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evol262
Nov 30, 2010
#!/usr/bin/perl

Kerpal posted:

Wait, isn't it illegal to turn down someone based on their personality type? I'm not a lawyer but I would think that doesn't comply with the equal opportunity federal laws. I'm assuming you're in the states. Funny because I have yet to work with any INTJs in IT. Most have been ENTJ, ENTP and other types. SA Forums are heavily INTJ. It's not surprising considering that NT types naturally have an affinity for technology. We're the tool makers :)

Myers-Briggs types don't have a lot of relation to anything. The strong interest inventory, asvab, and others don't test anything like it.

Personality types are not protected by eeo

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Hughmoris
Apr 21, 2007
Let's go to the abyss!

cryme posted:

Nailed it on the head (McKesson?). Limited functionality. Rules engine in our current system is way more powerful.

Shot you a PM.

Squatch Ambassador
Nov 12, 2008

What? Never seen a shaved Squatch before?

Kerpal posted:

Wait, isn't it illegal to turn down someone based on their personality type? I'm not a lawyer but I would think that doesn't comply with the equal opportunity federal laws. I'm assuming you're in the states. Funny because I have yet to work with any INTJs in IT. Most have been ENTJ, ENTP and other types. SA Forums are heavily INTJ. It's not surprising considering that NT types naturally have an affinity for technology. We're the tool makers :)

No, Canada. I don't know if there's any laws about it. I was almost certainly the least qualified applicant to make it to the final round of interviews, so I doubt personality type was the only reason. It's just the one they gave on the phone.

Sacred Cow
Aug 13, 2007

Japanese Dating Sim posted:

This is all my personal opinion, but -

In a normal offer-to-hire window (about a month), I'd say that no, doing something like this isn't really kosher and should only be done in extreme circumstances.

Given that it's been almost 3 months, I don't think it's at all outside of the realm of decency for you to try again to get some concrete feedback - you could include something like that you are "attempting to make some financial decisions that will be impacted by my employment status." If they don't respond to that, then I'd say it's pretty reasonable to accept another job. At the very least it's certainly not unethical.

That makes sense. I've tried contacting them several times throughout the process and the responses I've gotten has been "send me an email and I'll find out" and never heard back or "yeah this happens sometimes..." again with no response back after that. I know its still being processed because they call every once in a while for more information or some sort of documentation and then silence.



evol262 posted:


I'm going to take the opposite stance of the goony posters who believe you should treat all corporations as faceless monsters with whom an adversarial negotiation is necessary. Reach out to them and see where the process is. They probably told you it was a convoluted process anyway. See if they can give you a interim clearance. It's not unethical to take another offer, but it's bad form from you which will get your offer rescinded and possibly get you blackballed from that company/recruiter.

On the other hand, it's my general take that continuing to interview in this case is unethical. Three months is long. Much longer than any background check that I've ever had, including working for large financials in sensitive positions. But you accepted a conditional offer of employment. If they called you tomorrow and said "we continued interviewing candidates to see if we could find somebody better, and we're rescinding your offer" you'd be livid. The company you're going to isn't a person (except in the legal sense). But your prospective boss and the hiring manager are, and they're going to think you're a dick, with reason. If you'd started there two months ago, would you still be entertaining offers?

Talk to them and let them know that you're getting antsy and you'd like an update. Let them know that if it's going to take much longer, you may need to back out, because it's way longer than you thought it would be, or whatever. But be as transparent as you can. And don't go interviewing with other companies in the meantime.

I can appreciate this point of view. The annoying thing is I've held clearances with several government agencies (hell, one is still active) and NEVER had one take more then a month for at least an interim. I disagree with the interview itself being unethical. Even if I don't take the job and stick with offer I have now, going to interviews and feeling out the field is part of any career. Also, yes, if I had started 2 months ago and felt another company had a better offer I would entertain it. If I have a skill set that's high enough in demand there's no reason I shouldn't consider a job with a more competitive package.

KennyTheFish
Jan 13, 2004

evol262 posted:

Myers-Briggs types don't have a lot of relation to anything. The strong interest inventory, asvab, and others don't test anything like it.

Personality types are not protected by eeo

For Personality type to be protected, it would need more basis than astrology.

evol262
Nov 30, 2010
#!/usr/bin/perl

Sacred Cow posted:

I can appreciate this point of view. The annoying thing is I've held clearances with several government agencies (hell, one is still active) and NEVER had one take more then a month for at least an interim. I disagree with the interview itself being unethical. Even if I don't take the job and stick with offer I have now, going to interviews and feeling out the field is part of any career. Also, yes, if I had started 2 months ago and felt another company had a better offer I would entertain it.

It's like a relationship. It is a relationship with your employer. If you're not on the market, why are you interviewing? Would your girlfriend consider it unethical if you were on Tinder or some dating site?

Going to interviews and feeling out the field is part of any career. When you haven't just accepted an offer.

Sacred Cow posted:

If I have a skill set that's high enough in demand there's no reason I shouldn't consider a job with a more competitive package.
You've gotten the wrong lesson somewhere. A lot of us have skillsets that are in high enough demand that we get tempting requests for interviews multiple times a week. But at some point, you've gotta sit down and decide that you're gonna let that opportunity pass, because you've made a commitment somewhere, and you're a professional.

