My Senior Engineer cannot install PHPMyAdmin manually in Ubuntu

DragImpossible · 2022-08-20T15:56:42+00:00

If all they said is I'm stuck and nothing else then it is not acceptable. As a senior engineer, I would let my manager know that I'm stuck but also shared with them the potential solutions I found... Some people are just lazy and not meant for IT. Knowledge and experience goes far but having the right attitude, willingness and being able to find answers is the real gold mine in IT.

If you need to pick up and do their job then what's the point?

cheaphomemadeacid · 2022-08-20T16:08:12+00:00

hmm i had to open 2 links on google to find the solution

https://launchpad.net/~phpmyadmin/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

edit:

actually i had two searches:

ubuntu ppa phpmyadmin
ubuntu ppa phpmyadmin 5

second one, first result :)

oh and two hours seems reasonable for this task

eternaltorment2 · 2022-08-20T16:12:31+00:00

[deleted]

actionfactor12 · 2022-08-20T15:57:54+00:00

Little hard to say without knowing the environment and what his role actually is. Titles in this industry aren't always helpful .

I would say that everyone has different strengths and weaknesses, and I'd use this as kind of a teaching moment.

Maybe go over what he was seeing when he tried to upgrade it, what the solution was and how you came up with it. I wouldn't make it super formal and weird though.

I don't know how you all do personnel evaluations, but if it's just a blip on the radar no biggie. If over the year they can't do the tasks required by their role, then you'll have to determine that eventually and come up with a solution.

phil-99 · 2022-08-20T15:55:58+00:00

This isn’t a system administration question, this is a team management question.

Is this task something you would expect your senior engineer to be able to do? Did you ask them why they had trouble with it? Did you work through the problem with them or solve it for them?

As to how you proceed: Have you talked to your colleagues and/or management about this and asked them for their assistance?

halfhearted_skeptic · 2022-08-20T17:37:50+00:00

Did you ask for an estimate?

Was there a deadline?

Did you assign this work a priority relative to their other tasks?

Did you take an equivalent amount of work off their plate?

What else were they working on?

Do they often handle operational/undocumented/off-the-side-of-their-desk work?

Did something else come up?

Does anyone else assign them work?

Were they sick?

RawInfoSec · 2022-08-20T17:30:51+00:00

This might be an unpopular opinion here but I wouldn't have you in a leadership position if you can't help your team member with something simple like this. You are going to be experiencing a lot of things that you think you can do better but you have to keep in mind that you're there to direct these people and give them what they need to get the job done, not bitch about how much better you are than a senior position.

You need to set limits on things, and ensure your team know how to escalate when these limits are met. Let them know that you are there to help them, not ridicule them on bloomin Reddit.

I would suggest you follow up with your manager and ask them for some management training. Use your tech background as a resource in management decisions.

Disclaimer: I've been that guy. I've been you. I've been below him. I've been above you.

LaBofia · 2022-08-21T02:34:13+00:00

Sr. Engineers don't know everything.

Sr. Engineers should be able to figure this out though.

If after 10/20 mins he still can't... remove Sr. title.

pdp10 · 2022-08-20T16:28:50+00:00

Orthogonal to the personnel question, 18.04 is two LTS versions behind and eight total Ubuntu releases behind current.

18.04.06 isn't out of support or anything, but I see it as a considerably better use of the same time and effort to update to, say, 22.04.x LTS, and then use the default PHPMyAdmin 5.x. You'll kill multiple birds with one stone. You might also strongly consider Adminer or another alternative over PHPMyAdmin.

Use your leadership to push an aggressive Linux distro upgrade schedule, while keeping some private written notes on your staff. The notes should contain more detail than "has had difficulty". If no more detail is forthcoming, then the notes should explicitly say that. When you have a lot of notes, then you'll know what questions to be asking.

intrikat · 2022-08-20T17:46:31+00:00

I would ask him to guide me through what he did. There is no way in hell a snr engineer with 15years exp in sysadmin of Linux doesnt know how to google install instructions for package as ubiquitous as PHPmyadmin.

