# Tips on finding Senior IT/System Admin/Release Engineer **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [September 28, 2006, 5:35am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/tips-on-finding-senior-it-system-admin-release-engineer/70316 "2006-09-28T05:35:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![varac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/c2a13f/32.png) [@varac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/varac)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 5:35am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/tips-on-finding-senior-it-system-admin-release-engineer/70316/1 "2006-09-28T05:35:04Z")
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](http://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](http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/sof/213228022.html) Thanks for any suggestions that you have for me. Feel free to email me at removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid as well. ---
**Author:** ![varac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/c2a13f/32.png) [@varac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/varac)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 7:43am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/tips-on-finding-senior-it-system-admin-release-engineer/70316/2 "2006-09-28T07:43:08Z")
On Sep 27, 2006, at 8:35 PM, Ray C. 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 M. ---
**Author:** ![varac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/c2a13f/32.png) [@varac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/varac)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 8:57am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/tips-on-finding-senior-it-system-admin-release-engineer/70316/3 "2006-09-28T08:57:58Z")
Tom M. 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 ---
**Author:** ![varac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/c2a13f/32.png) [@varac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/varac)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 1:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/tips-on-finding-senior-it-system-admin-release-engineer/70316/4 "2006-09-28T13:19:40Z")
On Thu, Sep 28, 2006 at 08:57:58AM +0200, Joe R. MUDCRAP-CE wrote: } Tom M. 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 M. 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 ---
**Author:** ![varac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/c2a13f/32.png) [@varac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/varac)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 5:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/tips-on-finding-senior-it-system-admin-release-engineer/70316/5 "2006-09-28T17:34:28Z")
On Thu, Sep 28, 2006, Ray C. 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 ---
**Author:** ![varac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/c2a13f/32.png) [@varac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/varac)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 11:07pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/tips-on-finding-senior-it-system-admin-release-engineer/70316/6 "2006-09-28T23:07:58Z")
On Sep 28, 2006, at 4:14 AM, Gregory S. wrote: > } Show them the door immediately? Isn’t that really drastic? Nobody > > 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 M. ---
**Author:** ![varac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/c2a13f/32.png) [@varac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/varac)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2006, 7:48am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/tips-on-finding-senior-it-system-admin-release-engineer/70316/7 "2006-09-29T07:48:36Z")
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 ---
**Author:** ![varac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/c2a13f/32.png) [@varac](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/varac)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2006, 11:21am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/tips-on-finding-senior-it-system-admin-release-engineer/70316/8 "2006-09-28T11:21:27Z")
On Thu, 28 Sep 2006 05:35:04 +0200 Ray C. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) 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. 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 > **[Zed A. shaw](https://zedshaw.com/)** > > Personal essays and writings by Zed A. Shaw. [http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/](http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/) [http://www.lingr.com/room/3yXhqKbfPy8](http://www.lingr.com/room/3yXhqKbfPy8) – Come get help.