UNIX System Administration Handbook - Evi Nemeth [474]
• Heard of it, never did it (1)
• Have done it, could do it with supervision (2)
• Could do it without supervision (3)
• Know it well, could teach someone else to do it (4)
Embedded among the questions are several ringers. For example, in the hardware section is a question about RS-232 connectors followed by one about “MX connectors.”5
These bogus questions let you measure the BS factor in an applicant’s answers. A 3 on the MX connectors would be suspect. After the not-a-test, you might ask innocently, “So, what do you use MX connectors for?”
The second evaluation is designed for use during a telephone interview. Questions are set up to elicit quick answers from applicants who know their stuff. We score +1 for a right answer, 0 for an “I don’t know,” and -1 for obvious BS or typing man xxx in the background.
These two schemes have been quite good metrics for us. The percentage of bogus questions we use is determined by our state hiring folks; one or two questions aren’t enough. Keep in mind that these assessments do not address some of the most important issues regarding a prospective sysadmin:
• Will they get along with other members of the team?
• How is their user interface?
• Will they take direction?
• Are they on a growth curve with a positive slope?
A personal interview might answer some of these questions. A telephone conversation with references usually tells you more. Listen very carefully; many people do not like to say anything bad about a former employee or coworker, so they find clever ways to tell you (if you are listening carefully) that a potential employee has problems. Be very suspicious if the applicant does not include recent employers as references.
If you make a hiring mistake, fire early. You may miss a few late bloomers, but keeping people who are not pulling their own weight will alienate your other staff members as they take up the slack and clean up after the losers. In many organizations it is very hard to fire someone, especially after the initial evaluation period is over. Make sure that initial evaluations are taken seriously. Later, you may have to collect data showing incompetence, give formal warnings, set performance goals, and so on.
The evaluation assessments we use are on-line at www.admin.com. Can you find all the bogus questions?
Attitude adjustment
System administrators often forget that they are service providers and that users are their customers. Many sysadmins secretly hold the opinion that the systems are theirs to play with and that users are a regrettable nuisance.
Sysadmins today are respected, treated as skilled professionals, and paid well. In the past they have been looked upon as electronic janitors several castes below developers and engineers. But their leverage (fix the compiler for one engineer and it’s fixed for many more) has changed their status in most organizations. They still secretly have their clueless user awards and other types of harmless fun, but they are much more respected than they were 10 years ago. Managers would do well to ask the sysadmin staff their opinion of intended promotees; a user’s interaction with the sysadmin staff is often very revealing of that user’s creativity, independence, and problem-solving abilities.
Some of the qualities of a good system administrator are contradictory. A sysadmin must be brash enough to try innovative solutions when stuck on a problem but must also be careful enough not to try anything truly destructive. Interpersonal skills and problem-solving skills are both important, yet they seem to lie on orthogonal axes among many of the sysadmins we have known. One of our reviewers suggested that a “personable sysadmin” was an oxymoron.
Microsoft’s “adminless” systems will never replace sysadmins—someone still has to hit Operator wars
New sysadmins often become the victims of what we call “operator wars,” in which more experienced users alias ls to logout in the novices’ environments, send them mail bombs, and generally