Patience with that other forum

[grawk]

I like the sys admins who think it's a 9-5 M-F job when the business runs 24x7. Their idea of being on call is to tell the biz they can't figure it out and they will look at it in the morning (really pass it off to the senior admins). Try to 'teach them to fish' and same thing happens next time. repeat. repeat. sigh.

I'm a sysadmin who pushes back fairly hard when it comes to after hours support. If you don't push back, the company will get used to it, and stop respecting your time. If they need intensive support 24x7, they should have 3 shifts of people working. And no, I'm not the junior admin.

I was the guy that would work whenever, for whatever. I worked hard, and long hours. What'd it get me? Fewer people to help. Less time off. More work. Not significantly more pay. It almost got me divorced, and I got to hear one of my son's first words to me..."bye bye daddy".

[aerius]

...I've put these candidates in front of a machine with visual studio on it, and told them to make

the one line C program "hello world". Not a single person has been able to do it yet.

Have you thought about making a tube amp or something with exposed high voltage parts and getting the failed candidates to electrocute themselves?

[mjb]

that forum, as most others, exist not so much to inform but are more a social setting. the information is gathered and compiled by virtue of the discussion centered around a narrow set of topics and as has been said, could easily be maintained in a more orderly/clean/maintainable/searchable format... but "a setting to share information" is only a small portion of the role a discussion forum plays for most.

i personally prefer the "direct" community aspect of a forum setting (even though i have to deal with assholes who insult me about my signature or don't search before asking questions or don't contribute any insightful info or etc), i gain enjoyment from the signal despite the noise...and i'd argue it's the noise which helps one hone-in on the useful information by virtue of the contrast.

i agree with the comments about the "entitlement gen", but i think it's a societal shift, more about brand, packaging, looks...less about substance...

those IT types, they think it's more about "where i went to school" than "what can i accomplish", so they probaby think they're worth 100k based upon some ranking of their school.

mjb

[postjack]

I was the guy that would work whenever, for whatever. I worked hard, and long hours. What'd it get me? Fewer people to help. Less time off. More work. Not significantly more pay.

and this has been me the first two and a half years of my full time working career. I'm just now learning to stop engaging in this type of behavior.

My boss was a little shocked the first time I raised hell about being abused regarding a day off I wanted (this being about three weeks ago). But she apologized and promptly gave me exactly what I wanted.

[itsborken]

... If they need intensive support 24x7, they should have 3 shifts of people working. And no, I'm not the junior admin.

We have an eight week oncall cycle and the systems are pretty stable so its not that bad. We follow the sun and have bodies so it all looks good on paper to mgmt. When the chips are down the biz (and people you respect) have to be helped so I'm just a sucker at heart. Spent too much time as a Boy Scout and even longer being the sole admin for small companies

[grawk]

I'm primary support for a "national critical infrastructure" supercomputer. Even so, if I don't think it's important, I'm not gonna skip what I'm doing to fix it if it breaks.

[itsborken]

I'm in retail (Unix primarily, just starting to get into Teradata) so there's no lives hanging in the balance. Your environment sounds like a pretty interesting place to be working.

I know where you are coming from on the family front but it never quite got to that extreme. Happy to hear everything is working out for you.

[grawk]

I'm in retail (Unix primarily, just starting to get into Teradata) so there's no lives hanging in the balance. Your environment sounds like a pretty interesting place to be working.

I know where you are coming from on the family front but it never quite got to that extreme. Happy to hear everything is working out for you.

I started out in retail. I built the datawarehouse and corporate back end for autozone's customer warranty and sale database, etc. Went from there. What I do now is less life and death than any number of things I've done in the past. And it's not any more exciting than real world stuff, it's just more expensive toys. I wouldn't start on the road of a sysadmin today if I had the choice, but when I did it it meant for a good lifestyle. And I've got a pretty good lifestyle. Now, I'd go in a completely different direction. Bioinformatics or something.

[Fungi]

http://www.head-fi.org/forums/f11/stop-recommending-gear-youve-never-heard-rant-warning-270280/

Someone works fast.

