Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab
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@scottalanmiller Fresh outta surgery and have been home for 24 hours. Feeling a little rough but better that Saturday - Monday.
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@Kyle said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@scottalanmiller Fresh outta surgery and have been home for 24 hours. Feeling a little rough but better that Saturday - Monday.
Welcome back, glad to hear that you are on the road to recovery.
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@scottalanmiller Figured I'd chime in on the home lab. I've found it essential in being competitive in the IT industry. I get the whole work/home life balance but I've always wanted to learn more & more. If you think that you have learned all you need to know in this industry, it's time to find a new field of work.
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@Kyle said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@scottalanmiller Figured I'd chime in on the home lab. I've found it essential in being competitive in the IT industry. I get the whole work/home life balance but I've always wanted to learn more & more. If you think that you have learned all you need to know in this industry, it's time to find a new field of work.
My thoughts on the work/life balance part are that it's not as clear as people make it sound. Work/Life balance doesn't just mean "shutting off work when the day is done."
At NTG, for example, we take a very different view. We don't have downtime, there is no work hours / play hours. It's all one and the same. The job is integrated into normal life. But life is also integrated into the job. It's a totally different approach and certainly doesn't apply well to every person or to every job. But IT is much the same, IT isn't great for normal people or normal jobs. But for the people that it fits for, it's like the best thing ever.
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Fully agree. I don't know many in the IT field that just clock out and leave. Especially in 1 man shops where uptime is your sole job no matter how many hours you put in.
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@Kyle said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Fully agree. I don't know many in the IT field that just clock out and leave. Especially in 1 man shops where uptime is your sole job no matter how many hours you put in.
I know some in the enterprise. It does happen. Especially in the "traditional approach" path people, those that did a degree first, likely a graduate degree, got a job as an entry level person and worked their way up the corporate ranks, mostly through senority and stick-to-itiveness rather than being really into what they were doing.
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I have a virtual lab.
Virtual box with two windows vms, a linux vm, and three windows server vms.
A small linux vm (pfsense) for routing in th vm environment.That's all. Helped me many times when testing powershell scripts, learning concepts etc.
Took about six hours in total to setup...but no money as the laptop it runs on is pretty beefy.
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Speaking of lab stuff: After my boss gets back next week, I will probably have a couple big (and very very heavy) Dell 2900 towers to get rid of. They were former lab systems for us. I know one has 16GB ram in it, no idea what the other one has, either 160 or 250GB drives and PERC raid card (might be real raid cards not sure) if anyone is interested let me know otherwise probably off to the scrap heap. note these are VERY HEAVY TOWERS so would be local pickup in Buffalo NY not going to ship. Again have to check with the boss first to make sure its OK (company gets really weird about giving stuff away for some reason). Just want to put it out there
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@jt1001001 said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Speaking of lab stuff: After my boss gets back next week, I will probably have a couple big (and very very heavy) Dell 2900 towers to get rid of. They were former lab systems for us. I know one has 16GB ram in it, no idea what the other one has, either 160 or 250GB drives and PERC raid card (might be real raid cards not sure) if anyone is interested let me know otherwise probably off to the scrap heap. note these are VERY HEAVY TOWERS so would be local pickup in Buffalo NY not going to ship. Again have to check with the boss first to make sure its OK (company gets really weird about giving stuff away for some reason). Just want to put it out there
Man wish i lived closer....
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@FrostyPhoenix said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@jt1001001 said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Speaking of lab stuff: After my boss gets back next week, I will probably have a couple big (and very very heavy) Dell 2900 towers to get rid of. They were former lab systems for us. I know one has 16GB ram in it, no idea what the other one has, either 160 or 250GB drives and PERC raid card (might be real raid cards not sure) if anyone is interested let me know otherwise probably off to the scrap heap. note these are VERY HEAVY TOWERS so would be local pickup in Buffalo NY not going to ship. Again have to check with the boss first to make sure its OK (company gets really weird about giving stuff away for some reason). Just want to put it out there
Man wish i lived closer....
We drove from @jt1001001 to you so far today and will be driving from you to him when the pizza and whiskey is done this evening. It's not that far.
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Its only what 6-7 hours depending on traffic. Though keep in mind that's me driving with a 3 year ond and a 1 year old so frequent stops a must unfortunately
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My first home lab was an IBM eServer xSeries 366 8863 with 4 quadcores and 32 gb RAM. I got it on ebay for 6 bucks (50 delivery lol). At the time that was a lucky shot, they were going for way more. No drives in it. Had to pay $250 for 6 75gb SAS's. So, for 300 bucks a datacenter quality home lab. I am not saying everyone should be able to afford this, but it certainly was a good investment for me. I know at the time the money hurt, too. Sitting in the corner collecting dust now because I have the capacity for a lab at work, which is nice, because I do also agree with @RojoLoco that we have lost sight of a healthy work/life balance. Just offered it to my neighbor's kid who is messing around with raspberry PI's and Linux. Guys and gals, remember that first time you turned on an enterprise server and the fans blasted up to 100%...