And it doesn't have to be forever, and you should read the requisitions anyway, because this could be Google or NSA or McDonald's or whatever you consider to be your dream position. But you're gonna get a lot of recruiters asking you about a lot of jobs, and all of them are gonna look appealing in some way. Do you think we're all spending our time interviewing at them because it's "part of our career?" Or because the grass looks greener?

You should have considered a job with a more competitive package, if that's what matters to you. When you were looking for a job. Not when you're waiting to start at one.

Nintendo Kid
Aug 4, 2011

by Smythe

KennyTheFish posted:

For Personality type to be protected, it would need more basis than astrology.

Yeah it's basically like protecting you on the basis of 2008 Myspace quiz results.

psydude
Apr 1, 2008

Heartache is powerful, but democracy is *subtle*.

Sickening posted:

What job are you applying to that requires a polygraph?

It's a common requirement in law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Che Delilas
Nov 23, 2009
FREE TIBET WEED

evol262 posted:

Going to interviews and feeling out the field is part of any career. When you haven't just accepted an offer.

:words:

Your points are fair, but I would like to know what you think about something: When does it become ethical, in your definition, to look for a different job? 3 months after you've worked at a place? 6? A full year? In a country where a company can fire you whenever they like for basically whatever they like, what kind of commitment do you feel the average person should make towards a company that makes no such commitment in return?

I firmly believe in operating in good faith; if the decision-makers at a company are being open and honest and dealing with me straight, then they deserve the same from me. But three months is a long-rear end time to be committed to a company that isn't paying you or giving you feedback on the process. If their process takes that goddamn long, then they should be going out of their way to communicate with pending hires regularly so they don't feel like they're being jerked around. I wouldn't call three months "just" accepted an offer, either. I would call it, "accepted an offer a long-rear end time ago but still not getting paid, need to eat, sorry."

Your relationship analogy is apt. But relationships are a two-way street, and it sounds to me like the company isn't putting in its share of the work to make it succeed.

quote:

Myers-Briggs

Gonna channel Daylen Drazzi (I think) again and reply with, "I won't be taking a personality test, call me when you're serious about hiring an experienced IT professional." In this case I also would have directly called the people I actually interviewed with and ratted out the HR person for holding up the deal everyone wanted for spurious reasons. Chances are better than zero that one of the decision-makers would have talked to that person and told them to stop with the nonsense.

Che Delilas fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Jan 24, 2015

Methanar
Sep 26, 2013

by the sex ghost
Why [polygraphs]? They're inadmissible evidence in court and at best a placebo for everyone involved.

mayodreams
Jul 4, 2003


Hello darkness,
my old friend
Call it goony or whatever, but if someone kept me on the hook for more than a month and blew off my polite inquires to updates to the process, i'd continue looking too. A tentative agreement is just that.

My last job transition had me walk away from a 2 month process because they wouldn't actually make me an offer and left me hanging over the Christmas holidays. From my experience, you don't want to work for a company that is going to gently caress with you before your first day on the job. And when you do have the experience and skill set that garners attention from recruiters, the way in which they conduct themselves and represent the company is more important than the job description to me.

For example, I had 2 phone interviews and an entire afternoon of interviews onsite before Christmas last year, and they promised a call by the end of the week. Guess what? Never got a call or email response. I really wasn't feeling the position because the recruiter neglected to tell me the title beforehand, but still, you need to follow through and be professional. IT is a small world, and I've twice had companies treat me like poo poo and I walked away and they came back to me 6-12 months later looking to fill a position. Of course this goes both ways, but I'll be damed to repeat the personal hell and period of unemployment that followed me being too eager to drop the mic and make an exit while ignoring glaring warning signs about the new company.

evol262
Nov 30, 2010
#!/usr/bin/perl

mayodreams posted:

Call it goony or whatever, but if someone kept me on the hook for more than a month and blew off my polite inquires to updates to the process, i'd continue looking too. A tentative agreement is just that.

From my experience, you don't want to work for a company that is going to gently caress with you before your first day on the job.

Not disagreeing with any of this, but the ethical problem here is the nondisclosure. Don't get run around, but tell them. Don't continue looking without ever bringing it up. It's too long, I'm going to look for other opportunities, etc.

Understand that, for them, an acceptance of a conditional offer of employment is not "tentative". They've stopped interviewing, budgeted the agreed upon salary, etc. It's only "on the hook" because he accepted an offer he knew would have to wait for clearance. Three months is absurd, but talk about it. Be direct about your intentions. :drat:

Che Delilas posted:

Your points are fair, but I would like to know what you think about something: When does it become ethical, in your definition, to look for a different job? 3 months after you've worked at a place? 6? A full year? In a country where a company can fire you whenever they like for basically whatever they like, what kind of commitment do you feel the average person should make towards a company that makes no such commitment in return?
There's clearly not a right answer to that question, but it's also not the argument I was making. Actively seeking an offer beneficial enough to renege on an agreement you've made with another party who has no inkling of this (and is presumably not seeking the same, since that's very rare) is the problem.

Exiting employment doesn't have a timeframe that suddenly makes it ok. I think we can all agree that it should be mutually beneficial. And that <6mo on a resume often is seen as a negative. Partly because it shows bad decision making by you, the candidate. If you're unhappy, go. You don't owe them anything. But it may look bad.

