Hi there, On Mon, 13 Dec 2010, Jason Hsu wrote: > Are there other career paths I should consider? I've heard that I > should consider becoming a systems administrator. First of all, let me say that it's very cool to see people discovering and getting into the more 'real' world of computing (: I've been a systems administrator in one form or another for, oh good god, about 17 years. Sure, I'm a lot more specialised now, and I guess my job title isn't actually "systems administrator" (it has "analyst" in it, whatever that means). There are a lot of things you should know before choosing this career path, but here is the single most important one: THEY WILL GIVE YOU A PAGER AND THEY WILL NOT BE AFRAID TO USE IT. Take that with all that implies. It's EXTREMELY high pressure, everyone wants everything done NOW, everyone's priorities are way more important than yours, and if it's at 4am after you've put in 12 hours straight fixing something else, that's just too bad. It's a 24/7 kind of thing. Course there are plus sides - if you work at a good place you will be compensated for all of that in the form of money/cool toys/pizza. And if you thrive on high pressure and challenges, you may well enjoy it. But my advice is to avoid the pager-related jobs, or at least have an exit strategy. -Yaron --