Position in System Administration at SMU

[D G Teed-2]

I learned from someone at SMU about this job posting:

http://www.smu.ca/employment/staff/job3

Basically, this is a system administrator type of position,
with the primary focus on unix servers. They manage
approximately a hundred servers and appliances.
Their shop is running Solaris, Linux, Windows, and
a bit of VMS (which is being phased out).

The competition closes on October 6.

I hope that might be of interest to someone on this list.

--Donald
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[Hatem Nassrat]

On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 4:33 PM, D G Teed <donald.teed@...> wrote:
> a bit of VMS (which is being phased out).

wow. VMS, I don't even know what one of those looks like. Maybe those
can be donated to a museum.

--
Hatem Nassrat
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[Mike Spencer]

Hatem Nassrat <hnassrat@...> wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 4:33 PM, D G Teed <donald.teed@...> wrote:
>> a bit of VMS (which is being phased out).
>
> wow. VMS, I don't even know what one of those looks like. Maybe those
> can be donated to a museum.

I am shocked and appalled when I hear about a community fund raiser at
which you can pay a dollar to hit a piano with a sledge hammer.  Any
computer running VMS, OTOH, seems an ideal candidate for such
treatment. :-)


- Mike

--
Michael Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada       .~.
                                                           /V\
mspencer@...                                     /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/                        ^^-^^

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[Daniel Morrison-2]

2009/9/24 Mike Spencer <mspencer@...>:
> I am shocked and appalled when I hear about a community fund raiser at
> which you can pay a dollar to hit a piano with a sledge hammer.  Any
> computer running VMS, OTOH, seems an ideal candidate for such
> treatment. :-)

        One of the questions that comes up all the time is: How
enthusiastic is our support for UNIX?
        Unix was written on our machines and for our machines many
years ago.  Today, much of UNIX being done is done on our machines.
Ten percent of our VAXs are going for UNIX use.  UNIX is a simple
language, easy to understand, easy to get started with.  It's great for
students, great for somewhat casual users, and it's great for
interchanging programs between different machines.  And so, because of
its popularity in these markets, we support it.  We have good UNIX on
VAX and good UNIX on PDP-11s.
        It is our belief, however, that serious professional users will
run out of things they can do with UNIX. They'll want a real system and
will end up doing VMS when they get to be serious about programming.
        With UNIX, if you're looking for something, you can easily and
quickly check that small manual and find out that it's not there.  With
VMS, no matter what you look for -- it's literally a five-foot shelf of
documentation -- if you look long enough it's there.  That's the
difference -- the beauty of UNIX is it's simple; and the beauty of VMS
is that it's all there.
                -- Ken Olsen, President of DEC, 1984

-from fortune(6)

-D.
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[Eri Ramos Bastos]

(late for the discussion)

That was my position, which I left 4 months ago for another company.

I also received a call from a previous employer asking if I was
willing to consider a new position there, which they seem to be unable
to fill up.

Some of you probably noticed a few job posts for Linux administrators
(ie Martin Lockheed) which are posted again and again and again.

What's going on? I wonder if there are not enough skilled
professionals around, if they are too demanding or if the salaries are
just too low to attract potential candidates.

Regards,
Eri Ramos Bastos

On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 4:33 PM, D G Teed <donald.teed@...> wrote:

> I learned from someone at SMU about this job posting:
>
> http://www.smu.ca/employment/staff/job3
>
> Basically, this is a system administrator type of position,
> with the primary focus on unix servers. They manage
> approximately a hundred servers and appliances.
> Their shop is running Solaris, Linux, Windows, and
> a bit of VMS (which is being phased out).
>
> The competition closes on October 6.
>
> I hope that might be of interest to someone on this list.
>
> --Donald
> _______________________________________________
> nSLUG mailing list
> nSLUG@...
> http://nslug.ns.ca/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nslug
>

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[Ian Campbell-9]

On Mon, Oct 05, 2009 at 03:02:00PM -0300, Eri Ramos Bastos wrote:
>
> What's going on? I wonder if there are not enough skilled
> professionals around, if they are too demanding or if the salaries are
> just too low to attract potential candidates.

My experience out west (which may well be completely different) so far
has shown a couple of factors...

Biggest one is that employers are demanding more and offering less.
Positions are being rewritten to cover work previously done by two or
more people. I was offered ~$15/hr for a sysadmin ("but when you're
not putting out fires you'll be coding") position with on-call.
Unsurprisingly that job has been posted and re-posted for 6 or 7
months now. Other potential employers have also talked well below
normal market wages.

