Rails - Sep 2006 - Tips on finding Senior IT/System Admin/Release Engineer

I am a recent college grad and a founder in a RoR startup.  Since this 
is my first business, I have no previous experience hiring people 
outside of my work here at spokeo.com.

I have found hiring RoR developers to be quite an easy task.  As I was a 
CS/EE major in college, I just hired all my friends =)

Yet, for our team, finding a talented system administrator is impossibly 
hard.  The production environment for RoR is evolving every day, 
requiring the rare sys admin who has development skills.  I haven''t 
interviewed any sys admins yet who have the ability to understand such 
issues as the Mongrel threading problem.

Can the list offer any advice on how to find a good sys admin.  I think 
we need either a sys admin with development skills or a sys admin with 
prior experience in RoR deployment.  I''m not sure if the latter even 
exists.  They are probably kept in a vault by their companies =)

In case anyone is interested, our exact posting is at 
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/sof/213228022.html

Thanks for any suggestions that you have for me.  Feel free to email me 
at ray-c7uk/VlfCyDQT0dZR+AlfA@public.gmane.org as well.

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

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On Sep 27, 2006, at 8:35 PM, Ray Chen wrote:
> Yet, for our team, finding a talented system administrator is  
> impossibly
> hard.  The production environment for RoR is evolving every day,
> requiring the rare sys admin who has development skills.  I
haven''t
> interviewed any sys admins yet who have the ability to understand such
> issues as the Mongrel threading problem.
The only absolutely requirements I''ve found for system administrators  
is that, yes, they must be good developers (otherwise they''re  
operators, not administrators), and this will sound really weird, but  
they *must* be lazy.

I don''t mean that you want to hire a person who will sit around and  
do anything. But *do* mean that if you see a "system administrator"  
do the same thing twice in a row, show that person the door immediately.

You want to hire the person who realizes, in advance, that it''ll need  
to be done twice, and automates it.

At first, it will seem inefficient...but it won''t seem that way for  
long. :-)

-- 
-- Tom Mornini


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Tom Mornini wrote:
> The only absolutely requirements I''ve found for system
administrators
> is that, yes, they must be good developers (otherwise they''re
> operators, not administrators), and this will sound really weird, but
> they *must* be lazy.
> 
> I don''t mean that you want to hire a person who will sit around
and
> do anything. But *do* mean that if you see a "system
administrator"
> do the same thing twice in a row, show that person the door immediately.
> 
> You want to hire the person who realizes, in advance, that it''ll
need
> to be done twice, and automates it.
> 
> At first, it will seem inefficient...but it won''t seem that way
for
> long. :-)
Show them the door immediately? Isn''t that really drastic? Nobody knows
everything and when time was/is of the essence I did repetitive tasks 
rather than taking hours to days to research and educate myself about 
some tool/program that would do it for me. If you have a sysadmin who 
may need some further education on becoming more efficient or learning a 
new program, seems that''d be more worthwhile.

But I agree with what you say -- anybody that finds themself doing the 
same thing again and again needs to find a way to automate it. That''s 
the difference between craftsmen and laborers.

Joe

-- 
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: rubyonrails-talk-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFFw@public.gmane.org
[mailto:rubyonrails-
> talk-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFFw@public.gmane.org] On Behalf Of Joe Ruby
MUDCRAP-CE
> 
> 
> But I agree with what you say -- anybody that finds themself doing the
> same thing again and again needs to find a way to automate it.
That''s
> the difference between craftsmen and laborers.
> 
And find someone that knows Perl, not for Perl itself but for CPAN.

I''ve often chosen Perl over Ruby for some task, only because I found a
module (or several modules) in CPAN that just needed some glueing to do
exactly what I wanted.

Piet.


