3 ms·

I'm a customer of yours. Out of curiosity, what mailing lists do you participate in?

lsc 16y ago
xen-users, xen-devel, NANOG (oh man, I'm about 8K messages behind on that one) freeside-devel opensc-user dns-operations svlug lopsa-tech wear-hard centos-virt freebsd-xen netbsd-xen and a few others. If I'm working on an open source project, even in a minor way I usually subscribe to the list so I can lurk and ask questions in a more intelligent manner... For a while I was on the qemu mailing list (I think I even posted a stupid patch.) I'm leaving off the -announce lists I'm on to listen for security vulns because I don't post there, but they are essential for any computer janitor. I'd recommend a search on "Luke S. Crawford" as most of these lists have public archives that are indexed by google and other popular search engines. Actually, I'm sure you'll notice that I'm more active here than on any of those lists... this is probably a bad thing for my technical career development. (perhaps a good thing for my career development as a business person, though.) Edit: just to be clear, I'm not saying you should ask an applicant what lists s/he is active on... by itself that won't give you that much information (well, except maybe that if a SysAdmin is not on a bunch of security announce lists, something is very wrong but expecting them to remember this data without going through their mailbox is pretty unreasonable.) you should figure that out. maybe ask them what usernames they use on technical forms that they'd like to share? (note, as an employer, you have to be careful not to be creepy when you do this. Most of us have a 'professional identity' we don't mind sharing... but you don't want to look like the kind of employer who goes through employee's myspace profiles looking for drunken party pictures.)
- Poiesis 16y ago
  Wear-hard! I didn't think that one would still be alive and kicking. It's not exactly what most employers would be looking for, I guess. I lost interest in wear-hard when I realized that smartphones pretty much did everything I needed a wearable to do and also got out of my way when I needed them to. But all these mailing lists, they take serious time . For me, they're really the first thing to go.
  - lsc 16y ago
    I was wondering if anyone was going to catch that one. Wear-hard, certainly, won't take up much of your time. It's just about dead these days, but every now and then someone talks about their rig which usually triggers a bunch of responses like yours. I don't think smartphones are quite there yet. Most of the way, though. A bluetooth twiddler would about do it. Lists I can ignore (e.g. everything but the security -announce lists) go in their own folders to be ignored, most of the time. but they are a good substitute for HN, if you want a more technically oriented and less business oriented discussion, and they are essential if you really want to figure out a tough bug or add a new feature, so having a presence on the mailing lists (even if you don't read them every day) is really useful.

lsc 16y ago

xen-users, xen-devel, NANOG (oh man, I'm about 8K messages behind on that one) freeside-devel opensc-user dns-operations svlug lopsa-tech wear-hard centos-virt freebsd-xen netbsd-xen and a few others. If I'm working on an open source project, even in a minor way I usually subscribe to the list so I can lurk and ask questions in a more intelligent manner... For a while I was on the qemu mailing list (I think I even posted a stupid patch.) I'm leaving off the -announce lists I'm on to listen for security vulns because I don't post there, but they are essential for any computer janitor. I'd recommend a search on "Luke S. Crawford" as most of these lists have public archives that are indexed by google and other popular search engines. Actually, I'm sure you'll notice that I'm more active here than on any of those lists... this is probably a bad thing for my technical career development. (perhaps a good thing for my career development as a business person, though.) Edit: just to be clear, I'm not saying you should ask an applicant what lists s/he is active on... by itself that won't give you that much information (well, except maybe that if a SysAdmin is not on a bunch of security announce lists, something is very wrong but expecting them to remember this data without going through their mailbox is pretty unreasonable.) you should figure that out. maybe ask them what usernames they use on technical forms that they'd like to share? (note, as an employer, you have to be careful not to be creepy when you do this. Most of us have a 'professional identity' we don't mind sharing... but you don't want to look like the kind of employer who goes through employee's myspace profiles looking for drunken party pictures.)

Poiesis 16y ago
Wear-hard! I didn't think that one would still be alive and kicking. It's not exactly what most employers would be looking for, I guess. I lost interest in wear-hard when I realized that smartphones pretty much did everything I needed a wearable to do and also got out of my way when I needed them to. But all these mailing lists, they take serious time . For me, they're really the first thing to go.
- lsc 16y ago
  I was wondering if anyone was going to catch that one. Wear-hard, certainly, won't take up much of your time. It's just about dead these days, but every now and then someone talks about their rig which usually triggers a bunch of responses like yours. I don't think smartphones are quite there yet. Most of the way, though. A bluetooth twiddler would about do it. Lists I can ignore (e.g. everything but the security -announce lists) go in their own folders to be ignored, most of the time. but they are a good substitute for HN, if you want a more technically oriented and less business oriented discussion, and they are essential if you really want to figure out a tough bug or add a new feature, so having a presence on the mailing lists (even if you don't read them every day) is really useful.