In some cases they're being written with niche skill sets required and
no training available. If you require uncommon experience and you're
not willing to train otherwise promising candidates, you don't get to
complain when you can't find anyone.

Lockheed has a different problem, most of their positions require
security clearance, and not everybody can (or wants to get) cleared. A
friend of mine works there now, apparently getting in was a bit of a
pain. It's also military work, not everybody wants that sort of
environment. Bureaucracy is everywhere, but not like that ;)

... really though, I don't know. Good sysadmins aren't a dime a dozen
but neither are they unique and beautiful snowflakes. If you can't
find one in a city the size of Halifax, you are doing something
fundamentally wrong as an employer.
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[Richard Bonner]

On Mon, 5 Oct 2009, Ian Campbell wrote:

> Biggest one is that employers are demanding more and offering less.
> Positions are being rewritten to cover work previously done by two
> or more people. I was offered ~$15/hr for a sysadmin ("but when
> you're not putting out fires you'll be coding") position with
> on-call. Unsurprisingly that job has been posted and re-posted for 6
> or 7 months now. Other potential employers have also talked well
> below normal market wages.

***   It's the "Chinese Wages" syndrome. Canadians are well below
where they should be in wages. When I was laid off at Sears in 1983, I
was making $8-something an hour - and that was just a part-time
warehouse position. What do retail workers get today? $8 - $10 an
hour.

    Canadians are far worse off today than a generation ago. It takes
two to keep a middle-class existence where one could do it before.
Look at the number of homeless and shopping-cart scroungers compared
to a generation ago.  )-:

  Richard
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[Ian Campbell-9]

On Mon, Oct 05, 2009 at 05:27:00PM -0300, Richard Bonner wrote:

>
> On Mon, 5 Oct 2009, Ian Campbell wrote:
>
> > Biggest one is that employers are demanding more and offering less.
> > Positions are being rewritten to cover work previously done by two
> > or more people. I was offered ~$15/hr for a sysadmin ("but when
> > you're not putting out fires you'll be coding") position with
> > on-call. Unsurprisingly that job has been posted and re-posted for 6
> > or 7 months now. Other potential employers have also talked well
> > below normal market wages.
>
> ***   It's the "Chinese Wages" syndrome. Canadians are well below
> where they should be in wages. When I was laid off at Sears in 1983, I
> was making $8-something an hour - and that was just a part-time
> warehouse position. What do retail workers get today? $8 - $10 an
> hour.

Minimum wage jobs remain minimum wage, that's not too surprising.

>     Canadians are far worse off today than a generation ago. It takes
> two to keep a middle-class existence where one could do it before.
> Look at the number of homeless and shopping-cart scroungers compared
> to a generation ago.  )-:

The problem is more recent. This was abnormally low. The average for
jobs posting pay ranges before the OMG ECONOMIC MELTDOWN was 15-20k/yr
higher.

On average they appear to have dropped 5-10k.
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[mike.lifeguard]

Ian Campbell wrote:
>> When I was laid off at Sears in 1983, I
>> was making $8-something an hour - and that was just a part-time
>> warehouse position. What do retail workers get today? $8 - $10 an
>> hour.
>
> Minimum wage jobs remain minimum wage, that's not too surprising.

It *is* surprising that minimum wage hasn't kept pace with the real cost
of living though. OK, maybe not surprising, but sad for sure.

-Mike
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[Hatem Nassrat]

On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 6:02 PM, Mike.lifeguard <mike.lifeguard@...> wrote:

> Ian Campbell wrote:
>>> When I was laid off at Sears in 1983, I
>>> was making $8-something an hour - and that was just a part-time
>>> warehouse position. What do retail workers get today? $8 - $10 an
>>> hour.
>>
>> Minimum wage jobs remain minimum wage, that's not too surprising.
>
> It *is* surprising that minimum wage hasn't kept pace with the real cost
> of living though. OK, maybe not surprising, but sad for sure.

I am not sure about that. Maybe it is where I come from, but 8+ $ per
hour as a minimum wage is quite amazing to what some people get in
other places of the world. Maybe cost of living there is lower, but in
comparison Canada is still quite impressive.

I mean, I worked as a gas station attendant 4 years ago (i think) when
the minimum wage was 7.65. Anyways I felt that I was being overpaid
since I was basically studying and doing assignments most of the time.
In comparison, if a system administrator gets paid minimum wage, thats
quite sad.

