Devops Hiring - Devopsdays NYC 2013

Your organization has embraced the Devops philosophy, and it’s growing. Now you need to hire Devops adherents, but you soon discover that finding them presents an unusual set of challenges. Since DevOps is not a job description (the occasional “Head of DevOps” from 2007 notwithstanding), what criteria can we use to find qualified people? Is it a SysAdmin who codes? Is it a developer who knows what an inode is? Is it a SRE or a WebOps Engineer? Is it a unicorn? Where do you find them? How you capture these mythical creatures?

Transcript

1. Dave Zwieback @mindweather Head of Systems
3. ?
5. Who? Where? How?
6. Who? Where? How?
18. Пойди туда – не знаю куда, принеси того - не знаю чего.
19. Go I know not whither, And fetch I know not what
21. Who? Where? How?
22. |||||||||-shaped people
23. You might be a generalist if you… •  have been doing this “for a while” •  have a jagged, non-linear career path •  have a healthy interest in “disaster porn” •  have some arcane, secret knowledge •  have wide-ranging interests •  have a non-traditional (non-CS) background
24. ✓ Who? Where? How?
25. ✓ Who? Where? How?
33. IRC!
38. ✓ Who? ✓ Where? How?
39. ✓ Who? ✓ Where? How?
41. “Thank for not giving up on me. I can't do this week but let's get something on the books for next week. Tuesday afternoon say?” Actual response after 7 e-mails in 5 months.
42. 56% higher response rate hiring manager vs recruiter (YMMV)
43. “When I hired John at Etsy in 2009, the near-term recruiting process was a few months, but the actual recruiting process had been going on for a decade. ” Chad Dickerson, CEO of Etsy
44. “I skipped haskell & did 3 languages [Java, Ruby, and Clojure]. I spent an hour or two on the Java code. The rest was just for fun.” vs “Just to summarize - the skills you need for DevOps are really pretty different than the skills needed as a developer. (Fortunately I've done both for a long time). It's pretty rare that DevOps positions gets coding test [sic], since one generally doesn't write code as part of the job (one does write scripts, and things like chef 'recipes’ for example). That's why I answered it in 'bash' - it's the lingua franca of DevOps. So if you're measuring the potential quality of DevOps guys using the measuring stick for developers, you're likely to run into a disconnect.”
47. Photo Credits •  After the War, when there is no hope, by balt-arts •  Devopsdays Rome 2012, by pkhamre •  Hardcore devops, by Matt Moor •  The Recruiter Honeypot, by Elaine Wherry •  one world, by Kai Schreiber •  Coles Beach, by Kuyan Redman •  Greeting Card: BE MINE mini slip, by Cheryl T •  silo canister, by alan berning