Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Also, does this concept transfer to other professions or is it just a technology thing? Is it required that a dentist spends his free time fixing teeth of all friends and family who ask in order to show his passion? Is it required that a doctor spend his free time helping everybody who shows up at the door in order to show his passion?
It doesn't apply to "certified professionals" which are held to far, far lower standards than IT should be. That's one of the reason that I like to use IT Practitioner rather than IT Professional. We are looking for traditional amateurs, not modern professionals. IT doesn't require a degree, for example, it's a higher field than that. It's also not unionized. But "professionals" have all of those things. The unions are normally government ones, so pseudo-unions, but the same effect.
We mention all the time how doctors, dentists, pharmacists, etc. aren't measured on results, only on a lack of abject failure. That's important, more or less, for what they do but it is no way relates to our world in IT. If you tried to work like a doctor in IT you'd never get your first job. It's both not comparable as the fields are totally different, and not comparable because we'd never accept the low standards of the general healthcare field as acceptable in IT.
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@guyinpv but if you leave out the government union / cert jobs (aka traditional professionals) then yes, it absolutely applies. Scientists, engineers, artists, musicians, teachers (which are still government union / real union / cert but it still applies there), race car drivers, chemists, biologists, carpenters.... basically any job where results matter and you aren't there to just "push a button" I think that this applies when you are looking for great people. Many companies actively don't want great people, just mediocre people, so that doesn't stop most places from hiring. IT tends to look for the best, even at mediocre companies, so it is very demanding.
Would you want your brewmaster to not like making beer at home? Would you like your chef to not enjoy cooking and experimenting?
Pure service jobs, like waitress, concierge, cashier, receptionist... yeah, they don't have home labs. They practice by just being nice to people.
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Does a person who programs in .NET all day need to come home and keep programming in .NET all night to show he's really passionate about it?
100% yes. No question about that, whatsoever.
Or, of course, in another language or a different framework. Making them better at what they do outside of the confines of the code that they have to write every day. Trust me, every good programmer I've ever met does this without exception.
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
The only real push back I see with this home lab requirement are basically people who lack the time or money to spend on one.
Exactly. The one group where I would see an exception is interns and very entry level where they are not yet to the point in their careers to know how to do it or possibly be able to do it. Although generally, how would they even get to the point of looking for an IT job without having had a home lab? How do you even learn what IT is without one?
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
You can't deny the validity of the position of wanting to cut loose and leave tech out of personal life to some degree, friends and family and kids and social life are also very important. I don't think there is anything inherently "wrong" with that,
That's totally true. I don't deny the validity at all. I don't suggest that there is anything even slightly wrong with that. I'm only suggesting that I don't want to hire those people in IT.
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
I don't think there is anything inherently "wrong" with that, in fact it's scientifically healthy to do so.
I don't agree with the science there. They can't measure what we are talking about, you'd have to produce some pretty significant research on that one. Remember, we are looking for people who feel like they never go to work. It's accepted science that the need to cut loose and go home is itself a problem, a problem that we've solved by and large. The science you are talking about is people needing to disconnect from the stress of work. Instead of letting people disconnect, we look for people who never have it. Which is even healthier still.
Needing to disconnect and go home is a band-aid... a means to making the negative of work not so bad. We don't want to band-aid, we want to avoid the problem altogether.
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
On the other hand, there are other professions where it is CLEAR you have to spend considerable free time on the craft and not just when working, such as in sports. A basketball player who only does his sport when playing actual games or practices, is almost unacceptable. The real pros live their craft.
That's a great example. And how many of them would feel healthier if they stopped playing sports or exercising outside of work? Not many, I bet. Sports is much more like IT and any business area... it's performance driven.
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@scottalanmiller is right. We really try to make our work not be "Job". A job is something you go to, to pay the bills and may not love your job.
Even now that I am mostly management, still have a lab that I play in to keep my skills up. I don't get to do this very often and generally I am just playing with small pieces of software but I still do it, cause I want to. I tend to still be working from my phone when I am out in a bar listening to my favorite band or sitting at home watching a movie. Heck I can take the whole day off away from my desk but still work just cause I can. I don't need to disconnect to have a life because I can have both.
