@Breffni-Potter said in How Do You Evaluate IT Skills for Hiring:

Yes but a good head hunter does not just look at that, that is trivial and easy to discover.

I think we're in agreement here. What I'm objecting to is the assertion that a headhunter should be more skilled in the role than the person he's trying to recruit. So, for example, a headhunter trying to place a C# programmer doesn't have to be a better coder than his candidates. That's not a headhunters role. He has to know something - he just doesn't have to be better. I couldn't recruit a C# programmer because I know too little about it. But I could recruit an IT support technician, even though I'd hopefully know less about IT than the candidate - because I know something about IT.

@scottalanmiller said in How Do You Evaluate IT Skills for Hiring:

I'm a bit of an anomaly.

OK, fine. I'll rest my case. But please change your OP to "You must have someone doing the hiring that is dramatically more skills and experienced than the person you are hiring. Unless you're hiring Scott Alan Miller"

So do the headhunters that you've dealt with know more about IT than you?

@Breffni-Potter said in How Do You Evaluate IT Skills for Hiring:

I would not use recruiters, many of them are generically average at best, incompetent at worse. I would seriously think about head hunters though.

What's the difference?

Let's take an example. I'm recruiting for an IT role and @JaredBusch applies (he fancies a change of scenery).

Two points on this:

1. Although I'm not an IT pro, I know enough about IT to know that Jared knows his shit.
2. I don't know of any headhunter that is likely to know more about IT than Jared. That's not really a headhunters role.

Even though I'm crap at the guitar, I don't need to employ Eric Clapton to tell me that Jimi Hendrix is a better guitarist than Bon Jovi.

@scottalanmiller said in How Do You Evaluate IT Skills for Hiring:

• You must have someone doing the hiring that is dramatically more skills and experienced than the person you are hiring. This is the case for all jobs, not just IT. If the person interviewing is confused because the interviewee knows way more than them, they will just as likely think that the person is an idiot as a genius because they don't know enough to know if the person is right or wrong (seen this a lot.)

How? Are you suggesting firms should employ you to do the hiring or something? That's not normally practical.

Why not be even more efficient and go to bed in your clothes?

So what's your Scott? Being as you're pretty much half-European these days

Inspired by this site https://mymorningroutine.com/ what is your morning routine? I'm always staggered by how early Americans go to bed and get up, though I IT people tend to be evening people for some reason (I'm not).

I'm up with my alarm at 6am. A glass of water, a glass of orange juice, and my first mug of strong, black coffee. Then on my iPad I read the news and sport on The Guardian and catch up with overnight posts on ML, Facebook, plus a couple of football forums.

Shower and get dressed. Then my second mug of coffee with a piece of toast and marmalade - usually in the garden. The kids normally get up just as I'm getting ready to leave - they turn on the main telly and watch people playing Minecraft on YouTube (weird).

Off to work around 7.15 on my bike. Get to work at 7.30, catch-up on e-mails, sort out my to-do list on Trello, peruse any outstanding helpdesk tickets on Freshdesk. The first couple of hours at work are normally my most productive. By lunch-time I'm already running out of steam.

I'm sure some of those entries on https://mymorningroutine.com/ must be made up. There can't be that many people that spend their lives meditating, doing yoga, and drinking kale smoothies. There isn't a single routine on there that involves taking Alka Seltzer to recover from a raging hangover followed by a breakfast of donuts, which was mostly my routine until I had kids. That may be why I'm not a successful entrepeneur though!

https://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Electronics-Laptop-Computers/zgbs/electronics/565108

@scottalanmiller said in Is the computer repair business dead?:

@Carnival-Boy said in Is the computer repair business dead?:

Chromebooks are still niche.

Top selling computer category in the US. Anything but niche.

Where do you read that? Everything I've read is that outside of schools Chromebooks still have a tiny market share in the US.

I don't know a single person who owns one. I'd guess that 99% of my friends don't even know what one is.

Chromebooks are still niche. Most people have Windows PCs at home, and many will lose data or otherwise screw up their systems because someone in the family has been browsing dodgy websites. They often come to me for advice, which is if the computer is old and they have backups of their data then buy a new PC, if they don't go to one of a few repair shops in the town.

There's no money in it, for sure. The biggest computer retail store in the UK offers a fixed rate repair, plus parts, for about $80. I normally tell people to go there.

I joined the ML bandwagon but never actually used it. I just paid my money and then forgot about it.

I only remember it when I got an e-mail this morning:

Hello,
I would like to thank you for choosing us to host your servers.
As we value your business it is important to keep your account up to date.
You currently have an invoice that has not been paid.

I'm glad they don't have my bank details! I've never heard of a company just randomly deciding to invoice someone.

Any good?

I buy my couches from Ikea. And call them settees.

OK. I think I follow you all. It may well be the case with BT and other UK ISPs, I really don't know.

So you're saying the rule is that your internet pipe/leased line should be a separate contract to your SIP trunk. Company A (let's call them 'BT') sell leased lines and SIP trunks. Company B (let's call them 'TalkTalk') also sell leased lines and SIP trunks.

You should buy one service from BT, and one from TalkTalk. That's the rule, right? So TalkTalk are happy to run their SIP trunks on BT's leased line, and vice versa? The two are independent.

But if you buy both services from the same provider, their automatically tied together, and you can never separate them? That doesn't make sense?

@scottalanmiller said in Burned by Eschewing Best Practices:

Are they truly separate? That's not available in the US AFAIK.

Why not?

But they're not tied currently. I can run my SIP trunk on any line from any provider, I just happen to use BT.

How is it different if, say BT provide the SIP trunks, and TalkTalk provide the leased line?