Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab
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@scottalanmiller said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@thwr said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
I'm just curious: How would an ideal candidate for NTG look like?
Early 20s. Bikini model. I mean if we are looking for ideal.
Ok, well, I have at least some awesome stories to tell in this direction.
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There really isn't an ideal "NTG" person. It just isn't that kind of company. NTG has values, but we are a very disparate team. In age, background, location, history, etc. You'd often be shocked by who fits and who does not. Some of the things that we look for...
- Passion. NTG was founded and exists to be a platform for IT people to do amazing IT work. It's a company designed around doing IT. So doing IT for the sake of doing IT is pretty important.
- Culture. We are wild, crazy, fun, hard core IT people. This is a casual environment when it comes to "can I wear flip flops and drink beer in the office" but anything but casual when it comes to the work that we do. We are results oriented, not rules oriented. It's very much a team and a family.
- Longevity. NTG doesn't intend to hire for a position. Sure, sometimes we need a certain skill, but rarely. We need the right people, not the right skills. We can teach you skills, we can't make you awesome. NTG hires for the long haul. It's not a "hire you to get through this project" thing. The mindset going into NTG is "this will be a two year test period to see if we all fit". Because most people don't, and I don't meant that NTG doesn't want most of them, lots of people decide that they can't handle NTG. It's not for everyone. But for the right people, it's the best job ever.
- Team. Being able to work on your own is important, but NTG is a cohesive whole. We work together because it's what makes us NTG. Being able to be a team member is important. But that doesn't mean needing to be managed.
- Self Starter. NTG is a team but there is no micromanagement and no one holds your hand. You need to teach yourself and motivate yourself.
- Assertive. We have a lot of outspoken people. You need to be able to hold your own.
- Public. NTG lives on social media, conferences, meetings, etc. We live our lives in public. Welcome to the totally exposed workplace.
- Live IT. NTG is the worst place ever for people who want to do set hours and shut down. Nothing wrong with that, but we aren't that company. This is a 100% work/life integration environment. We mostly work from home offices, we mostly work 24x7. It never shuts down. But that's not bad like it sounds. We also don't make you leave "life" to go to work. Kids in the office, beer for breakfast, Facebook all day, no vacation days, no sick days, you take what you need when it makes sense. Some people hate it because they see work as never stopping. Some people love it because they see life never being interrupted by work.
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All that sounds just wonderful to me!
Speaking of "researching companies", I don't know enough about what you do except that you're a service provider. It sounds like you don't service just one location though. You talk about flip flops in the office, but you don't hire locally? Do you all work remotely? Are the services you provide all cloud?
The reason I'm asking is now I'm more curious about your idea of "passion". You wrap a lot of passion in the idea of people fidgeting with a home lab. You reject most other options. If the best definition of "passion" is that the person loves doing tech just as much on hours as off hours, I think I do.
Before I was married with kids, most days I'd come home from work and end up at a LAN party, gaming, programming, or rebuilding computers, etc. It would be Christmas if someone wanted to dump their old router or something, yeah I can try dd-wrt!
With family, I still want to retreat in the office and fiddle with stuff all night, but just can't spend my time that way. Wife doesn't want computers set up all over the house and CAT-5 running all over the floors. But it doesn't mean I don't have that desire to keep doing tech and learning things and tinkering at home.Anyway based on your description of an ideal candidate, I'd say it fits me. I don't mind the "on call" nature of working in IT, after all things can break at any time and businesses expect to be back up as fast as possible, it's a given. What I don't like is the pressure of the time frame when it happens. What if I happen to be camping with the family and we just hopped on a boat? The only option is 1) stop everything and run to a hot spot or where I can get a signal etc or 2) declare 'welp I can get to that in about 6 hours or 3) I don't know what else? I know I won't be able to enjoy the boat any more knowing I've got an issue hanging over me.
One time we had an issue that started at about 3am, some sites were defaced and the index file replaced. My phone just happened to have died or something, not on charger, and I slept in (on a Sunday). Well by the time I was aware of the problem and had it fixed an hour later, I got chewed out and blackmarked for not having fast enough turnaround time on my time off (I'm the only tech).
I'm okay with the idea of keeping a phone around most of the time, and doing some work when it's needed. But I'm not ok with the idea that if there is no signal or the phone dies or I'm in a movie theater and don't answer for a couple hours, that my head will be on the chopping block.
Anyway, do you hire in Arizona by chance
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
All that sounds just wonderful to me!
It sounds wonderful to at least twice as many people than who actually end up liking it in reality
But yes, it was designed to sound great to a certain group of people (like me as well, that's why I'm here.)For some, I think just the shock of working for a company like NTG is a bit much. There tends to be a lot less of a framework for support. The people are there to support you, but the corporate handholding is pretty much zero and people kind of freak out from the abstractness of it all.
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Speaking of "researching companies", I don't know enough about what you do except that you're a service provider. It sounds like you don't service just one location though. You talk about flip flops in the office, but you don't hire locally? Do you all work remotely? Are the services you provide all cloud?
