Ask Slashdot: What Should a Unix Fan Look For In a Windows Expert?

andy5555 writes "I am hardcore Unix (and recently storage) fan responsible for our server department. Most of the servers run (you guessed it) different types of Unix. For quite a long time, Windows servers played very little role, but sometimes we get applications from our business departments which run only under Windows. So it seems that we have to take it seriously and hire a few Windows fans who would be able to take care of the (still small but growing) number of Windows servers. Since I am Unix fan, I have very little knowledge of Windows (some of my teammates may have more, but we are not experts). If I have to hire such a person I would like to find someone who is passionate about Windows. It is easy for me to recognize a Windows fan, but I don't know how to test his/her knowledge. There are some sites with typical Windows interview questions, but everybody can read them and prepare. How would you recommend the hiring process to proceed? What should I ask?"

Comments

Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start

[crazyjj]

I'm not sure how you should start the interview. But I'm pretty sure starting it off by taking a holier-than-thou condescending attitude towards anyone who would sully themselves by being a Windows server admin, and referring to them as a Windows "fan" instead of a Windows professional, is definitely the way to NOT start the interview.

Believe it or not, there are plenty of professionals out there with significant admin experience with both Unix and Windows. Being a Windows professional doesn't make you some sort of dirt-eating Tauron, nor does it necessarily make you a "fan" who's chosen his side in some nerd-rage fight to the death.

Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start

[Anonymous Coward]

^This

Also stay away from people who have all the certifications. It just means they went to the class and passed the tests which are pass/fail. Most of the tests are online (and a good source of questions btw).

A good one to lead off if you are looking for a windows admin. Why would you use a workgroup vs a domain? How would you setup an active directory tree with 200 computers and 5 different departments?

Also find someone who does both Linux and Windows. More than likely they will have to jump into your shoes when you are on vacation. Also loose the attitude. They are computers they get your job done. If you go into with that attitude they will resent you in under 2 months and be looking to get out. Do not create a we vs they in your office before you even hire the guy...

Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start

[sortius_nod]

I am one of them. At work, I administer Windows servers, at home, I run Linux servers. I have had experience working with both in various environments, from small companies to large media organisations, & I don't think I've ever seen someone as less of a person because they can't administer *nix or Windows servers.

If I was to be interviewed by a condescending arshole like the OP, I'd walk out of the interview. Working for someone who looks down on you for having greater knowledge than them is far from ideal.

Let's face it, because the OP doesn't know how to administer both *nix & Windows, that makes them less of an admin than someone who does. Not only do they need to find someone, they need to pay someone who knows how to interview for the role.

The first thing I learnt in admin/support is that if you specialise, you limit your options, for both solutions & future employment.

Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the OP, you will see that he calls himself a Unix fan in the first sentence. I'm not sure how this translates into a holier-than-thou attitude---it sounds to me more like a welcoming environment, where people are fans of particular types of technologies.

Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start

[Hatta]

Actually, eliminating candidates that are so full of themselves that they object to being called a "fan" would be a great way to conduct the interview.

Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start

[black6host]

Believe it or not, there are plenty of professionals out there with significant admin experience with both Unix and Windows. Being a Windows professional doesn't make you some sort of dirt-eating Tauron, nor does it necessarily make you a "fan" who's chosen his side in some nerd-rage fight to the death.

Most definitely. I was a server admin for clients of mine who were too small to have one full time. Ran Linux on my own desktop, also had Windows and Linux servers running on different machines. I could deal with either. I wasn't a "fan" of anything. I was a professional who took care of my clients. Unix, Linux, Windows, it didn't matter. What mattered was my knowledge and making whatever they had chosen to run work. And work well.

As far as how to gauge their skills.... You won't be able to, as the good ones will know more than you do. Pay attention to what they have done in the past, contact their previous employers. Certs don't mean much, I've run across a few that didn't know anymore than was needed to pass the tests.

Maybe pose problems in a Linux domain that you are familiar with, ask them how they would handle that in Windows. Ask them to explain how it works differently from what you're doing. Ask them general security questions that should be known by all server admins. Firewalls, etc.

If you're in charge, you need to be able to assess their work. And that depends on the type of Win servers you're going to run. Outward facing? Database? In-house application only?

So much depends on what the servers do. Someone may be a great domain admin, but suck at the database side of things.

