7 ms·

Why you need a home lab to keep your job

45 points by iProject 14y ago

mctx 14y ago
The main problem with my rack is the noise - I live in a flat and there's nowhere but the living room to put it. I've seen a few noise cancelling designs around, but they're all too expensive. I wonder if I could build a simple noise cancellation system with an FX-LMS algorithm?
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  If you can replace the dinky fans servers usually use with 120mm units, you can all but solve the noise problem. It would be totally custom, yes, but probably easier than sophisticated noise cancellation.
- ratsbane 14y ago
  I have six IBM 2U servers in my home rack (36U). They're really well-designed and the noise level is not too bad even in the room with the rack, but there is also a 1U SuperMicro server in that rack with two Tesla cards and it is so loud as to be quite annoying anywhere in the house. I keep it turned off unless I'm specifically working on it, which isn't how I'd like it to be. The lesson I learned is that bigger servers (4U would be even better) have bigger fans and run more quietly. Also IBM servers aren't as loud as Dell and Dell servers are quieter than SuperMicro. I'm thinking the next addition might be a cluster of Raspberry Pis.
- s_baby 14y ago
  Does your experimentation require you work on blades and not on virtualized environment?
  - mctx 14y ago
    They're 1U and 2U servers on which I've installed ESXi. I love it - I can run a VM locally then transfer it across, then if I'm travelling I can chuck it onto VMWare Fusion on my laptop.
cup 14y ago
Unless I've misunderstood this article, I think this is a bad idea. When working for a company your work should ideally stay at work. Come 5pm, if you're privliged enough to work a 9-5, your day should be done. This growing push for work to be extended into the family home really erodes the necessary work life distinction that allows for a happy life. Thats not to say you shouldn't have a lab at home to train yourself on things that interest you in your own free time, but if staying at a job means investing unpaid hours at home then one should probably consider whether the job is worth it. After all, if a company expects you to do unpaid training in your own personal time then what will it expect from you in the future? Furthermore, these articles constantly push the message that more work is better for your career than less. My father always told me its not the quantity of time you spend at a task but the quality.
- Wilya 14y ago
  It's less about what your company wants you to do, and more about what you need to do to develop your career. If you want to stay on top and keep being employable, you'll have to invest in skills, and I see no reason why your employer would provide that for free, especially if those skills aren't directly useful to them. Company's job isn't to help you find a work-life balance. Its goal is to find the long term plan that extracts the most work out of you. It can involve giving you some cool perks to keep you healthy on the long run, or it can involve churning through new hires all the time and overworking them while they last. Depends on their strategy.
  - lelandbatey 14y ago
    Yes, I think this is the spot on point. You don't need a home lab to do your current job, but you are going to need a home lab to prepare for your next job. Because your employer certainly won't be shelling out so that you can leave (well, probably won't anyway).
  - rayiner 14y ago
    This mentality towards training people is common, but is a textbook case of stupid management. Companies under-invest in training, then pay enormous recruiting costs in getting people with the "right skills" as well as paying opportunity costs when projects can't go forward because they can't find the "right people." It's a bit of brain-dead management that's common in some other fields, but acutely common in software/IT.
joshbaptiste 14y ago
Yep, having your own personal lab allows you to do what you want and can actually be a sort of pretest bed for applications and/or hardware you want to recommend for your employer.
anigbrowl 14y ago
Companies that won't invest in training or research are not worth working for. If they want you (as an employee) to pay for that out of your own pocket and you do, then you're a sucker, unless you've negotiated a fat salary and a 4 day week.
- patio11 14y ago
  Many companies will pay for training to enhance your value to them but may not always pay for training which enhances your value to you, in part because occasionally (good! ethical!) companies have a plan for your career which is not the optimum plan for you. In this case, it makes sense to pay for training personally when the day job won't subsidize it, or otherwise invest in one's own professional development. (Via side projects, OSS contribution, yadda yadda whatever capital-building exercise you can licitly do outside the confines of 9 to 5.) For example, my old day job happily dropped $10k to fly me to JavaOne so that I would more effectively map XML files and JavaBeans together, but "Most efficient cog in an Enterprise Java consulting shop ever!" was not a long-term career aspiration of mine. They were pretty understanding about providing for career growth during work hours but when they didn't I did it on my own time. That eventually cost them my services but, hey, capitalism happens. Generic career advice for everyone: You are the captain of your own ship. You will have mentors, employers, and other folks who you are to some degree reliant on, but at the end of the day you have both responsibility for creating and authority to mandate forward progress.
