Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Still Worth It?

Hi all, I definitely think I enjoy it enough to do it as a job; the only reason I asked was because I've been reading about all these problems that people are having who have to administer these products daily and I just thought that it would be good to hear from people who have the benefit of hindsight. Obviously the more stuff you do the more issues you're going to encounter - I accept that, but some of these problems that people are having really seem quite major? Or is that just because I don't use the products you're talking about? I have to work round things in CS at the moment; the lab machines are on the same vlan as a few servers that we use for coursework but I don't have access to said servers because the lab boxes don't talk so I've had to set things like Oracle up myself. In a way I prefer it this way - I'm learning much more than most of the other people in my class by doing all the installations on my own and I prefer configuring to coding anyway so I quite enjoy it. Greg, I'm experiencing more or less the same thing as you are in CS although at the moment people are a bit more impressed with boring things like the iPhone and laptop than my programming abilities. Thanks for all the input so far. Cheers, Ben. On 4/10/12, John Heim wrote:

Well, really it depends on what you mean by "worth it". The people on this list have been talking about doing the same work as their sighted counterparts and that is indeed hard. Of course, its very rewarding too.

As a blind systems admin, to compete against your sighted counterparts, you're going to have to be better than they are and work harder than they do. Even then, you're going to fail sometimes just because you're blind. That's where the frustration comes in. But a couple of years ago, I had an opportunity to take disability retirement at 75% of what I was making then and I turned it down. I don't want the government paying me to do nothing. Honestly, I don't think if they paid me 100% of my salary I'd take disability retirement. To me, its not worth it.

---- Original Message ----- From: "Ben Mustill-Rose" To: "Blind sysadmins list" Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2012 12:04 PM Subject: [Blind-sysadmins] Still Worth It?

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Hi all,

I've been following Brians topic with some interest as it seems like most of you are doing what I aspire to be; I contribute to things on here whenever I think I have something informative to say, but I'm not really anything more than a hobbyist sysadmin at the moment. My plan for the past few years has been to graduate, start getting certs and eventually to end up in an environment where I would be doing everything. In my explorations I haven't really run into any major access issues other than the standard things like audio services not being started, but I've never really done anything regarding vmware other than using some of their consumer offerings.

So, I'm wondering if everyone still thinks its worth trying to get a job as a sysadmin? I don't give up on things easily (I've gone further than anyone else I know when it comes to hardware) and I do like a challenge, but I've noticed a few times that more experienced people on this list have pretty much said that our lucks out in this area.

Your thoughts would be great; it seems a bit pointless studying for something that people who do it already are saying presents too many access issues.

Cheers, Ben.

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