Re: Seeking Advice

Pablo Sanchez <pablo_at_dev.null> wrote in message news:<Xns92CAB0B21AA74pingottpingottbah_at_209.242.64.107>...
> joel-garry_at_home.com (Joel Garry) wrote in
> news:91884734.0211181605.22b58693_at_posting.google.com:
>
> > As far as Daniel's suggestion, Solaris or HP/UX _paid experience_ is
> > more marketable, but actually having your own box may be more
> > impressive to a manager who is seeking someone knowledgeable. By
> > that I mean, it won't impress the HR filtering droids, so be aware
> > of who you want to impress and why. Every kid coming out of high
> > school has a linux box (well, we can hope), so you may want to
> > differentiate yourself from them.
>
> If I were the hiring mangler, I wouldn't care what _box_ someone had,
> be it Linux, IRIX, HP-UX, Slowaris, etc, what's important is whether
> that someone has mastered it from the O/S perspective.

Well, hopefully that depends on what you want him to do. For example, a larger place might have a sysadmin for the unix stuff, and it wouldn't much matter which box, as you have other expertise. A smaller place where he is going to be one guy doing DBA and sysadmin and everything else, he might need to know specific things like where the kernel parameters are documented and which GUI admin program to use and what compiler/linker weirdness Oracle has on the platform ("What? I have to buy another compiler?" :-).

I do have sympathy for the viewpoint that once you know one unix, you know them all, but my experience has been knowing several is better for learning a new one.

>
> Are they familiar how to partition the drives? Do they know how to
> manage the machine? Maintain iptables/ipchains, DNS setup, etc etc
> ... I don't care _what_ but the fact that this person is "curious" and
> can figure things out.

Yes, you are the exactly person to do the evaluation. The point I perhaps muddled was that in many orgs, targetted impressiveness (to coin a phrase) must be used to get past HR to you. In other words, would you tell them not to send a curious kid on when they have several who have been paid to do what you want, and done it successfully? With a little DBA ad getting 150 resumes...

jg

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