[colug-432] the /etc test

[Rick Troth]

Pronounced "the etsy test".

On 07/21/2014 12:26 PM, Scott Merrill wrote:
> I recently learned that someone who I consider to be a competent Linux
> sysadmin had never personally installed Linux.  In his professional
> life, that was a task always performed by a different team.

Most shocking for me was to find at one shop that "systems programmers"
in one group did not know programming. To be specific, they did not know
the primary developmental language of that system. This knowledge was
historically a requirement. (True, one can go far with Linux and not
know C from the alphabet. But here was almost like not knowing command
entry.)

There's a spectrum of capability ... along several axis. Point taken,
Scott. There's also a problem of elitism, even snobbery.
But
the need to bring people up to speed is real and serious. (Crypto crises
are just the low hanging fruit for opportunistic journalists. Other
forms of system security follow closely, and RAS (reliability,
availability, serviceability) aspects will become critical.)

In job A, I learned about the /etc test.
In job B, I tried to apply it. Didn't go well.

In job A, the Unix team hired a PhD student who was ostensibly a Unix
heavy. Guy's working on a doctorate so he's not suffering from lack of
basic brains, and he'd been *on* the Unix systems for months. But they
had to let him go after just a week. It was embarrassing and painful.
Somehow he passed the interview only to fall flat with real work. What
happened?

Looking for a sharper edge, someone on that team hit upon "the /etc
test". The idea was ...

    cd /etc
    ls
    "tell me what each of these is used for"


It's a Kobayashi Maru. You're going to fail. Something in the range of
files will be outside your domain of knowledge. But the intent (of the
interviewers) was to see how far you get. (And maybe also see how you
handle the unknowns.)

In job B, I was allowed to be part of the interviewing panel. As if
candidates were not intimidated enough, I threw in the /etc test. Once.
We hired that candidate, and she was terrific, an excellent
engineer/admin. But she let us know with certainty (after joining the
team) that "the /etc test" was a bad idea (in her not so humble opinion).

I've mentioned the /etc test a few times since then.

-- R; <><



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