Re: tlug: Linux for the masses (was: ppa)

[Christopher Sekiya <wileyc@example.com>]

On Mon, Jan 24, 2000 at 07:30:53AM +0900, Frank Bennett wrote:

> Uh, sorry, I must have missed something here ... who said that
> Linux-for-the-masses was going to propagate The Knowledge
> (to borrow a phrase from London cabbie circles) to them as a class?

Years ago, watching Linux catch on was truly exciting.  The idea of having
Linux on every desktop was breathtaking, as the process would require _real_
computer literacy on the part of the users.  After all, UNIX was a _real_
OS (relatively speaking), it required (greater) technical proficiency, so
therefore the Knowledge would spread of its own accord ;)

Naive, ne?  The users didn't get more clueful -- UNIX was dumbed down.  Now,
if one can press TurboConfigurator's pretty multi-colored buttons, one
considers oneself a Guru of UNIX.  If it ain't point-and-click, it's a waste
of time[1].

> Maybe you can tighten up the text of your adverts, to get a little
> self-selection going in your favor?

The advertisments specify _senior_ admins, with n years of experience running
mission-critical systems, etc.  The applicants are falling into two categories:

* Admins who have been in the business for years, but can't (or won't) think
  their way through problems.  The standout example of this was a fellow with
  eighteen years of mid- to senior-level admin (and who could tell me the
  differences between the sun4c and sun4m archs in a single breath), but
  had great difficulty dealing with performance issues due to causes other
  than busy hard drives.

* Admins who know Linux/FreeBSD ... and only Linux/FreeBSD.  They tend to lie
  on their resume, perhaps believing that arrogance equals experience.

Perhaps we should change the text to read "don't bother to apply for these
positions unless you know what you are doing", but that would scare off the
people that we're really targetting -- those who have the requisite level of
experience, know that they don't know everything, and aren't too egotistical
to learn new things.

> Apologies if this should have gone to Advocacy.

tlug-advocacy no longer exists, AFAIK.

-- Chris

[1] Had a consultant tell us last week that he'd never screwed up a DNS
    record edit, as his neato GUI config tool never made mistakes.  He took
    great offense when we asked him if he'd ever actually looked at the tool's
    output -- apparently it didn't check for underscores ...

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