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@Minion-Queen said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@scottalanmiller is right. We really try to make our work not be "Job". A job is something you go to, to pay the bills and may not love your job.
Even now that I am mostly management, still have a lab that I play in to keep my skills up. I don't get to do this very often and generally I am just playing with small pieces of software but I still do it, cause I want to. I tend to still be working from my phone when I am out in a bar listening to my favorite band or sitting at home watching a movie. Heck I can take the whole day off away from my desk but still work just cause I can. I don't need to disconnect to have a life because I can have both.
Right... we don't want people to not disconnect from work. We want them to never disconnect from life.
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@scottalanmiller said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@Minion-Queen said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@scottalanmiller is right. We really try to make our work not be "Job". A job is something you go to, to pay the bills and may not love your job.
Even now that I am mostly management, still have a lab that I play in to keep my skills up. I don't get to do this very often and generally I am just playing with small pieces of software but I still do it, cause I want to. I tend to still be working from my phone when I am out in a bar listening to my favorite band or sitting at home watching a movie. Heck I can take the whole day off away from my desk but still work just cause I can. I don't need to disconnect to have a life because I can have both.
Right... we don't want people to not disconnect from work. We want them to never disconnect from life.
This is a good way to look at any job... But sadly, most of them require their people to be there in their office, taking up space because... My current employer and my previous one have been (were) great about letting me take care of life when it happened.
When I had my cochlear implant done, I actually got to work from home for a week. I got more done in that week than the entire previous three.
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@dafyre said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
This is a good way to look at any job... But sadly, most of them require their people to be there in their office, taking up space because... My current employer and my previous one have been (were) great about letting me take care of life when it happened.
NTG goes much farther. It's not just about things like being able to deal with life when needed, it's about not stopping living. What that means is different for different people, but like for me, it's never not being with my kids and getting to live all over the world and I am just as likely to be playing a video game at 10am as I am at 9pm. There is no "work time" or "not work time", it's all just life.
We don't shut down Facebook or avoid taking personal calls. We don't stop talking to family and start talking to work. There aren't the hard breaks.
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@scottalanmiller Sounds great
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@scottalanmiller said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@dafyre said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
This is a good way to look at any job... But sadly, most of them require their people to be there in their office, taking up space because... My current employer and my previous one have been (were) great about letting me take care of life when it happened.
NTG goes much farther. It's not just about things like being able to deal with life when needed, it's about not stopping living. What that means is different for different people, but like for me, it's never not being with my kids and getting to live all over the world and I am just as likely to be playing a video game at 10am as I am at 9pm. There is no "work time" or "not work time", it's all just life.
We don't shut down Facebook or avoid taking personal calls. We don't stop talking to family and start talking to work. There aren't the hard breaks.
Yeah, I get that. It sounds like how I was at my last job... I seemed to work all the time, and handle life all the time... There was no real "off-time"... I actually enjoyed that part of the job. What made it so rough was that I was the only one on call like that, and it got old being out in town with my wife and having to come back home (home was on campus) because a big wig needed a new mouse for their laptop at 3pm on a Sunday afternoon.
If they had let me and one or two of the other full timers have a share in that, it would have been awesome... I lacked that "Cloud of Support" (tm) that you guys have.
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@scottalanmiller said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
I don't think there is anything inherently "wrong" with that, in fact it's scientifically healthy to do so.
I don't agree with the science there. They can't measure what we are talking about, you'd have to produce some pretty significant research on that one. Remember, we are looking for people who feel like they never go to work. It's accepted science that the need to cut loose and go home is itself a problem, a problem that we've solved by and large. The science you are talking about is people needing to disconnect from the stress of work. Instead of letting people disconnect, we look for people who never have it. Which is even healthier still.
Needing to disconnect and go home is a band-aid... a means to making the negative of work not so bad. We don't want to band-aid, we want to avoid the problem altogether.
It sounds a bit like you're saying that people who feel the absolute need to cut off work and make clear delineations between work and home life, are perhaps not meant for that work in the first place?
Like if someone doesn't enjoy doing the work and tinkering with no real lines between work time and free time, then perhaps they don't really like the career?
