IT4Life wrote:
Which order do you think is best to persue?
31 yr old currently working as sys admin, proficient in microsoft technologies
I would say if your experience is already in Microsoft technologies, then you should focus on Virtualization (VM Ware and Hyper-V).
Those are becoming mandatory skills in any corporation for Sys Admins.
Our entire DEV and QA environments are virtual servers.
I did a lot of research on the MBA programs about a year ago, thinking that I wanted to do that. The reality is that it costs $50,000 to $80,000 to get an MBA and unless you go to a top school, the starting salaries are not that great. I doubt you will make more than you already make. It really depends on why you want an MBA. If someone is doing it to jumpstart their career because they are only making $40,000 then it might make sense. However I already earn over $100,000 per year and the starting MBA salaries from the nearby university (top 30 MBA program) were only in the $70,000 to $80,000 range. So it really wasn't worth doing. It certainly isn't worth going into debt to get an MBA.
Graduate education has become a bit of a scam in the education industry in the past decade. Lawyers are getting crushed from oversupply. The 200 law schools produce 45,000 law school grads every year and there are only an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 openings for lawyers. So about half of all graduating lawyers, after spending $100,000 to $200,000 for the 3 year degree, have no job. And the student loan debt cannot be discharged in bankruptcy. The top school graduates typically can find jobs. The bottom ranking graduates are wasting their money and time. There are similar results for MBAs and other graduate degrees. The lousy part is that GRAD PLUS loans have an 8% interest rate. There are tons of stories around lately that students are becoming debt slaves and can never pay them off. The job market simply cannot absorb all of these graduates with useless degrees.
Medical doctors and a few other select graduate degrees are the only ones that make financial sense these days.
The graduate education scam is being funded by unlimited government student loans. The problem is that nobody stops students from spending $200,000 for a degree that will result in only a $45,000 job. It is not sustainable to have $200,000 in student loan debt at 8% on a $45,000 salary.
I have zero interest in Linux since SQL Server doesn't run on Linux. So I cannot give you any advice there. Linux market share is not growing or shrinking any more. It is fairly static around 20% to 25% these days. It might continue to consume Unix market share as that dies.