Employment is not actually a prisoner's dilemma, either


Che Delilas posted:

I firmly believe in operating in good faith; if the decision-makers at a company are being open and honest and dealing with me straight, then they deserve the same from me. But three months is a long-rear end time to be committed to a company that isn't paying you or giving you feedback on the process. If their process takes that goddamn long, then they should be going out of their way to communicate with pending hires regularly so they don't feel like they're being jerked around. I wouldn't call three months "just" accepted an offer, either. I would call it, "accepted an offer a long-rear end time ago but still not getting paid, need to eat, sorry."

Your relationship analogy is apt. But relationships are a two-way street, and it sounds to me like the company isn't putting in its share of the work to make it succeed.
It sounds like they are communicating. "We need more info". Beyond that, some places aren't supposed to say anything, even if they'd be contrite. Additionally, they probably did disclose that it may take time, and the candidate should be prepared for it. It's depressingly normal for government jobs.

That said, " I'm straight up with people who are straight up with me" is a lovely policy. You should do it no matter what.

Using the relationship analogy, break up. Or tell them "this isn't working for me" Don't be the guy who finds his next girlfriend before he's on the market. That's basically my whole take on this. If you wanna look at another job way closer to home, go for it, but don't string these people along in case it doesn't work out.

George H.W. Cunt
Oct 6, 2010





Sickening posted:

What job are you applying to that requires a polygraph?

County Sheriff's office. Everyone from a clerk to deputy has to take one. It's a dying practice for the police. The actual polygraph isn't the issue that fucks you, it's the packet where you confess your sins so they can question if you left off anything and they get their reading from that.

It sucks too because I've been a contractor with them for two years now and everyone in the department loves me and went to bat for me to try and hire me on full time anyway. I'll leave once I have a new position lined up and they'll unfortunately lose a dedicated and eager employee

Gucci Loafers
May 20, 2006

Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?


SaltLick posted:

County Sheriff's office. Everyone from a clerk to deputy has to take one. It's a dying practice for the police. The actual polygraph isn't the issue that fucks you, it's the packet where you confess your sins so they can question if you left off anything and they get their reading from that.

You should always list your past, since it could used as blackmail but if an organization is really going to rate you based on things that occurred decades ago I am not sure I'd want to work their in the first place.

George H.W. Cunt
Oct 6, 2010





Tab8715 posted:

You should always list your past, since it could used as blackmail but if an organization is really going to rate you based on things that occurred decades ago I am not sure I'd want to work their in the first place.

I'm technically only disqualified until July 2016 (5 years after my latest offense I listed. I have a clean record just I've done illegal things ) and gently caress waiting around for that. The position is the only reason I stuck around for the year when they first started talking about it in late 2013

Gucci Loafers
May 20, 2006

Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?


evol262 posted:

We don't get off on being specialists. But being a network engineer is about as specialized as being a Windows admin. Don't get siloed,

Isn't it better to be good at a few things than a novice at many?

mayodreams
Jul 4, 2003


Hello darkness,
my old friend

evol262 posted:

Not disagreeing with any of this, but the ethical problem here is the nondisclosure. Don't get run around, but tell them. Don't continue looking without ever bringing it up. It's too long, I'm going to look for other opportunities, etc.

Understand that, for them, an acceptance of a conditional offer of employment is not "tentative". They've stopped interviewing, budgeted the agreed upon salary, etc. It's only "on the hook" because he accepted an offer he knew would have to wait for clearance. Three months is absurd, but talk about it. Be direct about your intentions. :drat:

My point here is that if they aren't committed and excited to get me in the door, then why should I blindly wait for a quarter of a year, regardless of a warning that it might take a while? If they are that inept at on boarding new hires, loving RUN. That being said, I can be an insufferable rear end in a top hat, but there are limits to reason and professionalism. If someone can't be bothered to return my call or email within a reasonable time then I am no longer obligated to extend the same courtesy.

About a week after I walked away from the aforementioned position where they would not actually make me an offer, the Director for the org called and emailed me pleading that I reconsider on my first day at the new job. I politely told him that I had made my decision, and he asked for written feedback on the process. I gave him about a page overview about the process, he thanked me, and about 3 months later he left the university after what I'm told by others was a 'you need to find another job before we fire you' situation which is common in academia. I needed a new job because my unemployment was ending, I made that abundantly clear, and they ignored it and kept dragging out the process for over 2 months. The CIO was so mad it cost the guy his job, and I'm glad I didn't take a position where they clearly didn't have their priorities right.

mayodreams fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Jan 24, 2015

Che Delilas
Nov 23, 2009
FREE TIBET WEED

evol262 posted:

Not disagreeing with any of this, but the ethical problem here is the nondisclosure.

Okay, that's a fair line for me.

quote:

Understand that, for them, an acceptance of a conditional offer of employment is not "tentative".

Heh, no, but it is conditional on the background check, and wouldn't it suck if they found out that he was arrested for possession a decade ago or something and rescinded the offer. They're not locked in any more than he is.

I know we're talking ethics here, not law, but this is not an equal relationship and him jerking the rug out from under the company is going to cause fewer problems to the company than the other way around. It's pretty clear to me that you personally work for great people who don't jerk you around, judging by the way you routinely refer to things like, "a goony obsession with believing every corporation on earth is an evil monster" (I'm paraphrasing). But many, many companies are controlled by people who do operate that way, and the "goony belief" comes from people getting burned by them. Money is too important and you have to protect yourself.

