Ski, During my time here at $WORK I have seen my share of young sysadmins and the main thing I have seen missing is troubleshooting skills. I have always been torn on how does a person gain troubleshooting skills. Is a person born with that trait or do they gather and retain that knowledge from training and personal experience. I have seen one course that taught analytic troubleshooting ( http://www.kepner-tregoe.com/workshops/our-workshops/analytic-trouble-shooting/). A similar process I saw taught in my venture into the Quality Management world at the Dense Department (http://www.tompeters.com/ Tom Peters the Quality Management Guru). In his process he teaches the analytic approach to any problem in an office (usually thorugh Quality circles).
So if a program is to push out sysadmins it should have a Trouble shooting component where the student is given the tools and preparation to handle any problem. Also one other lack I have found (in my travels here at $WORK) is the underlying knowledge of the network. I am of the belief that with all of the automation and computing devices in our world today we lose the basics on how to do something when there are no devices around. They just don't have the basics. Now it doesn't have to be a 4 credit course on Network topology and the person has to know the 7 layers but they should have the basic knowledge of networks and some history. If they don't get a taste of the history they run the risk of repeating the bad things that have happened. On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 10:26 PM, Craig Cook <[email protected]> wrote: > > > So what do you consider the skills and knowledge needed by a new system > > admin graduate? > > Some skills/knowledge I acquired through university that turned out to be > useful: > > - The ability to listen and understand (From a lecture figure out the few > things that we were going to be tested on) > - Be able to cheat/take shortcuts. No, I don't mean bring notes into an > exam. If you can use someone else's code (giving them credit) use it. > - Able to work the system. What do you really have to get done to pass > the course. > - Broad coverage of technology. How things work. (DB's, programming, > UNIX, system design, TCP packets, Networks, etc). This was also useful to > identify areas of interest for career options. Knowing how to write PASCAL > code was not useful. Knowing the technique was though. > - Work with a team (even when you were supposed to work on your own). > Others in your team brought strengths and could explain concepts. Some > groups had dead-weight. You had to deal with that too. > - A degree gets your first job. After that experience counts. > - Work experience before you graduate. > - Problem solving. Break the problem into small parts. Understand their > relationships. > - Job Interview skills > > Other things that would be useful. > > Be able to write technical documentation > Troubleshooting techniques > Understand that when you graduate you really don't know that much about > computing. (That was taught to me during my first 2 weeks on the job) > Statistics for sysadmins > > Overall I would say "How things work" is critical. The more things the > better. > > If you want your graduate to be marketable, maybe one or two specific > current technologies that are in demand. i.e. windows admin/linux > admin/etc > > You can be sent to training courses by your employer to learn specific > things they need. > > Craig > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss > This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators > http://lopsa.org/ > > -- John J. Boris, Sr. Online Services www.onlinesvc.com
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