Dacian was the one who actually got me moving. We’d run an online gaming community together back in 2012, so he knew exactly what I was into. When he spotted a System Administrator listing at a company called Netex, he basically told me I was applying. Sysadmin roles are rare around here — most people still equate IT with programming — so this one stood out.
My first CV was written in Notepad. I printed a physical copy to bring with me just in case, because I genuinely had no idea if sending it digitally was enough.
Shoutout to @Dacian for the push — wouldn’t have moved without it.
The Interview#
I dropped off the CV at their headquarters and was told HR would follow up. About a week later they called to schedule. The interview was with an HR rep and the IT department head — conference room, pretty standard. They introduced the company, asked me to talk about my experience and what I was looking for.
I had the logic for most things but not always the right vocabulary to go with it. Turned out that was fine — the conversation ended up more relaxed than I expected because of it.
The Questions#
If you’re a beginner, try to answer these before opening them.
What is the administrator user in Linux?
root, UID 0.How do you see which ports are open on a Linux machine?
ss -tulpn — listening TCP and UDP sockets, with the process that owns each. I answered netstat -tulpen, which does the same on older systems.And on a remote machine?
nmap <host> — it scans from the outside, so it shows what’s reachable, not just what’s listening.What are the basic file permissions?
r read (4), w write (2), x execute (1) — set separately for the owner, the group and everyone else, so chmod 750 is rwx / r-x / ---.Which ports do HTTPS, SSH, IMAP, SMTP and DNS use?
grep -i imap /etc/services.What is /etc/shadow?
/etc/passwd it isn’t world-readable.The Offer#
The day after I actually went to a lecture — enrolled in Timișoara, commuting from my hometown, attendance wasn’t great. I wouldn’t recommend it; I think university is genuinely useful, it just wasn’t landing for me at the time.
I hadn’t finished the class when my phone rang. Got the job.
Slightly above minimum wage. I didn’t care about the salary, I just wanted to be doing something real. Everything after that is on the about page. Still grab a beer with my former department head sometimes.
A few photos from that period:
