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It’s official: I’m on the job market again. :)

Published

1 year, 4 months ago

in Jobs, Miscellaneous stuff, PHP and Unix / Linux / *BSD

. 0 Comments

As of now, I’m looking for a job in the area of Lisbon, Portugal. Sorry to any non-Portuguese readers / potential employers, but I am not ready to move abroad at this time of my life.

My ideal job, at the moment, would be a senior sysadmin / junior PHP programmer “hybrid”, but I’m open to alternatives.

As I’ve said here before: no outsourcing, no MS stuff, no helpdesk. I don’t see this as “arrogance” on my part, but simply as not wanting to waste both sides’ time.

For more details (in Portuguese), and the full CV, please visit www.pedrotimoteo.com/cv . Thank you.

What I don’t want in a job

Published

Pedro Timóteo

1 year, 5 months ago

in Jobs and Work

. 4 Comments

Continuing with my recent “jobs” theme…

I mentioned in the previous post that there are some things I don’t want in a job, and that, if I go looking for one, stating those in advance might potentially save both me and a couple of companies a bit of time. But what are those things? And why?

Assuming you’re curious…

No Microsoft technologies. For many people, having a permanent “scapegoat” (“hey, software crashes occasionally, it’s normal… what can anyone do?”) is probably a boon, but I simply despise the idea. If something goes wrong with my work, I want it to be my fault, my responsibility, and fixable (and avoidable in the future) by me. Windows, MS software, and closed source software in general, take too much control away from the user. I need to be able to vouch for my tools.
Note: I don’t mean that I refuse to ever touch MS software. If I’m in a company, I’m the Unix admin, a Windows server needs something done to it and the Windows admin is at home sick, of course I’ll help. I simply don’t want it as part of my “regular” work.
No helpdesk work. I’ve done it in the past, both to calling customers and to co-workers, and didn’t like it. This is not “arrogance” or “I’m too good for it”; I’m simply a technically-inclined, introverted, and sometimes shy person, and, at work, I feel much more at ease with computers than with people.
Note: as before, I wouldn’t refuse to help a co-worker in need, sporadically. I simply don’t want it as part of the job description. And, yes, “everyone in the IT department does some helpdesk” does qualify as “part of the job description”.
No outsourcing. Sorry if I offend someone, but I sincerely believe that outsourcing is an evil, evil thing. As most countries have incredibly collectivist laws which make it less expensive and time-consuming to keep paying an useless employee than firing him (because he “needs” the job, so the law is on his side, and other crap), this has given birth to companies which employ people themselves, pay them a salary, and then “rent” them to real companies, for much more money, just so companies can “fire” a bad worker with a snap of fingers. And companies prefer to pay twice the money, if not more, just so they don’t risk ending up with an “unfirable” parasite. Obviously, I don’t like the concept. In fact, I think it stinks. I’m not saying that there aren’t very nice people as part of outsourcing companies, but, to me, those companies shouldn’t exist in the first place.
Besides, when working as a “consultant”, you can go one day to a company, another day to another, and I don’t like that. Personal taste. And most companies will treat you as a “stranger”, instead of as part of the “team”. And you won’t have any power to change anything for the better, only do as you’re told. And you’ll have to do reports and more reports. Why spend your life in a situation you hate?

A little clarification, mostly about the first two: you may be thinking that I’m some conceited “prima donna”, that I accept working only in ideal conditions, and expect to do only things I like. That is not the case at all. I’m not naïve; I know that in any job a person, from time to time, has to do something boring or frustrating. But those cases should be the exception, not the rule. If you know in advance you will hate a significant part of a job, why take it at all? It’s not the job you want, and you’re not the person they want, either.

A simple metaphor: let’s say you’re a gardener, and you’re also able to cook, but you hate cooking. Would you take a job as cook? Or, if someone wanted to hire you as a gardener, but then told you that you’d also have to cook for the entire family every day. Would you still want the job, in that situation?

I think not… and it’s the same scenario, here.

On job searching: stating in advance what you don’t want?

Published

Pedro Timóteo

1 year, 5 months ago

in Jobs and Work

. 2 Comments

For some reason, after the last post about my disillusion with having been a sysadmin for about a decade, I’ve been thinking about past jobs, job searching, interviews, and so on, and there’s a point I’ve never seen addressed anywhere, and about which I’d like to have some reader opinions. Yes, that means you.

During the last two times I searched for a job (in 2000 and 2004, if I remember correctly), there were several times when I went to a job interview, and during the first 5 minutes of that interview, it became painfully obvious that I wasn’t what they wanted… or that the job included something I didn’t want as part of it… or both. This happened more than once, too.

Some were obvious cases of they not having looked at my CV at all (which is apparently increasingly common [link in Portuguese]), as nothing else explains why they’d ask a guy whose CV lists mostly Unix and open source software skills to do helpdesk for Windows desktops! But, in other cases, it was something that a CV typically doesn’t say, such as “no helpdesk work” or “no outsourcing”.

