<div dir="ltr"><span class="gmail-im" style="text-align:left;color:rgb(80,0,80);text-transform:none;text-indent:0px;letter-spacing:normal;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:400;text-decoration:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;background-color:transparent"><div style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span style="text-align:left;color:rgb(34,34,34);text-transform:none;text-indent:0px;letter-spacing:normal;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:400;text-decoration:none;word-spacing:0px;display:inline;white-space:normal;float:none;background-color:transparent">>If a sys admin position involves shell prorgramming/scripting, knowing the details of a specific programming language or processor are secondary, but thinking like a >programmer is skill not everyone has or can develop.Just last week a wrote a Lua script without knowing a thing about Lua. I looked at the example scripts, and then >googled to fill in the blanks. I think most SysAdmins do stuff like that on a regular basis.</span></div><div style="color:rgb(80,0,80)"><span style="text-align:left;color:rgb(34,34,34);text-transform:none;text-indent:0px;letter-spacing:normal;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:400;text-decoration:none;word-spacing:0px;display:inline;white-space:normal;float:none;background-color:transparent"><br></span></div></span><div style="margin:0px;text-align:left;color:rgb(34,34,34);text-transform:none;text-indent:0px;letter-spacing:normal;padding-bottom:0px;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:400;text-decoration:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;direction:ltr;background-color:transparent"><span style="text-align:left;color:rgb(34,34,34);text-transform:none;text-indent:0px;letter-spacing:normal;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:400;text-decoration:none;word-spacing:0px;display:inline;white-space:normal;float:none;background-color:transparent">Nooo.. I would never do that.</span></div><div style="margin:0px;text-align:left;color:rgb(34,34,34);text-transform:none;text-indent:0px;letter-spacing:normal;padding-bottom:0px;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:400;text-decoration:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;direction:ltr;background-color:transparent"><span style="text-align:left;color:rgb(34,34,34);text-transform:none;text-indent:0px;letter-spacing:normal;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:400;text-decoration:none;word-spacing:0px;display:inline;white-space:normal;float:none;background-color:transparent">At one stage I had a whole shelf of Oreilly books at work. Still have them at home, but a bunch went to Textbooks for Africa recently.</span></div><div style="margin:0px;text-align:left;color:rgb(34,34,34);text-transform:none;text-indent:0px;letter-spacing:normal;padding-bottom:0px;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:400;text-decoration:none;word-spacing:0px;white-space:normal;direction:ltr;background-color:transparent"><span style="text-align:left;color:rgb(34,34,34);text-transform:none;text-indent:0px;letter-spacing:normal;font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:12.8px;font-style:normal;font-variant:normal;font-weight:400;text-decoration:none;word-spacing:0px;display:inline;white-space:normal;float:none;background-color:transparent">My local library gladly accepted some rather heavy tomes on parallel programming. Goodness knows what the residents of SE London make of them. I rather hope that some youngster is inspired by one of the books.</span></div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 19 June 2018 at 18:01, Prentice Bisbal <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:pbisbal@pppl.gov" target="_blank">pbisbal@pppl.gov</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">Despite the source (just kidding, Bill!) I'm going to have to support this line of questioning.<br>
<br>
HPC (and general IT), consists of systems with many different layers, and it takes the correct personality type with the good analytical skills to be able to trouble shoot things effectively. I really don't care about questioning an interviewee about technical minutiae in an interview. Most of that can be easily googled these days. The real value/skill is in coming up with a plan of attack: knowing where to start troubleshooting, what to google, how to correctly interpret those google results, and then now to apply what you find online to fix your problem.<br>
<br>
If a sys admin position involves shell prorgramming/scripting, knowing the details of a specific programming language or processor are secondary, but thinking like a programmer is skill not everyone has or can develop.Just last week a wrote a Lua script without knowing a thing about Lua. I looked at the example scripts, and then googled to fill in the blanks. I think most SysAdmins do stuff like that on a regular basis.<br>
<br>
If a position involves writing optimized code, I wouldn't apply this logic - getting really good performance can require knowing the minutiae of a specific language, but most HPC sys admins don't do that level of programming.<br>
<br>
I also look for people who have hobbies that involve understanding how things go together and work: working on bicycles or cars, electronics, etc. If you can understand how other things go together or work, computers, are not that big of a jump.<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>
<br>
Prentice</font></span><div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><br>
<br>
On 06/13/2018 02:37 PM, Bill Abbott wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
One of my standard interview questions is to say ok, you start on Monday and you're placed in charge of a web/db server, tell me what you do your first week.<br>
<br>
What I want to hear is security, backups, log checking, monitoring, performance, functionality, etc., but most of all I want to know how they think and if they can come up with a coherent plan.<br>
<br>
Another version is "A user says the cluster is slow. What do you do?"<br>
<br>
Bill<br>
<br>
On 06/13/2018 02:27 PM, Andrew Latham wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Such a broad topic. I would assume things like DHCP, TFTP, Networking, PXE and IPMI which come to mind. Troubleshooting tools, configuration management, version control, monitoring, issue tracking and many other processes are at play. I would love to hear any interview questions which could cover this array of topics sanely.<br>
<br>
Suggested question: Tell me the best hardware horror story?<br>
<br>
<br>
On Wed, Jun 13, 2018 at 12:08 PM Jonathan Engwall <<a href="mailto:engwalljonathanthereal@gmail.com" target="_blank">engwalljonathanthereal@gmail.<wbr>com</a> <mailto:<a href="mailto:engwalljonathanthereal@gmail.com" target="_blank">engwalljonathanthereal<wbr>@gmail.com</a>>> wrote:<br>
<br>
John Hearne wrote:<br>
> Stuart Midgley works for DUG? They are currently<br>
> recruiting for an HPC manager in London... Interesting...<br>
<br>
Recruitment at DUG wants to call me about Low Level HPC. I have at<br>
least until 6pm.<br>
I am excited but also terrified. My background is C and now<br>
JavaScript, mostly online course work and telnet MUDs.<br>
Any suggestions are very much needed.<br>
What must a "low level HPC" know on day 1???<br>
Jonathan Engwall<br>
<a href="mailto:engwalljonathanthereal@gmail.com" target="_blank">engwalljonathanthereal@gmail.c<wbr>om</a><br>
<mailto:<a href="mailto:engwalljonathanthereal@gmail.com" target="_blank">engwalljonathanthereal<wbr>@gmail.com</a>><br>
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