Ask Slashdot: What Should a Unix Fan Look For In a Windows Expert? 454
andy5555 writes "I am hardcore Unix (and recently storage) fan responsible for our server department. Most of the servers run (you guessed it) different types of Unix. For quite a long time, Windows servers played very little role, but sometimes we get applications from our business departments which run only under Windows. So it seems that we have to take it seriously and hire a few Windows fans who would be able to take care of the (still small but growing) number of Windows servers. Since I am Unix fan, I have very little knowledge of Windows (some of my teammates may have more, but we are not experts). If I have to hire such a person I would like to find someone who is passionate about Windows. It is easy for me to recognize a Windows fan, but I don't know how to test his/her knowledge. There are some sites with typical Windows interview questions, but everybody can read them and prepare. How would you recommend the hiring process to proceed? What should I ask?"
Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure how you should start the interview. But I'm pretty sure starting it off by taking a holier-than-thou condescending attitude towards anyone who would sully themselves by being a Windows server admin, and referring to them as a Windows "fan" instead of a Windows professional, is definitely the way to NOT start the interview.
Believe it or not, there are plenty of professionals out there with significant admin experience with both Unix and Windows. Being a Windows professional doesn't make you some sort of dirt-eating Tauron, nor does it necessarily make you a "fan" who's chosen his side in some nerd-rage fight to the death.
Professional, not fan (Score:1, Insightful)
What is this 'fan' shit? You want to hire someone who has studied Windows architecture and know how it works. Not someone who wants to blow the OS.
Re:UNIX Differences (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck... slashdot is becoming reddit!!!
Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start (Score:5, Insightful)
^This
Also stay away from people who have all the certifications. It just means they went to the class and passed the tests which are pass/fail. Most of the tests are online (and a good source of questions btw).
A good one to lead off if you are looking for a windows admin. Why would you use a workgroup vs a domain? How would you setup an active directory tree with 200 computers and 5 different departments?
Also find someone who does both Linux and Windows. More than likely they will have to jump into your shoes when you are on vacation. Also loose the attitude. They are computers they get your job done. If you go into with that attitude they will resent you in under 2 months and be looking to get out. Do not create a we vs they in your office before you even hire the guy...
Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start (Score:5, Insightful)
I am one of them. At work, I administer Windows servers, at home, I run Linux servers. I have had experience working with both in various environments, from small companies to large media organisations, & I don't think I've ever seen someone as less of a person because they can't administer *nix or Windows servers.
If I was to be interviewed by a condescending arshole like the OP, I'd walk out of the interview. Working for someone who looks down on you for having greater knowledge than them is far from ideal.
Let's face it, because the OP doesn't know how to administer both *nix & Windows, that makes them less of an admin than someone who does. Not only do they need to find someone, they need to pay someone who knows how to interview for the role.
The first thing I learnt in admin/support is that if you specialise, you limit your options, for both solutions & future employment.
Wrong approach (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start (Score:4, Insightful)
If you read the OP, you will see that he calls himself a Unix fan in the first sentence. I'm not sure how this translates into a holier-than-thou attitude---it sounds to me more like a welcoming environment, where people are fans of particular types of technologies.
Make sure they can script (Score:5, Insightful)
There's plenty of Windows people who know how to click "Next... Next... Next..." but no more than this.
Well and good if that's all you need, but you'll get someone a lot more productive if they know a bit of Powershell, VBS and batch scripting.
Ask Slashdot: (Score:2, Insightful)
: Are all these "stories" posed as questions really fooling anybody? I see less and less interesting news and more stories designed purely to provoke chatter. Oh boy, Unix vs Windows should get lots of posts! Maybe next time you can work Apple in there too.
It's like the blogger feedback ploy - end your crappy blog with a question and more people will respond.
Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, eliminating candidates that are so full of themselves that they object to being called a "fan" would be a great way to conduct the interview.
knowledge... (Score:2, Insightful)
Ask him if he know:
1) How to use regedit.exe
2) What is a GPO
3) DCOM
4) WMI(this shit will help a lot if you need his help on monitoring)
5) WSUS, ISA and PowerShell
--- and you will obtain a medium-level professional --
And will filter 80% of the Windows guys on your "audition"
Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start (Score:5, Insightful)
Most definitely. I was a server admin for clients of mine who were too small to have one full time. Ran Linux on my own desktop, also had Windows and Linux servers running on different machines. I could deal with either. I wasn't a "fan" of anything. I was a professional who took care of my clients. Unix, Linux, Windows, it didn't matter. What mattered was my knowledge and making whatever they had chosen to run work. And work well.
