey beard. SurprisedPikachu.gif
To be fair journalctl practically requires its own book
raises hand
Been daily driving desktop Debian for dang-near a decade now (heh). I've also maintained a gradually-evolving app hosting service for clients for even longer, covering all kinds of stuff. Current architecture includes LXC and nginx. And, I've got BSD experience too.
Job market sucks for me too.
Oh that's an easy problem to solve, just use: https://docs.brew.sh/Homebrew-on-Linux :p
Despite its standard Homebrew warts, I've been using Homebrew on Linux for years now for my dev boxes and it's been great.
It's good for getting the latest versions of packages, both for things that aren't in the distro and even to override distro packages. So far almost everything Just Works alongside the distro packages (at least for Ubuntu LTS).
Is it pure Ops. Or also coding? I've managed Linux servers for nigh 20~ years at SMB's and personally. Kubernetes is misery
Am available shortly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45801184
25 years of Linux experience here, 19 professionally. Email's in my profile, happy to help answer questions.
And embedded Linux!
I’ve had a hell of a time finding good embedded Linux devs.
I got insanely lucky to hire two this year.
I have been doing backend/infrastructure coding for years and have been thinking about trying embedded work but am unsure how to break into that area. Curious if you (your industry) would be interested in someone with a lot of Linux/systems experience but not in the embedded space?
I'd start from this - https://www.coursera.org/specializations/advanced-embedded-l...
I studied under him at the university. He's also active in open source communities around embedded space.
What are you looking for? Yocto experience? Experience writing drivers? C/Rust/C++? Hardware / FPGA experience as well?
Is embedded Linux that different to regular Linux?
Edit: I mean, Vizio TVs literally run systemd.
A lot of work here is working on vendor provided BSP (which can range from esoteric mix of ancient kernels/bootloaders to top-quality community maintained mainline kernels) to work on your custom board/product.
So Linux kernel config/building/patching?
In demand? In the age where people are being completely replaced by their AI fellow colleagues, it logically doesn't follow that the Linux admin skills won't be or aren't already. The heck, I hate to say this but most of my colleagues right now are less competent than the AI models. What AI model can spit out in the matter of working with it in minutes, given the correct prompt, they can't solve in 3 months.
> Linux engineers
I know Linux and majored in Engineering in college. Do I count? Lol
So sick of these “Accept all cookies” / “reject optional cookies” dark patterns, sites that do this should be banned
Yes but :
1- use the consent-o-matic extension, or 2- open in incognito mode, accept whatever, then when closing the session all the cookies they gave you go away.
consent-o-matic failed on this site
That’s why I gave you the other option :)
ProTip: Raise your rates. The "typical salary ranges" are laughable, even in 2008 Dollars.
I'm curious if these are somehow informed by real job postings. if so, I agree it's pretty obvious why these are in high demand (of employers).
there is a high demand for finding intelligent life on mars.
Rising rates is what high demand means.
The article no doubt misspelt "wishful thinkers", of course.
The guy in the photo is clearly qualified. Dual monitors is hard enough on Linux, that man got triple!
He installed an open source NVIDIA driver for a graphics card from 2014. He earns 7 figures.
[flagged]
Unless you're running Alpine Linux or similar of course. Nowadays the GNU tools make up a small (if important) part of a Linux distro. There's also alternatives.
Still has nothing to do with Linux. Look at "Skills Employers Seek in 2025." What does Docker or Kubernetes have to do with Linux?
4 decades on and there are STILL people trying to get everyone to say “GNU Linux”.
Everyone knows Linux is the kernel. Nobody CARES.
Everyone says GNU Linux. The target is called x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.