I know, not much help. But please don't call them "fans" :)

Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start

[justforgetme]

I fully agree with you on the attitude part.

On the decision part I'm not so sure. I mean sure you will limit yourself if you are going to only look for admin jobs on a specific OS but the truth is that the extent of a sysadmin's or opadmin's responsibilities will limit your specialization automatically through the passage of time. Sure for entry/mid level positions you don't have a problem, most of your responsibilities can be brushed over in an afternoons reading, but for high end/profile positions your chances are with a specialized attitude rather with the jack of al trades attitude.

Surely these are only my personal opinions, other people might disagree.

Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start

[JustOK]

Stay away from those that put emphasis on their certs.

Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start

[Darth_brooks]

As someone who just finished an MS cert bootcamp in May, I'd say you may want to reconsider your stance. The days of the Paper MCSE seem to be going by the wayside. I did the Windows 7 Enterprise Admin course (MCITP) which is a split course.

The first part is "Configuring Windows 7", which ends with a certification exam (Microsoft Certified technical specialist, Configuring Windows 7.) I'll admit, I went into it without studying as hard as I could have, mostly because I had the attitude of "Ooooooh, Configuring Windows 7. I hope they don't ask me where the *Control Panel* is..." When I took the exam, I was promptly blown out of the water, and ended up retaking just to pass. They're pushing Branch Cache very heavily, and they expected some reasonable experience configuring WSUS via GPO.

Now, neither of those are shocking technologies, but they're definitely a *huge* step up in how they're treating the 'entry' exams. They seem to be making a big effort (according to the guy that ran the course, the questions have been changing since the start of the year) at getting away from "memorize the question, get the answer down to a 50/50, and guess your way in."

I'm not ashamed to admit that I failed the 60-686 exam for MCITP and still need to take it. Out of 11 people who took the course, all of us took the 60-680 MCTS exam, and 7 of us took either the 60-686 and 60-685 exam (combine course). I was the only one who passed *any* of the exams. We had some fairly sharp people, and the common theme was that we were all sorta surprised at how tough the exams were.

Just my two cents, maybe we were all just a class full of derps.

Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start

[joelleo]

I have to disagree with those asserting *snicker* certs are worthless. Take them into consideration, but validate that they know what they certified on. They don't "just mean they went to the class and passed the tests" they can actually validate real world experience with the tools and environments, but that needs to be _proven_ to the interviewer. The best way to do this is to sit them in front of a computer that has access to a test environment and tell them to do stuff and see how they perform. Admittedly, this requires an understanding of what they are doing on the interviewer's part, but to completely exclude a large swath of potential candidates because of someone's misinformed perception of certifications would be a misstep, in my opinion.

Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start

[hawkeyeMI]

I read the OP as saying, "I love *NIX and that's all I really know in depth as an Admin. I have no clue how to find someone similar for Windows. How would I go about that?". I didn't read it as condescending, but clearly many here did.

Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start

[Sir_Sri]

This is because we've started teaching these things in 1 and 2 year trade school /college programmes where you can get various certs at the end. The quality of the people and training is going up, and the tests can now actually be more than laughably basic stuff.

The windows ecosystem is huge, mind bogglingly so. If you're going to look for a 'windows server' guy you really need to know what you want them to do. Is this a server to support desktops? A web server? Some cloud thing - if so there are a lot of different specializations here. If you want someone with a background in infosec you might be looking at having multiple people.

maybe we were all just a class full of derps.

That used to be the case. If you had (or have) brains you take comp sci, software eng or computer engineering. Everyone else is in the IT guy certifications stream which, lets face it, is one tier of people down on average, usually the top people in the certs stream should really be in comp sci, and the bottom people in comp sci should be in the IT side of things. The problem is that for a long time the IT stream attracted script kiddies out of highschool who played video games on windows and they were basically the only people who knew *anything* about windows so they could get a job. The world has moved on though. If you're going to deploy clients to 200 machines, and then manage all of their licences, sharepoint install, active directory, etc. you really do need a lot more than just 'windows is fun'. At that point windows isn't fun, windows is an expertise you have and that expertise has little to no connection to any 'fun' you might have with windows.

