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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   3799 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 2, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

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How is your sysadmin recruiting going?

Having been in this space for nearly 30 years, the quality of the candidates seems lower now than in the 90's.

I recall working with people enthusiastic and curious about the technology we were administering. They'd have hobbies or intrests in adjacent but relevant areas.

Many now need more supervision than they receive. I also suspect the poor performers drag down the pay scales.

I work in tech accidentally. I'm a "little sister." My older brother was very into computers, and I fell into it because working overnights as tech support while I was in law school gave me a lot more time to study than working overnights at a gas station. I knew enough by virtue of being around my brother to be competent (and back then, knowing the difference between SLIP and PPP was enough to get hired). And there was a certain level of trouble shooting and just needing to understand computers that you had to know to use them. So I could swap out cards in my computer as I managed upgrades, I'm not afraid of an IRQ jumper. I've run cables. But I am not a computer person. These are just things I learned by virtue of being around people who lived and breathed this stuff, or because I had to know it in order to use the tools for my specific purposes. And ultimately, because I ended up liking working in tech more than working in law. I'm good at what I do. People who learn I didn't intend to go into tech or that I don't consider myself particularly a computer person are often surprised.

My daughter (college aged) is basically a power user, even growing up with two parents in tech. She hasn't had to do the trouble shooting or the general tech support we had to do, because computers are functional tools now. When something doesn't work, after she turns it off and back on, she's kind of stymied, because things usually "just work" for her. It's the same way a lot of folks are with cars. I grew up with beaters, so there's a level of mechanical trouble shooting I knew that people who grew up with cars that just worked didn't know. Now, because she grew up with parents in tech, she can do basic trouble shooting, she can build simple electronic devices, she knows percussive maintenance can just work. But she has peers (in STEM even) who couldn't figure out how to plug an ethernet cable in (they've never plugged in a phone jack, either...).

I don't think that folks are necessarily less capable, they just don't have the same skill set. It's not required in the way it used to be. In the 80's, if I couldn't build my own PC, I didn't have a PC. Nowadays, building your PC is a niche thing only people who are deeply into (some aspects of) computers do. My daughter and her peers are going to come across as less able, in a lot of ways, than those of us who were in tech in the 90s (or earlier). They aren't. They've just grown up with tools that work. They aren't shadetree mechanics because that hasn't been something in their environment. They know other things. And they obviously have the potential (it's not like we're smarter than them). Nowadays, they have no reason to be able to chant orange white, orange, green white, blue, blue white, green, brown white, brown. So when I'm interviewing (for a junior position), I look for the curiosity, the trouble shooting ability, the engagement. This is particularly challenging because interviewing has become very scripted, at least where I work currently. It's also challenging because there's something about computers that makes a lot of people in it want to be the smartest guy in the room, and they can get really demeaning, really quickly, about someone who doesn't act like they know it all right out of the gate. As if proving themselves superior is more important than finding someone who can do the job. It's not rocket science, even when it is.

I think we often hire the wrong people, both because the candidates show up with less of the knowledge we're looking for, so it's hard to pick out the best ones, and also because the hiring process has become so weird that the ways in which we might have dug for the passion, the enthusiasm, even the basic underlying abilities (do they give up when they don't know something, or do they poke at it again?) aren't allowed. But we focus on, how did this candidate not know the TCP 3 way handshake cold? (Sure, maybe he should have, but it ends up being more important because we aren't allowed to get into how he figured out how to manage pedal feedback, because we'll never learn that he plays guitar in a band for a hobby, and maybe him explaining THAT problem is what demonstrates the trouble shooting and tracing skills that we're looking for, even if he spaced on the 3 way handshake in a moment of stress.)

how did this candidate not know the TCP 3 way handshake cold?

I've always thought of the tcp handshake as more of a tech shibboleth. It's something you pick up if you've been around, but I've never actually needed to know it. What's your experience on that?

She hasn't had to do the trouble shooting or the general tech support we had to do, because computers are functional tools now.

Yes, this is huge. My aunt was a programmer back in the 1970s, and debugged programs by staring at raw core dumps until they made sense. I will never develop that skill, because I have access to tools that are much better for over 99% of cases I will ever deal with. Similarly, I use her old punchcards as bookmarks.