Daylen Drazzi
Mar 10, 2007

Why do I root for Notre Dame? Because I like pain, and disappointment, and anguish. Notre Dame Football has destroyed more dreams than the Irish Potato Famine, and that is the kind of suffering I can get behind.
I prefer to operate in the belief that corporations, comprised of people from all walks of life, are essentially there just to demonstrate exactly how much other people can get away with by screwing over those lower on the totem pole. Lawful evil is what I believe that type of alignment in D&D is called. Invariably, when the company acts exactly as I expect there is no surprise. However, if (and it's a big if) the company behaves in a tolerant and benevolent manner I can then be pleasantly surprised.

Since I work for a government defense contractor I have rarely had the opportunity to be surprised. Take for example the New Year's feast that the three contracting companies decided to provide - it was a nice gesture, but then they immediately turned around and said second and third and weekend shifts can heat up the leftovers and clean up after first shift, despite the food being delivered 5 hours before second shift would even show up. The suggestion that they hold off on ordering 2/3rd of the meal and let us pick it up after each shift reported in was firmly shot down because it might confuse people. Consequently second shift only barely partook of the largesse, and third shift didn't touch the food at all, and weekend shift didn't even attempt to eat anything, and as such didn't even bother to clean up the food that had been left out for 2 days until we came in.

Unsurprisingly, weekend shift got our asses handed to us because we didn't bother to check that the food had been left out and the smells were rather vile in a darkened and closed room when 1st shift rolled in on Monday. The term "not team players" was thrown around quite a bit, and various disparaging remarks made against us. I believe it was also mentioned that there would be no further events like this in the future because "some people acted like children" and basically "spit on the generosity of the contracting companies."

Weekend and third shift have responded by bringing in our own hot plates, pans, and frozen ingredients. I've had chili, spaghetti with meat sauce and garlic bread, takeout from BW3's, BLT's, Biscuits and Gravy, Bacon, Egg and Cheese sandwiches, and takeout pizza from a small local joint that makes some of the best pizzas in Dayton. I must say, the lack of support from leadership has definitely provided a number of team-bonding opportunities over food for those not on the blessed 1st shift. It's going to suck having to move back to 1st shift on the weekend and 2 days during the week, because it's turned into a loving miserable place to be during the week.

Super Slash
Feb 20, 2006

You rang ?

Daylen Drazzi posted:

I prefer to operate in the belief that corporations, comprised of people from all walks of life, are essentially there just to demonstrate exactly how much other people can get away with by screwing over those lower on the totem pole.

Not even corporations, but companies in general.

Not IT but a friend I helped recruit into the business was worried about her job over christmas, over the holiday party she was assured she's safe and wouldn't let her go in their wildest dreams. January comes and she's made "redundant" the morning we all come back, and told to pack her poo poo and leave; Que everything going wrong afterwards because she organises a ton of stuff with no one to hold the bag.

Like mentioned before, treat jobs like a Mercenary; you do stuff for money, you don't owe poo poo to the business, and nice colleagues are a bonus.

Bhodi
Dec 9, 2007

Oh, it's just a cat.
Pillbug
If a company were to fly you out to interview, you wouldn't feel more obligated to take a position with that company than one you interviewed locally for, would you? This is the same situation. Offer letters are OFFERS and there is no binding contract, explicit or implied. You aren't reneging on anything. There is no reason to ever tell a company you may be looking at other companies, it can only hurt you. It IS absolutely polite to tell them once you've already found another job, but again, that's just being professional. The company may be out some time invested in you, but that's just part of doing business.

evol262 works for RedHat (a good company!) and I respect his opinion on many things but in this case I completely disagree. You have to look out for number 1 because you're the only one who is going to do so.

It's also INCREDIBLY common for people to find another job during the long-rear end wait for a clearance / investigation. Many people who eventually get clearances don't qualify for the interim, like ones who have foreign nationals in the family. I went through almost a year of investigation / onboarding process with a sensitive agency that didn't allow interims only to discover the woman handing my case went on maternity leave and didn't do the handoff properly and so I had pretty much just been in limbo the entire time.

Proteus Jones
Feb 28, 2013



Tab8715 posted:

Isn't it better to be good at a few things than a novice at many?

If you like money it is.

YOLOsubmarine
Oct 19, 2004

When asked which Pokemon he evolved into, Kamara pauses.

"Motherfucking, what's that big dragon shit? That orange motherfucker. Charizard."

It's best to be good at a few things AND a novice at many.

Proteus Jones
Feb 28, 2013



NippleFloss posted:

It's best to be good at a few things AND a novice at many.

Right, having generalist skills is a *good* thing. But don't make a career out of it. You'll hit a brick wall in terms of advancement and compensation.

evol262
Nov 30, 2010
#!/usr/bin/perl

mayodreams posted:

My point here is that if they aren't committed and excited to get me in the door, then why should I blindly wait for a quarter of a year, regardless of a warning that it might take a while? If they are that inept at on boarding new hires, loving RUN. That being said, I can be an insufferable rear end in a top hat, but there are limits to reason and professionalism. If someone can't be bothered to return my call or email within a reasonable time then I am no longer obligated to extend the same courtesy.
Run if you want to. But then run. Be honest about your intentions.

They are returning his calls and emails telling him they need more info, and the waiting period for new hires was a known fat.

mayodreams posted:

About a week after I walked away from the aforementioned position where they would not actually make me an offer, the Director for the org called and emailed me pleading that I reconsider on my first day at the new job. I politely told him that I had made my decision, and he asked for written feedback on the process. I gave him about a page overview about the process, he thanked me, and about 3 months later he left the university after what I'm told by others was a 'you need to find another job before we fire you' situation which is common in academia. I needed a new job because my unemployment was ending, I made that abundantly clear, and they ignored it and kept dragging out the process for over 2 months. The CIO was so mad it cost the guy his job, and I'm glad I didn't take a position where they clearly didn't have their priorities right.
And I'd agree with your actions there. But they made him an offer, and he accepted it. It's pretty cut and dry.

