Job postings

[Dan Ryan]

Hey folks!

We have an open Ops position at $DAYJOB but I wanted to first ask the group if it's kosher before I posted it here. I'm not a recruiter so I didn't want to come off like one :)

On a related note, where are people posting job opportunities these days? Is there a DevOps-specific board anywhere?

--

Dan Ryan

[Mason Turner]

On Oct 18, 2012, at 3:57 PM, Dan Ryan <scri...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On a related note, where are people posting job opportunities these days? Is there a DevOps-specific board anywhere?

I've been getting a lot of recruiters via Stackoverflow Careers.

[Yves Hanoulle]

>On a related note, where are people posting job opportunities these days? Is there a DevOps-specific board anywhere?

you see it you own it.

 aka, it might be a good idea to create one.

y

[Gmail - benkrueger]

Not to be an ass, but wouldn't that be every job listing for sysadmins, system engineer, and SRE? Why do we need a special board for one of yet another in an (unfortunate) long line of names?

[Dan Ryan]

Not to be an ass, but wouldn't that be every job listing for sysadmins, system engineer, and SRE? Why do we need a special board for one of yet another in an (unfortunate) long line of names?

Not to also be an ass, but probably for the same intentions we have a special mailing list?

[Nathaniel R. Ben-Attar]

I think Ben has a very good point.  DevOps mailing list is a great forum for discussing the practices and philosophies behind DevOps in general but job listings geared toward looking for "DevOps Engineers" narrows the pool too much.  Job listings should be gears towards looking for Engineers in their specific fields and mention a desire for candidates familiar with standard DevOps practices or expressing a desire to learn and embrace Devops.    

[Gmail - benkrueger]

You beat me to the punch (and with fewer words to boot), but I'll throw in what I had to say anyway. The mailing list is ostensibly to discuss the methodology of devops, particularly as performed by development and operations. It's appropriate as its own list because this is a specialized subset of operations that would be distracting or overwhelming on an existing and more general mailing list. Given that the newly invented and often colorfully varied devops positions are generally well filled by people who have previously held titles like system administrator, systems engineer, and site reliability engineer, it seems a bit silly to specialize below the already narrow field of operations. More to the point, it is unlikely to help hire qualified candidates. The problem our industry finds itself dealing with is one of availability, not sorting; if we had a plethora of candidates to choose from and our biggest problem was sorting the "sysadmins" from the "devops" then a specialized board might make sense, but instead there is a shortage of qualified candidates. Can't solve that problem by further dividing the job postings.

Benjamin

[Nathaniel R. Ben-Attar]

Exactly.

Dan, my advice for filling a devops position is to focus on the core skill set that your engineering org values most or sees the most need for in your candidate search.  Address devops tools and philosophies in the screening process.  You will find that there are some fantastic engineers with very in depth backgrounds in the technologies you use who may not have been exposed to a devops environment.  You will also find piss poor engineers who know all the devops keywords but can't strap on a thinking cap and solve real world problems or find common ground for communication across engineering specialties.  In addition, devops in practice is quite varied in different orgs.  There is far more value in finding rock solid engineers who can quickly learn and adapt to your organization's devops practices.

[Yves Hanoulle]

2012/10/18 Gmail - benkrueger <ben.k...@gmail.com>

I don't agree. finding a good candidate takes time. 

if you have a specific job board, you already know that people there are interested in these kind of jobs, and more important for people interested in devops jobs, they also know that the jobs on that board are specific for devops.

I think that developers interested in devops jobs, will not watch the sysadmin boards, so you as a job poster, you will loose part of the people who might be good at the job...

aka maybe we need both...

y

 

 

Benjamin

[Matt Joyce]

DevOps people are in short supply and high demand at the moment.  The reality is it's difficult for people to find quality engineers.  And yes that means they will use every avenue they can to recruit.  However that pollutes this list and costs in value.

So no posting job adverts here please.

-Matt

[Yves Hanoulle]

2012/10/18 Matt Joyce <mdj...@gmail.com>

DevOps people are in short supply and high demand at the moment.  The reality is it's difficult for people to find quality engineers.  And yes that means they will use every avenue they can to recruit.  However that pollutes this list and costs in value.

So no posting job adverts here please.

for clarity that's not what I said.

I said another list just for that.

(as they are n high demand)

[damone...@gmail.com]

So no posting job adverts here please.

+10 to that. 

The reality is it's difficult for people to find quality engineers. 

I used to be dead set against using the word "DevOps" in any job title or team name. I still think it makes about as much sense as saying you want to hire an "Agile" (rather than a Developer who is knowledgable in Agile principles and practices, among other skills). 

But I've softened my stance for one practical reason... I spoke with a few hiring managers who have used it effectively as a "freshness" filter. It helps candidates pattern match to find employers that at least aspire to have a clue and it helps employers by being a beacon to attract the self-selecting crowd how knows what DevOps is and responds to it.

That being said, it is being overused ("let's rebrand everyone the DevOps something or other!") and as word gets out it will probably be less useful as a filter (like the dilution of  "Big Data")

[Matt Joyce]

I still hate that cloud is called cloud... but that much like the term computer science just will not go away ever.  So suffer.

[Ernest Mueller]

I'm a hiring manager. We're a very DevOpsed shop - distributed
product teams with embedded dev, QA, and ops resources on them.
Cloud, puppet, etc.

We tried hiring for several months for "Linux System Administrators"
and other variants of that. Then we switched to "DevOps System
Engineer" and "DevOps Developer" (basically ops guys who have their
heads screwed on right and can automate vs. developers with strengths
in systems programming, automation, build) and the quality of
candidates we were getting in went up dramatically. Our head
engineering recruiter was extremely struck by the differential. Not
more candidates, but candidates that a) were better fits for our
roles and b) that could pass our pretty stringent interview process.

I probably shouldn't share this because I'd rather hire people away
from those that don't believe in it, but there it is. :-) Proof by
code, manager style.

Ernest

>><<mailto:ben.k...@gmail.com>ben.k...@gmail.com>

[Spike Morelli]

+1 to everything Ernest said, same exact experience here.

in the end as long as you care to explain its meaning and not just use it as a catch-all buzzword, it's a very good filter and way to match people with common world views. And to be honest to me the key is not as much the set of skills, but the mentality of how folks that recognize themselves in devops role approach such position.

Spike