Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Do you think that a person may reach a point in their career where they are greatly skilled and have no need for tinkering in a home lab?
Nope. Change is happening all the time. There is no "Universal Man" in IT.
It's not possible to know everything about everything.- There is always someone who knows more than you do
- It's not possible to know everything
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@scottalanmiller said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Do you think that a person may reach a point in their career where they are greatly skilled and have no need for tinkering in a home lab?
Not really. IT always needs to keep learning, growing... even just to stay doing the same position. The amount that you need to do decreases over time. But growth and exploration is an important part of IT.
I agree. I just think there is a difference between a person "learning" and a professional who is just doing "maintenance" on their knowledge, in proportion to time spent in home lab. There is a difference between a "learner" who tinkers and rebuilds their lab all the time, and a professional who set his up and never needs to touch it. One "does" the lab, the other "has" a lab, in other words.
Also, does this concept transfer to other professions or is it just a technology thing? Is it required that a dentist spends his free time fixing teeth of all friends and family who ask in order to show his passion? Is it required that a doctor spend his free time helping everybody who shows up at the door in order to show his passion?
Does a person who programs in .NET all day need to come home and keep programming in .NET all night to show he's really passionate about it?The only real push back I see with this home lab requirement are basically people who lack the time or money to spend on one. Who basically do not feel any need to take their work home and thus never unplug from their profession.
You can't deny the validity of the position of wanting to cut loose and leave tech out of personal life to some degree, friends and family and kids and social life are also very important. I don't think there is anything inherently "wrong" with that, in fact it's scientifically healthy to do so.
On the other hand, there are other professions where it is CLEAR you have to spend considerable free time on the craft and not just when working, such as in sports. A basketball player who only does his sport when playing actual games or practices, is almost unacceptable. The real pros live their craft.
Anyway, interesting topic.
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
For example at the peak of my "computer repair" days, I was sufficiently skilled enough to fix nearly anything with only the most obscure problems requiring a lot of Googling to figure out. I had no need to fill my house with broken computers from Good Will to fix on my own time. I used to work on 4 to 8 computers at once by having tables all around me and KVM switches so I could cram as many towers on the table as possible.
So, in that case, how did you keep up with new gear as it released, new operating systems and such?
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Staying up to date on the latest improvements in CPUs and the latest RAM specs and motherboard sockets and video card benchmarks had much more to do with reading tech websites and magazines and news, than anything that could be done in a home lab.
At one job interview I had, they asked me not about a home lab, but asked me "how do you keep up to date on the latest technology advancements?" In other words, they were asking what blogs I read, subscriptions, newsletters, magazines, etc.So my point is, if you are an amazing small engine repairman, do you really have to fill your house and yard with engines and parts to prove your passion? Or can a person just be really good and keep up to date on the latest advancements via publications?
That's bench, though. And far more like small engine repair. It's not like in IT where you need to know the interfaces and the changes in the software, applications, paradigms. It's a very different thing. And even then, I'd expect a small amount of home labs, just maybe far, far less. Bench work or engine repair aren't fields that generally work in "giving advice", but IT is.
Even in forensic biochemistry which my wife used to do, the only thing that kept you from being barred from working by not having a home lab was that literally no one took their job that seriously. But if anyone did, they would have moved up so much faster than anyone else. We almost bought a full home chem lab with high end HP gear for that purpose. But my wife decided to move to a rewarding career instead in IT... and got a home lab.
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
All I'm really asking is whether you change this requirement at all based on whether the person is inexperienced versus older/experienced etc. Surely there is a type of performance curve that shows when a person is learning, they would be far more into hands-on lab stuff, versus experienced where their home lab is just something they've already built and works great and doesn't need tinkering.
A little. If someone is young and inexperienced they have fewer resources to get a lab and less understanding of how to do it. The higher someone gets, the more I would have the requirement.
I would never hire a CIO, for example, that didn't have a home lab. But I might hire someone entry level who hasn't gotten one yet. And trust me, when interviewing for seven figure positions, home labs always come up.
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
I agree. I just think there is a difference between a person "learning" and a professional who is just doing "maintenance" on their knowledge, in proportion to time spent in home lab. There is a difference between a "learner" who tinkers and rebuilds their lab all the time, and a professional who set his up and never needs to touch it. One "does" the lab, the other "has" a lab, in other words.
That's why not having a lab is a "no" vote, but having one isn't a "yes" vote. Having a lab doesn't get you in the door, it just doesn't shut the door on you. Now you are getting into the next phase, determining if they are really learning with their lab.
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Also, does this concept transfer to other professions or is it just a technology thing? Is it required that a dentist spends his free time fixing teeth of all friends and family who ask in order to show his passion? Is it required that a doctor spend his free time helping everybody who shows up at the door in order to show his passion?