Che Delilas posted:

Heh, no, but it is conditional on the background check, and wouldn't it suck if they found out that he was arrested for possession a decade ago or something and rescinded the offer. They're not locked in any more than he is.
False equivalence for $100. If he was arrested for a possession a decade ago, he shouldn't have accepted a conditional offer of employment contingent on a background check. Both actors are acting in good faith.

"We'll make you an offer under the assumption that your background check will come back fine."
"My background check will come back fine, so I'll accept your offer, and you can move on with the hiring process and stop interviewing other candidates"

Che Delilas posted:

I know we're talking ethics here, not law, but this is not an equal relationship and him jerking the rug out from under the company is going to cause fewer problems to the company than the other way around. It's pretty clear to me that you personally work for great people who don't jerk you around, judging by the way you routinely refer to things like, "a goony obsession with believing every corporation on earth is an evil monster" (I'm paraphrasing). But many, many companies are controlled by people who do operate that way, and the "goony belief" comes from people getting burned by them. Money is too important and you have to protect yourself.
I work for great people who don't jerk me around because I sought that. And because I'm up-front about what I want and what I expect.

But I spent 4 years as a contract-to-hire sysadmin for financials (and anyone who's spent time working in consumer banking or credit for the last 8 years knows how likely a contract conversion is, and what the odds of that "to-hire" right being exercised by upper management). Guess how much jerking around there was there?

Between finance and Red Hat, I was at a major usenet/CDN provider for a year. The company was fine as a whole, but I was completely misled about the role I was going to be taking and what kind of agency I'd have to change things. "We know we have problems and we're happy to let you drive a revamp of our architecture" turned into "we don't have the time to fix this, so why don't you try to work around it"? The only reason I stayed was because I liked mentoring the team under me.

Before finance, I spent three years in an operations role at a weather company which was bought out twice in three years, where I ended up on-call 24/7/365.

It wasn't always happy Red Hat land.

Protect yourself if you want to, but this whole "companies are D&D lawful evil" is :spergin: philosophically bankrupt crap. "May as well gently caress them because they might gently caress me" shows that you made a poor choice in the interview process, and I'm speaking from my work history.

Bhodi posted:

If a company were to fly you out to interview, you wouldn't feel more obligated to take a position with that company than one you interviewed locally for, would you? This is the same situation. Offer letters are OFFERS and there is no binding contract, explicit or implied. You aren't reneging on anything. There is no reason to ever tell a company you may be looking at other companies, it can only hurt you. It IS absolutely polite to tell them once you've already found another job, but again, that's just being professional. The company may be out some time invested in you, but that's just part of doing business.
No, I wouldn't feel more obligated. But an offer is an offer, sure. You have the choice to accept it or reject it. Once you accept it, you are reneging. It's not a binding contract because companies have made a point of writing offer letters which are not binding contracts in order to protect themselves. Which says something about the way they may act, but backing out of an offer because they continued the interview process once they made you an offer and found a better candidate is practically unheard of.

Do you equate what's right with what's legal, or legally binding? Probably not. So is doing what's right doing what you're legally obligated to do? If the answer to that is no, then what's right? Is it what's convenient? Or what's best for you? Or do you hold a concept of "right" behavior somewhere that you're bending because somehow interacting with a company falls under a different ethical framework than the one which guides the rest of your life?

Don't do something distasteful just because it's a company and you're "protecting yourself". You can protect yourself and be honest.

You have no obligation to tell a company you're looking at other companies, legally. It's polite to tell them you've found another job, sure. And losing time invested in the interview process is one thing. But the interview process is over once there's an accepted offer.

You can back out of that. I've done it (between the usenet provider and the last contract). But I was interviewing multiple places, got a good looking offer, accepted it, got another one two days later from a place I'd already interviewed with. I called them up and let them know, and we re-started negotiations. That's normal business practice, and again, you don't owe them anything other than honesty.

Bhodi posted:

evol262 works for RedHat (a good company!) and I respect his opinion on many things but in this case I completely disagree. You have to look out for number 1 because you're the only one who is going to do so.
You shouldn't have to play realpolitik with your employer, prospective or otherwise.

Bhodi posted:

It's also INCREDIBLY common for people to find another job during the long-rear end wait for a clearance / investigation. Many people who eventually get clearances don't qualify for the interim, like ones who have foreign nationals in the family. I went through almost a year of investigation / onboarding process with a sensitive agency that didn't allow interims only to discover the woman handing my case went on maternity leave and didn't do the handoff properly and so I had pretty much just been in limbo the entire time.
It is incredibly common. And most of those agencies already know that, and tell you that you should expect for a long wait for a single scope during which time they can't promise you employment, so you should have another job. Either the one you're at or taking contracts. But that you should be ready to leave that job if/when they get you cleared. Honesty is also sort of a big deal in getting a clearance.

