Training is different from the other side!
September 1, 2009
Ryan, my new admin, has been doing a great job. After only a week, he’s able to let me get more done by essentially allowing me to be in two places at once. This is a Good Thing(tm).
Training has definitely been interesting! It’s completely different from this side. I definitely have a lot more respect for people like my old Cisco teacher, Tom, or Brian Jones, or you, if you’ve done training. wow! I like it though, but I’m not very good at it yet. I suppose it’s something that will improve in time.
The subjects we’ve been covering are sort of a baseline for the skills he needs to have to offload my typical workload, and I’ve been throwing in stuff that will help him later on when I start giving him heavier tasks. I want to make sure to balance these required skills with his interests, and I don’t want to forget that he came here because I get to play with an astonishing variety of toys technologies.
Overall, I’m definitely liking the learning process from the other side, and that’s not to say that I’m not learning, too, because I have to. If I don’t learn from Ryan, then we’ll have hired the wrong guy, and I’ll be doing him a disservice because I think you have to learn from someone to teach them well.
Any advice or thoughts on better ways to transfer knowledge? I wouldn’t say no to one of those Matrix-style uploaders right about now!
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September 1st, 2009 at 9:49 am
Matt,
Something I’ve learned from training several batches of students is that you can always do it better the next time around. What we’re doing for the students we’ll be hiring later this year is to come up with training checklists. There’s a checklist for each competency area (e.g. poster printing, machine re-imaging, etc) which will have a list of skills the trainee should be able to demonstrate before being turned loose.
The idea, then, is that you sit down with the person and show them in detail how it’s done, perhaps several times. Then you let them train you on it. If they can, then you know its done. Of course, this method works better for technical tasks (especially ones that are primarily robotical) but it does work. We made good use of it in my previous life as a Training Supervisor at a local quick-service restaurant.
September 1st, 2009 at 10:28 am
Don’t make him exactly like you either. Show him the baseline of each task, then give him the ability to explore new methods. Help him redesign a new process or two, and let him build experience and confidence.
In that way, when you have to troubleshoot a difficult problem, you won’t just have a student, you’ll have a partner.
If you are interested in SA education and training, checkout the Short Topics on System Administration #4 and #5 http://www.sage.org/pubs/short_topics.html
September 1st, 2009 at 11:05 am
In the past when I have taken interns what I do is show them a few basics so they can mostly get around. Then I just sickem on desktop support. I usually try to co
e up with a project. Something I have wanted to do but have not had time but falls close to their interests. Then I make that thier project. I give them advice along the way but I try not to show them how to complete the project. When it’s done and they think it works I have them takeme through the setup process and train me how to use the service (if needed). After that I go back through the setup with them and point out the best practices.
I have found it gives them a great sense of accomplishment to have their own project.
Good luck and keep us posted.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Hey it’s Justin from sysadmin day meetup,
considering I wasn’t in that position too long ago, I’d say break things down in subjects, DNS, Apache, Backups, Monitoring, etc.. And start him with something small in each and build upon there. I remember editing my first zone file in bind, learning about the serials, A Records vs CNAMEs, from there built upon things. With Nagios I was taught how to add host monitoring and get things going and then I began to really learn how nagios worked with SNMP. Apache, setting up a basic vhost, and once you get a handle on that, begin to learn about how tuning apache.
I’d say if you can show him the basics in each area, that could begin to take the load off off your day to day , and each of those tasks you can build upon, something as simple as adding a user can segway into uids,gids , issues with permissions on shared docroots, etc.
Oh also another good thing is if you have documentation, have him follow you docs on certain tasks and it gives you a good idea of how well your documentation is written and where it can be improved. If he gets confused at any point in your documentation, guide him through it and have him update your documentation =). Lots of times we don’t realize our own docs just sometimes only make sense to us, and bits and pieces are filled in by our brain as we read them.
September 1st, 2009 at 11:57 pm
@Ben – Thanks, the checklist is an amazing invention. I’ve really got to start using it in more places than I have been. I’ve also heard incredibly good things about fast food training. Say what you will about the food, it is always the same, everywhere, and quality control like that doesn’t grow on trees. I bet it does give you an interesting perspective on training in IT. I know my training at RadioShack when I was a counter-jockey really opened my eyes to sales.
@Joseph – You’re right. I don’t want a mini-me (well, I do, but that’s off topic). Andrew, my boss and sometimes blog visitor, will be training Ryan on more DBA-like tasks in the future, which I have sort of eschewed. Getting him to cross train there will be great. It’ll open his experiences up and reduce Andrew’s bus factor. Win-Win.
@Nick – I think the idea of starting with desktop support is great. Now if I could just convince my users of that! They still have the habit of asking me things right off the bat, but I’ve taken a tip from Tom Limoncelli’s Time Management for System Administrators
(great book) and put Ryan in the direct line of attack from my users. The stragglers are going to be getting a gentle nudge from me to talk to Ryan first.
You’re right on about the project, too. He came in with experience in making machine images. Guess what he’s been doing! It’s been a great help, since it takes time, and I don’t have time. It gets something very useful accomplished, and as you said, he knows it.
@Justin – Hey, thanks for stopping by. I had a great time at the meetup. I hope you did too.
Yes, I agree that you’ve got to break it down. He’s got a decent background in Linux as a desktop user, but not to much in administration or networking, so I’ve been approaching things from those angles. Essentially, my script has been “What do you know about X?” Then we’ll review what he knows, and expand his knowledge out from there. It’s worked so far, but then the most complex thing I’ve unleashed on him yet has been subnetting. He got that OK, so I have faith in him to get the rest of it.
I like the idea on documentation. I have some, but like most people, it’s out of date. One of the projects (like Nick mentioned) I have him work on may be revising and organizing the IT section of the internal wiki. I’ve got a “sysadmin scratch pad” for quick notes to myself that is somewhere around 5 pages. Exciting!
Thanks everyone, for the comments!