I work as a UNIX admin. It is okay work, and I have learned a lot since I have had this job. I've had several different sysadmin jobs over the past several years, and of course I learned a lot in each of those jobs as well. The main thing about being in IT is that to advance in your field, you will have to learn things on your own time. Otherwise you will miss out on many new advances in programming languages/techniques, software applications, operating systems, and technology in general. I have done this by building a home network of machines (it is a mix of Linux and FreeBSD) to handle various tasks (firewall, fileserver, workstation, dev box, etc.). Most home users don't need this complex of a network, but being a computer geek blktype I am obligated to do things the hard way. I also get a lot of experience by running my own web/mail/etc. server. (FreeBSD is cool. )