- ajross 14y ago
  True enough. And employees who wait to be "trained" on interesting new technology instead of learning it for themselves aren't worth hiring. Obviously neither statement is (completely) true. At the "rockstar" level, all learning is self directed. And rockstar employers expect and rely on that. But for everyone else I think it's reasonable that there be some level of support for education from employers, and some level of self motivation from good employees. Neither is going to make up for a total shortcoming in the other.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    > And employees who wait to be "trained" on interesting new technology instead of learning it for themselves aren't worth hiring. > At the "rockstar" level, all learning is self directed. This is a bit of brain damage that is, as far as I can tell, limited to programming, for various weird cultural reasons. Go to Goldman Sachs and ask them how many of their "rockstar" traders learned the craft at home on their free time. Or go to a top research hospital and ask them how many of their surgeons did the same. Or go to a top architecture firm and ask them how many of their architects learned skyscraper design on the weekends. They will probably all laugh at you. Rockstars can be created through institutional processes by identifying, nurturing, and systematically training talent. All industries have their rockstars, but ones more mature than the software industry have saner and more efficient ways of taking raw talent and nurturing them into rockstars.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
Interesting discussion here. I've always had a home 'lab' because I've always been interested in a variety of technologies. At college it was half my desk and a couple of carrying boxes, (one for tools, one for parts). Once I got married I had a desk in the spare bedroom which had other stuff as well. Eventually I got a room to myself in the house. Back in the dot.com days before it went tango-uniform I was going to build a basement (machine room, library, office) but alas that was not to be. Since learning is my hobby and my passion it serves me well. But I could certainly understand it if you hated what you worked on and wanting to get away from it when you were at home.
ssharwood 14y ago
Oooh! I got aggregated. Thanks for the nice discussion
- Swannie 14y ago
  So you did!
dnewcome 14y ago
To get true understanding of what you're working with you need to be able to trash the configuration of your gear at will. I learned a lot buying up some big old Cisco Catalysts and EMC Clariion SAN boxes back when I was doing data center work. Later on though, when I was in charge of buying new stuff I'd rack the stuff up first and go crazy with it before it was in production. Either way works. I don't miss having those fans running in my house though.
- packetslave 14y ago
  The really nice thing about labs these days is how much you can do virtually. Before I changed jobs, I had 2 NetApp filers doing replication, two EMC Clariion CX arrays, and two complete VMware datacenters doing DR failover, vMotion, and DRS. All on two PC servers in a downstairs closet.
c141charlie 14y ago
Who needs a home lab when you have AWS and other on demand cloud computing providers at your disposal?
- elchief 14y ago
  But AWS uses Xen and not VMWare!
esperluette 14y ago
"Girlfriend Impact" -- bleh. Yeah, I know, 99.99whatever9% of IT workers, esp in the ops role, are guys, but would it have taken so much extra thought to put "family impact"? Or even "balanced life penalty"? And I say this as someone who has spent a ridiculous amount of money on tech books in the past year (probably four figures) and who is giving up 1.5-2 nights a week, on average, to tech meetups.
- mathrawka 14y ago
  I'm pretty sure he was referring to his own personal "Girlfriend Impact". It was not a general statement about all IT workers, just the one who was talking about the lab.
femto 14y ago
If an employee is going to have invest effort into a significant home lab, it'd make sense to go the extra mile and start using the lab to earn an income, reducing reliance on said employer.
No1 14y ago
His $1,362 per month spend (not including hardware, which it sounds like he gets for free) seems a bit spendy for just a hobby "lab". Since when was a rack of computers called a lab? Does a few servers in the closet count? I want to know if I'm in danger of losing my job.
codex 14y ago
TL;DR: An evangelist for a company that sells software for virtual labs says that everyone should have a lab at home.
peterclary 14y ago
"Today, the lab costs £870 a month thanks to the presence of a pair of Dell EqualLogic arrays." To paraphrase that fount of wisdom, the hippy from The Simpsons: Sounds like you're working for your lab. Simplify, man!