As far as how to gauge their skills.... You won't be able to, as the good ones will know more than you do. Pay attention to what they have done in the past, contact their previous employers. Certs don't mean much, I've run across a few that didn't know anymore than was needed to pass the tests.
Maybe pose problems in a Linux domain that you are familiar with, ask them how they would handle that in Windows. Ask them to explain how it works differently from what you're doing. Ask them general security questions that should be known by all server admins. Firewalls, etc.
If you're in charge, you need to be able to assess their work. And that depends on the type of Win servers you're going to run. Outward facing? Database? In-house application only?
So much depends on what the servers do. Someone may be a great domain admin, but suck at the database side of things.
I know, not much help. But please don't call them "fans" :)
Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, go ahead and hire someone who thinks of themselves as a "fan" instead of a "professional" and see how that goes.
In fact, why not mock all of your potential candidates to see how they handle abuse and only hire people who "pass"?
Re:Professional, not fan (Score:1, Insightful)
then it's pretty probable they'll end up with some unix guy who also just happens to like gaming and has a windows side affair.
LOL, you refer to the kind of hacks that create a Windows "domain" that I get to come in and unfuck. Neckbeards, keeping real professionals employed for years.
Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure how you should start the interview. But I'm pretty sure starting it off by taking a holier-than-thou condescending attitude towards anyone who would sully themselves by being a Windows server admin, and referring to them as a Windows "fan" instead of a Windows professional, is definitely the way to NOT start the interview.
Believe it or not, there are plenty of professionals out there with significant admin experience with both Unix and Windows. Being a Windows professional doesn't make you some sort of dirt-eating Tauron, nor does it necessarily make you a "fan" who's chosen his side in some nerd-rage fight to the death.
I wholeheartedly agree. As someone that has worked supporting several flavors of *nix, and versions of both Windows and Mac OS server (and client) systems I would say that the OPs environment is hostile based on the description. It's certainly not an environment that I would recommend to any of my Windows Server admin colleagues to walk into. There is little place for that kind of "I-only-work-with-Unix-and-the-rest-is-beneath-me" attitude. Personal preference is fine, zealotry is not, especially when in conflicts with the needs of others or is used as a weapon.
Now, if you want a quality Windows admin you look for the same things you look for in any admin; experience, education and certifications, in that order. I know plenty of enthusiastic Windows "fans" that are NOT admin material. Liking something (fan) and having a deep understanding of something (professional) are completely different things. If you don't know what to ask then you have clearly not done your needs requirements for the position and should not even advertise the job until you do. This process will not only help you define the requirements for the position, clearly define the roles and responsibilities (and overlaps for support coverage) it will educate those involved in the process as to what to look for in a candidate. It may also be helpful to contact your Microsoft representative, not only to assist in your edification, but to help define the scope of what you may need. That's what a professional would do over just a "fan".
Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start (Score:2, Insightful)
This is exactly what I'm talking about. Anyone who considers being referred to as a "fan" as mockery is too fragile to work with.
Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start (Score:5, Insightful)
I fully agree with you on the attitude part.
On the decision part I'm not so sure. I mean sure you will limit yourself if you are going to only look for admin jobs on a specific OS but the truth is that the extent of a sysadmin's or opadmin's responsibilities will limit your specialization automatically through the passage of time. Sure for entry/mid level positions you don't have a problem, most of your responsibilities can be brushed over in an afternoons reading, but for high end/profile positions your chances are with a specialized attitude rather with the jack of al trades attitude.
Surely these are only my personal opinions, other people might disagree.
First step, don't look for "passion." (Score:3, Insightful)
Religiosity in Operating Systems is a character flaw, not a strength. Clearly this is going to be a hard concept for you to work your head around because you yourself are evangelical about UNIX. If you find somebody who is evangelical about Windiows, you're basically asking for interpersonal conflict as this engineer with "passion" for Windows is going to feel outnumbered and isolated if your whole team uses emotional language like you do.
What you' are REALLY looking for are skills and atrributes that are OS-agnostic while still demonstrating serious practical experience with Microsoft server products:
If you don't feel comfortable saying "yes" to all the above questions, then all the nuts and bolts technical stuff means nothing. Once these fundamental questions have been answered, there are some specific technical avenues to explore with your future Windows sysadmin:
There are a bunch of technical questions you probably need to ask that I can't possibly suggest to you, because I don't know the details of your envirionment. But these two are mandatory. Powershell is a scripting language developed to handle all kinds of administrative and automation needs for a system administrator, and it was written by two UNIX guys. If your future Windows admin understands and appreciates Powershell, they not only have a skillset that is going to be demonstratably useful in the future, they will be more likely to "think like a UNIX guy" than someone who went to an MSCE puppy mill. The AD/LDAP integration question is the one thing I know about your environment. If you're going to operate UNIX and Windows servers in the same ecossytem, some level of integration is inevitable and making sure the guy on the Windows end has the technical chops is essential.
Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start (Score:5, Insightful)
Stay away from those that put emphasis on their certs.
See if they use Windows the way you use UNIX (Score:5, Insightful)
A good Windows admin will "work around" the Windows-ism of it all and use the more UNIX-y features of it (they won't think of it that way, but they will). See how they are at whipping up quick VB or PowerShell scripts to do some little task (the same way you would whip up a Perl or Bash script). Check their problem-diagnosis skills - give them a hypothetical scenario (some weird proprietary service isn't starting at boot) and keep throwing up obstacles ("Guy: Well, I would check the services panel, make sure it was set to start automatically"; "You: Alright, you check that, and it is set to, but it's marked as 'stopped' and halts as soon as you try to start it"). Eventually he'll give up and say "there's obviously something wrong that's beyond my ability to fix, I would have to contact their support people", but see how many things he can think of to check. If he can think of a lot of ways something can go wrong, he likely has both experience and wisdom (unless he's rattling off bullshit, of course).
Another thing to look at is his WindowsUNIX skills. I'm working on a project now that involves getting applications running on both to work with each other, and that's not easy. Having a Windows guy who can grok Unix-speak would definitely be a plus for you.
Wrong answer (Score:2, Insightful)
By this logic, any of the current Unix experts they employ would also be the right people for the Windows server support, yet clearly they already know that isn't the solution. Here the OS distinction matters, because they want to hire based on that distinction (and for good reason). If you're hiring your first admin, you might want them to use any technology thrown at them. By the time you employ several experts in one area but lack experts in a new area, you're better off getting people with expertise in that new area.
Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start (Score:5, Insightful)
As someone who just finished an MS cert bootcamp in May, I'd say you may want to reconsider your stance. The days of the Paper MCSE seem to be going by the wayside. I did the Windows 7 Enterprise Admin course (MCITP) which is a split course.
The first part is "Configuring Windows 7", which ends with a certification exam (Microsoft Certified technical specialist, Configuring Windows 7.) I'll admit, I went into it without studying as hard as I could have, mostly because I had the attitude of "Ooooooh, Configuring Windows 7. I hope they don't ask me where the *Control Panel* is..." When I took the exam, I was promptly blown out of the water, and ended up retaking just to pass. They're pushing Branch Cache very heavily, and they expected some reasonable experience configuring WSUS via GPO.
Now, neither of those are shocking technologies, but they're definitely a *huge* step up in how they're treating the 'entry' exams. They seem to be making a big effort (according to the guy that ran the course, the questions have been changing since the start of the year) at getting away from "memorize the question, get the answer down to a 50/50, and guess your way in."
I'm not ashamed to admit that I failed the 60-686 exam for MCITP and still need to take it. Out of 11 people who took the course, all of us took the 60-680 MCTS exam, and 7 of us took either the 60-686 and 60-685 exam (combine course). I was the only one who passed *any* of the exams. We had some fairly sharp people, and the common theme was that we were all sorta surprised at how tough the exams were.
Just my two cents, maybe we were all just a class full of derps.
Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to disagree with those asserting *snicker* certs are worthless. Take them into consideration, but validate that they know what they certified on. They don't "just mean they went to the class and passed the tests" they can actually validate real world experience with the tools and environments, but that needs to be _proven_ to the interviewer. The best way to do this is to sit them in front of a computer that has access to a test environment and tell them to do stuff and see how they perform. Admittedly, this requires an understanding of what they are doing on the interviewer's part, but to completely exclude a large swath of potential candidates because of someone's misinformed perception of certifications would be a misstep, in my opinion.
Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not about fragility, it's about respect. If you can't pull off a bit of respect in an interview, what do you offer as an employer?
Re:Simple (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know any of your questions and I've been installing and maintaining a Windows server farm with 600-800 standalone Windows servers and clusters from Windows 2000 to Windows 2008 R2 for at least 10 years. Your questions are test level, not real administration and engineering level. Should you know about SMBv2 and potential conflicts with a WAN accelerator? If it is in your environment, yes. The kernel name of Windows 7? Who gives a shit. That's a test question that has no impact on anything you will encounter.
Re:Sanity and a lack of mythos tentacles... (Score:5, Insightful)
"How long have you been using Microsoft SQL?"
"How would you write a query in SSMS 2005 that pulls data from an Access database on a different server?"
Unless you actually had some background, you wouldn't know to ask the second question, which would give you a lot more information. I'm only using SQL as an example, the same would apply with AD or Exchange server management.
