jobs in Linux / IT

[Christopher Browne]

On 12/20/05, Clive DaSilva <cdasilva-q6EoVN9bke6w5LPnMra/2Q at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> These days it seems as if
> the business environment in most if not all areas are geared towards the
> "quick fix" solutions, hiring practices being high on that list,
> governed by lack of understanding of what skills are really required to
> do the job,
> and more of "will the candidate fit in" with the current tribe.

There can be occasions when things get particularly, erm, "tribal,"
where it is actually pretty important whether or not the candidate
will "fit."

I have watched candidates *not* fit, and *not* work, even though there
was reasonably considered care in their selection.

In the cases I particularly have in mind (and some might feel
telepathic about this ;-)), inability to fit into the "current tribe"
was in truth a severe loss because that specifically hindered
learning.  They weren't already experts; they needed to learn from the
people around them.  Failure to learn prevented them from becoming
competent.

This can be true in any kind of environment where it is unlikely that
people will come in as "experts."

In a "high availability" context, there is another aspect to this,
namely that if HA is needful, you can NOT have a multiplicity of kinds
of "operational doctrines" in play.

Right or wrong, an organization needs a well-defined set of
"operational doctrines" otherwise anyone can do anything and you no
longer have systems capable of being kept running at a high pace 24
hours a day, 365 days a year.  Someone who doesn't "fit with the
tribe" is, ipso facto, a liability to the goal of "24x365", whether
they're nice, smart, or have good ideas.  If they're not "with the
tribe," then they are injuring the capability of running those systems
24x365.

That's not the entirety of all industry, but I'd hazard the guess that
this is likely true for all of the cases where you heard people
saying, last Tuesday, that they were having trouble finding the kind
of people they need.

The guys running a financial trading floor don't need cowboys coming
in with the attitude of "Oh, let's replace that with some Fedora Core
N machines."  They're not interested in how much faster KDE may run on
Slackware, and bringing up Gentoo as anything other than a joke likely
won't fit in there.
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