I'm not understanding what is so hard about telling the people that he's going to start looking again.

fromoutofnowhere
Mar 19, 2004

Enjoy it while you can.
So in an effort to get people to shut down their computers here at work, I told several people that if they do it, it will stop bad things from happening. I was hoping that they would spread the word since they tend to listen to their friends rather than IT. At first, nothing really happened, but then we started noticing that many systems were finally getting shut down, either daily, or after around 4-5 days of uptime. We were happy, it wasn't all of them, but a decent amount. Later today I walk into a room and over hear a user say to another user if he shut down his computer that IT couldn't track him and his "activities". "OH, I guess I should do that as well."

What ever.

psydude
Apr 1, 2008

Heartache is powerful, but democracy is *subtle*.

Tab8715 posted:

Isn't it better to be good at a few things than a novice at many?

Specialization is a bit different between systems admins and network engineers. An expert linux admin can move between organizations as a linux specialist without any issue, but in networking you're expected to have a broader knowledge in some sort of specialty like wireless or security. This oftentimes means touching a lot of different appliances and systems.

psydude fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Jan 24, 2015

Vulture Culture
Jul 14, 2003

I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

flosofl posted:

Right, having generalist skills is a *good* thing. But don't make a career out of it. You'll hit a brick wall in terms of advancement and compensation.
This is, ironically, a bit of an overgeneralization.

The larger the organization, the more specialized you're expected to be in a technical role. However, you still need competent people who understand how all the pieces fit together, and how to construct a business strategy from the strengths of those component parts. Generalists with the appropriate soft skills excel as project managers, cross-functional leaders, and many other roles within large organizations. Because of their understanding of the technologies involved, and the workflows and processes supporting them, they have better bullshit detectors, are better able to give accurate estimates, and are able to properly assess the capabilities of the teams they're working with. Because they understand the day-to-day roles of more of the people involved, they're more naturally empathetic to the day-to-day challenges facing the individual people and teams associated with a particular project. This builds rapport, which helps to break down political barriers and get things done.

From a purely technical standpoint, generalists make great architects and strategists, even informally -- as one key example, you won't find many good on-premises virtualization experts who aren't generalists in multiple operating systems, networking, storage, and navigating the political minefield that surfaces when people discover that, hey, servers are free now!

On the other end of the spectrum, very small companies (read: startups) rise and fall on the capabilities of very smart, motivated generalists, because there isn't the budget to hire a specialist in every conceivable thing they'll ever need to do in order to push out a profitable product. Smaller companies thrive on experimentation, and may rapidly change direction on key product or business strategies, so having people who understand the stakes at every level help to do this intelligently. As the company I work for grows, I've settled more comfortably into a pure operations role (1,000+ servers is too many to manage part-time), but in the past I've done work on core product (backend, frontend, design) and user research/analytics as well.

There are two situations where generalists can be severely hamstrung in terms of development: when they don't want to advance into leadership positions, or when they're stuck in a midsize organization where there's no room to either advance or specialize.

Maybe it's best to sort generalists into two buckets -- those who are motivated to learn many things to solve problems effectively for an organization, and those who want to use it as an excuse to sit at their desk and answer random tickets that are flung their way. In other words: the same as any other people in technology.

YOLOsubmarine
Oct 19, 2004

When asked which Pokemon he evolved into, Kamara pauses.

"Motherfucking, what's that big dragon shit? That orange motherfucker. Charizard."

The other benefit of maintaining a strong general base is that you can become an expert in something else much faster when technology changes and your specialty becomes functionally obsolete. Unless you want to be one those 70 year old geezers flying around the country working on defunct tape libraries or mainframes or keeping legacy netware environments running.

This is probably what's happening in the storage industry right now. Lotta storage and backup admins are gonna be out if a job if they don't lake an effort to keep current with trends in software defined storage and DR/BCP, which means you need to know at least a little about virtualization, networking, automation, and the best methodologies for protection and HA for the applications themselves.

Gucci Loafers
May 20, 2006

Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?


psydude posted:

Specialization is a bit different between systems admins and network engineers. An expert linux admin can move between organizations as a linux specialist without any issue, but in networking you're expected to have a broader knowledge in some sort of specialty like wireless or security. This oftentimes means touching a lot of different appliances and systems.

Yea, but the OP was against specialization? I mean, if you're network engineer you want to remain specialized in that field not switching gears and working on say bash scrips that run a sql query that automatically emails managers server resource utilization.

flosofl posted:

Right, having generalist skills is a *good* thing. But don't make a career out of it. You'll hit a brick wall in terms of advancement and compensation.

I feel like this is the biggest mistake I've made - I know bits of and pieces of VMware, Microsoft Servers, SharePoint, UNIX, Linux and even IBM i.

psydude
Apr 1, 2008

Heartache is powerful, but democracy is *subtle*.

Tab8715 posted:

Yea, but the OP was against specialization? I mean, if you're network engineer you want to remain specialized in that field not switching gears and working on say bash scrips that run a sql query that automatically emails managers server resource utilization.

True, I didn't phrase it well - I meant that I was becoming too specialized on one particular system without getting a lot of exposure to other stuff.

Proud Christian Mom
Dec 20, 2006
READING COMPREHENSION IS HARD
Yes folks never forget to kiss the feet of your benevolent corporate rulers for allowing you to exist

Docjowles
Apr 9, 2009

lolwut

skooma512
Feb 8, 2012

You couldn't grok my race car, but you dug the roadside blur.

fromoutofnowhere posted:

So in an effort to get people to shut down their computers here at work, I told several people that if they do it, it will stop bad things from happening. I was hoping that they would spread the word since they tend to listen to their friends rather than IT. At first, nothing really happened, but then we started noticing that many systems were finally getting shut down, either daily, or after around 4-5 days of uptime. We were happy, it wasn't all of them, but a decent amount. Later today I walk into a room and over hear a user say to another user if he shut down his computer that IT couldn't track him and his "activities". "OH, I guess I should do that as well."