So, at the time, I talked to friends and family about it, and told them that I wondered if it wouldn’t be better if, when applying for a job, I stated in front (in the original letter / email, or as part of the CV) that there were several things that would make me refuse a job offer (I’ll write about them in a future post).

“No!”, everyone replied. “Are you crazy? If they read something like that, they’ll dismiss you then and there! You can’t show such arrogance when applying for a new job! You need to show humility, and readiness to do anything they require from you!”

I don’t know if this is common in other countries, such as the United States, but here in Portugal we still tend to see a job as a “favor” the employer does to the employee. That’s why such extreme humility — almost like we are beggars — is expected.

But I don’t see this as arrogance at all. In fact, it is in the company’s interest as well as mine: it potentially avoids wasting their time. It’s like a filter in a search; you exclude — or allow others to exclude — the results you already know you don’t want. Is this “arrogant”?

Why I’m not a Sysadmin anymore

Published

Pedro Timóteo

1 year, 5 months ago

in Systems administration and Work

. 42 Comments

I have worked as a sysadmin (mostly Unix / Linux) for most of my professional life (not right now, though), and I’ve been meaning to write a few thoughts about it for a while.

My experience is that working as a sysadmin is, to me, interesting and fulfilling on a technical level, but ultimately disappointing and frustrating on a career and personal level. Why is that?

Let’s say you’re a good, competent sysadmin, and you’ve just joined a new company. During the first few days, you get acquainted with the company, the department, the sysadmin team (if any), the network, and the servers. Soon, any technical problems the company suffers from become apparent. Maybe a particular service is too slow, there have been security problems in the past, a server or application crashes often, there is some network congestion, that server’s logs tend to fill up the entire drive and need to be deleted from time to time, and so on. Or maybe you spot a need for something the company doesn’t have: a caching proxy server, an anti-spam / anti-virus email gateway, etc..

So, you get to work on those problems. Some software upgrades here, some tuning there, some cron entries here, some scripting there, some changes to the network, and so on. In months — maybe weeks, if the company is small — all the problems are mostly solved, and everything runs smoothly. Sure, you still have to reset users’ passwords (they keep ~~losing the Post-Its~~ forgetting them), keep software versions up to date (at least concerning bug fixes or newfound security holes), and, since you’re not dead and therefore haven’t stopped learning, maybe you later realize how a redesign or change of some particular server or software application can make things even better.

But, for the most part… most of your job is done. In the Unix world, with a decent knowledge of scripting and a good deal of experience, you can make your servers almost administer themselves, and you will be warned (by scripts) of potential problems in advance, so that they never actually happen. So… what now?

Now, you have a problem… especially if you’re an honest person. Because managers — and this has been my experience almost everywhere I’ve been — still tend to measure an employee’s work — and worth — by how busy he looks. Many people, then, simply pretend to be busy all the time (“change your email password? OK, I’ll get back to you next Monday.”), but such an attitude may be repulsive to you (it is to me). Explaining things to your manager doesn’t really work; even if he begins to understand, his own bosses won’t, and, if some head must roll, better yours than his…

So, after solving the company’s problems, and assuming you refuse to act busy when you’re not, what next? Well, you’ll get a reputation for laziness, for not “working” all the time, when everyone else does it (even if they’re just faking it). You’ll probably get assigned, in addition to your “proper” work, all the dumb, repetitive, non-sysadmin (and therefore non-scriptable) tasks — which, since you have free time, you probably can’t refuse, or at least feel you can’t. Any raise or promotion will certainly not go to you, but to your “hard-working” co-workers, who are always so “busy” and have so much “work” that they stay at work every day after 6, that they can never do a task “right now”, but only in a week’s time, and that, even their own results are much inferior to yours, it’s you who’re not “dependable”, “dedicated”, or “competent”.

Which is why I think it’s time for a career change. I currently work at home, in personal projects, but I’m probably going to look for a new job soon (for the extra money, and for learning something new “on the job”), and I’m thinking of programming, probably in PHP. I love the idea of creating something, instead of just making existing things work. And of (hopefully) being measured by results, not by how busy I look. I’m not a PHP “expert” (far from it), but I learn quickly, and I love to learn — even at 32 years old. Stagnation is always bad (though it seems that’s what most people seek in a job, especially in Portugal, oddly enough — learn a couple of skills, then do exactly that for the rest of your life), and, paraphrasing Duke Leto Atreides, a person needs new experiences… and new challenges.

Work: why a good sysadmin has a lot of free time

Published

Pedro Timóteo

3 years ago

in Systems administration and Work

. 7 Comments

I’ve talked about this subject before (in the “keeping busy” entries), and I think I mentioned this in passing, but I believe that this is an important point, and deserves its own article.

My theory (which observation seems to validate) is that the better a system administrator is, the more free time he will eventually have.

Many people (including managers, team leaders, etc.), unfortunately, equate “free time” or “not working hard all the time” with “laziness”, and wrongly believe that a good worker is one who is working hard all the time - if he extends it to after work hours and weekends, even better.

Unfortunately, if they thought a couple of minutes about it, they might spot the huge, glaring error in such “logic”…

Continue reading ‘Work: why a good sysadmin has a lot of free time’