Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab
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@wirestyle22 said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@JaredBusch said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Regarding paid time off. I get $2/hour more for not having 80 hours of PTO.
If my rate was $30, then in a 2087 hour year I would earn $62,610 with $2,400 of that being the 80 hours of PTO. So that means I was paid $60,210 for the 2007 worked hours.
So making $2 more means a rate of $32 in a 2007 hour year (assuming unpaid 80 hours were taken) means I was paid $64,224.
That is $1,614 more than the full 2087 hour with PTO $30 wage.
What about the increased costs of paying for health insurance, vision and dental though? I guess they are somewhat supplemented by that $1614, but that is a considerable amount of money.
That is a different part of the equation. I was strictly comparing the difference in asking for PTO.
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@david.wiese said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@wirestyle22 said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@david.wiese said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@JaredBusch said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Regarding paid time off. I get $2/hour more for not having 80 hours of PTO.
If my rate was $30, then in a 2087 hour year I would earn $62,610 with $2,400 of that being the 80 hours of PTO. So that means I was paid $60,210 for the 2007 worked hours.
So making $2 more means a rate of $32 in a 2007 hour year (assuming unpaid 80 hours were taken) means I was paid $64,224.
That is $1,614 more than the full 2087 hour with PTO $30 wage.
i'll take a $1600 hit for having my nights and weekends and not being on call 24/7
He's not on call. He explained that before. I made the same assumption.
if you are working on weekends updating servers then you are on call (in my opinion). On call to me means you work when the client has time for you to work. IE you put your life on hold for the client.
On call to me is unscheduled work
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@wirestyle22 said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@david.wiese said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@wirestyle22 said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@david.wiese said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@JaredBusch said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Regarding paid time off. I get $2/hour more for not having 80 hours of PTO.
If my rate was $30, then in a 2087 hour year I would earn $62,610 with $2,400 of that being the 80 hours of PTO. So that means I was paid $60,210 for the 2007 worked hours.
So making $2 more means a rate of $32 in a 2007 hour year (assuming unpaid 80 hours were taken) means I was paid $64,224.
That is $1,614 more than the full 2087 hour with PTO $30 wage.
i'll take a $1600 hit for having my nights and weekends and not being on call 24/7
He's not on call. He explained that before. I made the same assumption.
if you are working on weekends updating servers then you are on call (in my opinion). On call to me means you work when the client has time for you to work. IE you put your life on hold for the client.
On call to me is unscheduled work
http://definitions.uslegal.com/o/on-call-employees/
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@david.wiese Point being that @JaredBusch has a schedule. It just changes week to week. I don't know how much advanced notice he is given, but hypothetically it doesn't really have to interfere with his life that much.
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I kinda do and kinda don't have a home lab.
I have Virtual Box as well as I use Vagrant. Most of my stuff these days are web/dev related so the extent of my home stuff is little more than web servers. I fire up a VM to play with Node or PHP7 or whatever.
I don't know if this qualifies as a "home lab" as I consider it just basic dev tools. I also toy with VMs from VULTR and Digital Ocean.
When it comes to education I have two general ideas. One is that if I need to learn things very specific to tasks my boss is telling me I must cover, I expect the business to help with training. I expect them to let me take an online course or two, buy a book, or buy a service and that I can study as I go and learn "on the job".
If they want me to do new things and learn new things that were never on my job app, then it makes sense they help cover some education for it.I also like this because I can learn the thing while actually using company data. That is to say, rather than being in a generic lab trying to learn, I can do it with real world data and problems, which is much more useful.
On the other hand, if I want to learn something new, or something to improve myself in a general sense that isn't related to tasks at work, then of course I study on my own.
My problem with the home lab idea is that it's not easy to build the environment I want to study. It's not that easy to build a home lab for studying Cisco edge routing and advanced networking. There are some virtual environments and stuff but I can't afford hundreds and even thousands of dollars worth of switches and routers to play with for a home lab. It's harder to study those than it is to, say, spin up a FreeNAS server or OwnCloud.
Personally I don't like the idea of being weeded out based on this. I would think that personal qualities come first, experience second, and passion third.
It's getting harder and harder to find good people. I think people are becoming more selfish and self-serving, with growing animosity toward "the man" and the corporate overlords. You know, those people who make all the money and drive Cadillacs while paying minimal to the techs who actually run the business and keep things flowing. People think businesses are just out to use them.
