PaulDotCom mailing list archives
Specialise to survive?
From: tadaka at gmail.com (Jason Wood)
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 11:11:06 -0600
And that's why I now offer up network 101 classes (and a series of others) to *anyone* who wants to attend.
Mick, I'm glad you made this comment and that you've started doing this. How are the classes going and what impact has it had on Carl and the organization? I've thought a lot about this idea right here, but never gotten off my butt to put one together. I've worked with a few Clueless Carls and while I can cuss about them real good, I've never done much other than give a terse lecture on why X was a really bad idea. So to jack the thread even further, perhaps I'm not doing enough to make sure Carl doesn't remain clueless. Carl has the major portion of that responsibility, but for the good of my sanity and the organization, some 101 classes may be in order. Jason On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 8:38 AM, Michael Douglas <mick at pauldotcom.com>wrote:
Yes, specialists with a lack of skill in other areas can be truly dangerous. Funny & true story (details of where this happened omitted to protect the guilty) One day I saw our IDS system explode with alarms about some truly horrific network traffic, at the same time, our host monitoring system started showing web servers winking out of existence. Evil was afoot. As I was about to run to the server room, a DBA we'll call Clueless Carl came over. And asked the most horrifying question I've ever heard. Carl: "Mick, I just ran into a strange ping problem. When I send pings that are over 2.5 meg in size I'll get a response back once... but then the rest time out." Me: (I made a squeaking "urk" type sound) ... what? Carl: You know ping. I need to test the network. Ping's how you do it. Me: well... sometimes. Did you say 2.5 Meg? As in megabytes? via ping? Carl: (clearly exasperated) YEAH! We're having trouble with the TPS reports... some of the results don't display in the browser right. Looking at the table the result set is a bit under 2.5 Meg. So I wanted to see why the network can't handle data sets that large. We have a problem here! Me: You have no idea! (evil grin) And that's why I now offer up network 101 classes (and a series of others) to *anyone* who wants to attend. Sorry to thread jack, but it was too good to pass up! - Mick On Sun, Aug 16, 2009 at 10:07 AM, Raffi Jamgotchian<raffi at flossyourmind.com> wrote:That's precisely what's wrong about your argument. Your asumption is that the generalist doesn't have deep understanding in any subject. A good generalist can do the work of many people. But the same good generalist needs to know when to call in for help. In my experience, present company excluded of course, specialists that are typically so narrow in thinking cause more issues than not. Because they don't completely understand the affects on surrounding disciplines. ---- Raffi On Aug 16, 2009, at 8:49 AM, Shane Kelly <shane at nightcoder.org> wrote:I think you are going to have incompetent people at either side of the spectrum. You could argue that generalists are multi-handed specialists / or that specialists do not have sufficient understanding of surround areas. You could also argue that generalists do not have enough technical understanding or patience to pursue a given specialism. It ultimately comes down to how must time and effort people are willing to invest in understanding their acclaimed subject. IMHO, you can not encapsulate peoples skill level at a 100 foot view of there depth into the subject. You need people in both sides of the field. Generalists to have enough knowledge to understand where organisations should focus efforts. Specialists to focus on that area and have deep technical knowledge of that area to ensure a quality work is performed. In my view, generalists make good sales people, specialists get recognised in the security field for there technical achievements. Shane 2009/8/16 Raffi Jamgotchian <raffi at flossyourmind.com>:Hear hear. Whether a generalist or a specialist, hubris will bite you. ---- Raffi On Aug 15, 2009, at 10:35 PM, Michael Douglas <mick at pauldotcom.com> wrote:jack of all trades messed up the environmentOK this is the one area where I wasn't too clear on the earlier thread. I'm assuming that you are competent in everything that you say you're going to do. Unfortunately, this isn't the case. There are many Jerks of All Trades who will mess things up badly. For those who mentioned it above, yes being a generalist does tend to get you in the small and medium sized