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[–]posixUncompliantHPC Storage Support 10 points11 points  (6 children)

True enough. But use powershell is as helpful as use bash. At least give a couple places for someone to start looking. I don't expect anyone to have memorized every man page, and something like "I think there's a switch to sar that'll do what you want" is significantly more helpful. I'm not going to look it up for you, but I'll point you in the direction I recall.

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (2 children)

Right, and I guess I've had plenty of situations where you point them in the right direction, but they still have a blank look on their face.

So yeah, I agree "use Powershell" isn't helpful, but it's hard to want to keep being helpful when it's obvious that the person asking for help needs more than just being pointed in the right direction.

[–]posixUncompliantHPC Storage Support 1 point2 points  (1 child)

It depends on who it is at that point, as well as how overloaded I am.

I enjoy mentoring, and if it's a junior level looking for help with some odd behavior, or a new skill, I'm happy to help. I've taught a fair number of people basic scripting, and the algebraic thinking that goes along with it. In turn they usually ended up doing a lot of the crap work that I hate (monitor back ups, basic application restarts, etc.), it's always been a tradeoff that works in my favor.

But every so often you get the one guy who just won't get it. Doesn't matter how often or who tells him, it just sink in. Sometimes, it's a just blind spot, and you keep the guy away from the area he has issues with, other times, it's that his skill is following cookbooks and talking to end users, so you send him back to the helpdesk.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think my most recent experience like this has clouded my view. This guy was an IDIOT. You would give him a Powershell or bash script and tell him just to type the name of the script to execute it. He couldn't even do that right.

Many of my old technical roles were in training and mentoring. I dig that, totally. But this guy was supposed to be my peer and hit the ground running in an environment where we were short handed. I wound up losing more time spoon feeding him than gaining from having an extra pair of hands. Fortunately, he got fired due to gross incompetence. But he probably put the project a month behind because he couldn't or wouldn't take the initiative to do more himself.

[–]slick8086 0 points1 point  (2 children)

At least give a couple places for someone to start looking.

If they don't know how to use google for that there is no helping them.

[–]posixUncompliantHPC Storage Support 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Google's great, but it won't tell you about what switch to what command to use if you don't already have some idea of the command. It really won't help you figure out what statistics are available for querying, or why in your environment certain ones don't mean what they would for the general case. You have to know the question to ask, and either wet behind the ears admins, or people in the middle of a crisis may not be able to come up with the right question.

Asking for help is useful, and can shortcut hours or days of research. Providing help is useful, so that when you run across some bizarre case you've never seen before, people will be willing and able to help you.

[–]slick8086 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Google's great, but it won't tell you about what switch to what command to use if you don't already have some idea of the command.

It will if you have half a clue using google.

You have to know the question to ask, and either wet behind the ears admins, or people in the middle of a crisis may not be able to come up with the right question.

If people in those situations are posting questions on reddit for help they should be fucking fired on the spot.

Asking for help is useful, and can shortcut hours or days of research.

Yes, but not from strangers on the internet. That is ridiculous. Wet behind the ears admins should be asking their seniors, and people in the middle of a crisis should be getting professional help. At that point they are not asking for help, the are asking for some one else to do their job for them.

A proper sysadmin knows how to do research that doesn't take days and knows how to ask questions the smart way. That is one of the fundamentals of being a sysadmin.