They've just grown up with tools that work. They aren't shadetree mechanics because that hasn't been something in their environment. They know other things.

In your opinion what are these other things?

For my kid and her peers, their people skills are lightning years above the people skills of the computer people I know (and mine). There seems to be a higher baseline for presentations than there used to be. They have broad computer skills - they may "just" be power users, but they also don't just know excel, they know all the tools. They have better virtual meeting etiquette. I think they have broader skills in general. My kid and her STEM peers have high level accomplishments in athletics, arts, humanities, in a way that I didn't see among my computer peers in the 80s and 90s. Unless you count D&D, quoting Monty Python, and taking the Church of the SubGenius a little too seriously broad high level accomplishments.

I'm not meaning to talk down myself or my peers. But I would like those of us who are shocked at what the kids don't know to consider why they don't know it. If I can't show someone how to plug in an ethernet cable that's on me. It's unreasonable to expect everyone to know everything. I've been employed in tech since 1995, and got "my" (it was a family computer) first computer in 1979 (Atari gang represent!). There are loads of things I don't know. Even things I obviously should know that I just don't.

Definitely video editing.

I think there's truth to this, but there are limits. To use your example, if someone who wants to work in tech can't figure out how to plug in an Ethernet cable, then they are in fact lacking skills. Specifically, basic troubleshooting skills. I should be able to hand anyone an Ethernet cable and a computer with a port, and have them figure out how the two fit together. The large majority of one's value as a tech person isn't the specific things they know how to work with, it's their ability to figure out new things when confronted with them. I don't care if someone knows how to set master/slave IDE jumpers, but I do care if they just give up and say "I don't know" when confronted with such a problem.

Agreed. In many jobs, to be successful you need to be curious, willing to take risks, able to think things through logically, and problem solve. But for a kid who's never plugged in a phone jack, it shouldn't be surprising if they're also confused when asked about an ethernet cable. This came up because when my kid lived in her first dorm at college, we set her up with a hard wired connection, expecting wireless to be completely overwhelmed. She became the tech support person on her dorm floor because apparently no one else walked their kids through this process. So she'd take her friends to Staples, get them whatever they needed for their particular computer, show them where the jack was in their room (kind of hidden) and get them set up. These kids have not been taught or encouraged to take risks, so the idea of plugging a very expensive computer into some random thing in a way they've never seen or done wasn't something they took to immediately. It all makes sense if you consider the current environment.

This is why I don't want to look for quiz answers or trick questions when interviewing. I want to look for the curious ones, the ones who're willing to try to puzzle through something. I don't care as much about how accurate they are, I care that they're willing to take the risk of admitting they don't know something in front of someone else and try and talk through how they might arrive at an answer.

Sysadmin seems to be a bit of a dying role - most of the competent people are probably looking for DevOps or SRE roles.

Which... is really just sysadmin with a fancy name tbh.

Eh, I'd argue that sysadmin is maintaining running systems by hand, and DevOps is Infrastructure-as-Code. There is a qualitative difference when you switch from one to the other.

Sysadmin jobs haven't been maintaining systems by hand for the last 20 years (my entire career). A good sysadmin has long used scripts and other tools to help his work, and from there it's easy to move to infrastructure as code.

That's true. Maybe the shift also is from servers-as-pets to servers-as-cattle.

I just think there's a definite shift between the two types of admin, even if it occurs in parts. And because the change is large enough, we use two different words to describe the jobs.

I can't really say. I've changed industries a few times the last 20 years. It certainly seems like more people are replying to job openings now. Like hundreds at a time. 2 years ago it would be tens. I don't have a read yet if the quality is higher though. E.g. a lot of these numbers could be blown up from layoffs, and the laid off people are probably not the cream of the crop.

Me too. Tech before / during the dot com bust. Finance / investment banking, managed services, defense.

I think I may be seeing some geographic selection effects too. It could be the median candidate in London, UK is better than the median candidate in the Boston suburbs.

The more we pay, the worse the candidate pool is, simply because it draws more normies that are in it for the money than geeks.

Even at 6 figures the quality is poorer than I recall.

I suspect it's the increased size of the industry that we're failing to produce the quality candidates at scale or there is insufficient human capital as a starting point.

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