The point being that I would much rather hire a person because they are trustworthy and dedicated and love the work and are a decent person. Ruling out selfish, self-absorbed, arrogant, job-hopping, money-focused, disconnected people. I don't give a crap if they have a home lab if they are only in it for the money. They will jump ship at the next highest offer and play that game. I wouldn't want to hire somebody who is already a disgruntled employee from day 1 for no other reason than he hates having to work for someone.
Once I've found somebody who seems to be excited to work at the company and knows something about it, who proves to be a decent human being and isn't simply job-hopping up the "ladder", then I'd move on to knowledge/experience.
If they prove to be good and experienced at the core aspects of the job, I can always train for the rest and negotiate salary based on their experience and how much I think I need to train them for the position.
Where I work now we've seen 15 people hired and fired in a little over a year in basic positions. Mostly they quit or were fired because they were not good people. Whiners, complainers, back biters, lazy, job hopping. Who cares if they had a home lab? They were not good people, they didn't work well with others, they were lazy and didn't want to learn anything new or take on any tasks outside their small sphere. They were jealous of whatever pleasures the CEO had and thus built up animosity toward the company.
Find good people first. Train them. Keep them when you got them!
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@wirestyle22 said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@david.wiese Point being that @JaredBusch has a schedule. It just changes week to week. I don't know how much advanced notice he is given, but hypothetically it doesn't really have to interfere with his life that much.
How does one plan their life if the above is true? A schedule that varies week to week is something I gave up in my early 20s. Plus any work I do outside of M-F 9-6 is paid as overtime and scheduled in advance. I wouldn't give that up for $1600 a year.
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@RojoLoco said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@wirestyle22 said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@david.wiese Point being that @JaredBusch has a schedule. It just changes week to week. I don't know how much advanced notice he is given, but hypothetically it doesn't really have to interfere with his life that much.
How does one plan their life if the above is true? A schedule that varies week to week is something I gave up in my early 20s. Plus any work I do outside of M-F 9-6 is paid as overtime and scheduled in advance. I wouldn't give that up for $1600 a year.
You are locked on the wrong number. that number s strictly the difference in 80 hours of PTO versus no PTO. THat number has nothign to do with any other part of the conversation.
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@RojoLoco said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@wirestyle22 said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@david.wiese Point being that @JaredBusch has a schedule. It just changes week to week. I don't know how much advanced notice he is given, but hypothetically it doesn't really have to interfere with his life that much.
How does one plan their life if the above is true?
Quite well.
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IMHO (just read the first post): when you hire someone, it depends completely for which tasks and/or in which team you want to place it. It's a "human problem" first.
It's like having a sport team: you need to have a balance. The whole should be more than the sum of its parts (that's the key).
So when I spent time with potential candidates, it's entirely a question of feelings, ability to be not serious and have at least one interest in common with people he/she will work with. Then it's about curiosity and capability to search for itself (that's easy to spot during the trial period). That's also the time to see the "enjoy" level during working (mood is a good indicator).
Technical ability will come last.
So what about home lab? It could be something great if it fits with the rest of personality, but not a game changer per se.
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Am I the only IT guy that gets a salary anymore? I much enjoy salary rather than having to fill out a timecard every day. Also, if things are good i go home a bit early.
My home lab:
4930k with 32GB Ram, a couple TB storage, half a dozen vms. Going to add some managed switch in there at some point just havent done it yet. Also have a much lamer lab here at work that i am slowly building up using old stuff. Currently a XS 7 server with a vm on it to test gpu passthrough performance eventually(Solid Edge on a vm). Havent got around to testing it yet.
I would hire somebody without a lab, esp if it was an entry level help desk type situ. -
Jared has the best possible schedule. Also as an employee of a consulting company.. he has many customers who he supports, many of whom hire his company because they are willing to work outside the normal 8-5 time frames.
Jared get to spend time with his wife at lunch for a few hours.. then with his kids when they get home from school. then he goes back to work for a few more hours to get his 40. It's the ultimate in a flexible schedule.
Is it for everyone? Of course not, actually it's probably for the very few, because like Loco people like their simple routines.
If JB does have to work more than 40 hours in a week, he does get OT.
Now his numbers where definitely on the low side in my opinion for someone who is basically working like a self employed person, with the exception of needing to carry their own worker's comp and covering the business's side of the matching taxes.
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@momurda said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Am I the only IT guy that gets a salary anymore?
I like the idea of it but where I work it wouldn't change anything. They would still demand when I come and go and expect the same amount of "on call" available from me.
