Education · 1 of 5

The path

A college diploma, a hands-on certification, and a couple of years on a help desk. Then you own the servers.

1. 1

   High school

   Grades 11 and 12

   Computer science, math and English. Install Linux on an old laptop and break things on purpose.

2. 2

   College diploma

   2 to 3 years

   Computer systems technology or a similar IT program: 2 years for a diploma, 3 for an advanced diploma. Look for co-op.

3. 3

   Certify

   During or right after college

   One Linux certification (RHCSA, the Red Hat Certified System Administrator, is the respected one) or one Microsoft certification, depending on the shops you want to work in.

4. 4

   Help desk or junior administrator

   1 to 2 years

   Resetting passwords, building laptops, then creating user accounts and patching servers. Most people spend 1 to 2 years here.

5. 5

   Systems administrator

   Year 3 onward

   Responsible for servers, backups, identity and security patches. From here the ladder goes to senior, infrastructure lead, or cloud and DevOps (development plus operations) engineering.