In general I do not agree with the one size fits all minimum wage, I
think the minimum wage should be dependant on the job description.

--
Hatem Nassrat

PS. I had a friend in Egypt who worked in an internet cafe (sys admin,
hardware maintenance, casheir, janitor, ...) and he made 1 EGP an hour
= 0.2 CAD, he worked 10-12 hrs a day (this being his second job). This
was back in 2002, even with the lower cost of living in Egypt, this is
not anywhere near a decent wage. Today, the cost of living in Cairo is
comparable to Halifax.
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[Richard Bonner]

On Mon, 5 Oct 2009, Ian Campbell wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 05, 2009 at 05:27:00PM -0300, Richard Bonner wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, 5 Oct 2009, Ian Campbell wrote:
>>
>>> Biggest one is that employers are demanding more and offering less.
>>> Positions are being rewritten to cover work previously done by two
>>> or more people. I was offered ~$15/hr for a sysadmin ("but when
>>> you're not putting out fires you'll be coding") position with
>>> on-call. Unsurprisingly that job has been posted and re-posted for 6
>>> or 7 months now. Other potential employers have also talked well
>>> below normal market wages.
>>
>> ***   It's the "Chinese Wages" syndrome. Canadians are well below
>> where they should be in wages. When I was laid off at Sears in 1983, I
>> was making $8-something an hour - and that was just a part-time
>> warehouse position. What do retail workers get today? $8 - $10 an
>> hour.
>
> Minimum wage jobs remain minimum wage, that's not too surprising.

***   Ahh, Nova Scotia minimum wage in 1983 was $3-something. Jobs
that used to be good payers have become minimum wage in the past 15
or so years. Pay scales for many jobs have simply not kept up with
costs.

>>     Canadians are far worse off today than a generation ago. It takes
>> two to keep a middle-class existence where one could do it before.
>> Look at the number of homeless and shopping-cart scroungers compared
>> to a generation ago.  )-:
>
> The problem is more recent. This was abnormally low. The average for
> jobs posting pay ranges before the OMG ECONOMIC MELTDOWN was 15-20k/yr
> higher.
>
> On average they appear to have dropped 5-10k.

***   It sure seems like it. I see it as too many foreign companies
be allowed to come in and drive out the better paying businesses.

Richard
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[D G Teed-2]

Hey guys. The pay isn't that terrible.  46 to 56 thousand salary is pretty
typical kind of salary for IT workers at a University.  It is a far jump
from minimal wage, so I don't know why you are talking about that.
It has nothing to do with this position.

I don't know their compensation package, but where I work there
are other pluses besides salary you don't see often in private sector.
They include health spending account (pre-tax income to spend on
medical, dental, etc.),
employer matched pension plan, more vacation plus a week off between terms
at Christmas, and tuition reduction for self and family.

Position closes Oct 6, BTW.
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[Ian Campbell-9]

On Mon, Oct 05, 2009 at 10:29:15PM -0300, D G Teed wrote:
> Hey guys. The pay isn't that terrible.  46 to 56 thousand salary is pretty
> typical kind of salary for IT workers at a University.  It is a far jump
> from minimal wage, so I don't know why you are talking about that.
> It has nothing to do with this position.

The same reason we're talking about pay scales at all on a LUG list,
because sometimes discussions go off-topic... If you re-read the
thread the progression is quite clear.

I don't think there's anything from with 46-56k for a university gig,
especially when coupled with tuition discounts, reduced hours (I heard
somewhere Dal IT does 32.5 hours a week) etc.

I stand by "if you can't find a sysadmin in Halifax you're doing
something fundamentally wrong" though.
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[Richard Bonner]

On Mon, 5 Oct 2009, D G Teed wrote:

> Hey guys. The pay isn't that terrible.  46 to 56 thousand salary is
> pretty typical kind of salary for IT workers at a University.  It is
> a far jump from minimal wage, so I don't know why you are talking
> about that. It has nothing to do with this position.

***   True, but as conversations do, this one drifted.  (-:

  Richard
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[D G Teed-2]

On Tue, Oct 6, 2009 at 12:00 AM, Ian Campbell <ian@...> wrote:

> I stand by "if you can't find a sysadmin in Halifax you're doing
> something fundamentally wrong" though.

And that's why I offered to post a notice on this list.
There is an awesome group of talent and knowledge here
that might not know of the opening, or might know someone
would would like that job.

--Donald
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