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dm_gsxr
Thu Sep 8th, 2011, 06:31 AM
The position is for an Operations based Mid level Unix Admin. My expectations are that you understand how the operating system works and that you are somewhat knowledgeable about tools used to manage Unix systems.

We have a series of easy to hard technical questions we use to see just what a candidate knows. These are things that have come up in our (the team) experience as Unix Admins. Sure, it may not have come up for you which is why we don't ask one question, we ask a subset of the 50 or so questions and will delve deeper depending on the answer.

As I stated in another thread, we'll also let you dig your hole just as deep as you wish.

One of the things we do is list common daemons and request the candidate fill in the blanks with the well known port numbers.

It seems most recent candidates don't know that port 80 is http and that port 443 is https. Even better, yesterday's candidate (who had 13 years working at Sun and IBM and pointed out his experience as an e-mail admin) thought telnet was port 80 and didn't know the port for smtp (that's the mail program; port 25). Now if you're an e-mail admin, I really expect you to know what port is used for email. Heck, I expect you to be able to craft an on-the-fly e-mail message for testing, be able to read headers, and understand why an e-mail message that begins with "From" might actually begin with ">From" and how to end an e-mail message.

If you have 18 years experience as a Linux Admin, I expect you to be able to accurately tell me why file permissions are 664 and what permissions are needed to ensure access to a directory (he also said https' port was 81).

I expect a Unix Admin to know where the crontabs file is located on their Unix system of choice. To know where log files are located. What the -n switch means when you run netstat -rn to see the routing table. He knew how to get the routing table but when I asked why he used -rn, he didn't know.

I expect you to know about the tools used to view system performance stats. 'sar', 'vmstat', 'psrstat', 'iostat', etc. Telling me you use a custom script called 'top' and that you think this 'script' uses system tools really doesn't prove you know much of anything about the system (top isn't a script, it's a tool used to show the running processes, cpu load, io stats, memory and swap information).

And one of my favorite questions. Learn the difference between a hard link and a soft link. Telling me a hard link creates a copy of the file and maintains them by doing a sync behind the scenes is a serious eyebrow raiser. Better yet, telling me soft links are dangerous will get you in the hall of fame.

I expect to experience even more head shaking in the coming weeks as we interview folks.

Where are all the technical folks?

Carl

fasterlaster
Thu Sep 8th, 2011, 06:37 AM
We are having the same issues where I work looking for someone on my team. It sure seems the only people looking for work are looking because they are inept. oh well.

dm_gsxr
Thu Sep 8th, 2011, 07:53 AM
It can be frustrating. When you tell me you have 15 years experience as a Unix Admin and don't know how to script, well I'm likely not going to be very understanding.

Carl

Devaclis
Thu Sep 8th, 2011, 08:34 AM
I have been a server admin (among MANY other things) since 1992 and do not know how to script well. I have always been able to find tools or methods for doing what needs to be done without it. Now, not knowing your basic OS operations and inner workings is not excusable for a veteran in the field. That will end an interview early. I have also BEEN interviewd by a person who was pretty perturbed that I did not know specific information about his homegrown systems. THAT will end an inteview early as well. "Sorry I don't know the specific error codes that you created for your custom programmed CAD tools."

dm_gsxr
Thu Sep 8th, 2011, 10:43 AM
Interesting (really). I find I tend to roll my own when I need to get something done. Scripting to accomplish tasks across multiple systems (we're managing over 400 now). I can see how this might be detrimental when I'd rather roll my own and get the info I want vs chasing down a tool that might offer more capabilities but I have to learn in order to get working the way I want it to. To me, it seems easier to just whip up a quick script. But I started out in computers as a programmer so there may be some bias there :)

Out of curiosity, are you a Windows admin mostly or have/do you admin Unix servers?

Back before Windows NT, I managed Novell Netware, 3Com 3+Share and 3+Open, and Microsoft Lan Manager. All were command line based (mostly) so I did lots of scripting (and programming; I had the 3Com libraries so I could write my own utilities in C). When we started deploying Windows NT, it coincided with a change in the function of the admins. Moving from managing it all to managing users/printers. I decided to move on when the Unix team asked me to switch over to be a full time Unix admin which kept my scripting skills up to speed.

Even now I'm pushing out a scripted environment in order to monitor and manage our systems. Be proactive essentially.