In other words, salary for me wouldn't change my freedoms one bit. It's my general opinion (based on what others have said) that salary typically just means the boss expects you to work more, longer, and at home, and on weekends too, and on the road, and keep the phone by you at all times, and answer work emails, etc.
We moved our general manager to salary and all it did was make him stay longer hours and answer phone and emails all day and night.
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As far as I understood, Jared's initial statement was a bit misleading. He works for 42 hours and can split that in any way he likes, which is ok. I've worked both ways and both have their pros and cons. I don't care much for the exact model, time card or fixed salary.
If someone wants me on standby 24/7, he would have to open his wallet. Very wide.
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@momurda I'm salary.
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@momurda said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Am I the only IT guy that gets a salary anymore?
I like the idea of it but where I work it wouldn't change anything. They would still demand when I come and go and expect the same amount of "on call" available from me.
In other words, salary for me wouldn't change my freedoms one bit. It's my general opinion (based on what others have said) that salary typically just means the boss expects you to work more, longer, and at home, and on weekends too, and on the road, and keep the phone by you at all times, and answer work emails, etc.
We moved our general manager to salary and all it did was make him stay longer hours and answer phone and emails all day and night.
That's what salary has always meant. Or for a very long time. Even in the 1970s a "professional day" was ten hours, not eight. And salary has always meant that you were paid more, and given more flexibility, but expected to be more flexible yourself and that work/life kind of mix together in most cases. Hourly denotes a much stricter delineation between work time and non-work time. Salary denotes a blending.
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@momurda said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Am I the only IT guy that gets a salary anymore?
Almost everyone that I know in IT is salary.
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@RojoLoco said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@wirestyle22 said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@david.wiese Point being that @JaredBusch has a schedule. It just changes week to week. I don't know how much advanced notice he is given, but hypothetically it doesn't really have to interfere with his life that much.
How does one plan their life if the above is true? A schedule that varies week to week is something I gave up in my early 20s. Plus any work I do outside of M-F 9-6 is paid as overtime and scheduled in advance. I wouldn't give that up for $1600 a year.
Conversely, having any schedule at all is something that I gave up in my early 20s. The ability to work when needed, take off when not needed, be flexible and do what makes sense rather than what is scheduled is great. The last thing that I ever want is to be forced to work for no reason and to be forced to stop working for no reason. My flexible schedule lets me to work when it is needed or practical and lets me not work when it is best suited.
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@RojoLoco said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Plus any work I do outside of M-F 9-6 is paid as overtime and scheduled in advance. I wouldn't give that up for $1600 a year.
My guess is that you are a planner. I'm a perceiver. I don't want a strict schedule, that's boring and exhausting to me. I love checking in, finding out that there is no work to do and heading to the bar. I like being the guy that gets called in a panic because there is a disaster and working while there is excitement and taking off when there is not.
What you describe as glorious sounds terrible to me. I would hate that rigid schedule. It sounds like punishment to me. I had a schedule like that when I worked in restaurants and hotels (as the cashier or clerk, not in IT), getting into IT let me escape that and set my own schedule.
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@scottalanmiller said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@RojoLoco said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Plus any work I do outside of M-F 9-6 is paid as overtime and scheduled in advance. I wouldn't give that up for $1600 a year.
My guess is that you are a planner. I'm a perceiver. I don't want a strict schedule, that's boring and exhausting to me. I love checking in, finding out that there is no work to do and heading to the bar. I like being the guy that gets called in a panic because there is a disaster and working while there is excitement and taking off when there is not.
What you describe as glorious sounds terrible to me. I would hate that rigid schedule. It sounds like punishment to me. I had a schedule like that when I worked in restaurants and hotels (as the cashier or clerk, not in IT), getting into IT let me escape that and set my own schedule.
This comes down to personal preference, which is what I was getting at. I definitely enjoy a schedule for work. I like to know what the expectations are. With that said, I also enjoy excitement which I think comes with the territory sometimes.
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Find good people first. Train them. Keep them when you got them!
That's what we are trying to find. I've never found someone that loved working in IT and didn't bring the job home with them. Could the two be separate? Probably. Have I seen it, not really. And that's the question that I keep proposing... if you don't use a home lab as an indicator of passion and self learning, what are you using?
No one is saying that it is the only factor or that you have to have one for every role anywhere. But when you are looking to hire someone passionate, what would you consider a good alternative indicator?
