Re: a question regarding resumes

[Rick Heaton <rheaton@at.tandem.com>]

Steven Jenkins writes:
> 
> That is a fairly enlightened perspective, but it's been my experience
> (albeit limited) that most SAs don't really stick around long enough
> to learn anything useful.  Or once they have really learned something,
> they leave.  If the average time on a job is on the order of 2-3 years,
> then most places really need their SAs to already have knowledge
> (obviously there are exceptions, but it's clearly unreasonable for
> a computer illiterate company to hire someone who does not have
> specific knowledge).

I strongly disagree.  2-3 years is MORE than enough time to "learn something
useful."  Heck, 3 months is usually sufficient for a bright, motivated
person to be a quite valuable contributor for a given environment.  Sure,
that's not enough time to go from square 1 to Senior Admin (tm), but
I don't think that's what we're talking about here.

Granted, it's hard to keep such a person interested for longer than 2-3 years
in a single-administrator site, but that's a whole different problem.

    -- Rick