Open source careers: A tough start, a different future, a lot of FOSS

Hi, it’s Dani here; Milo for my friends. I was born 40 years ago in Bogotá, Colombia, yes: the country tagged as violent and poor. That is not something you think about when you are a child and your dreams, no matter how ambitious they are, are within your grasp. My dream was to become a scientist: to be wearing a white gown doing experiments, knowing how things work. That child had to realize that he would need to study a lot if he wanted to design robots and rockets one day… 

Memories

Probably one of the most cherished memories of my childhood is the math, drawing, and natural science classes at school, or watching Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” and the 1990’s “Beyond 2000” show on TV.

Then something happened. My family had financial problems. I had to withdraw from the third year of high school and start working. Things only got worse after my father left my mother, me, my two younger sisters, and my niece. At that time, my options were not the most favorable, since I didn’t have a job and I lacked a secondary education.

I had hit the bottom. But it’s where the story gets interesting… 

In 2000, a good friend helped me get an interview at an ISP in Bogotá for a support agent role. Curiosity led me to install my first Linux distribution (Suse 9) on a home machine with 256MB of RAM. I realized immediately that Linux was my cup of tea: I remember how happy I was installing and learning how to compile the drivers for my PCTel modem!

I made my decision: I wanted to learn more about the nuts and bolts that made Linux work. I realized I could modify and adapt my operating system, and I felt that inner child and scientist appearing to me every time I could make some new component work.

This job allowed me to finish high school by studying at night and on weekends, but the wage was not enough for me to go to university.

Linux

In 2008, the Linux engineer of the company I was working in moved to another company and recommended me to take his place. I became a Linux Junior engineer: I was paid now to do what I liked so much. It was time to delve into administration and troubleshooting secrets and then certify the skills I learned about Linux.

With this in mind, I embarked on my own informal curriculum with one goal: to improve my skills, getting what technology companies are looking for.

Cutting a long story short, from 2012 to 2016, I learned everything that was possible about how to configure hardware, install software, troubleshooting, etc. in different Linux flavors. I managed to obtain several Linux-related certifications, among the most important being the LPIC-1. More recently, I became a certified DevOps Tools Engineer (LPI 701-100)

Since 2017, I have been a consultant and instructor for various companies. I have had fun travelling and teaching open source in various Latin American countries while improving my English language skills.

Lifetime Learning

A couple of lessons I learned in the process:

1. You cannot change your past; you can only cultivate in the present what you want to harvest in the future.
2. Today’s me is the result of my decisions from five or ten years ago; one of them was to become an IT certified professional.
3. I didn’t only improve my life options, but am now giving back to my family, my country, and my community.
4. If something is really worth it, it will not be easy, and it will ask you for a sacrifice and the fee of discipline. Therefore, love what you do, take one step at a time, and have fun while you live it–because in the end life is a marathon, not a sprint.

For you, inner child!!