The certifications are supposed to be the minimum level of competence you'd expect out of someone with little to no experience. Believe it or not you do want people with the certifications (or equivalent) so you know they didn't just 'manage' their 200 machines individually and were actually aware of the enterprise product tools. Someone fresh out of a 1 year college course with an MCSE is about what you'd expect for someone one year out of highschool who can prove they paid attention in class. They're way better than someone with no training at all, but there's a lot of experience to had still.

P.S. I think you mean the 70-686 exam, I believe the 60 series was for vista and is long long long gone.

Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start

[Spazmania]

For better or for worse I think you have stumbled not on a condescending attitude but on a difference between *nix and Windows admins.

The OP *enjoys* administering Linux servers. It's fun for him. Not in a professional my job is satisfactory way but in an I just played ball with my buddies and had a blast way. And in a classic feedback loop, he's good at it because he enjoys it because he's good at it.

He's looking for someone who feels that way about running Windows servers. Someone who feels that way about Windows will fit well into his team while filling the technical need. The stodgy "Windows Professional" capital P may meet the technical need but he won't integrate well into the team.

Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start

[grcumb]

I read the OP as saying, "I love *NIX and that's all I really know in depth as an Admin. I have no clue how to find someone similar for Windows. How would I go about that?". I didn't read it as condescending, but clearly many here did.

... And there, right there, is how you tell the difference between Windows and Unix experts. The Unix expert sees no problem with exposing either his preferences or his ignorance about the world beyond his experience. The Windows expert has been taught that these are weaknesses.

Re:UNIX Differences

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck... slashdot is becoming reddit!!!

Wrong approach

[jdastrup]

The answers I ask when hiring a system admin are typically not OS or vendor specific. I'd rather have someone intelligent and clever, who can then pick up any technology thrown at them. This philosophy has worked incredibly well. But, if you want someone that has memorized the MCSE tests, then ask the Windows-specific questions. But when it comes to troubleshooting or real-world environments, you have no guarantees.

Make sure they can script

[jimicus]

There's plenty of Windows people who know how to click "Next... Next... Next..." but no more than this.

Well and good if that's all you need, but you'll get someone a lot more productive if they know a bit of Powershell, VBS and batch scripting.

See if they use Windows the way you use UNIX

[gman003]

A good Windows admin will "work around" the Windows-ism of it all and use the more UNIX-y features of it (they won't think of it that way, but they will). See how they are at whipping up quick VB or PowerShell scripts to do some little task (the same way you would whip up a Perl or Bash script). Check their problem-diagnosis skills - give them a hypothetical scenario (some weird proprietary service isn't starting at boot) and keep throwing up obstacles ("Guy: Well, I would check the services panel, make sure it was set to start automatically"; "You: Alright, you check that, and it is set to, but it's marked as 'stopped' and halts as soon as you try to start it"). Eventually he'll give up and say "there's obviously something wrong that's beyond my ability to fix, I would have to contact their support people", but see how many things he can think of to check. If he can think of a lot of ways something can go wrong, he likely has both experience and wisdom (unless he's rattling off bullshit, of course).

Another thing to look at is his WindowsUNIX skills. I'm working on a project now that involves getting applications running on both to work with each other, and that's not easy. Having a Windows guy who can grok Unix-speak would definitely be a plus for you.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know any of your questions and I've been installing and maintaining a Windows server farm with 600-800 standalone Windows servers and clusters from Windows 2000 to Windows 2008 R2 for at least 10 years. Your questions are test level, not real administration and engineering level. Should you know about SMBv2 and potential conflicts with a WAN accelerator? If it is in your environment, yes. The kernel name of Windows 7? Who gives a shit. That's a test question that has no impact on anything you will encounter.

Re:Sanity and a lack of mythos tentacles...

[ZeroPly]

I can honestly say I'm familiar with every technology you mentioned, but I would still be unqualified for a job running Windows servers. There's a big difference between these two interview questions:

"How long have you been using Microsoft SQL?"
"How would you write a query in SSMS 2005 that pulls data from an Access database on a different server?"

Unless you actually had some background, you wouldn't know to ask the second question, which would give you a lot more information. I'm only using SQL as an example, the same would apply with AD or Exchange server management.

One possibility - hire a consultant to sit in on the interviews. You evaluate the general technical skills and personality, the consultant probes the specific Windows technical skills.

Re:UNIX Differences

[Deagol]

Slashdot became reddit before reddit existed. You can bet your hot grits on it.