77: The Promotion Paradox | SUDO Show 77

Sudo Show — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 05:00:00 -0600

SUDO Show 77, “The Promotion Paradox,” is all about what happens when the best nerd in the room gets handed a calendar full of 1:1s, budgets, and “peopleware” instead of terminals and tickets. Bill, Neal, and Noel swap stories about micromanagers, open office nightmares, open source maintainers, and why learning to lead humans is way harder—and ultimately more rewarding—than just being the fastest person at fixing servers.

Show Links:
The Manager’s Path – Camille Fournier
https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/the-managers-path/9781491973882/
An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management – Will Larson
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45303387-an-elegant-puzzle
Linus Torvalds & Dirk Hohndel – Open Source Summit North America 2026 keynote
https://youtu.be/fi29pfLcW4I

Connect with the Hosts:
Bill - @ctlinux on Mastodon
Neal - @neal@social.gompa.me on Mastodon
Noel - https://github.com/noelmiller

73: Career Pipeline 2.0 – Building Your Linux Path

Sudo Show — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 05:00:00 -0700

SUDO Show 73 revisits the classic “Career Pipeline” topic with a fresh panel and an updated roadmap for building a Linux and open source career today. Bill, Neal, and Noel start with the “Wayland-only” future of the Linux desktop, spotlight Red Hat’s work on fwupd and the Linux Vendor Firmware Service, then dive into education, certifications, homelabs, open source contributions, and soft skills that turn curiosity into real-world tech jobs. They wrap up with a practical systemd-analyze “quick win” you can run right now to understand and improve your system’s boot performance.

Show Links:
Red Hat – Company site:
https://www.redhat.com
fwupd project:
https://fwupd.org
LVFS (Linux Vendor Firmware Service):
https://fwupd.org/lvfs
CompTIA A+ Certification:
https://www.comptia.org/en-us/certifications/a/
AWS Certification:
https://aws.amazon.com/certification/
RHCSA Training and Certification:
https://www.redhat.com/en/services/certification/rhcsa
SUSE SCA (SLES 15):
https://www.suse.com/training/exam/sca-sles-15/
Linux Professional Institute (LPIC):
https://www.lpi.org
systemd-analyze documentation:
https://www.freedesktop.org/software/systemd/man/systemd-analyze.html
Commands discussed:
systemd-analyze – “Odometer” (total boot time)
systemd-analyze blame – “Leaderboard” (slowest services)
systemd-analyze critical-chain – “Timeline” (dependency chain)
systemd-analyze critical-chain --system
systemd-analyze plot > boot.svg – “Visualizer” (boot chart)

Sudo Show - Episodes Tagged with “Tech Careers”

77: The Promotion Paradox | SUDO Show 77

73: Career Pipeline 2.0 – Building Your Linux Path