45 points by iProject 14y ago

mctx 14y ago

The main problem with my rack is the noise - I live in a flat and there's nowhere but the living room to put it. I've seen a few noise cancelling designs around, but they're all too expensive. I wonder if I could build a simple noise cancellation system with an FX-LMS algorithm?

sliverstorm 14y ago
If you can replace the dinky fans servers usually use with 120mm units, you can all but solve the noise problem. It would be totally custom, yes, but probably easier than sophisticated noise cancellation.
ratsbane 14y ago
I have six IBM 2U servers in my home rack (36U). They're really well-designed and the noise level is not too bad even in the room with the rack, but there is also a 1U SuperMicro server in that rack with two Tesla cards and it is so loud as to be quite annoying anywhere in the house. I keep it turned off unless I'm specifically working on it, which isn't how I'd like it to be. The lesson I learned is that bigger servers (4U would be even better) have bigger fans and run more quietly. Also IBM servers aren't as loud as Dell and Dell servers are quieter than SuperMicro. I'm thinking the next addition might be a cluster of Raspberry Pis.
s_baby 14y ago
Does your experimentation require you work on blades and not on virtualized environment?
- mctx 14y ago
  They're 1U and 2U servers on which I've installed ESXi. I love it - I can run a VM locally then transfer it across, then if I'm travelling I can chuck it onto VMWare Fusion on my laptop.

cup 14y ago

Unless I've misunderstood this article, I think this is a bad idea. When working for a company your work should ideally stay at work. Come 5pm, if you're privliged enough to work a 9-5, your day should be done. This growing push for work to be extended into the family home really erodes the necessary work life distinction that allows for a happy life. Thats not to say you shouldn't have a lab at home to train yourself on things that interest you in your own free time, but if staying at a job means investing unpaid hours at home then one should probably consider whether the job is worth it. After all, if a company expects you to do unpaid training in your own personal time then what will it expect from you in the future? Furthermore, these articles constantly push the message that more work is better for your career than less. My father always told me its not the quantity of time you spend at a task but the quality.

Wilya 14y ago
It's less about what your company wants you to do, and more about what you need to do to develop your career. If you want to stay on top and keep being employable, you'll have to invest in skills, and I see no reason why your employer would provide that for free, especially if those skills aren't directly useful to them. Company's job isn't to help you find a work-life balance. Its goal is to find the long term plan that extracts the most work out of you. It can involve giving you some cool perks to keep you healthy on the long run, or it can involve churning through new hires all the time and overworking them while they last. Depends on their strategy.
- lelandbatey 14y ago
  Yes, I think this is the spot on point. You don't need a home lab to do your current job, but you are going to need a home lab to prepare for your next job. Because your employer certainly won't be shelling out so that you can leave (well, probably won't anyway).
- rayiner 14y ago
  This mentality towards training people is common, but is a textbook case of stupid management. Companies under-invest in training, then pay enormous recruiting costs in getting people with the "right skills" as well as paying opportunity costs when projects can't go forward because they can't find the "right people." It's a bit of brain-dead management that's common in some other fields, but acutely common in software/IT.

joshbaptiste 14y ago

Yep, having your own personal lab allows you to do what you want and can actually be a sort of pretest bed for applications and/or hardware you want to recommend for your employer.

anigbrowl 14y ago

Companies that won't invest in training or research are not worth working for. If they want you (as an employee) to pay for that out of your own pocket and you do, then you're a sucker, unless you've negotiated a fat salary and a 4 day week.

