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How to Hire a Linux Administrator
Skapare writes "Hiring a good system administrator can be difficult. Hiring one while converting to Linux may take someone with special skills. Tom Adelstein is exploring just what is needed, and what should be avoided, in an article at Linux Journal about Linux System Administrators. I say hire more than just one."
Don't forget to look for personality.
Too many geeks spend so much time in front of the computer they forget how to deal with people.
I'd rather hire a less-technical person with good person skills then a more-technical person who cannot hold a converation. Since the Linux admin is basically a internal support person for the business, a good personality, decent communication skills, and the ability to turn a low-level human concepts to create a technical solution are always very important. The ability to chat over a coffee or beer is essential in any workplace.
Many technical skills can be learned very quickly. Personality is learned in a lifetime.
Well, the question would be more like "Can you find the incorrect answers on this website ?"
:
Here are the first two (easiest) ones
"Q: What is HTTP Tunneling
A: HTTP Tunneling is a security method that encryptes packets traveling throught the internet. Only the intended reciepent should be able to decrypt the packets. Can be used to Create Virtual Private Networks. (VPN)"
"Q: What is the difference between a soft link and a hard link?
A: A symbolic (soft) linked file and the targeted file can be located on the same or different file system while for a hard link they must be located on the same file system."
#include "coucou.h"
Not a big fan of several of the answers. The first batch of questions has some things that are quite wrong (virtual memory is implemented by time-sharing?!?) and there's no comments correcting them. At least the one that starts with "ls -ltra" has comments, although the main page doesn't make that clear.
One problem with providing answers to interview questions is that it's almost useless. If the interviewer knows the correct answers, then they don't need it. If the interviewer doesn't, then the questions must be crafted to only have one correct answer (eg, "What does UDP stand for?"), and such questions are often teh suck. Otherwise (still discussing the case when the interviewer doesn't know the problem domain) you end up with situations like the windows/unix filesharing question, in which the interviewer expects to hear NFS while many respondants would reply SAMBA. Open-ended questions, such as "what does [technology] do" are the worst in this scenario. So I don't think that providing answers helps.
Beware also of "opinion" questions, such as "what is the main advantage of symlinks over copies". The question on your site says that permissions are shared, while I think that the main advantage is that modifications are shared. Somebody coming from an embedded systems background may well have good reason to say that the main advantage is disk space.
I guess my point is, it's perilous to interview for Linux folk if you don't know enough Linux to deal with a variety of correct answers.
Better questions:
"Only in their dreams can men truly be free 'twas always thus, and always thus will be."
--Tom Schulman
The thing I noticed (other than the wrong answers) was that a lot of the questions are aimed at a potentially different target. For example, why would you be asking a linux admin any dba-related questions? Also, the questions specific about various apache versions should be aimed at a web administrator (which falls under the applications group, not the sys-admin group, at least in a larger organization).
I'd prefer to see a list of questions that pertain to the more non-technical aspects of system admin, such as proper change control procedures, importance of using well-tested and documented solutions, and reasons not to impliment something "just because you can". I may be getting cynical in my old age, but I've spent way too much time on cleaning up previous hot-shot admins' "handy work".
In general, a Linux system administrator has an easier time working on Microsoft and UNIX operating systems than the other way around.
It's phrases like this that make me question the validity of the whole article. The prejudice many Linux users have against Microsoft alone would be enough to keep them from trying to administer Windows systems. On the other hand, I think most UNIX admins would have an easy time admining a Linux system.
Join a startup company. Of course, you have to find one, or start one, but they love people like you. Being a low-budget environment, you get to do everything, with real responsibility, from sysadmin to programming and answering the phones (or whatever. Startup companies can't afford to hire sysadmins. They can usually only afford generalists. You can then emphasize whatever it is you want on your resume.
As for finding one, well... luck probably. you have to know people in that world. Or know those who know people doing it.
The other thing you could do is volunteer (ie for free) for a non-profit org to get experience while you do whatever other job you have. Like startups, they have little (or no) budget for people like you, but they probably desperately need technical help.
must... stay... awake...