[boomana]

Actually, it was fucking bad Nate (oicdn) who put up pictures of a Graham Slee amp and said that the company made great products in a thread that got me going. I know he's never heard one, just as I knew he never talked with Ray at a meet like he posted here. I was going to post a "but have you heard it" comment, but I didn't think it would register as anything other than me being bitchy (again). I didn't even think about this thread, but maybe it was in the back of my mind. I love Duggeh's response.

[Fungi]

After I saw his post on the 1200 hour burn-in on the Marshmallows, I figured he was someone to ignore completely.

[boomana]

What's weird is I actually lent him my Hornet for a couple weeks, since I was going to sell it anyway. He'd gotten screwed over on some deal on a Hornet (funny how that seems to happen to him a lot...diamond ring story, too) and posted about tracking the kid to Chicago subs and calling the police on him. I knew he was a Florida guy and had been to Matt's, and I figured he was just a kid starting out, so I sent him my amp, which he reviewed. He sent it back a little later than I asked, but I figured it was just a stupid kid thing, and it came back well packaged and no problems.

I never saw the Marshmallow thread, but right before head-fi went down, he started posting really messed up shit about being with women and about what a burden it was to be a dad because he just couldn't stop, etc. I knew he was a jerk right then. The talking with Ray bit confirmed it.

[aerius]

Actually, it was fucking bad Nate (oicdn) who put up pictures of a Graham Slee amp and said that the company made great products in a thread that got me going. I know he's never heard one, just as I knew he never talked with Ray at a meet like he posted here. I was going to post a "but have you heard it" comment, but I didn't think it would register as anything other than me being bitchy (again).

I say burn his ass, he'll keep lying and talking shit as long as he thinks he can get away with it. When it becomes clear to him that he'll be ruthlessly humiliated for being an assclown, he'll either shape up or leave.

Of course the problem is some people will hate you, and as you put it, think you're being bitchy. Personally I think that reflects more on them than anything else, they're like basically teenage brats sitting at the adults' table and trying to butt their way into the conversation and tell the adults what to do. When this happens in real life, the adults will go "shut the fuck up and go sit with the rest of the kids", and I feel the same applies on forums. I've slightly lost the analogy here, but point is this; doing the right thing will get you hated on by some people, good ain't always popular and popular ain't necessarily good.

[boomana]

Well, if you haven't noticed, I'm not real worried about being perceived as a bitch, but I also don't think being bitchy serves a purpose if the meaning behind the bitchfest isn't understood. I didn't think it would be in this case. That's why I started that thread.

[fierce_freak]

those IT types, they think it's more about "where i went to school" than "what can i accomplish", so they probaby think they're worth 100k based upon some ranking of their school.

Ha, we have one of those here. I managed to get in with no formal training based on a good recommendation...the company's glad they took it.

[grawk]

Ha, we have one of those here. I managed to get in with no formal training based on a good recommendation...the company's glad they took it.

I'm a college dropout. I find that's a benefit these days. I don't really want to work someplace that values college over experience anyway.

[JBLoudG20]

Hmm, so Kevin need a guy who CAN code, and has experience in filesystem work, networking, infiniband, etc.

[ph0rk]

I've put these candidates in front of a machine with visual studio on it, and told them to make

the one line C program "hello world". Not a single person has been able to do it yet.

Give me a fucking break.

I'm not surprised, given what I thought the last time I looked at VS

Check out: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000781.html

The guys I used to work with use FizzBuzz as a weed-out mechanism. They can use the language of their choice, too, which is nice (lets you get someone who can code, no matter their language - they can learn whatever you need later).

Sort applicants based on elegance of solution.

I was the guy that would work whenever, for whatever. I worked hard, and long hours. What'd it get me? Fewer people to help. Less time off. More work. Not significantly more pay. It almost got me divorced, and I got to hear one of my son's first words to me..."bye bye daddy".

Ouch. 8 years I spent in IT. The contracting life was awful, the you're-a-contractor-but-we-pretend-you're-almost-a-real-employee gig got real old (AT&T, IBM). I burned out at went to grad school Never thought I'd be happy earning less than 20k/yr

i agree with the comments about the "entitlement gen", but i think it's a societal shift, more about brand, packaging, looks...less about substance...

