[Novalug] Credentials

Rich Kulawiec rsk@gsp.org
Mon May 11 17:17:53 EDT 2015


Viewed from the hiring side:

Degrees in technical fields (anything STEM-related) are nice but not
strictly necessary.  (One of the smartest system admins that I've ever
known holds a degree in philosophy.)

Certifications are okay but I'm meh about them.  FAR too many are just
cash cows and propaganda engines for the vendors.  (This is especially
true in the security area.)

Breadth of experience helps a lot: someone who has had their paws on
OpenSolaris and NetBSD and Fedora and HPUX and Debian is not going to
be stuck for long if I put them in front of FreeBSD or Mint.

Depth of experience helps too.  Someone who has some clues at multiple
levels starting with silicon and working up, and from global networks
and working down, is better positioned to see the big picture.  (E.g.,
someone who's spent their entire academic and professional career coding
and thus working at just one level may not have this.)

Expertise in the flavor-of-the-moment isn't that useful.  Sufficiently
smart people can learn any piece of technology, whether it's BGP or
Python or postfix, on the fly.  E.g., someone who has extensive experience
with CVS will have no problem learning git.

I don't play quiz time with interviewees.  I look for problem-solving
ability: can they grasp a problem, ask questions designed to delineate
its scope and scale, narrow the range of plausible solutions, and
maybe even figure out that this is the wrong problem to be working on?
Many problems present their own solutions if they're sufficiently
well-defined; conversely, poorly-defined problems lead to non-solutions.

I don't care all that much about published code: some of my best stuff is
(unfortunately) locked up, theirs might be too.  If I look at code at all,
it's strictly for readability and lack of cleverness.  (Unreadable, clever
code is buggy, insecure code.)   Laziness is a virtue: someone who will
spend an hour searching the 'net for code that does 90% of the job (and
then augments it for the other 10%) is probably going to outperform
someone who spends a week writing code.

I look for clues that "established wisdom" isn't.  These are people
who will be capable of solving problems that others can't even perceive.

Writing ability is pretty high on my list, too.  (Not that mine is all
that great!)

Diversity is not just a buzzword.  The presence of myriad viewpoints
brings fresh/different/new approaches to old problems.

You get what you pay for.  Well-qualified hard-working people deserve to
be compensated appropriately.  It does no good to try to save $10K/year
by hiring a lesser candidate, because they'll incur $30K/year in costs.
By contrast, a great candidate might save you $320K in one afternoon
three years from now (perhaps by convincing you to do something or by
convincing you NOT to do something), thus justifying everything you've
ever paid them.

People with balanced lifestyles tend to thrive; workaholics will
eventually burn out.

Professionals require offices with doors, windows, privacy and quiet.


On the jobhunter side:

Potential employers who don't respond to *every* resume submission
are inconsiderate and rude.  C'mon, how difficult is it to task someone
with writing a suitable email?

Employers who play buzzword bingo with resumes instead of actually
reading them (and the accompanying cover letters) are missing out.

Playing "stump the interviewee" is a great way to add more stress to
the process and is a game that interviewers can always win if they wish...
so what's the point?

Y'know, we can often tell when you've hardwired the job for a candidate
who's already in-house.

Don't ask my salary history.  What X paid me to do Y has absolutely
nothing to do with what you're going to pay me to do something else.
Besides, it's none of your damn business.

If you want a candidate who's an Apache HTTPD expert and a routing
expert and a Solaris expert and a database expert and a Perl expert
and a Java expert and an IPSEC expert and a DNS expert and a crypto
expert and and and...then you should recognize (a) there may not actually
be anyone on this planet with that skillset but (b) if there is, you'd
better be prepared to pay them extremely well.

Professionals require offices with doors, windows, privacy and quiet.

---rsk



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