lvacula.com-blog/content/posts/notes-on-a-year-at-current-job.md
2025-05-14 10:08:04 -04:00

42 lines
2.5 KiB
Markdown

+++
title = "Notes After a Year at My Current Job"
description = "Musings on assorted Linux and personal things"
date = 2024-09-04
# updated = 2024-09-04
#draft = true
[taxonomies]
tags = []
+++
About a year ago, I started working for a new company.
This was a major shift for me as I'd gone from being a fully-remote penetration tester with a focus on Windows to an on-site systems engineer with a focus on Linux.
This post is some of my thoughts on the change, and things I've learned about my work and myself in that time.
- I *really* enjoy being a Linux admin more than a Windows admin.
I prefer the tooling and being able to do most of my work over SSH.
- I need to have some kind of project tracking like a kanban board so that I don't get lost in a list of 700 tasks.
- I can learn a *lot* through hands-on work and troubleshooting.
I already kind of knew this one but not how *much* I could learn.
A year ago, I had never heard of Satellite and Ansible was something I used in a class one time.
Today, I'm the SME for Satellite at the company and leading our Ansible Automation Platform deployment project.
- Red Hat has wonderful people working for them.
Everyone I've met on sales calls, in workshops, and at the Summit has been a pleasure to talk to.
- It is so much fun having Linux nerds to talk to who aren't developers.
That's not a jab against developers, but there is a difference between a Linux nerd who mostly talks about programming new drivers and a Linux nerd who knows how to write Systemd unit files.
- I *loathe* driving into an office.
I had an hour-long commute each way for most of the past year.
It was a huge waste of time, energy, and (gas) money.
- I also strongly dislike *being in* an office.
I never felt unsafe or anything, but I never felt comfortable either.
- Basic `vim` usage is worth it to learn.
I originally did so because `nano` wasn't available on all of the servers I was managing.
I continue to use it as my default because it feels a little more ergonomic than the alternatives.
- Ansible is incredibly satisfying.
There's nothing quite like going from base installation to a working service in 2 minutes with one command.
- There are plenty of tricks and tools that I have no idea about yet but will change the way I work as soon as I learn them. For example:
- `bash`'s `Ctrl-r` to do a substring search on history instead of tapping the up key a bunch
- `at` to schedule one-off commands
- Everything related to Ansible
I may add to this post as I think of more.