patio11 14y ago
Many companies will pay for training to enhance your value to them but may not always pay for training which enhances your value to you, in part because occasionally (good! ethical!) companies have a plan for your career which is not the optimum plan for you. In this case, it makes sense to pay for training personally when the day job won't subsidize it, or otherwise invest in one's own professional development. (Via side projects, OSS contribution, yadda yadda whatever capital-building exercise you can licitly do outside the confines of 9 to 5.) For example, my old day job happily dropped $10k to fly me to JavaOne so that I would more effectively map XML files and JavaBeans together, but "Most efficient cog in an Enterprise Java consulting shop ever!" was not a long-term career aspiration of mine. They were pretty understanding about providing for career growth during work hours but when they didn't I did it on my own time. That eventually cost them my services but, hey, capitalism happens. Generic career advice for everyone: You are the captain of your own ship. You will have mentors, employers, and other folks who you are to some degree reliant on, but at the end of the day you have both responsibility for creating and authority to mandate forward progress.
ajross 14y ago
True enough. And employees who wait to be "trained" on interesting new technology instead of learning it for themselves aren't worth hiring. Obviously neither statement is (completely) true. At the "rockstar" level, all learning is self directed. And rockstar employers expect and rely on that. But for everyone else I think it's reasonable that there be some level of support for education from employers, and some level of self motivation from good employees. Neither is going to make up for a total shortcoming in the other.
- rayiner 14y ago
  > And employees who wait to be "trained" on interesting new technology instead of learning it for themselves aren't worth hiring. > At the "rockstar" level, all learning is self directed. This is a bit of brain damage that is, as far as I can tell, limited to programming, for various weird cultural reasons. Go to Goldman Sachs and ask them how many of their "rockstar" traders learned the craft at home on their free time. Or go to a top research hospital and ask them how many of their surgeons did the same. Or go to a top architecture firm and ask them how many of their architects learned skyscraper design on the weekends. They will probably all laugh at you. Rockstars can be created through institutional processes by identifying, nurturing, and systematically training talent. All industries have their rockstars, but ones more mature than the software industry have saner and more efficient ways of taking raw talent and nurturing them into rockstars.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

Interesting discussion here. I've always had a home 'lab' because I've always been interested in a variety of technologies. At college it was half my desk and a couple of carrying boxes, (one for tools, one for parts). Once I got married I had a desk in the spare bedroom which had other stuff as well. Eventually I got a room to myself in the house. Back in the dot.com days before it went tango-uniform I was going to build a basement (machine room, library, office) but alas that was not to be. Since learning is my hobby and my passion it serves me well. But I could certainly understand it if you hated what you worked on and wanting to get away from it when you were at home.

ssharwood 14y ago

Oooh! I got aggregated. Thanks for the nice discussion

Swannie 14y ago
So you did!

dnewcome 14y ago

To get true understanding of what you're working with you need to be able to trash the configuration of your gear at will. I learned a lot buying up some big old Cisco Catalysts and EMC Clariion SAN boxes back when I was doing data center work. Later on though, when I was in charge of buying new stuff I'd rack the stuff up first and go crazy with it before it was in production. Either way works. I don't miss having those fans running in my house though.

packetslave 14y ago
The really nice thing about labs these days is how much you can do virtually. Before I changed jobs, I had 2 NetApp filers doing replication, two EMC Clariion CX arrays, and two complete VMware datacenters doing DR failover, vMotion, and DRS. All on two PC servers in a downstairs closet.

c141charlie 14y ago

Who needs a home lab when you have AWS and other on demand cloud computing providers at your disposal?

elchief 14y ago
But AWS uses Xen and not VMWare!

esperluette 14y ago

"Girlfriend Impact" -- bleh. Yeah, I know, 99.99whatever9% of IT workers, esp in the ops role, are guys, but would it have taken so much extra thought to put "family impact"? Or even "balanced life penalty"? And I say this as someone who has spent a ridiculous amount of money on tech books in the past year (probably four figures) and who is giving up 1.5-2 nights a week, on average, to tech meetups.

mathrawka 14y ago
I'm pretty sure he was referring to his own personal "Girlfriend Impact". It was not a general statement about all IT workers, just the one who was talking about the lab.

femto 14y ago

If an employee is going to have invest effort into a significant home lab, it'd make sense to go the extra mile and start using the lab to earn an income, reducing reliance on said employer.

No1 14y ago

His $1,362 per month spend (not including hardware, which it sounds like he gets for free) seems a bit spendy for just a hobby "lab". Since when was a rack of computers called a lab? Does a few servers in the closet count? I want to know if I'm in danger of losing my job.

codex 14y ago

TL;DR: An evangelist for a company that sells software for virtual labs says that everyone should have a lab at home.

peterclary 14y ago

"Today, the lab costs £870 a month thanks to the presence of a pair of Dell EqualLogic arrays." To paraphrase that fount of wisdom, the hippy from The Simpsons: Sounds like you're working for your lab. Simplify, man!