So NTG does a few things. I'll try to give an elevator pitch, but I've done this three times this week and it's never quite right. But...
- NTG is an ITSP, basically an outsourced IT department and/or IT department augmentation service for SMB organizations. So more or less an MSP, but not a reseller (except for Webroot AV, I think that that is the only thing that we resell. We are an O365 partner but not a reseller and don't get paid for that, so not even kind of like a reseller.)
- NTG is an MMSP, a Meta MSP. Basically an MSP to MSPs. A company that smaller or lower end MSPs can turn to for escalation, coverage, assistance, or whatever.
- NTG is a bespoke software engineering house. This is where we started but this is now nearly phased out. We make our own software, you don't hire us to make software for other people. But we make SaaS applications for the medical industry since the 1990s, it's how we started.
- We are an R&D firm, doing research, writing, publishing and similar services for the industry. Still IT, just not IT directly but indirectly.
We are more or less location agnostic. We are legally based in Upstate NY but do not like to hire in NY for many reasons (taxes, lack of local customer options, etc.) We work all over the US including PR, and we regularly service locations such as Canada, UK, EU (France, Spain and a few others I know we've worked in for sure), Mexico, Panama, Brasil, and others that I don't likely remember. We have an NTG partner that handles the UAE as well.
Not everyone works remotely, but mostly everyone does. I do most of the time, but not today. I'm normally in Europe, but this week I'm in the main office in NY. But even being here local, I had to put in hundreds of miles of driving to go see customers that were very far away while I was around. So "local" isn't so meaningful.
We are definitely not primarily cloud except for that one SaaS portfolio item that is minor and most of our own staff are not even aware of it (go ahead, ask @Mike-Davis if he even knows its name, that's how unknown it is even internally.) And yet it's been in continuous production for sixteen years with some pretty impressive clients. We mostly do remote services for customers, but when needed we do local work as well. We just often drive or fly someone in for that when it comes up.
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
The reason I'm asking is now I'm more curious about your idea of "passion". You wrap a lot of passion in the idea of people fidgeting with a home lab. You reject most other options. If the best definition of "passion" is that the person loves doing tech just as much on hours as off hours, I think I do.
I really don't, it's just that I struggle to find ways to gauge passion otherwise. And it's "home lab", not home lab, really. If it's doing development at home, having lab gear on a laptop with VMs, a colocation facility, using Vultr or whatever... that's all "home lab" to me (or close enough.)
So yes, I'm really using the words "home lab" to mean more "loves doing tech off hours" combined with an aspect of "learning" in that time. Not just fidgeting, but actively attempting to learn.
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Anyway based on your description of an ideal candidate, I'd say it fits me. I don't mind the "on call" nature of working in IT, after all things can break at any time and businesses expect to be back up as fast as possible, it's a given. What I don't like is the pressure of the time frame when it happens. What if I happen to be camping with the family and we just hopped on a boat? The only option is 1) stop everything and run to a hot spot or where I can get a signal etc or 2) declare 'welp I can get to that in about 6 hours or 3) I don't know what else? I know I won't be able to enjoy the boat any more knowing I've got an issue hanging over me.
And that's why companies like NTG (and tons of others, we aren't special here) have teams. I've worked in the Wall St. banking space and we had the same stuff. 24x7 on call (I went eight years on call without a break, actually!) but we had teams so someone was taking that call, but that I was on a boat or at dinner or whatever means that the call desk would either gauge how long until I could get to it or find someone who was actively available or figure out that I had to drop everything and do it anyway (I was the final point of escalation, so unlike everyone else, I always had to drop everything if no one else could.) But that team nature meant that even though I was on call 24x7x365x8 I only rarely took calls (maybe once a week on average) and many of those were just that, calls, not big deals. It might have been nothing more than me approving a change, double checking a warning or some such.
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
I'm okay with the idea of keeping a phone around most of the time, and doing some work when it's needed. But I'm not ok with the idea that if there is no signal or the phone dies or I'm in a movie theater and don't answer for a couple hours, that my head will be on the chopping block.
That's one of the aspects and passion and culture that is important to us. It can't be just one passionate, always on guy (or gal) dealing with that. It has to be everyone. When everyone has that mindset, we don't need any given person to never disconnect, because we have a "cloud" of support. We back each other up, we work together for coverage. And yes, that means that right now I could post to our Yammer page and very likely several people would see it because they were up and checking their phones, but it's not like those people can't enjoy their evenings, generally they like that our lives don't split at the end of the work day.
It's a weird thing, some people feel that it is like never getting to not work. But when you fit this culture, it's more like we never have to work.
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@scottalanmiller Thanks Scott, I think most of the people here now at least have an idea where your initial question comes form.