What ever.

Reminds me of when I went into a lab at work, a doctor had Netflix open but shut down when I walked in. I then found Google with "How to clear web history" on it.

1. I don't give a poo poo what you do down here, that's between you and your boss.
2. It doesn't even matter since everything goes through Websense and we have logs there.
3. lol users

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.
I have an interview this week, here's hoping! :yotj:

crunk dork
Jan 15, 2006
The elementary school I work at has a bunch of iPads that I'm going to start enrolling in Meraki (which seems pretty cool). Does anyone know if there is a way to manage which class/teacher is in possession of the iPad, something similar to a library checkout maybe? I thought about using tags but that would most likely end up being a huge headache I'm thinking.

evol262
Nov 30, 2010
#!/usr/bin/perl

psydude posted:

Specialization is a bit different between systems admins and network engineers. An expert linux admin can move between organizations as a linux specialist without any issue, but in networking you're expected to have a broader knowledge in some sort of specialty like wireless or security. This oftentimes means touching a lot of different appliances and systems.

Just as an aside, this also applies to us Linux guys. If you look at the RHCA track (or anything else, really), it's basically "foundational Linux skills (RHCSA) + expert Linux skills (RHCE) + specialization (security, virtualization, storage, app servers, whatever)"

It's easy for people in one area of IT to look at another and say "pfft, those network guys, they just have to know Cisco and they can write their own paycheck!" (s/Cisco/whatever/ for Netapp, Linux, AD, Exchange, C#, or your poison). There's not enough appreciation from any of us in our silos for exactly how many things other specialists/teams do.

Except in extremely niche cases and people who've siloed themselves into obsolescence as "Oracle Middleware guys" or whatever, you don't get to be an "expert" in any part of IT without having at least some cross-domain knowledge of another specialty, and probably more than one. You can't be an "expert" Linux admin without being a competent network guy, as an example, and a lot of people would also argue that you have to be a competent programmer, and able to read C (though this is less important), and competent at storage, and...

I'm sure the same thing applies to networking.

NippleFloss posted:

This is probably what's happening in the storage industry right now. Lotta storage and backup admins are gonna be out if a job if they don't lake an effort to keep current with trends in software defined storage and DR/BCP, which means you need to know at least a little about virtualization, networking, automation, and the best methodologies for protection and HA for the applications themselves.
On the one hand, I've heard the same thing about SDN, and it makes me laugh. Not because it isn't true, but because continuing education is just the name of the game. And because the people who are out of a job aren't getting replaced by Linux admins or generalists, but by other (maybe younger) network guys who can adapt.

I'm not as close to storage, but I imagine it's the same. Anybody can string together commodity servers with a distributed filesystem. You're still gonna want a storage admin when it breaks, or when you want to squeeze the most performance out of a limited budget or limited hardware.

Continuing education is just the name of the game. The old trend in storage isn't that old, objectively. There are probably guys I've worked with who were "storage" guys on DAS HVD SCSI arrays backing Tru64 clusters because FC SANs (much less iSCSI) weren't a thing yet. Best practices and industry trends change. Keep up or get out isn't anything new.

MJBuddy
Sep 22, 2008

Now I do not know whether I was then a head coach dreaming I was a Saints fan, or whether I am now a Saints fan, dreaming I am a head coach.

psydude posted:

My current job and my last job were both contracted positions requiring a clearance. Being a direct-labor contractor for the Federal Government leaves you with most of the negative aspects of being a federal employee (coworkers that are overwhelmingly risk averse or stagnant, glacial decisionmaking and procurement by management, and odd union rules) with none of the positives (you have poor job security, you run into odd contractual boundaries prohibiting you from doing the best thing, and you have no protection against workplace abuse perpetrated by feds and contractors from other companies). My company isn't too bad (they offer decent benefits and provide opportunities to move between assignments), but there's also the fact that many government contractors (General Dynamics, Lockheed, etc.) are notorious for treating their employees like cattle. That being said, your pay is usually much better than your federal counterparts.

Many consulting firms, resellers, and vendors that deal with the government in a non-direct-labor capacity still require security clearances because of the nature of their relationship with clients. And they generally pay better.

I believe we work for the same company (though unlikely we've run into each other due to geography and field), but my experience for internal is that it's going to be highly correlated to the PM's effort on maintaining communication within the company and I've seen the best success for those who remember the contacts they meet. One of the rare cases was our team floating a guy by finding a special project under our task for 4 weeks so that he could qualify for his 3 year vest because he helped our PM out a project years ago.

The company itself can be pretty dumb (I'm sure this isn't exclusive) but some of the people can be great. If yours aren't, that would be a reason to look, though. Both of my PMs would go above and beyond to help someone move around if the project ended (or in cases where the position was closed).

YOLOsubmarine
Oct 19, 2004

When asked which Pokemon he evolved into, Kamara pauses.

"Motherfucking, what's that big dragon shit? That orange motherfucker. Charizard."

evol262 posted:

On the one hand, I've heard the same thing about SDN, and it makes me laugh. Not because it isn't true, but because continuing education is just the name of the game. And because the people who are out of a job aren't getting replaced by Linux admins or generalists, but by other (maybe younger) network guys who can adapt.