Also this brings up a side point. Perhaps some people feel the need to cut off, not necessarily from IT or tech, but from the demands of a boss? If my job is "you do this stuff for 8 hours a day" and I'm somehow made to feel like I need to continue doing more of the stuff on my free time, there is this sense that my boss is still controlling me in some way even after I leave the office.
I think when people say they need to unplug, it's unplug from the company/boss/control of the work environment, rather than unplugging simply from tech and learning things. It's unplugging from customers and demands and tasks lists and emergency emails with ALL CAPS subject lines.
When you talk about how NTG does things, you earlier mentioned being salary. Regarding that, how do you gauge "on the clock" hours from off the clock? How do you know when there seems to be too much "home life" and not enough "work life"?
This can perhaps be rewritten as, what do you expect from employees as far as time required for their pay? Are there days where they just play games all day and put off menial tasks for after dinner? Do you expect certain turnaround times if a person happens to be out? What if they are out ALL the time and it's a habit that they are always immersed in family life when work comes calling?
How do you control, or perhaps encourage that proper work/life balance so NTG gets their fair share and personal stuff gets its fair share?I'm asking because the major benefit of the 9-5 that we know exactly what's expected of us. We know exactly what is meant by being lazy or late or unproductive. And it's within certain hours.
In a free-form job where times are all over and work/life mingle all day long, how does one gauge their performance? See if there were a "slow" time and I didn't have much to do, I'd probably go nuts thinking I was being paid for nothing. On the flip side if it got super busy and the wife didn't like me up till midnight all week, I'd begin to feel overworked. How do you play out that balance so employees don't feel "controlled" or under pressure, but also you get out of them what is required for the job?
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
It sounds a bit like you're saying that people who feel the absolute need to cut off work and make clear delineations between work and home life, are perhaps not meant for that work in the first place?
Like if someone doesn't enjoy doing the work and tinkering with no real lines between work time and free time, then perhaps they don't really like the career?
Absolutely, that's the idea. Your career is a HUGE part of your life. You should love it. Not only will loving what you do make you more successful at it, it makes your life so much better. There are few pieces of life advice that I could possibly give someone that to do something that makes you happy. If you hate your job, or even just dislike it, you will have an unhappy life. You are lucky if your job is just 25% of your life hours, it's normally closer to 40% of your awake hours. Don't spend that time wanting to leave and be someplace else!
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Also this brings up a side point. Perhaps some people feel the need to cut off, not necessarily from IT or tech, but from the demands of a boss? If my job is "you do this stuff for 8 hours a day" and I'm somehow made to feel like I need to continue doing more of the stuff on my free time, there is this sense that my boss is still controlling me in some way even after I leave the office.
I think when people say they need to unplug, it's unplug from the company/boss/control of the work environment, rather than unplugging simply from tech and learning things. It's unplugging from customers and demands and tasks lists and emergency emails with ALL CAPS subject lines.
I can understand that. And I'd treat it the same way, if your boss makes you unhappy, consider making a change. Life is way, way too short to have most of it suck. You should not have to spent the little free time that you get recovering from how crappy the rest of it is.
Some people have no interests and hate anything that involves thinking or doing anything, at some point, people can't be helped. But for the majority of people, finding something that we enjoy, can do and can do in a happy environment is worth nearly anything.
One of the most important lessons that I learned from working terrible jobs in high school was to never do those kinds of jobs again. Learn a skill that you love and make yourself able to not have to be subject to bad working conditions. The only reason that bad bosses can exist in any frequency is because willing staff let them.
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
When you talk about how NTG does things, you earlier mentioned being salary. Regarding that, how do you gauge "on the clock" hours from off the clock? How do you know when there seems to be too much "home life" and not enough "work life"?
This can perhaps be rewritten as, what do you expect from employees as far as time required for their pay? Are there days where they just play games all day and put off menial tasks for after dinner? Do you expect certain turnaround times if a person happens to be out? What if they are out ALL the time and it's a habit that they are always immersed in family life when work comes calling?
