Re: [OPINION] Best place in the US for NetAdmins
--- Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote: On Fri, 25 Jul 2014 17:52:05 -0400, Miles Fidelman said:
Still DC is a nice place to live.
Depends on your definition of "nice". I'm perfectly OK with the fact that when I look out the window here in my office, the skyline is mostly National Forest. Not many places in DC have that going for them.... ------------------------------------------------- Just for fun... Nice is indeed subjective. We have crap for restaurants for the most part, the only "mall" here is tiny, traffic is terrible and everything is expensive, so we go do free stuff like: hiking http://meteora.ucsd.edu/~iacob/photos/Kauai/napali05.jpg http://www.world-of-waterfalls.com/images/Hanakoa_060L.jpg and surfing http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/db/ca/ff/dbcaff7ecc0504a9278e2b804cd8... scott One day, hopefully, telecommuting really takes off, I can actually sound intelligent in an interview (I do worse than geek-attempting-to-ask-a-girl-out-for-a-date) and I get to do the job I want from here instead of struggling through what I do for work. You gain some; you lose some.
On Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 05:35:45PM -0700, Scott Weeks wrote:
One day, hopefully, telecommuting really takes off [...]
It often strikes me as incredibly ironic that companies which *would not exist* were it not for the Internet are among the most resistant to the simple, obvious concept that telecommuting allows them to hire the best and brightest regardless of geography. Telecommuting should not be a rare exception: it should be the default. And "corporate headquarters" should be as small and inexpensive as possible, staffed (in person) only by a handful of people -- if even that. Asking net admins to do stupid, wasteful, expensive things like "commute 3 hours a day" and "live in areas with ridiculously inflated housing prices" is a good way to filter *out* the employees one would most like to have. ---rsk
Rich, In principal I agree, and I've said this many times, for years I've telecommuted myself, mostly effectively. I'd work much longer hours, but not always worked as efficiently during all of those hours. When I started my own company, with $$ be in short supply like all start ups I I planned to have as many folks telecommute as possible. In some cases it worked out, in others it was a terrible failure. Maybe it was my hiring choices, maybe it was being a bad "manager" but without people in the office it was harder to tell. Also with "most" people under one roof now, I also see the on going information sharing that isn't as possible with a mostly remote office. -jim On Sat, Jul 26, 2014 at 8:04 AM, Rich Kulawiec <rsk@gsp.org> wrote:
On Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 05:35:45PM -0700, Scott Weeks wrote:
One day, hopefully, telecommuting really takes off [...]
It often strikes me as incredibly ironic that companies which *would not exist* were it not for the Internet are among the most resistant to the simple, obvious concept that telecommuting allows them to hire the best and brightest regardless of geography.
Telecommuting should not be a rare exception: it should be the default. And "corporate headquarters" should be as small and inexpensive as possible, staffed (in person) only by a handful of people -- if even that. Asking net admins to do stupid, wasteful, expensive things like "commute 3 hours a day" and "live in areas with ridiculously inflated housing prices" is a good way to filter *out* the employees one would most like to have.
---rsk
On 07/26/2014 04:29 AM, jim deleskie wrote:
Rich,
In principal I agree, and I've said this many times, for years I've telecommuted myself, mostly effectively. I'd work much longer hours, but not always worked as efficiently during all of those hours. When I started my own company, with $$ be in short supply like all start ups I I planned to have as many folks telecommute as possible. In some cases it worked out, in others it was a terrible failure. Maybe it was my hiring choices, maybe it was being a bad "manager" but without people in the office it was harder to tell. Also with "most" people under one roof now, I also see the on going information sharing that isn't as possible with a mostly remote office.
Having done about every conceivable combination, I think the sweet spot is, unsurprisingly, somewhere in between. Telecommuting is great if you need a lot of undisturbed time, but it's horrible if you need interaction with coworkers. So for me, at least (primarily a dev type) having an intersection in the middle of the day a couple days a week at least is the best balance. That said, I think that part of this might be solved with technology somehow. A big problem, IMO, is that we use tech much too formally in that meetings get scheduled instead of just interrupting somebody at their desk which often blows things way out of proportion to their actual import, and worse delays resolving issues. Maybe the webrtc stuff will help this by making ad hoc communication trivial and pervasive and wrest it from the hands of these bloated, overwrought conferencing-as-business-model abominations we have to deal with. Mike
On Sat, Jul 26, 2014 at 7:29 AM, jim deleskie <deleskie@gmail.com> wrote:
In principal I agree, and I've said this many times, for years I've telecommuted myself, mostly effectively. I'd work much longer hours, but not always worked as efficiently during all of those hours. [snip]
It's worth noting that working at max efficiency is often not even the best thing for a company. This has been known for years [1], but most companies don't put it into practice. [1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Principles-Product-Development-Flow/dp/1935401009
On Sat, Jul 26, 2014 at 7:04 AM, Rich Kulawiec <rsk@gsp.org> wrote:
On Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 05:35:45PM -0700, Scott Weeks wrote:
One day, hopefully, telecommuting really takes off [...]
It often strikes me as incredibly ironic that companies which *would not exist* were it not for the Internet are among the most resistant to the simple, obvious concept that telecommuting allows them to hire the best and brightest regardless of geography.
Hi Rich, It's hard to manage telecommuters. Any manager can see whether or not you're at your desk, but gauging your work output and assessing whether it's happening at an appropriate rate is actually pretty challenging. This is especially true of systems administration where the ideal output of your efforts is that nothing is observed to have happened -- you prevented all problems from escalating to where they became visible. So not only does your manager have to be really good at management, he has to understand your work well enough to assess the quality and quantity of your results too. In other words, you may be asking more of your manager than you're willing to ask of yourself. Generally speaking, you're more valuable to a company if that equation is the other way around. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us Owner, Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/> Can I solve your unusual networking challenges?