Think he will have a blast with it!
My that was off topic. I don't know if I would consider it a reason not to hire someone, but if I was hiring it would definitely give a second candidate with a lab an advantage.
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I think you basing your decision on hiring someone on whether they have a home lab or not is complete and udder crap. For example, I do have a media "sever" but that is it. I chose to not spend my money (whether it be on a home server or the electricity to power said home server) on things I have access to at work. My time out the office is my time, spent with family, doing things I enjoy. Not having my head buried in technology (I do that enough at work).
Scott you are different than most since you have come out and said that you cannot disconnect from technology (even when you are on vacation). Those like myself like to leave technology at work. When I get home, I usually (if I can) leave my cell phone on the opposite end of my house and spend time outside. When I go on the weekend camping trips, my phone stays in my tent. We as a society have become so dependent on technology to run our daily lives, we lose sight with the fact that the things we did as children, (hanging out with friends, playing at the park and not coming home until dinner...etc.) we no longer do. Most adults have their heads on a permanent 25 degree downward angle with a phone/tablet glued to their hands.
Yes IT is a hobby/passion but that does not mean IT needs to be your life. I think you discounting someone based on if they have a home server or not is total bs.
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@scottalanmiller said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
So some things that I think are important, some are questions, others are points...
- If you don't have a lab at home, how do you cover that same educational ground in other ways? I understand that some people think that needing a lab is unnecessary, and I'll bite: what's the alternative that would show the same dedicated to learning on personal time and without needing outside resources?
- Given that the reasons that labs are seen as important are 1) a dedication to learning on your own 2) ability to learn without needing to be taught only by others and 3) passion because mostly we look for passion more than experience.... what would be alternative or better ways to gauge these factors?
- Given that practically unlimited candidates do have home labs, what differentiators do you feel should cause someone without a home lab to be considered above them (because without that, it's just another term for ruling out those without.)
- Why do we need to show dedication outside of the office? What impact does that have to the job at hand?
- I am passionate about my job and how I do my job, just because I do not show that same passion for IT outside of my job, does that make me any less qualified for the job?
- My experience for the job duties outlined in the description should be enough. My time outside of work is my time and shouldn't come into play when comparing candidates. If I did, I wouldn't want to work for that company anyways.
Personally I see it as, if someone likes to disconnect the less likely they are to be burned out due to stress.
edited #3 comments
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Something to remember: we are an IT firm. We have much higher standards than a business hiring an IT person. I talk to other managers etc. from other IT firms... we all ask this question.
IF you aren't playing with technology and constantly learning how to use both new tech and things you haven't used before, (old or new) then you won't be whole lot of use for a company like NTG, that has clients with 100,000 different environments that run everything under the sun.
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@Minion-Queen said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Something to remember: we are an IT firm. We have much higher standards than a business hiring an IT person. I talk to other managers etc. from other IT firms... we all ask this question.
IF you aren't playing with technology and constantly learning how to use both new tech and things you haven't used before, (old or new) then you won't be whole lot of use for a company like NTG, that has clients with 100,000 different environments that run everything under the sun.
So at NTG, if you don't have a home lab and aren't learning outside of work then you won't be hired?
I have interviewed at msp's, large and small companies over the past 10 years and have yet to be asked if I have a home lab or not. I don't know if this is a relatively new line of questioning to whittle down candidates or not but it doesn't seem fair. You cannot know everything out there, you get the knowledge by being exposed to it on the job.
Also it takes money to stay on top of new tech. I have a 8 year old tower, 5 year old laptop and a 5 year old android tablet at home. I don't have the means to go out and buy all of the gear necessary to setup a home lab and nor do I want to. Sure you could set it up for under $800, however, that is a mortgage, that is car payments, that is a new stove. For those that make under $50k a year have other things to pay for, so why should that disqualify me from working at your company?
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Our hours can also be 24/7 so while it might seem unfair it is the life. While I have no issue with someone who wants to disconnect and just not be available. We could never hire someone who does that, our clients need us during outages etc. when they need us. We have had times where we are all hands on deck and work in 24 hour shifts for days and then all crash and take vacation days.
IT is what IT is
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@Minion-Queen said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Our hours can also be 24/7 so while it might seem unfair it is the life. While I have no issue with someone who wants to disconnect and just not be available. We could never hire someone who does that, our clients need us during outages etc. when they need us. We have had times where we are all hands on deck and work in 24 hour shifts for days and then all crash and take vacation days.
IT is what IT is
Don't get me wrong, if that is apart of the job description where you need to be reachable at anytime that is fine. That is IT in a nutshell. I am not arguing that. I am arguing the point of the validity of hiring someone based on the premise of a home lab or not.
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Well also the argument comes in that why should I pay someone to work on a client's environment if you don't at least have some idea. I can't charge a client for a staff member to learn. Where do you fit your learning time in, if when you are at work you are..working?
There is always a little piece as an IT person that GOOGLE comes to the resuce but it can't give you the wisdom to know how to apply what you are seeing. Wisdom comes with doing.