In addition, I find lots of tools require the installation of a client agent which leads to open ports which leads to interaction with the firewall guys. In some cases, client agents have a license cost (not all of course) so the agent doesn't get deployed everywhere. Which means my scripts have to be in place anyway to catch problems on systems that aren't monitored.

Carl

Ricky
Thu Sep 8th, 2011, 11:27 AM
Are you kidding me? That's crazy shit. I'm no unix admin, but I do administer a couple of boxes for my own LAMP environments (redhat ent, centos, fedora), however I've gone well beyond that.

I know pretty much everything you mentioned, except maybe the diff between a hard and soft link. But that's nothing I couldn't learn from google in about 3.4 seconds. I don't know what the -n flag is on netstat, but a quick 'man netstat' would tell me. Why are people so helpless?

What always got me was in my early IT days when I supported the top level developers in the company. It would just amaze me how clueless these guys were as to how the OS works, and how to make it work as they wanted it. I mean, they wrote software for windows... wtf?

Depending on job location, I might be interested in applying. I'm a bit worried about my job at the moment.

dm_gsxr
Thu Sep 8th, 2011, 11:59 AM
We are in Longmont so if you live south, it might be a bit of a drive. We did have one guy driving from Castle Rock and have several in Highlands Ranch, Golden, and Aurora so there are folks who commute.

I posted the job link a couple of weeks ago or so:

http://www.cosportbikeclub.org/forums/showthread.php?t=41690

All we're looking for is someone who's reasonably clueful and mid-level admin material.

Carl

dm_gsxr
Thu Sep 8th, 2011, 12:42 PM
On the scripting side, for example I'm creating a script that parses the sudoers file extracting a list of users and their access rights based on the settings in the file. Then I'm creating a report to let us know who has unnecessary access.

There may be a tool that does this but it's just as easy for me to fold it into the existing scripts that do similar stuff using the existing foundation.

Carl

Ricky
Thu Sep 8th, 2011, 01:15 PM
I'm a northie, so that's not a big deal for me. What's the salary range for the position? I have a feeling it may be too low.

dm_gsxr
Thu Sep 8th, 2011, 01:48 PM
I'm a northie, so that's not a big deal for me. What's the salary range for the position? I have a feeling it may be too low.

I've seen folks asking around $70k on their cover letters. I just checked in with the boss and he said there's a pretty broad range so there's no way to give a good number although $70 is a good middle value. Also, West's range for a mid level admin is lower than ours so don't take it to heart if you're checking it out. Of course it's commensurate with experience, etc, yadda yadda yadda :)

We're looking for a mid level Unix admin who's willing to learn the NonStop platform (we'll send to training). As noted in the other thread, we're running about 350 Linux/Solaris systems with a few HP-UX, Tru64, and even a FreeBSD system.

Shoot me an e-mail with a cover and resume (for god's sake, spell check and use a sane formatting method; have someone read it first; see my other thread for that :) )

carl.schelin (at)
intrado (dot)
com

And that goes for anyone else who's interested. I get a bit of a kickback if I submit your resume and you stick around for 6 months (or something like that) and I need a new rear seat on the 'busa :)

Carl

Ricky
Thu Sep 8th, 2011, 03:12 PM
I used to know a few peeps who worked there. That was several years ago though.

I don't misspell words, and I certainly wouldn't submit a cover letter that I hadn't read through at least a hundred times, lol. Seems like common knowledge to me.

dm_gsxr
Thu Sep 8th, 2011, 03:45 PM
I used to know a few peeps who worked there. That was several years ago though.

I don't misspell words, and I certainly wouldn't submit a cover letter that I hadn't read through at least a hundred times, lol. Seems like common knowledge to me.

Heh, you might be surprised :)

Carl

Filo
Thu Sep 8th, 2011, 03:49 PM
It seems most recent candidates don't know that port 80 is http and that port 443 is https.

If you have 18 years experience as a Linux Admin, I expect you to be able to accurately tell me why file permissions are 664 and what permissions are needed to ensure access to a directory (he also said https' port was 81).

I expect a Unix Admin to know where the crontabs file is located on their Unix system of choice. To know where log files are located. What the -n switch means when you run netstat -rn to see the routing table. He knew how to get the routing table but when I asked why he used -rn, he didn't know.


And one of my favorite questions. Learn the difference between a hard link and a soft link. Telling me a hard link creates a copy of the file and maintains them by doing a sync behind the scenes is a serious eyebrow raiser. Better yet, telling me soft links are dangerous will get you in the hall of fame.