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On Thu, 28 Sep 2006 05:35:04 +0200
Ray Chen <rails-mailing-list-ARtvInVfO7ksV2N9l4h3zg@public.gmane.org>
wrote:

<snip> 
> Yet, for our team, finding a talented system administrator is impossibly 
> hard.  The production environment for RoR is evolving every day, 
> requiring the rare sys admin who has development skills.  I
haven''t
> interviewed any sys admins yet who have the ability to understand such 
> issues as the Mongrel threading problem.
Eh, what "threading issue" is that?  Maybe I shouldn''t be a
sysadmin. :-)
> Can the list offer any advice on how to find a good sys admin.  I think 
> we need either a sys admin with development skills or a sys admin with 
> prior experience in RoR deployment.  I''m not sure if the latter
even
> exists.  They are probably kept in a vault by their companies =)
Why don''t you advertise for a Configuration Manager and a junior system
administrator to assist them?  The CM''s job would be specifically to
"automate every that isn''t nailed down", the
junior''s job is to do what the CM says.

This person wouldn''t be a sysadmin or a developer, but instead someone
who''s had experience managing/automating the deployment, control,
versioning, and testing of applications.  They''d also be given the
power to reject releases if they don''t pass quality requirements. 
They''re the person who knows what svn revisions and changes are on each
machine and collect metrics on deployment efficiency, up time, automation
quality, etc.

People who are good as CMs are folks who have backgrounds in logistics or
operations research.  Coders and sysadmins are notoriously bad at these kinds of
problems.

That might be more what you need.

-- 
Zed A. Shaw, MUDCRAP-CE Master Black Belt Sifu
http://www.zedshaw.com/
http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/
http://www.lingr.com/room/3yXhqKbfPy8 -- Come get help.

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On Thu, Sep 28, 2006 at 08:57:58AM +0200, Joe Ruby MUDCRAP-CE wrote:
} Tom Mornini wrote:
} > The only absolutely requirements I''ve found for system
administrators
} > is that, yes, they must be good developers (otherwise they''re
} > operators, not administrators), and this will sound really weird, but
} > they *must* be lazy.
} > 
} > I don''t mean that you want to hire a person who will sit around
and
} > do anything. But *do* mean that if you see a "system
administrator"
} > do the same thing twice in a row, show that person the door immediately.
} > 
} > You want to hire the person who realizes, in advance, that it''ll
need
} > to be done twice, and automates it.
} > 
} > At first, it will seem inefficient...but it won''t seem that way
for
} > long. :-)
} 
} Show them the door immediately? Isn''t that really drastic? Nobody
knows
} everything and when time was/is of the essence I did repetitive tasks 
} rather than taking hours to days to research and educate myself about 
} some tool/program that would do it for me. If you have a sysadmin who 
} may need some further education on becoming more efficient or learning a 
} new program, seems that''d be more worthwhile.
} 
} But I agree with what you say -- anybody that finds themself doing the 
} same thing again and again needs to find a way to automate it. That''s
} the difference between craftsmen and laborers.

I think Tom Mornini expressed it a little bit unclearly. It isn''t that
the
sysadmin should never do the same thing twice because it is inefficient.
The buzzword is "repeatable." Everything the sysadmin does, from
setting up
a dev/test/prod box to creating a new developer account to configuring
firewall rules, should be a repeatable process. This is why Capistrano is
so valuable, for example; you put all the necessary actions in a recipe so
that the deployment process can be repeated as needed. A repeatable process
is a dependable process, and reduces the opportunity for human error.

} Joe
--Greg


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On Thu, Sep 28, 2006, Ray Chen wrote:
> Can the list offer any advice on how to find a good sys admin.  I think 
> we need either a sys admin with development skills or a sys admin with 
> prior experience in RoR deployment.  I''m not sure if the latter
even
> exists.  They are probably kept in a vault by their companies =)
Others have provided good advice about the technical skills a good
sysadmin should have.  They''re totally right (I''m a
sysadmin/developer,
and what they described is what works best for me...)

