Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab
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Preface: "Home Lab" here meaning home lab or better. Moving your home lab to a colocation facility, using a cloud provider like AWS, building a full offsite lab or similar obviously supersede this wording. The term here being used for "educational environment for yourself in your own time."
The question came up in another forum and many people were very upset that I said that I really would not interview or consider applicants for IT positions who did not have home labs. Some people argued that they couldn't be bothered to learn on their own time (um, and that's why I don't want to hire you) and some made the argument that this rules out poor applicants, some feel that it's a pointless way to filter people.
I have my reasons that I can go into, but first I want to hear... who here does not have a home lab or equivalent or better? And how many of you, looking to hire others would be willing to hire or at least seriously consider someone who did not have a home lab? (Interns do not count, we expect that they may lack the resources to do this in some cases. People outside of the US and EU do not count as the cost of a home lab can legitimately be crippling.)
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I would change the title from home lab to just lab, whether it is hosting with a provider or a server box at home, It is a definite bonus for me to see someone doing that.
Now here's another question...would you let an interviewer see your lab setup? Or would it just become another interview question that you blag your way through.
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A quick note on why a home lab is different than college/university for a filter in hiring: having a home lab takes essentially zero effort, time or financial resources. If you want to have a small home lab, you just build one. It depends what you want to learn, some things take more effort than others. But a starter home lab can easily be done for free or nearly for free. And it's something you "just do" and can do at any point in your career. If you are a middle school student, a teen, a college student, a forty year old working professional or even retired you can do this. There are options for doing this even if you are homeless. College takes huge time, money and other commitments. You can't realize that you skipped college and need to fix that between now and an interview. But a candidate for a job could find out that they are having an interview tomorrow and start building a home lab today. Totally different things.
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@Breffni-Potter said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
I would change the title from home lab to just lab, whether it is hosting with a provider or a server box at home, It is a definite bonus for me to see someone doing that.
Now here's another question...would you let an interviewer see your lab setup? Or would it just become another interview question that you blag your way through.
I do always ask if someone has a home lab, but have never needed to ask to see it. Generally when asked this question a true IT person even without extensive experience gets really excited and animated talking about all they do in their lab.
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@Breffni-Potter said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Now here's another question...would you let an interviewer see your lab setup? Or would it just become another interview question that you blag your way through.
How would one go about doing that, though, I wonder?
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@Minion-Queen said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
I do always ask if someone has a home lab, but have never needed to ask to see it. Generally when asked this question a true IT person even without extensive experience gets really excited and animated talking about all they do in their lab.
And it is very hard to fake to any degree. Making up a story about a home lab is very, very hard to maintain.
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@scottalanmiller said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@Breffni-Potter said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Now here's another question...would you let an interviewer see your lab setup? Or would it just become another interview question that you blag your way through.
How would one go about doing that, though, I wonder?
What would you say if I told you I have a lab and I don't have the tools to manage it remotely? Now at a standard interview this would be unfair to spring it on someone but if they are pre-warned before the day to bring their laptop/tools?
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@scottalanmiller said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@Breffni-Potter said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Now here's another question...would you let an interviewer see your lab setup? Or would it just become another interview question that you blag your way through.
How would one go about doing that, though, I wonder?
SSH in from my phone...
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What ever happened to "work / life balance"? I don't have a home lab because I unplug when I leave the office. Wouldn't mind having a lab to dick around with between 9am-6pm, but I have no desire to have noisy ass servers blaring on in my home. So I guess I'd be fuct if I ever went to find a new job?
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@Breffni-Potter 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:
@Breffni-Potter said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Now here's another question...would you let an interviewer see your lab setup? Or would it just become another interview question that you blag your way through.
How would one go about doing that, though, I wonder?
What would you say if I told you I have a lab and I don't have the tools to manage it remotely? Now at a standard interview this would be unfair to spring it on someone but if they are pre-warned before the day to bring their laptop/tools?
Assuming that the lab is of the types of things that could be accessed remotely, was designed for that purpose, etc. But a good lab would often be being torn down and rebuilt (or likely would be, I guess) so assessing a "current state" as opposed to what it is used for would be, I think, bad.
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@RojoLoco said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
What ever happened to "work / life balance"? I don't have a home lab because I unplug when I leave the office. Wouldn't minf having a lab to dick around with between 9am-6pm, but I have no desire to have noisy ass servers blaring on in my home. So I guess I'd be fuct if I ever went to find a new job?
I actually think that a lab is critical to having a work/life balance. Without one we become beholden to our jobs and lose the critical bargaining power that we need.
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I've had labs over the years. Currently my home PC is my lab as I primarily live on my laptop. I don't have anything as dedicated as a server as I have in the past.
I do have a website, though it's really more a storage repository than anything.
My day job does allow me extra resources and some time to build things I want to play with, so the need for that at home are greatly reduced.
though I spend more time on ML and less time than I should actually playing in my VMs.
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I do not have, a home lab. I have never had a home lab. I would enjoy the resources, but honestly don't know what I would do with that investment in technology.
I've run a BBS, a few hosted websites in the past, but never had the financial resources to own a decked out server box.
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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.
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@gjacobse said
never had the financial resources to own a decked out server box.
My first ever lab, was virtual box running on a poor desktop with far too little ram and a 1TB hard drive.
Based on what I did with that, I learnt a lot more than I would have done if I did not even try using what I had and with AWS and other services becoming so cheap now, if you need performance servers, just rent them for a few hours, do a test and then turn them off.
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@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.
right. my first ever lab was old 486 desktops running Linux. For some people a home lab might only be some juniper switches because they are networking people, not systems. For others it's just having another desktop to work on desktop stuff (probably for people doing desktop support.) FOr some of us it's SANs and NAS and all kinds of stuff because that's what you need to learn storage. It's not the same for everyone.
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@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!
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@Breffni-Potter said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@gjacobse said
never had the financial resources to own a decked out server box.
My first ever lab, was virtual box running on a poor desktop with far too little ram and a 1TB hard drive.
Based on what I did with that, I learnt a lot more than I would have done if I did not even try using what I had and with AWS and other services becoming so cheap now, if you need performance servers, just rent them for a few hours, do a test and then turn them off.
If you qualify decades old equipment and desktops, then I suppose in a sorts I have a mini as I have a Dell PE2900 minus drives I want to get back online... and a Dell Optiplex 330 running Linux Mint 17.x which while it mainly runs Pithos for Pandora - I use it (and my NTG desktop) for learning more about Linux and CLI.
But I don't 'rate that' as 'lab level' arrangement.
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Hi,
I used to have a home-lab .. but, no more .. now, with kids , I need all the space ...@ home, I just work from a laptop... The lab is @ the office only ...
Also, I would not discount a candidate just cause she/he does not have a home lab.. I typically hire someone based on their, attitude, real-world experience, real-world skills etc .. ... Infact, most technicians (network, desktop, server) I hire probably did not / or don't have a desktop or laptop, leave a home-lab. Simply, because they can't afford one, or they lack the space... On the other hand, most developers & designers I hire, have atleast a desktop or laptop ..
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I don't have a home lab.
As a single income family, we have other priorities.However, I do have a laptop, a NAS, a desktop and a toy VPS (that I don't talk about).
When I upgrade the CPU/MoBo/RAM in my PC (opted for the graphics card recently), I will be using the Desktop as a lab of sorts with Hyper-V and a VM to play around with... but I'm not intending on having a pile-o-tin sitting in my house to have as a lab. Far too noisy and expensive to run.
