[Gllug] hourly/daily rate for linux systems admins?

[tid]

On 23 November 2010 13:48, Karanbir Singh <mail-lists at karan.org> wrote:
> As another example, when asked to find per-process blockdev i/o rate,
> only 1 out of 8 people actually looked in /proc/<id>/; a couple
> dismissed it as only available in >= 2.6.2X; the rest just went faffing
> about with iostat / vmstat / <randomtool>.

Personally, I find that interview quiz questions (such as the one
above) often don't highlight people's
individual skillsets or their actual working methodologies. It may be
that the person who answered
the questions brilliantly would not be happy to spend their life
working on networking. I have one
co-worker who purely does DNS, has done it for ~5 years and feels that
he has another couple of years
of doing it. He knows bugger-all about blockdev so would fail the
above test but I'd give him a
job anywhere. In the same vein, some 'generalist' sysadmins are
fantastic as rapid-response staff
but flounder when looking at source code.

For me, after 20-odd years of recruiting sysadmins, the best method is

 - Phone call to the prospective candidate with a few general Linux questions
 - If successful, get them in for a dedicated question on paper & PC session
 - If successful, get them to work alongside existing staff for a day
or evening if possible
 - If successful, offer them the job with a stringent 6-month probabation.

As mentioned, it works for me and yes, some duffers have slipped
through the net over the years,
but mostly it yields good staff.

Tid
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