On 07/26/2014 07:57 AM, William Herrin wrote:
On Sat, Jul 26, 2014 at 7:04 AM, Rich Kulawiec <rsk@gsp.org> wrote:
One day, hopefully, telecommuting really takes off [...] It often strikes me as incredibly ironic that companies which *would not exist* were it not for the Internet are among the most resistant to the simple, obvious concept that telecommuting allows them to hire
On Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 05:35:45PM -0700, Scott Weeks wrote: the best and brightest regardless of geography. Hi Rich,
It's hard to manage
There, I fixed it for you. Mike
telecommuters. Any manager can see whether or not you're at your desk, but gauging your work output and assessing whether it's happening at an appropriate rate is actually pretty challenging.
This is especially true of systems administration where the ideal output of your efforts is that nothing is observed to have happened -- you prevented all problems from escalating to where they became visible. So not only does your manager have to be really good at management, he has to understand your work well enough to assess the quality and quantity of your results too.
In other words, you may be asking more of your manager than you're willing to ask of yourself. Generally speaking, you're more valuable to a company if that equation is the other way around.
Regards, Bill Herrin
On Sat, Jul 26, 2014 at 7:04 AM, Rich Kulawiec <rsk@gsp.org> wrote:
Telecommuting should not be a rare exception: it should be the default. And "corporate headquarters" should be as small and inexpensive as possible, staffed (in person) only by a handful of people -- if even that.
Automattic (WordPress) works like that. There's a book about it. http://www.amazon.com/The-Year-Without-Pants-WordPress-com/dp/1118660633 j -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org -------------------------------------------------------------- -
Joly MacFie wrote:
On Sat, Jul 26, 2014 at 7:04 AM, Rich Kulawiec <rsk@gsp.org> wrote:
Telecommuting should not be a rare exception: it should be the default. And "corporate headquarters" should be as small and inexpensive as possible, staffed (in person) only by a handful of people -- if even that.
Automattic (WordPress) works like that.
There's a book about it. http://www.amazon.com/The-Year-Without-Pants-WordPress-com/dp/1118660633
Funny thing. A place I'm working now (not as a sysadmin, though) builds intelligent transportation systems for buses (dispatch systems, passenger information, and the like) - half of us are spread all over the place. A lot of us live pretty far from the home office, and spend most of our time working from home; then there are all the folks on the road doing sales; and the deployment teams working on-site at customer locations. About the only folks who are actually in the office a lot are the design engineers and the folks who build hardware. Works pretty well - though proposals get kind of interesting (which is what I mostly do these days). The problem isn't so much remoteness (email, audio bridges, and webex work well enough) - it's finding blocks of time for meetings - everyone is juggling too many things - kind of organizational ADHD. Personally, I think there's a lot to be said for actually having everybody in the same physical place - makes those impromptu hallway conversations a lot easier. Cheers, Miles -- In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
On 26 July 2014 17:10, Joly MacFie <joly@punkcast.com> wrote:
On Sat, Jul 26, 2014 at 7:04 AM, Rich Kulawiec <rsk@gsp.org> wrote:
Telecommuting should not be a rare exception: it should be the default. And "corporate headquarters" should be as small and inexpensive as possible, staffed (in person) only by a handful of people -- if even that.
Automattic (WordPress) works like that.
There's a book about it. http://www.amazon.com/The-Year-Without-Pants-WordPress-com/dp/1118660633
Yes, and the book title is not at all misleading! However there's a few key differences between Automattic and your regular company. First is that we're flat, so there's no employees to manage (ie: you manage your own workload). Second is that we dont do meetings. Period. Overall, I think remote working can be successful, however you need a few things in place: 1. More efficient information sharing system than meetings (*cough* blogs). 2. Flat to almost flat structure. 3. Senior hires who can manage their own workloads and not be dependant on a "big boss" to dole out work. There's still some issues that need to be worked out (Timezones, the bane of my existence!), however the benefit of being location agnostic HUGELY outweighs petty fights over the office thermostat, office politics and being forced to recruit from a localised talent pool. The downside is that being located in a different region than you're buying your equipment means that you get stiffed on vendor lunches :) /Ruairi
j -- --------------------------------------------------------------- Joly MacFie 218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org -------------------------------------------------------------- -
On Sat, Jul 26, 2014 at 7:04 AM, Rich Kulawiec <rsk@gsp.org> wrote:
On Fri, Jul 25, 2014 at 05:35:45PM -0700, Scott Weeks wrote:
One day, hopefully, telecommuting really takes off [...]
It often strikes me as incredibly ironic that companies which *would not exist* were it not for the Internet are among the most resistant to the simple, obvious concept that telecommuting allows them to hire the best and brightest regardless of geography.
Telecommuting should not be a rare exception: it should be the default. And "corporate headquarters" should be as small and inexpensive as possible, staffed (in person) only by a handful of people -- if even that. Asking net admins to do stupid, wasteful, expensive things like "commute 3 hours a day" and "live in areas with ridiculously inflated housing prices" is a good way to filter *out* the employees one would most like to have.
Something like 40% of IBM'ers telecommute, saving IBM $2.9B (if you believe some PR). And IBM is about as large and bloated, report heavy, mgmt heavy, conference call heavy, that a company can get. :-) -Jim P.
participants (10)
-
Darius Jahandarie -
jim deleskie -
Jim Popovitch -
Joly MacFie -
Michael Thomas -
Miles Fidelman -
Rich Kulawiec -
Ruairi Carroll -
Scott Weeks -
William Herrin