businesses... but there are exceptions... take my day job for instance. For those of you who don't know, I work at OCLC -- a non-profit library coop. We're what I'd consider large. We have over 72,000 libraries in our collective. We have a database with holdings information on about 1.2 billion (yes billion) records (books and other stuff). We have a few thousand servers... yet they hired me... A generalist! I'm a generalist... but a big part of my ability to get things done is admitting what I don't know. For instance, a big part of my skill with forensics is how I DON'T mess up data. If things get to hairy for me, I can wrap things up and call in folks who are better than me (and remember, there ALWAYS is someone better than you -- thinking otherwise is the first step on the path to destruction) knowing when to sit down and hack or when to walk away is probably the greatest skill anyone in computers can have! - Mick On Sat, Aug 15, 2009 at 2:42 PM, John Navarro<jnavtx at gmail.com> wrote:Good point Tim! Robert, I do think that a "jack of all trades" type will fit in better to smaller companies, whereas the specialized, from my experience, seem to have a better chance at getting into larger corporations. It was never my intention to be "specialized", but having worked at a firewall vendor it was just easier to find those opportunities that required a specific skillset. Of course it could be that the jack of all trades messed up the environment and they needed someone specialized to come in and clean it up ;) On Sat, Aug 15, 2009 at 8:16 AM, Tim Krabec <tkrabec at gmail.com> wrote:Don't forget your specialization does not have to be computer/ program related You don't have to specialize in "forensic analysis of devorak keyboards for AS/400 systems emulating Apple IIc systems" You could specialize in database recovery for small businesses. Or BCP & DR for law offices or real estate companies. -- Tim Krabec Kracomp 772-597-2349 smbminute.com kracomp.blogspot.com www.kracomp.com _______________________________________________ Pauldotcom mailing list Pauldotcom at mail.pauldotcom.com http://mail.pauldotcom.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pauldotcom Main Web Site: http://pauldotcom.com_______________________________________________ Pauldotcom mailing list Pauldotcom at mail.pauldotcom.com http://mail.pauldotcom.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pauldotcom Main Web Site: http://pauldotcom.com_______________________________________________ Pauldotcom mailing list Pauldotcom at mail.pauldotcom.com http://mail.pauldotcom.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pauldotcom Main Web Site: http://pauldotcom.com_______________________________________________ Pauldotcom mailing list Pauldotcom at mail.pauldotcom.com http://mail.pauldotcom.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pauldotcom Main Web Site: http://pauldotcom.com_______________________________________________ Pauldotcom mailing list Pauldotcom at mail.pauldotcom.com http://mail.pauldotcom.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pauldotcom Main Web Site: http://pauldotcom.com_______________________________________________ Pauldotcom mailing list Pauldotcom at mail.pauldotcom.com http://mail.pauldotcom.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pauldotcom Main Web Site: http://pauldotcom.com_______________________________________________ Pauldotcom mailing list Pauldotcom at mail.pauldotcom.com http://mail.pauldotcom.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pauldotcom Main Web Site: http://pauldotcom.com
-- irc: Tadaka Twitter: Jason_Wood jwnetworkconsulting.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.pauldotcom.com/pipermail/pauldotcom/attachments/20090816/1bb0271f/attachment.htm
Current thread:
- Specialise to survive?, (continued)
- Specialise to survive? Jody & Jennifer McCluggage (Aug 14)
- Specialise to survive? Robert Portvliet (Aug 14)
- Specialise to survive? Tim Krabec (Aug 15)
- Specialise to survive? John Navarro (Aug 15)
- Specialise to survive? Michael Douglas (Aug 15)
- Specialise to survive? John Navarro (Aug 15)
- Specialise to survive? Raffi Jamgotchian (Aug 15)
- Specialise to survive? Shane Kelly (Aug 16)
- Specialise to survive? Raffi Jamgotchian (Aug 16)
- Specialise to survive? Michael Douglas (Aug 16)
- Specialise to survive? Jason Wood (Aug 16)
- Specialise to survive? Michael Douglas (Aug 16)
- Specialise to survive? Matt Hillman (Aug 18)
- Specialise to survive? Shane Kelly (Aug 18)
- Specialise to survive? Jason Wood (Aug 15)
- Specialise to survive? Subba Rao (Sep 27)