I'm not as close to storage, but I imagine it's the same. Anybody can string together commodity servers with a distributed filesystem. You're still gonna want a storage admin when it breaks, or when you want to squeeze the most performance out of a limited budget or limited hardware.

Continuing education is just the name of the game. The old trend in storage isn't that old, objectively. There are probably guys I've worked with who were "storage" guys on DAS HVD SCSI arrays backing Tru64 clusters because FC SANs (much less iSCSI) weren't a thing yet. Best practices and industry trends change. Keep up or get out isn't anything new.

SDN will be bad for Cisco and Juniper because hardware is where the money is for them, but networking isn't going away as a discipline and you will still need people who understand networking. You'll still have layer 2 and layer 3 (more of it, with overlay transport), you'll still have routing, and load balancing, and firewalls, and NAC, and intrusion detection, and all these other things you've got now. The may be managed via programmable interfaces from a central controller, instead of at the device level, and they may be running on cheaper hardware, but you'll still need people in the organization who understand all of those things and know how to troubleshoot them. Network admins will still have plenty to do.

On the other hand, storage admins are seeing a lot of their job subsumed by other groups in the datacenter. Traditionally you bought a dedicated array because you wanted better performance and availability, efficient capacity utilization and streamlined recovery. Cheap flash makes performance almost a trivial problem to solve in most cases. Once you put a couple dozen SSDs in a controller you're likely going to hit CPU or memory limits before you max out the drives, which means you no longer need to solve all of these complicated engineering problems to make very slow HDD fast enough to feed very fast CPUs. Cheap flash, along with relatively cheap low latency 10G switching, also means that availability and scaling performance gets easier since you can build a scale out cluster with a bunch of SSD cache jammed into each node, distribute the data across it in a relatively unsophisticated way (think VSAN) and still get very good performance and availability. And since it doesn't require expensive special purpose hardware like battery backed NVRAM you can do this with commodity hardware. Efficient capacity utilization (thin provisioning, pooled storage, cloning, etc) is being provided at the hypervisor layer now, so those storage features are becoming redundant. Likewise, things replication and backup offload that have traditionally happened at the storage layer (block level incremental replication, snapshots) are also moving into the hypervisor or even the applications, which are both more natural locations for them than storage that isn't VM or application aware, at least without plugins and agents and a lot of intercommunication.

So whereas before you might hire a storage admin because you had a big farm of disparate EMC boxes with a mix of VMAX and VNX and Isilon for differey types of workloads, and those arrays would all have a different backup and recovery methodology for their data based, and you'd be using VPLEX for replication and SRM to manage the site recovery at the other end and you'd need to be very mindful of data placement to ensure performance...in ten years that could very well all be running of a large VSAN deployment with backup handled at the hypervisor layer (VEEAM-like) or the application layer (Exchange backupless architecture) and replication happening at the hypervisor layer (Zerto) or application layer (SQL Always-On, Oracle DataGuard, stateless web/application tier), performance driven by large, cheap SSD cache, or even an all SSD deployment that requires minimal oversight or tuning, and storage efficiency driven by the hypervisor pooling those storage resources, well, at that point those job functions are easy enough that you just split them onto other teams and get rid of your storage admins. Your application admins handle backup and replication within the application if possible, your virtualization admins take care the hypervisor level replication and backup, there's very little day to day management for things like provisioning storage because provisioning happens at the VM level, not the storage level, the whole thing is running over 10G ethernet (well 40G by then), not fiber, so your network admins handle the storage infrastructure. It just makes sense to divide that work up and parcel it out into other domains where it makes more sense.

This trend has already started, really. That's the big appeal of the entire new class of storage vendors like Pure, Tintri, Tegile, and Nimble, that they are so easy to manage that you don't need a dedicated storage admin. It's a pretty common problem in the SMB space, where they just don't have the budget available to employ a dedicated storage guy, and their server or virtual admins don't have the bandwidth to learn how to manage and monitor a complicated storage system. That has lead to the development of these very simple arrays, but it's not going to stop at the SMB side. Companies of any size will want to take advantage of those same efficiencies to save money once it becomes plausible to do at their scale, and it will. There will always be some places that are big enough and have significant enough requirements that they will want dedicated storage folks, but the number of storage admin positions will shrink and a lot of storage-only guys will need to transition into other disciplines like virtualization or networking or application support with a touch of storage on the side if they want to remain employable.

That's my take on it, anyway.

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psydude
Apr 1, 2008

Heartache is powerful, but democracy is *subtle*.

MJBuddy posted:

I believe we work for the same company (though unlikely we've run into each other due to geography and field), but my experience for internal is that it's going to be highly correlated to the PM's effort on maintaining communication within the company and I've seen the best success for those who remember the contacts they meet. One of the rare cases was our team floating a guy by finding a special project under our task for 4 weeks so that he could qualify for his 3 year vest because he helped our PM out a project years ago.

The company itself can be pretty dumb (I'm sure this isn't exclusive) but some of the people can be great. If yours aren't, that would be a reason to look, though. Both of my PMs would go above and beyond to help someone move around if the project ended (or in cases where the position was closed).

Do you work out of one of the corporate offices, or on a client site? It seems like the corporate offices offer a bit better mobility just due to the variety of projects they undertake and the contact that the various teams have.

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