One possibility - hire a consultant to sit in on the interviews. You evaluate the general technical skills and personality, the consultant probes the specific Windows technical skills.
Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start (Score:4, Insightful)
There's nothing disrespectful about the term "fan" except in your own fevered imagination. If I were to hire someone who gets upset over the word "fan", I'm just setting myself up for drama(or worse) when someone makes some other harmless, off the cuff remark and the new hire feels slighted.
Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start (Score:5, Insightful)
This is because we've started teaching these things in 1 and 2 year trade school /college programmes where you can get various certs at the end. The quality of the people and training is going up, and the tests can now actually be more than laughably basic stuff.
The windows ecosystem is huge, mind bogglingly so. If you're going to look for a 'windows server' guy you really need to know what you want them to do. Is this a server to support desktops? A web server? Some cloud thing - if so there are a lot of different specializations here. If you want someone with a background in infosec you might be looking at having multiple people.
maybe we were all just a class full of derps.
That used to be the case. If you had (or have) brains you take comp sci, software eng or computer engineering. Everyone else is in the IT guy certifications stream which, lets face it, is one tier of people down on average, usually the top people in the certs stream should really be in comp sci, and the bottom people in comp sci should be in the IT side of things. The problem is that for a long time the IT stream attracted script kiddies out of highschool who played video games on windows and they were basically the only people who knew *anything* about windows so they could get a job. The world has moved on though. If you're going to deploy clients to 200 machines, and then manage all of their licences, sharepoint install, active directory, etc. you really do need a lot more than just 'windows is fun'. At that point windows isn't fun, windows is an expertise you have and that expertise has little to no connection to any 'fun' you might have with windows.
The certifications are supposed to be the minimum level of competence you'd expect out of someone with little to no experience. Believe it or not you do want people with the certifications (or equivalent) so you know they didn't just 'manage' their 200 machines individually and were actually aware of the enterprise product tools. Someone fresh out of a 1 year college course with an MCSE is about what you'd expect for someone one year out of highschool who can prove they paid attention in class. They're way better than someone with no training at all, but there's a lot of experience to had still.
P.S. I think you mean the 70-686 exam, I believe the 60 series was for vista and is long long long gone.
Re:UNIX Differences (Score:2, Insightful)
Best ask yourself why there are so many articles advertising Microsoft today.
Maybe they are releasing a new product?
Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start (Score:5, Insightful)
For better or for worse I think you have stumbled not on a condescending attitude but on a difference between *nix and Windows admins.
The OP *enjoys* administering Linux servers. It's fun for him. Not in a professional my job is satisfactory way but in an I just played ball with my buddies and had a blast way. And in a classic feedback loop, he's good at it because he enjoys it because he's good at it.
He's looking for someone who feels that way about running Windows servers. Someone who feels that way about Windows will fit well into his team while filling the technical need. The stodgy "Windows Professional" capital P may meet the technical need but he won't integrate well into the team.
Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start (Score:4, Insightful)
I read the OP as saying, "I love *NIX and that's all I really know in depth as an Admin. I have no clue how to find someone similar for Windows. How would I go about that?". I didn't read it as condescending, but clearly many here did.
... And there, right there, is how you tell the difference between Windows and Unix experts. The Unix expert sees no problem with exposing either his preferences or his ignorance about the world beyond his experience. The Windows expert has been taught that these are weaknesses.
Re:UNIX Differences (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot became reddit before reddit existed. You can bet your hot grits on it.
Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would you use a workgroup vs a domain?
Workgroup
When you cant afford a server license.
Domain
When you can afford a server license.
(Bonus: Always, because inter-computer trust relationships actually work with some degree of reliability once a domain is set up.)
Do I win a prize?
Re:Well, not calling them a "fan" might be a start (Score:2, Insightful)
I read the OP as saying, "I love *NIX and that's all I really know in depth as an Admin. I have no clue how to find someone similar for Windows. How would I go about that?". I didn't read it as condescending, but clearly many here did.
How is that not condescending? Apparently *NIX is NOT all the OP needs to know, or there wouldn't be a need for a Windows "fan." It's condescending to think a UNIX "fan" could not, and should not, touch anything Windows. We need a seperate guy for that.
The attitude should be, the people that pay my salary and pay for the hardware and software have certain needs, and as a professional admin, I need to address those needs. If those needs are best servered by Windows, then I should put the business needs ahead of my fandom.
I'm not against hiring when there's a need for skills outside of the current staff, but it doesn't sounds like there's really a need for a full time Windows-only admin.
Can you explain to me, in some non-condescending way, why none of the current UNIX admins in house could learn Windows, or why the OP couldn't hire someone who knows both? Why must the UNIX guys be UNIX only and the Windows guys by Windows only?