I don''t understand your business at all or the state you''re
in, but is
having a full-time, on-site sysadmin really necessary?  By restricting
yourself to local candidates you''ve just shut out the majority of
people
with the skillset you''re looking for.

Rails is still young.  Finding someone with Rails experience who prefers
system administration is a challenge no matter what.  It may be that
there simply are no people in your area who A) have the skills you
require and B) need a new job.

I''m not trying to tell you how to run your business of course, this is
just something to consider.  Are you sure you''re going to have enough
work to keep someone busy ~40 hours a week?  And are you sure they need
to be close enough to touch?

Good luck at any rate.  Wish I was looking :)

Ben

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On Sep 28, 2006, at 4:14 AM, Gregory Seidman wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 28, 2006 at 08:57:58AM +0200, Joe Ruby MUDCRAP-CE wrote:
> } Tom Mornini wrote:
>
> } > I don''t mean that you want to hire a person who will sit
around
> and
> } > do anything. But *do* mean that if you see a "system  
> administrator"
> } > do the same thing twice in a row, show that person the door  
> immediately.
> }
> } Show them the door immediately? Isn''t that really drastic?
Nobody
> knows
> } everything and when time was/is of the essence I did repetitive  
> tasks
> } rather than taking hours to days to research and educate myself  
> about
> } some tool/program that would do it for me. If you have a sysadmin  
> who
> } may need some further education on becoming more efficient or  
> learning a
> } new program, seems that''d be more worthwhile.
>
> I think Tom Mornini expressed it a little bit unclearly. It isn''t
> that the
> sysadmin should never do the same thing twice because it is  
> inefficient.
> The buzzword is "repeatable." Everything the sysadmin does, from
> setting up
> a dev/test/prod box to creating a new developer account to configuring
> firewall rules, should be a repeatable process. This is why  
> Capistrano is
> so valuable, for example; you put all the necessary actions in a  
> recipe so
> that the deployment process can be repeated as needed. A repeatable  
> process
> is a dependable process, and reduces the opportunity for human error.
That''s a good clarification of an advantage of what I''ve said.

But, it is a bit more than that as well. I''ve seem some *extremely*  
knowledgeable and sophisticated system administrators that revel in  
20 open SSH sessions, all su''d to root, typing commands faster than  
the wind. The problem isn''t even a question of "what if they make
a
mistake" and some of them are so good that the repeatability is  
nearly machine like (though never quite as good).

The problem is that once that process gets in place early, it just  
never goes away. Need another system administrator? Who''s doing the  
interviewing for sysadmin skills?  You''ll end up with an army of  
smart people typing root commands all day, and loving it.

But the business'' bottom line will *not* love it. :-(

-- 
-- Tom Mornini


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I should have provided some background about our company.
We have a 3 person technical team right now, 2 working in RoR and 1 
working on backend in pure Ruby.  All we have right now is basic server 
setup.  We would like to have some server + process monitoring, and 
performance benchmarking, to say the very least.

Ben, I do believe we have a need for a full-time system administrator. 
I imagine this person would spend 10/hrs a week on general maintainence 
of 20+ desktops/servers that we own.  Initially, he would spend some 
time on the monitoring and benchmarking apps.  Afterwards if the 
business goes well, I imagine scaling would take a considerable amount 
of time.  Other potential projects include website traffic analysis, 
database usage analysis, and deployment streamlining.  This seems like a 
full-time job to me, but I am also very new to this.  Feel free to 
disagree.

Zed, I am trying to go the cheap route and get everything rolled up into 
1 hire.  In the context of the CM and the junior admin, we already have 
a developer doubling as CM.  The mongrel threading issue is something I 
overheard the developers talking about.  I am not about to pick a fight 
with the mongrel author!

I am starting to see Rails as a great platform for development, but one 
that is hard to hire IT for.  I''ll settle for someone who is lazy, 
automates things, and doesn''t revel in 20 open SSH sessions.

And finally, yes, the bay area tech industry is picking up, so it''s
hard
to hire again.

Ray

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