This indeed sounds
goodgreatawesome, but you also clearly mentionedthe downsidesfactors like the on-call and no-vacations thing, something that is hard to come by when you first encounter this as an employee. But I guess that NTG members don't see themselves as employees, but more like a family from what I've been reading here. Especially the "longevity" is something that seems to be uncommon in the US, at least in IT. -
We really are family and even though it never stops some of us from time to time need to walk away for family emergencies etc. and because we are a family everyone else picks up the slack willingly. And sends flowers and food etc. if needed.
My team is amazing (yes even @scottalanmiller) we are here we help each other out and we all work our butts off when needed and then party hard other times
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I like @scottalanmiller 's terminology for it... If he, or anybody else goes on vacation, everybody else becomes the collective brain trust for the person who goes on vacation... Cloud of Support... That's a perfect way to say it, lol.
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@dafyre said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
I like @scottalanmiller 's terminology for it... If he, or anybody else goes on vacation, everybody else becomes the collective brain trust for the person who goes on vacation... Cloud of Support... That's a perfect way to say it, lol.
I like that! It is very accurate!
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@dafyre said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
I like @scottalanmiller 's terminology for it... If he, or anybody else goes on vacation, everybody else becomes the collective brain trust for the person who goes on vacation... Cloud of Support... That's a perfect way to say it, lol.
Oh and I am steal that
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I don't mind being plagiarized.
Although technically @scottalanmiller beat me to it.
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@thwr said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@scottalanmiller Thanks Scott, I think most of the people here now at least have an idea where your initial question comes form.
This indeed sounds
goodgreatawesome, but you also clearly mentionedthe downsidesfactors like the on-call and no-vacations thing, something that is hard to come by when you first encounter this as an employee. But I guess that NTG members don't see themselves as employees, but more like a family from what I've been reading here. Especially the "longevity" is something that seems to be uncommon in the US, at least in IT.Yes, that's a good way to think of it. People who want to be an employee probably won't like NTG. People who want to be a part of the company, might. It's anything but normal and some people just need time to grok it and then they like it. Many never will (or would, we try to figure those people out ahead of time.) We know that it is not for everyone. We've had lots of people try it for a year or two and bail. We've also had people bail and then beg to come back once they remembered what the outside world was like. Once you get the flexibility of NTG, it is hard to give it up.
Working at NTG really is a lot more like hanging out with friend and family, having some beers, eating some ice cream and talking about things that you enjoy (which just happens to normally be IT.) It makes nothing ever feel like work. And it makes for a busy, but far less stressful life. There is no "I need to go home and decompress" feeling. That's totally gone.
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@scottalanmiller said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@thwr said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@scottalanmiller Thanks Scott, I think most of the people here now at least have an idea where your initial question comes form.
This indeed sounds
goodgreatawesome, but you also clearly mentionedthe downsidesfactors like the on-call and no-vacations thing, something that is hard to come by when you first encounter this as an employee. But I guess that NTG members don't see themselves as employees, but more like a family from what I've been reading here. Especially the "longevity" is something that seems to be uncommon in the US, at least in IT.Yes, that's a good way to think of it. People who want to be an employee probably won't like NTG. People who want to be a part of the company, might. It's anything but normal and some people just need time to grok it and then they like it. Many never will (or would, we try to figure those people out ahead of time.) We know that it is not for everyone. We've had lots of people try it for a year or two and bail. We've also had people bail and then beg to come back once they remembered what the outside world was like. Once you get the flexibility of NTG, it is hard to give it up.
Working at NTG really is a lot more like hanging out with friend and family, having some beers, eating some ice cream and talking about things that you enjoy (which just happens to normally be IT.) It makes nothing ever feel like work. And it makes for a busy, but far less stressful life. There is no "I need to go home and decompress" feeling. That's totally gone.
Why aren't I working there yet?
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@scottalanmiller said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Not everyone works remotely, but mostly everyone does.
If you don't only provide cloud services, I take this to mean that you guys end up doing a lot of traveling to local businesses?
How much do each of you end up traveling to clients in a given month, or the whole year? Do you outsource and hire local tech shops to do physical stuff like networking or replacing machines?
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
If you don't only provide cloud services, I take this to mean that you guys end up doing a lot of traveling to local businesses?
That's correct.
I don't have any other answer
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
How much do each of you end up traveling to clients in a given month, or the whole year? Do you outsource and hire local tech shops to do physical stuff like networking or replacing machines?
Oh boy, that I have no idea. i know that me personally, it's not that much. I did 25 hours of traveling this week and today I have customers who travelled to see us instead (internationally, no less.) But for an average, no idea. But it's light. Some people travel a bit, some zero. Some have been relocated in the past.
I think @gjacobse travels zero, for example.
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Do you outsource and hire local tech shops to do physical stuff like networking or replacing machines?
Yes, we have remote hands services all over the place. Like Manhattan, we have a long term partner there that just is our eyes, ears and hands. They do no real tech work, they are just our remote controlled robots. That way our high cost, high skill staff can stay central and efficient while touching a lot of different localities.
