Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab
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A guy at my last office still used Pine when we went to O365. I don't think he ever got it working with it that I know of.
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I used Pine as my first email client. I remember those days well.
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IMO if someone doesn't have a home lab of some sort they don't truly care about IT as a whole. Would I hire a hardware geek on the other hand? Yes, chances are this person knows at the very least BIOS configurations, tons of software solutions and has basic troubleshooting skills. I guess it would really come down to the role I was hiring this person for in the end.
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@zuphzuph said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
IMO if someone doesn't have a home lab of some sort they don't truly care about IT as a whole.
Exactly. It's plausible that they still are passionate about IT, but they'd have to make a pretty good case for what was a good alternative (like their job provided an unlimited lab and they worked around the clock....something unique.)
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@zuphzuph said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Would I hire a hardware geek on the other hand? Yes, chances are this person knows at the very least BIOS configurations, tons of software solutions and has basic troubleshooting skills. I guess it would really come down to the role I was hiring this person for in the end.
Maybe for bench work. Hardware geeks tend to hate IT.
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@scottalanmiller said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@zuphzuph said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Would I hire a hardware geek on the other hand? Yes, chances are this person knows at the very least BIOS configurations, tons of software solutions and has basic troubleshooting skills. I guess it would really come down to the role I was hiring this person for in the end.
Maybe for bench work. Hardware geeks tend to hate IT.
Hmm... I must be the exception, I only ended up in IT after building PCs as a child. Still a hardware nerd to this day, by having the occasional problem/issue I learned basic desktop troubleshooting.
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@scottalanmiller said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@zuphzuph said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Would I hire a hardware geek on the other hand? Yes, chances are this person knows at the very least BIOS configurations, tons of software solutions and has basic troubleshooting skills. I guess it would really come down to the role I was hiring this person for in the end.
Maybe for bench work. Hardware geeks tend to hate IT.
I never really liked doing hardware stuff -- I can, and I do, but I'm far better at software-side. One of the reason Pops and I work so well together, lol.
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I don't mind working the range between hardware and actual IT, it breaks up the day. What I do dislike is things like such as troubleshooting non-working mice, or monitor issues.
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@DustinB3403 Unplug it, plug it back in. Reboot it... Replace it... easy-peasy!
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Just no reason besides being in an IT generalist role that I have to deal with these kinds of tasks.
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@dafyre said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@DustinB3403 Unplug it, plug it back in. Reboot it... Replace it... easy-peasy!
Replace the user, also works.
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I personally have no qualms about reporting a lack of user fundamentals to my manager, and they can pass it onward if the issue(s) persist.
For really simple things like non-working USB mouse, but the trackpad works. So the user blames IT, gets no work done on a deadline.
Um it was a battery, we have those on the shelf here, where they've been before. Plus the trackpad works without issue (and requires no batteries). This is purely on you <user>
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@DustinB3403 said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
I don't mind working the range between hardware and actual IT, it breaks up the day. What I do dislike is things like such as troubleshooting non-working mice, or monitor issues.
@DustinB3403 said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
I personally have no qualms about reporting a lack of user fundamentals to my manager, and they can pass it onward if the issue(s) persist.
For really simple things like non-working USB mouse, but the trackpad works. So the user blames IT, gets no work done on a deadline.
Um it was a battery, we have those on the shelf here, where they've been before. Plus the trackpad works without issue (and requires no batteries). This is purely on you <user>
I've never worked anywhere where troubleshooting these things were the end user's responsibility.
Heck most home users don't troubleshoot these things on their own either - they either call whomever they purchased it from, or they take it to geek squad - or simply replace it.
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I don't have any an issue in a small one man IT shop checking hardware - is it a waste of my salary - maybe/probably, but it's one of the reasons they have me here.
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Currently my home lab consists of a Raspberry Pi B+ and Raspbian. I currently have Home-Assistant and Pi Hole. Not doing much with the Home Assistant but the Pi Hole is definitely saving us some internal bandwidth as its sucking out the ads of the web pages.
Next goal is to take an old Dell desktop and turn it into a SmoothWall firewall. I have a DuckDNS but need to setup a VPN to phone home. The current problem is the absence of knowledge of server-level Linux, which I plan to start on.
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@NerdyDad said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Currently my home lab consists of a Raspberry Pi B+ and Raspbian. I currently have Home-Assistant and Pi Hole. Not doing much with the Home Assistant but the Pi Hole is definitely saving us some internal bandwidth as its sucking out the ads of the web pages.
So the Pi Hole is outside you're local network? You're still paying the bandwidth "bill" for those adds if it's local. At least you're not seeing the adds, which is a plus with most websites anymore.
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@travisdh1 So you do have a point there. It is still within my network but, like you said, at least I'm not seeing the ads anymore. This is both more of convenience and security.
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@travisdh1 said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@NerdyDad said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Currently my home lab consists of a Raspberry Pi B+ and Raspbian. I currently have Home-Assistant and Pi Hole. Not doing much with the Home Assistant but the Pi Hole is definitely saving us some internal bandwidth as its sucking out the ads of the web pages.
So the Pi Hole is outside you're local network? You're still paying the bandwidth "bill" for those adds if it's local. At least you're not seeing the adds, which is a plus with most websites anymore.
You don't save the bandwidth? I must be forgetting how it works - I thought it blocked the request to the ad pages?
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@zuphzuph said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@scottalanmiller said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@zuphzuph said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Would I hire a hardware geek on the other hand? Yes, chances are this person knows at the very least BIOS configurations, tons of software solutions and has basic troubleshooting skills. I guess it would really come down to the role I was hiring this person for in the end.
Maybe for bench work. Hardware geeks tend to hate IT.
Hmm... I must be the exception, I only ended up in IT after building PCs as a child. Still a hardware nerd to this day, by having the occasional problem/issue I learned basic desktop troubleshooting.
There have to be crossovers, but there is no direct connection between the two since the tasks are totally unrelated.
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@DustinB3403 said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Just no reason besides being in an IT generalist role that I have to deal with these kinds of tasks.
It's being in IT Generalist + Bench Generalist that causes it.
