3 ms·

I work at a pretty successful SaaS start-up in the valley and one of my responsibility is to hire system engineers. It's been one of the most challenging positi

by sybhn 14y ago

I work at a pretty successful SaaS start-up in the valley and one of my responsibility is to hire system engineers. It's been one of the most challenging positions I ever had to fill. We see many developers using Linux nowadays - which is an improvement I guess, but there's a big difference between building your little rail apps on your local Ubuntu instance and setting-up/managing/scaling/troubleshooting Linux based ecosystems of applications & servers. [edit sp]

Spooky23 14y ago
One of the tough things is that Red Hat and SUSE really mangled their desktop story. Ubuntu has really captured mindshare in the development space. In the RH world, you do have the certification path, and a supply of good SAs who have worked in professional, systems-focused capacities. Most of the old Unix guys who are still around doing SA work have certs on the RH stack. On the Ubuntu side, many of the people I see who claim "Ubuntu" subject matter expertise are basically Mac users who have more comfort working in the shell. That's a testament to the improvements in the Linux ecosystem from a desktop POV, but not so good if you are trying to hire people! Obviously, the wizards are out there, but they are hard to find.
DodgyEggplant 14y ago
One issue is training and test environment. Easy to set up a VPS and play with it, but the larger system you probably have to learn on the job, as apprentice. What skills/resources do you suggest to improve for "my app runs on linux" developer - towards "I know linux" in the level you seek for?
- pathy 14y ago
  This is a genuinely interesting question. I can manage my own linux server well enough but I could not in a million years scale a larger system.
  - sybhn 14y ago
    'I know linux' is different than 'I know how to scale on a linux stack'. Many engineers who build native apps on Linux can claim 'i know linux'. Native is an important distinction, as many good java developers for example have no clue what is going on down the stack. For the 'I know how to scale on linux stack', I'd think the fastest way would be for you to look into a (1) system imager (e.g. kickstart) and a (2) configuration management system (e.g. puppet or chef). This will bring you scale and management. Throw in a (3) monitoring/alerting system (e.g. nagios and cacti). Finally, put your coding skills to work by building a small app that glues all the above together.

by sybhn 14y ago

Spooky23 14y ago

One of the tough things is that Red Hat and SUSE really mangled their desktop story. Ubuntu has really captured mindshare in the development space. In the RH world, you do have the certification path, and a supply of good SAs who have worked in professional, systems-focused capacities. Most of the old Unix guys who are still around doing SA work have certs on the RH stack. On the Ubuntu side, many of the people I see who claim "Ubuntu" subject matter expertise are basically Mac users who have more comfort working in the shell. That's a testament to the improvements in the Linux ecosystem from a desktop POV, but not so good if you are trying to hire people! Obviously, the wizards are out there, but they are hard to find.

DodgyEggplant 14y ago

One issue is training and test environment. Easy to set up a VPS and play with it, but the larger system you probably have to learn on the job, as apprentice. What skills/resources do you suggest to improve for "my app runs on linux" developer - towards "I know linux" in the level you seek for?

pathy 14y ago
This is a genuinely interesting question. I can manage my own linux server well enough but I could not in a million years scale a larger system.
- sybhn 14y ago
  'I know linux' is different than 'I know how to scale on a linux stack'. Many engineers who build native apps on Linux can claim 'i know linux'. Native is an important distinction, as many good java developers for example have no clue what is going on down the stack. For the 'I know how to scale on linux stack', I'd think the fastest way would be for you to look into a (1) system imager (e.g. kickstart) and a (2) configuration management system (e.g. puppet or chef). This will bring you scale and management. Throw in a (3) monitoring/alerting system (e.g. nagios and cacti). Finally, put your coding skills to work by building a small app that glues all the above together.