Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab
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For a lot of us (me, especially), I live, breathe, and sleep techy stuff... I work in IT, I've got a "lab" at home, and a few extra bits in the cloud... and I tinker some in my free time... I tinker because I have nothing better to do, lol.
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So some things that I think are important, some are questions, others are points...
- If you don't have a lab at home, how do you cover that same educational ground in other ways? I understand that some people think that needing a lab is unnecessary, and I'll bite: what's the alternative that would show the same dedicated to learning on personal time and without needing outside resources?
- Given that the reasons that labs are seen as important are 1) a dedication to learning on your own 2) ability to learn without needing to be taught only by others and 3) passion because mostly we look for passion more than experience.... what would be alternative or better ways to gauge these factors?
- Given that practically unlimited candidates do have home labs, what differentiators do you feel should cause someone without a home lab to be considered above them (because without that, it's just another term for ruling out those without.)
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@JaredBusch said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@travisdh1 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:
@Dashrender said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
I think one of Scott's points is that you don't need a decked out box to make a lab happen.
I had an old 486 running Novell Netware what seems like 100 years ago, and a Pentium running Windows NT 4.0 This was when P II's were the rage, or was it PIIIs?
10+ year old hardware used to be completely usable for most lab setups. now with Virtualization, you need something a bit newer, x64 and supports virtualization, but that started becoming very common 8 or so years ago, so there's that. But real servers aren't needed either. A desktop can run VMWare ESXi or XenServer or Hyper-V just fine (assuming the virtualization hardware is there). Other factors will limit the number of VMs you can run, but hey, this is a lab.
Then today we can get $5/month VMs online - so there are options.
@Dashrender said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Then today we can get $5/month VMs online - so there are options.
And that's the price to keep it online and running 24x7. You can make scripts and build them when you need them and tear them down when you don't to learn more, cheaper than even the $5 mark!
Yeah, I don't have a HOME lab, but I've been building things in ramnode, Digital Ocean, and Vultr in not quite wild abandon. My current Vultr instance I'm playing with is all the way up to $0.56 for this billing period. That's less than I'd pay for the electric to run something at home.
If you are doing it outside of work hours, then it is a "home" lab IMO.
Exactly. An alternative home lab could also be "volunteer at a non-profit where I have essentially unlimited educational opportunity."
A "home" lab need not be in your home.
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@scottalanmiller said
- Given that practically unlimited candidates do have home labs, what differentiators do you feel should cause someone without a home lab to be considered above them
...A degree.
I'll get my coat.
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@Breffni-Potter said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@scottalanmiller said
- Given that practically unlimited candidates do have home labs, what differentiators do you feel should cause someone without a home lab to be considered above them
...A degree.
I'll get my coat.
In business administration....
bu da bump..
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@DustinB3403 said
In business administration....
No in computer science...because that's so helpful.
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I personally run a MacBook Pro decked out with 16GB of RAM and 256GB SSD & 1TB 7,000 spare drive. I run VMware Fusion 8 running everything from Server 2008 R2, Server 2012, 2012 R2 + Hyper V , Server 2016 RTM, Windows 10, Linux Mint, Elementary OS, & Debian.
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@Kyle OMG, it's Kyle!!
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@scottalanmiller Fresh outta surgery and have been home for 24 hours. Feeling a little rough but better that Saturday - Monday.
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@Kyle said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@scottalanmiller Fresh outta surgery and have been home for 24 hours. Feeling a little rough but better that Saturday - Monday.
Welcome back, glad to hear that you are on the road to recovery.
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@scottalanmiller Figured I'd chime in on the home lab. I've found it essential in being competitive in the IT industry. I get the whole work/home life balance but I've always wanted to learn more & more. If you think that you have learned all you need to know in this industry, it's time to find a new field of work.
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@Kyle said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@scottalanmiller Figured I'd chime in on the home lab. I've found it essential in being competitive in the IT industry. I get the whole work/home life balance but I've always wanted to learn more & more. If you think that you have learned all you need to know in this industry, it's time to find a new field of work.
My thoughts on the work/life balance part are that it's not as clear as people make it sound. Work/Life balance doesn't just mean "shutting off work when the day is done."
At NTG, for example, we take a very different view. We don't have downtime, there is no work hours / play hours. It's all one and the same. The job is integrated into normal life. But life is also integrated into the job. It's a totally different approach and certainly doesn't apply well to every person or to every job. But IT is much the same, IT isn't great for normal people or normal jobs. But for the people that it fits for, it's like the best thing ever.
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Fully agree. I don't know many in the IT field that just clock out and leave. Especially in 1 man shops where uptime is your sole job no matter how many hours you put in.
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@Kyle said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Fully agree. I don't know many in the IT field that just clock out and leave. Especially in 1 man shops where uptime is your sole job no matter how many hours you put in.
I know some in the enterprise. It does happen. Especially in the "traditional approach" path people, those that did a degree first, likely a graduate degree, got a job as an entry level person and worked their way up the corporate ranks, mostly through senority and stick-to-itiveness rather than being really into what they were doing.
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I have a virtual lab.
Virtual box with two windows vms, a linux vm, and three windows server vms.
A small linux vm (pfsense) for routing in th vm environment.That's all. Helped me many times when testing powershell scripts, learning concepts etc.
Took about six hours in total to setup...but no money as the laptop it runs on is pretty beefy.
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Speaking of lab stuff: After my boss gets back next week, I will probably have a couple big (and very very heavy) Dell 2900 towers to get rid of. They were former lab systems for us. I know one has 16GB ram in it, no idea what the other one has, either 160 or 250GB drives and PERC raid card (might be real raid cards not sure) if anyone is interested let me know otherwise probably off to the scrap heap. note these are VERY HEAVY TOWERS so would be local pickup in Buffalo NY not going to ship. Again have to check with the boss first to make sure its OK (company gets really weird about giving stuff away for some reason). Just want to put it out there
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@jt1001001 said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Speaking of lab stuff: After my boss gets back next week, I will probably have a couple big (and very very heavy) Dell 2900 towers to get rid of. They were former lab systems for us. I know one has 16GB ram in it, no idea what the other one has, either 160 or 250GB drives and PERC raid card (might be real raid cards not sure) if anyone is interested let me know otherwise probably off to the scrap heap. note these are VERY HEAVY TOWERS so would be local pickup in Buffalo NY not going to ship. Again have to check with the boss first to make sure its OK (company gets really weird about giving stuff away for some reason). Just want to put it out there
Man wish i lived closer....
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@FrostyPhoenix said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@jt1001001 said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Speaking of lab stuff: After my boss gets back next week, I will probably have a couple big (and very very heavy) Dell 2900 towers to get rid of. They were former lab systems for us. I know one has 16GB ram in it, no idea what the other one has, either 160 or 250GB drives and PERC raid card (might be real raid cards not sure) if anyone is interested let me know otherwise probably off to the scrap heap. note these are VERY HEAVY TOWERS so would be local pickup in Buffalo NY not going to ship. Again have to check with the boss first to make sure its OK (company gets really weird about giving stuff away for some reason). Just want to put it out there
Man wish i lived closer....
We drove from @jt1001001 to you so far today and will be driving from you to him when the pizza and whiskey is done this evening. It's not that far.
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Its only what 6-7 hours depending on traffic. Though keep in mind that's me driving with a 3 year ond and a 1 year old so frequent stops a must unfortunately
