Transcript Manager’s Firing Line Panel

Manager’s Firing Line
Panel
UUASC Panel Discussion
December 2006
Lori Barfield, Jack Cate, Dave Close, and Neil Waybright
Questions From the Audience
► How
do you view employees who work 10-12 hours day vs. ones
who work the standard 8 hour day?
► Do you expect employees to put in the extra hours because of the
nature of the industry?
► What value do you place on technical certifications?
► How do you look at those with degrees versus those with trade
school backgrounds or no education at all, in terms of hiring, salary,
and promotions?
► What is the career process to enter into an entry level UNIX position
today?
► What are the pitfalls of managing friends?
► About the learning curve of management: Have you ever had a
situation where management responsibility overwhelmed you? How
did you react? What steps did you take to recover?
► What's the best way to motivate shy, non-motivated, low-level
sysadmins?
How do you view employees who
work 10-12 hours day vs. ones who
work the standard 8 hour day?
► Neil
– long days are sometimes required, but you
have to watch out. If the need is continuous and
unrewarded, this is a sign of an exploitive
employer and you need to be looking at whether
you are compensated enough. There are also CA
labor law issues.
► Lori – startups may require this just to keep alive
so expect it for some roles. It is rarer at larger
firms
Long days (continued)
► Jack
► Dave
Do you expect employees to put in
the extra hours because of the
nature of the industry?
►
►
►
Neil – no. They are sometimes needed for emergencies, but if they
are routine it may be a sign of an incompetent or exploitive
organization. Either one is a bad sign.
Lori – yes. We even make it clear to interviewees that a role at our
startup involves a professional commitment to a given responsibility,
not to a particular work schedule. Engineers who are looking for a
predictable work environment won’t be happy in a startup situation.
But smaller companies like mine tend to be agile and can reward
people generously for going above and beyond when it’s needed by
the team. At a well-established company the rewards are often
anemic, slow in coming, and only loosely tied to performance.
Jack
Even more extended hours
► Dave
► Lori-
Good team leads monitor their hardworking reports for burnout, and manage
their project loads to accommodate ebb and
flow in productivity.
What value do you place on
technical certifications?
► Neil
– very little. Experience of almost any kind is
for more important to most of us. Certifications
might be a tie-breaker if everything else is even,
but the CNE and MCSE “factories” soured most of
us to any value certification might hold.
► Lori- I ask an interviewee what the certification
means to him and any value I will ascribe comes
out that way. A candidate has many ways to
demonstrate personal initiative with technical
learning and the ability to persevere once he’s set
a goal for himself.
► Jack
Technical Certifications (continued)
► Dave
How do you look at those with
degrees versus those with trade
school backgrounds or no education
at all, in terms of hiring, salary, and
promotions?
► Neil
– in my current role, relevant technical
degrees play an important part. They are
not viewed the same way as a MCSE cert.
We are trying to avoid the cargo-cult
sysadmin syndrome where people know of
exactly one way to do something, and
►
►
►
►
nothing of why it works that way. College is not a magic bullet though
that lets stupid people through, and keeps great people out at most
places. It is usually far less important than experience and past
performance as one grows more senior.
Lori- I respect a tough degree from a tough school. But my
organization needs more than people who have resumes that look like
they should be able to do the job, so regardless of education, the
highest offers go to those who have done it before and are bringing in
solutions. The highest raises and new opportunities also go to those
who contribute the best, without preference to those who attended
college long before they joined us. Once you’re here, though, your
parents are going to love it…because we’re going to encourage you to
keep pursuing your education.
Jack
Dave
► Lori-
I do find degrees from places like the
University of Phoenix a turnoff. It’s not
because I don’t like the schools, I bet they
actually have very good instructors who are
currently out in their industries making
contributions. But those institutions seem
to appeal to students who want to punch a
career ticket with as little effort as possible.
What is the career process to enter
into an entry level UNIX position
today?
► Neil
– three paths (for Sysadmins) are the
ones I usually see:
 Get recruited out of college (my current
employer does this a lot)
 Move up from a less technical role (desktop
support, etc.) into server ops
 Learn on your own, volunteer to get noticed,
start consulting, then move into industry
Breaking In (continued)
► Lori-
if you need to establish yourself there
are plenty of opportunities to contribute to
respected open source projects
► Dave
► Jack
What are the pitfalls of managing
friends?
► Neil
– The appearance of favoritism is hard to
shake. I don’t mix work and socializing. I spend
time with subordinates in recognizable “socializing”
behavior only outside of work. I am friendly, but
no more to any one than the others.
► Lori- I love the people I work with but I can’t
forget that I’m paid to make sure work gets done
and careers are managed well. Having to wear a
leadership “hat” around your friends isn’t a
pitfall….but it should come naturally to you or you
should consider staying in a technical role.
► Jack
Socializing with Subordinates
(continued)
► Dave
About the learning curve of
management: Have you ever had a
situation where management
responsibility overwhelmed
you? How did you react? What
steps did you take to recover?
► Neil
– of course I have felt overwhelmed. I
have gone to my managers, peers, and
others outside the organization looking for
ideas.
Ever Overwhelmed? (continued)
(Neil continued) I have also taken management training at
work and pursued a MBA in my own time to get better at
it.
► Lori- When you are in a managerial situation bigger than
one person can handle, you need to develop an SIC: a
Second-In-Command. Teams with a strong SIC are usually
the most harmonious and the shared leadership efforts
scale up well as a team grows. To use a family analogy,
the team leader is like a parent; the SIC is like the oldest
brother and is the next in succession.
► Jack
► Dave
►
What's the best way to motivate
shy, non-motivated, low-level
sysadmins?
► This
is a question we didn’t get to address
during the talk. The responses now are
added after-the-fact
► Neil – I am not sure what kind of folks this
really refers to, but motivation is complex. I
am not a trained mental health professional
and won’t play amateur psychologist. If the
person’s work is poor I would try and provide
Motivation (continued)
► (Neil
continued) them usable behavioral
feedback, letting them know what I see them
doing that is not up to expectations and see
if they need help to get back on track. By
my natural I like to complement people on
notable good work in their 1:1 meetings
every other week to help them remember
that their good work is noticed and valued.
Motivation comes from inside, but we can
help someone find it within themselves.
► Lori-
sysadmin work is not for everyone. You can
force an engineer to do user support and handle
unplanned outages, but that doesn’t mean he is fit
for it. If you’ve got an SA who can’t handle
interruptions, pressure, or the unknown, try
pushing him into back-end tasks like scripting and
documentation. Find projects that will give him
the chance to contribute by supporting the front
line team members.
► Dave
► Jack