Good day,
I'm interested in making a drastic career change and want to get a better feel for where I fit. I'm a Red Seal electrician and an instructor at RRC but have always wanted to work in tech. The tricky part is that I'm 42, married with 2 kids, 2 cats and a mortgage. And the cats eat a LOT. I either need to get in at an intermediate position or at least have the opportunity to rise to that point fairly quickly.
I've been studying Linux Sys Admin courses in my evenings and am close to getting my LPIC-1 certification. I also have a strong programming background. At this point I could go either way, towards software development or system administration. The friends I have spoken to suggest that it is either-or, that programming and sysadmin do not go together in most regular jobs.
I'm putting together a portfolio of projects I've worked on at home, raspberry pi stuff, messing with my network, and also my GitHub profile.
My two questions are:
1. What's available to me and what is a reasonable expectation for a first job? 2. What else can I do to add business value to my skills?
Thanks in advance, I feel awkward asking this here but after slow-burning this idea for 3 years I need to make a change before I spend another 25 in the wrong job.
CS