How do you control, or perhaps encourage that proper work/life balance so NTG gets their fair share and personal stuff gets its fair share?I think the easiest answer is "we don't." But more poignantly let me ask you, how do you do the same thing if you have people clock in and clock out? The number of hours sitting in the office tells us nothing useful. So I don't see NTG lacking a tool that other businesses have, it's just that we've reduced a red herring that most depend on.
Hours worked is a terrible gauge for anything outside of factory labour. What if they are idle at work, or thinking about non-work things, or just terrible at their jobs? Or what if they are thinking about work at home, or amazingly efficient, or get the most done when they don't work normal hours?
You are asking how much time people are expected to do. But we don't work off of time. The very idea that everything has to be timed is something that we don't have. We do have necessary coverage for phones and stuff, and that has hours because we need to know what phone will ring where, of course. But even that is pretty grey. Are they watching TV, reading a book, playing with kids and only around in case the phone rings? Does it matter?
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
I'm asking because the major benefit of the 9-5 that we know exactly what's expected of us. We know exactly what is meant by being lazy or late or unproductive. And it's within certain hours.
I don't agree, I think it makes things harder. If you have a 9-5 you have one totally useless, but all controlling metric of "be in the office, physically from this time to that time." But it is not based on anything useful, like productivity or work being done or doing a good job. It doesn't connect the people to their value. It just makes doing so harder because you are forcing people to not enjoy their lives, while doing nothing to guarantee that they are being productive (and often almost guaranteeing that they are not.)
It makes it so much harder to figure out who is doing a good job versus doing what their boss or hours are forcing them to do, which might not be useful.
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
In a free-form job where times are all over and work/life mingle all day long, how does one gauge their performance?
How do you if you have set hours? Productivity is productivity, the set hours are a red herring, but one that people have to be paid for, regardless of productivity.
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@guyinpv said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
See if there were a "slow" time and I didn't have much to do, I'd probably go nuts thinking I was being paid for nothing. On the flip side if it got super busy and the wife didn't like me up till midnight all week, I'd begin to feel overworked. How do you play out that balance so employees don't feel "controlled" or under pressure, but also you get out of them what is required for the job?
I think you have these kinds of problems in an hourly job, too. But this isn't anything unique, all professionals (doctors, lawyers, engineers, IT, scientists, etc.) have loose hours, it's actually generally accepted as a requirement of the term professional. White collar work is expected to be gauged on what is accomplished, not how long someone sits in a chair. With hourly, you still have the problem that if you are idle that you feel that you are being paid to do nothing, for example.
People have to be able to regulate their own time. But we are all grownups, it's just part of adulting. Be productive, don't be ridiculous, take time when you need it, put it in when you can. We all love the job, no one wants to avoid it. That's why we look for passionate people. If it doesn't feel like work, you don't have this "avoiding it" reaction. But you also want to get things done.
Having a spouse that doesn't support you... there is no answer there. Your family needs to understand that you are trading off guaranteed hours for a better, happier life. All people who work white collar jobs face this if their spouses come from a blue collar world, I've seen it a lot outside of IT. Someone having to turn down huge pay and better hours because their spouse will freak out if they aren't home at exactly 5:15 on the dot, every day, no exceptions. They feel that every minute over 40 hours that isn't predictable is time being stolen from them, even if in the long run it is more money per hour, less stressful, better stability and fewer hours overall. There is no cure for that, you need a spouse that's on your team and understands both what is best for you individually and for your family. Likewise, you need to understand if your happiness, the quality of your work and the total time that you have with them is what is important for your family or if getting home at exactly the same time and earning less and being unhappy is what they need. It's legitimate either way.
One of the things that I love about what I do is that I am home with my wife and kids all day, every day with only rare exceptions that I go see a vendor, client or visit the office. I get so much more family time than normal dads. I mean like 100x more time. But my work is not predictable. My wife and kids have to understand that when I'm needed or I'm productive that that has to be allowed or else we have to give up the 100x more time and better life options. The trade offs are enormous. But not everyone thinks that happiness, money, health, flexibility, time with the family, freedom of location and other benefits are worth not having guaranteed time off. That sounds crazy to those of us who love the flexibility, but average people actually will accept all of that in order to punch out and go home, guaranteed.