People have been saying stuff like that since they were old enough to talk smack about the younger generation. I'm sure there are bad eggs, but I don't think it is indicative of some sky-is-falling trend.

The generation concept as used in the popular media is bunk anyway (thanks alot, Mannheim). The birth cohort is the only distillation that has much use (or has any validity for talking about intergroup similarities). Even that potentially has issues. Current "gen y"ers are aged 26 to 12. Why anyone would think that is a valid unit of comparison is beyond me.

Besides, everyone knows it's the boomers that broke the gen Y kiddies.

[mjb]

People have been saying stuff like that since they were old enough to talk smack about the younger generation. I'm sure there are bad eggs, but I don't think it is indicative of some sky-is-falling trend.

actually, that comment was referring to our society in general, not just the so-called gen y'ers or the younger generations...

yeah, not the apocolypse...maybe more like the idiocracy http://imdb.com/title/tt0387808/ (which is an hilarious movie btw)

mjb

[ph0rk]

yeah, not the apocolypse...maybe more like the idiocracy http://imdb.com/title/tt0387808/ (which is an hilarious movie btw)

The setup was interesting, but I thought the follow-through was about as subtle as a brick to the head. Whatever magic Judge had with Office Space he forgot to use when he finished that movie.

[Assorted]

I agree reading oicdn's posts crack me up. I also dislike how some people mentions the Cowon D2 on every damn "what's the best dap" thread. These people haven't even heard other great sounding daps by Kenwood, JVC and even Sony's HD series. I personally think even my iRiver H10 trumps the D2, and various other daps that people claim to have best SQ. I'm not disputing the fact that people have different hearing, but we're talking whole steps in the SQ spectrum.

I am similarly annoyed by snob attitude some of the MOTs/sponsors give. I won't finger-point names, but some of these MOTs actually give attitude on a public non-sponsored thread - he even actively broke the forum rules once! Does anybody remember that rant thread made by the famous cable maker known for making the proprietary iMod cables? It was deleted within minutes, but this sponsor MOT actually started a rant topic on how every line-out cable makers are copy-cats of his company! In fact, the company this sponsor MOT was directly referring to, was another sponsor of HF!

[itsborken]

I'm a college dropout. I find that's a benefit these days. I don't really want to work someplace that values college over experience anyway.

rant Unfortunately neither college or experience really measure troubleshooting capabilities. In fairness, there was probably half of my CS 'boomer' class populations that were totally lost in the subjects and just marking time towards graduation.

I took a jr level compiler design course where we broke into three man teams. I got teamed up with two post-grads and thought it would be a cake walk. Nope, they were clueless too and so I had to do their pieces of the project as well as mine. They weren't even TAs so they didn't have the excuse that they were too busy with the other teaching. All this happened way before the dot com boom when IT wages were relatively low compared to other disciplines due to lower demand.

Yep, the boomers broke it as we got greedy and lazy. Lay off people for short term results. We tell our kids don't dedicate yourself to one company as you'll just get shafted in the end. Style is valued over substance most of the time. Small wonder we are in this situation. Sometimes I think its going to take a real problem like the dust bowl, depressions, the great wars, etc. to snap the population out of the collective mindset. /rant

[kevin gilmore]

Hmm, so Kevin need a guy who CAN code, and has experience in filesystem work, networking, infiniband, etc.

Bingo. Also need someone that can do sql all day long.

[mjb]

Bingo. Also need someone that can do sql all day long.

you need a functional programmer if you want the best...

try to find someone who does haskell...it's a good sign they're both interested in fp and probably good at it (as it is a more obscure language with a strong community of smart fp geeks)

mjb

[aerius]

Sometimes I think its going to take a real problem like the dust bowl, depressions, the great wars, etc. to snap the population out of the collective mindset. /rant

Read up on the joys of Peak Oil, our real big fucking problem is a lot closer than most people think. Dealing with its effects will forge the next "greatest generation".