It doesn't apply to "certified professionals" which are held to far, far lower standards than IT should be. That's one of the reason that I like to use IT Practitioner rather than IT Professional. We are looking for traditional amateurs, not modern professionals. IT doesn't require a degree, for example, it's a higher field than that. It's also not unionized. But "professionals" have all of those things. The unions are normally government ones, so pseudo-unions, but the same effect.
We mention all the time how doctors, dentists, pharmacists, etc. aren't measured on results, only on a lack of abject failure. That's important, more or less, for what they do but it is no way relates to our world in IT. If you tried to work like a doctor in IT you'd never get your first job. It's both not comparable as the fields are totally different, and not comparable because we'd never accept the low standards of the general healthcare field as acceptable in IT.
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@guyinpv but if you leave out the government union / cert jobs (aka traditional professionals) then yes, it absolutely applies. Scientists, engineers, artists, musicians, teachers (which are still government union / real union / cert but it still applies there), race car drivers, chemists, biologists, carpenters.... basically any job where results matter and you aren't there to just "push a button" I think that this applies when you are looking for great people. Many companies actively don't want great people, just mediocre people, so that doesn't stop most places from hiring. IT tends to look for the best, even at mediocre companies, so it is very demanding.
Would you want your brewmaster to not like making beer at home? Would you like your chef to not enjoy cooking and experimenting?
Pure service jobs, like waitress, concierge, cashier, receptionist... yeah, they don't have home labs. They practice by just being nice to people.
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Does a person who programs in .NET all day need to come home and keep programming in .NET all night to show he's really passionate about it?
100% yes. No question about that, whatsoever.
Or, of course, in another language or a different framework. Making them better at what they do outside of the confines of the code that they have to write every day. Trust me, every good programmer I've ever met does this without exception.
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
The only real push back I see with this home lab requirement are basically people who lack the time or money to spend on one.
Exactly. The one group where I would see an exception is interns and very entry level where they are not yet to the point in their careers to know how to do it or possibly be able to do it. Although generally, how would they even get to the point of looking for an IT job without having had a home lab? How do you even learn what IT is without one?
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
You can't deny the validity of the position of wanting to cut loose and leave tech out of personal life to some degree, friends and family and kids and social life are also very important. I don't think there is anything inherently "wrong" with that,
That's totally true. I don't deny the validity at all. I don't suggest that there is anything even slightly wrong with that. I'm only suggesting that I don't want to hire those people in IT.
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
I don't think there is anything inherently "wrong" with that, in fact it's scientifically healthy to do so.
I don't agree with the science there. They can't measure what we are talking about, you'd have to produce some pretty significant research on that one. Remember, we are looking for people who feel like they never go to work. It's accepted science that the need to cut loose and go home is itself a problem, a problem that we've solved by and large. The science you are talking about is people needing to disconnect from the stress of work. Instead of letting people disconnect, we look for people who never have it. Which is even healthier still.
Needing to disconnect and go home is a band-aid... a means to making the negative of work not so bad. We don't want to band-aid, we want to avoid the problem altogether.
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
On the other hand, there are other professions where it is CLEAR you have to spend considerable free time on the craft and not just when working, such as in sports. A basketball player who only does his sport when playing actual games or practices, is almost unacceptable. The real pros live their craft.
That's a great example. And how many of them would feel healthier if they stopped playing sports or exercising outside of work? Not many, I bet. Sports is much more like IT and any business area... it's performance driven.
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@scottalanmiller is right. We really try to make our work not be "Job". A job is something you go to, to pay the bills and may not love your job.
Even now that I am mostly management, still have a lab that I play in to keep my skills up. I don't get to do this very often and generally I am just playing with small pieces of software but I still do it, cause I want to. I tend to still be working from my phone when I am out in a bar listening to my favorite band or sitting at home watching a movie. Heck I can take the whole day off away from my desk but still work just cause I can. I don't need to disconnect to have a life because I can have both.
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@Minion-Queen said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@scottalanmiller is right. We really try to make our work not be "Job". A job is something you go to, to pay the bills and may not love your job.
Even now that I am mostly management, still have a lab that I play in to keep my skills up. I don't get to do this very often and generally I am just playing with small pieces of software but I still do it, cause I want to. I tend to still be working from my phone when I am out in a bar listening to my favorite band or sitting at home watching a movie. Heck I can take the whole day off away from my desk but still work just cause I can. I don't need to disconnect to have a life because I can have both.
Right... we don't want people to not disconnect from work. We want them to never disconnect from life.
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@scottalanmiller said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@Minion-Queen said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@scottalanmiller is right. We really try to make our work not be "Job". A job is something you go to, to pay the bills and may not love your job.
Even now that I am mostly management, still have a lab that I play in to keep my skills up. I don't get to do this very often and generally I am just playing with small pieces of software but I still do it, cause I want to. I tend to still be working from my phone when I am out in a bar listening to my favorite band or sitting at home watching a movie. Heck I can take the whole day off away from my desk but still work just cause I can. I don't need to disconnect to have a life because I can have both.
