Years and Years and Years of experience..

[Furmanek, Greg]

-> -----Original Message-----
-> From: Don Harrop [mailto:don@nis4u.com]
-> Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2000 12:10 PM
-> To: plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us
-> Subject: Years and Years and Years of experience..
-> 
-> 
-> That's true about being able to fix a problem in 5 minutes 
-> rather than 5
-> hours if you've experienced it before.  How many of us 
-> remember everything
-> we've ever done on a computer before though?  

If you find a guy that claims he can solve a problem within
5 minutes I would probably not hire him at all. Problem analysis
takes more then 5 minutes.  If it takes about 5 minute to analyze
a problem then the problem is trivial and It should never take 
5 hours to solve it.

-> If there's any 
-> one on this
-> list that has ever gone to tackle a problem that they have 
-> had before and
-> couldn't remember what they did to fix it the first time, 
-> I'd like to know
-> about it.  

I often run into problems I have solved before but every time
I take a look at it I find better/different way to solve it.
I have not found 2 identical problems yet.  If they are identical
then I probably have the solution archived somewhere and it probably 
takes about 5 minutes to find it.

-> I think that your problem solving abilities is 
-> worth more than
-> the "been there done that" approach.  I also think that it's really
-> important to have a team because everyone has something to 
-> contribute.  

This is one point many managers and HR people overlook.  If you 
find a person with a natural ability to solve problems he is 
worth more then 5 guys with 10 year experience each who do not
get the problem.

-> Nobody knows everything.  That's why I'm a member of this 
-> list.  

Amen to this one.  I have seen people with many years of experience
but they think they know everything and are not willing to learn new
technology.

-> The only
-> problem with the person employing you is that they wont know 
-> for sure what
-> kind of computer wizard you are until they hire you so the "years and
-> years and years of experience" is the only benchmark that 
-> they have.  

This is not the only benchmark they have.  They also have interviews
and they can test your problem solving skills if they wanted to but
no one bothers to do that this days.  It takes a lot of effort to
test candidates. Most of the companies not provide excellent benefits 
and great working atmosphere have high turnover.  If they had to 
test every candidate the hiring cost would probably double and 
as we all know they are not willing to spend money in the first place.

-> My
-> background is pretty broad.  I've been into computers 
-> professionally for
-> about 10 years now.  I've delt with routers, switches, hubs, cabling
-> (coax, cat5, token ring), DOS 3.3 up to Win2k, most of the 
-> unicies (no
-> Solaris though) IIS, Apache, DNS, SSH, FTP servers unix/windows,
-> automation using cron (unix) or at (NT) and scripting, disaster/data
-> recovery, yadda yadda yadda...  I've contracted for over 2 
-> years now for
-> mostly the City of Mesa and an ISP and eight years before 
-> that with other
-> employers.  Right now I'd like to find another "GOOD" 
-> employer and I'd
-> like the job to be unix based.  Yes, all you employers out 
-> there need to
-> realize that your being interviewed as well.  The last thing 
-> I want is to
-> end up with another company that can't even deal with their 
-> own management
-> issues which is why they keep loosing techs in the first 
-> place!  Sorry for
-> the rant guys..  It just sucks when your trying to find a 
-> place and people
-> keep telling you that you need X number of years experience 
-> as "insert job
-> title here" in order to be conisdered.  But hey, who said 
-> life was fair..
-> :-)  I think I've found a place running HP-UX that's going 
-> to hire me..  
-> With all these Solaris posts maybe I should have them buy a 
-> Solaris box
-> for me just to play with and change the job title to 
-> HP-UX/Solaris Admin
-> so I can start to develop the years and years and years of 
-> experience..
-> :-)  Or maybe I shouldn't be so truthful..  Maybe the fuzzy 
-> math theory
-> has a big part in finding a job these days... ;-)  j/k
-> 
-> Don

Fuzzy math is kind of helpful, but rounding up to the nearest 10
is even better.  

the wolf
-> 
-> 
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