I expect to experience even more head shaking in the coming weeks as we interview folks.

Where are all the technical folks?

Carl

Oooh, pick me. I knew port 80. I usually set my umask to 022, so I don't get 644, I get 744. I know where to find crontabs and that the -rn is used to show the routing table in numeric format. I use soft porn ^h^h^h^h links all the time. I can't really script for shit though. Of course, I am just a user. I don't even pretend to be an admin.

I feel your pain. We are interviewing for an analog circuit designer (if anyone knows anyone, send them my way). I see resumes that indicated the candidate is a rock star and we would be lucky to have them. When they get to the interview, I wonder if they made up everything on their resume and if they even have a degree or any experience in circuit design... With all the people out of work, you would think we could find someone who doesn't suck. Of course, the two we interviewed that DIDN'T suck got more offers than they knew what to do with.

Double the salary and I will learn admin just for you. Give me a week. How hard can it be (hahahahahahahahahaha)?

dm_gsxr
Thu Sep 8th, 2011, 05:16 PM
Oooh, pick me. I knew port 80. I usually set my umask to 022, so I don't get 644, I get 744. I know where to find crontabs and that the -rn is used to show the routing table in numeric format. I use soft porn ^h^h^h^h links all the time. I can't really script for shit though. Of course, I am just a user. I don't even pretend to be an admin.

And I'm interviewing some who don't know and call themselves admins.

The funny thing is when I interviewed in Parker for a Sr admin, they offered $70k. I had to pass on that one :shock:


Double the salary and I will learn admin just for you. Give me a week. How hard can it be (hahahahahahahahahaha)?

It most be hard, or the good admins are satisfied where they are.

Carl

dm_gsxr
Wed Sep 21st, 2011, 06:20 PM
I feel like a master of trivia at times when interviewing folks. We have about half or so Solaris systems. On a Linux box, runlevel 5 brings up the graphical interface. On a Solaris box, it powers down the box. Telling me the killing a defunct process is done by kill -15, kill -9, then reboot will have me shaking my head. There were lots of gems from the guy today. 25 years of experience doesn't seem to mean what I think it means I guess.

Carl

dm_gsxr
Wed Sep 21st, 2011, 06:21 PM
And good luck to Ricky tomorrow :)

Carl

TurboGizzmo
Wed Sep 21st, 2011, 08:41 PM
Ha! Reminds me of some of the people i deal with....they have the word "Senior" in their IT title and all that means is they've been promoted so many times they have no idea how computers work anymore....or they are old....and forgetful. I like Linux and piping and grepping and today was busy du and df-ing! Very close to scripting it to find the rouge log file but found it before scripting was needed. After a little rm and rm -rf <damnit dont tell me the directory is not empty...force....recursive-you!!>

dm_gsxr
Thu Sep 22nd, 2011, 04:31 AM
I have old and young, junior and senior folks coming in for interviews. With very few exceptions, none are really operations folks. They're engineers or managers or whatever and can't run a computer without copious notes. And notes aren't bad but if you don't understand how stuff works, how can you understand the notes? Notes tell you how, not why.

Carl

TurboGizzmo
Thu Sep 22nd, 2011, 09:05 AM
Google is my IT Co-pilot!

Ricky
Thu Sep 22nd, 2011, 09:12 AM
I feel like a master of trivia at times when interviewing folks. We have about half or so Solaris systems. On a Linux box, runlevel 5 brings up the graphical interface. On a Solaris box, it powers down the box. Telling me the killing a defunct process is done by kill -15, kill -9, then reboot will have me shaking my head. There were lots of gems from the guy today. 25 years of experience doesn't seem to mean what I think it means I guess.

Carl

Yeah, see... that's the stuff I don't know well enough, but want to know very badly. Unfortunately for me, my 10 years of linux experience is intermediate at best.

dm_gsxr
Thu Sep 22nd, 2011, 10:30 AM
But intermediate is exactly what we're looking for. No worries there. The problems I see are folks who say they're a 9 and can't seem to explain things that a '9' should know. Per Jeff you did fine as well. We'll be setting up an interview for next week (or when you can get in).

Carl

dm_gsxr
Thu Sep 22nd, 2011, 10:33 AM
And if you don't have Solaris experience, don't say you're a 9. That stops the Solaris questions :) Our first question is "what unix systems are you familiar with and rate your knowledge between 1 and 10." If you say you're a 5 Solaris, we'll be expecting level 5 answers :)

Carl