Right... we don't want people to not disconnect from work. We want them to never disconnect from life.
This is a good way to look at any job... But sadly, most of them require their people to be there in their office, taking up space because... My current employer and my previous one have been (were) great about letting me take care of life when it happened.
When I had my cochlear implant done, I actually got to work from home for a week. I got more done in that week than the entire previous three.
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@dafyre said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
This is a good way to look at any job... But sadly, most of them require their people to be there in their office, taking up space because... My current employer and my previous one have been (were) great about letting me take care of life when it happened.
NTG goes much farther. It's not just about things like being able to deal with life when needed, it's about not stopping living. What that means is different for different people, but like for me, it's never not being with my kids and getting to live all over the world and I am just as likely to be playing a video game at 10am as I am at 9pm. There is no "work time" or "not work time", it's all just life.
We don't shut down Facebook or avoid taking personal calls. We don't stop talking to family and start talking to work. There aren't the hard breaks.
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@scottalanmiller Sounds great
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@scottalanmiller said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@dafyre said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
This is a good way to look at any job... But sadly, most of them require their people to be there in their office, taking up space because... My current employer and my previous one have been (were) great about letting me take care of life when it happened.
NTG goes much farther. It's not just about things like being able to deal with life when needed, it's about not stopping living. What that means is different for different people, but like for me, it's never not being with my kids and getting to live all over the world and I am just as likely to be playing a video game at 10am as I am at 9pm. There is no "work time" or "not work time", it's all just life.
We don't shut down Facebook or avoid taking personal calls. We don't stop talking to family and start talking to work. There aren't the hard breaks.
Yeah, I get that. It sounds like how I was at my last job... I seemed to work all the time, and handle life all the time... There was no real "off-time"... I actually enjoyed that part of the job. What made it so rough was that I was the only one on call like that, and it got old being out in town with my wife and having to come back home (home was on campus) because a big wig needed a new mouse for their laptop at 3pm on a Sunday afternoon.
If they had let me and one or two of the other full timers have a share in that, it would have been awesome... I lacked that "Cloud of Support" (tm) that you guys have.
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@scottalanmiller said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
I don't think there is anything inherently "wrong" with that, in fact it's scientifically healthy to do so.
I don't agree with the science there. They can't measure what we are talking about, you'd have to produce some pretty significant research on that one. Remember, we are looking for people who feel like they never go to work. It's accepted science that the need to cut loose and go home is itself a problem, a problem that we've solved by and large. The science you are talking about is people needing to disconnect from the stress of work. Instead of letting people disconnect, we look for people who never have it. Which is even healthier still.
Needing to disconnect and go home is a band-aid... a means to making the negative of work not so bad. We don't want to band-aid, we want to avoid the problem altogether.
It sounds a bit like you're saying that people who feel the absolute need to cut off work and make clear delineations between work and home life, are perhaps not meant for that work in the first place?
Like if someone doesn't enjoy doing the work and tinkering with no real lines between work time and free time, then perhaps they don't really like the career?
Also this brings up a side point. Perhaps some people feel the need to cut off, not necessarily from IT or tech, but from the demands of a boss? If my job is "you do this stuff for 8 hours a day" and I'm somehow made to feel like I need to continue doing more of the stuff on my free time, there is this sense that my boss is still controlling me in some way even after I leave the office.
I think when people say they need to unplug, it's unplug from the company/boss/control of the work environment, rather than unplugging simply from tech and learning things. It's unplugging from customers and demands and tasks lists and emergency emails with ALL CAPS subject lines.
When you talk about how NTG does things, you earlier mentioned being salary. Regarding that, how do you gauge "on the clock" hours from off the clock? How do you know when there seems to be too much "home life" and not enough "work life"?
This can perhaps be rewritten as, what do you expect from employees as far as time required for their pay? Are there days where they just play games all day and put off menial tasks for after dinner? Do you expect certain turnaround times if a person happens to be out? What if they are out ALL the time and it's a habit that they are always immersed in family life when work comes calling?
How do you control, or perhaps encourage that proper work/life balance so NTG gets their fair share and personal stuff gets its fair share?I'm asking because the major benefit of the 9-5 that we know exactly what's expected of us. We know exactly what is meant by being lazy or late or unproductive. And it's within certain hours.
In a free-form job where times are all over and work/life mingle all day long, how does one gauge their performance? See if there were a "slow" time and I didn't have much to do, I'd probably go nuts thinking I was being paid for nothing. On the flip side if it got super busy and the wife didn't like me up till midnight all week, I'd begin to feel overworked. How do you play out that balance so employees don't feel "controlled" or under pressure, but also you get out of them what is required for the job?