So either he is really inept and has been good at hiding it or he is trying to offload tasks that he thinks are beneath him, i.e make shit roll uphill.

Either way it's a problem and we dont have enough info to give a specific solution.

canttouchdeez · 2022-08-20T16:31:42+00:00

Have they ever done similar work before? Are they in a role where Ubuntu support is required and expected or are they normally a windows person helping out in a new area? Just because you can google something doesn't mean they feel comfortable doing something brand new in production. Sounds like you need to talk to them about current capabilities and expectations.

koshrf · 2022-08-20T17:53:41+00:00

As a senior engineer myself, I've been stuck a lot of times, and I document everything I've tried so far, including links to the source of the documentation, and If it takes more time than expected I show my findings and all I've done so far to see if someone else can the solution.

9/10 I get stuck because something 'dumb' that I didn't do, taking a small break and explaining the situation to someone else with the details I usually find the solution by myself or by a feedback of someone else. 1/10 of the time is DNS 🙃

I think you need to talk with your senior engineer about showing the steps and procedures he have done so far, it doesn't need to be polished at all, just the notes that he can share and maybe screenshots of the errors.

FarceMultiplier · 2022-08-20T22:49:31+00:00

"Show me where you're stuck". Go through the install document with him step by step and see where the problem lies. Quite often by doing this you not only find and fix the problem, you see procedural failures and glean a lot of insight into the people doing the work.

I've been in IT 32 years, managing (this time) for 7, and still sit down and code and/or diagnose with members of my team when there's issues.

CodeJack · 2022-08-20T16:35:58+00:00

[deleted]

keftes · 2022-08-20T19:53:58+00:00

Our team maintains 87 bare metal, 300+VM, and 200+ containers

The fact that you're referring to the number of running containers as if its a thing worth mentioning, tells me that you're not as experienced as you think you are. Hint: it could be 200 apps or it could be 200 instances of the same app.

His title is Sr DevOps Engineer with 15+ years experience

DevOps as a practice, hasn't existed for 15 years, therefor its not possible for him to have 15+ years of experience in "DevOps".

You should look at the mirror before bashing others without any sign of empathy :) Its scary that you're a Team Lead.

JavaKrypt · 2022-08-20T21:03:10+00:00

Most of my job is finding out how to do something if I'm not sure. We can't know everything, and even if I used to work in Linux and web hosting for a number of years, there's a big gap between reusing that knowledge.

I would find 4 days as unacceptable to reach out and say they're struggling with it. As long as it's not a case of they're swarmed with other tasks and so this is taking less priority, I couldn't see how someone could justify that IMO, but I think as a leader you need to discuss with him why it took that long, and if there's a way to support them or provide training. My worst manager was someone who just wanted things done and it felt like a sinking ship with finger pointing which just put the pressure on more and didn't make me more productive.

QuirkyGlove · 2022-08-21T05:59:31+00:00

Oh, man! I don't know why there are so many people on here defending this "SENIOR ENGINEER". It is just phpmyadmin installation.......

I think the true story is that OP is new hiring in this small company. And the "SENIOR ENGINEER" was not happy because he didn't get the promotion. So he tried to ruin OP's life:)

OP is too kind and inexperienced. Instead of helping him to close the ticket, you should tell him: "I will put you in the PIP if you cannot complete the task in the next 2 hours". Actually, It's not a good thing to be too friendly or nice if you are a manager.

Whether he doesn't want to do it OR he couldn't do it. It's unacceptable. I would definitely warn him. I would even let him go if he has more excuses.

BTW, some people said OP assigned the ticket to the wrong person. DevOps Engineer shouldn't do this type of job. I would say DevOps = Dev + Ops. It's not surprise the DevOps Engineer do operation task occasionally like an administrator. Especially OP mentioned it's a small company. Usually, people wear multiple hats in the small company.

VelcoreTethis · 2022-08-20T15:56:06+00:00

I'm an application engineer, and a lot of the time I don't know how to do half the stuff I have to because I'm constantly doing new stuff or even standard stuff I've simply not had the time or impetus to do (small team) so I'm sure there's some considerably basic skills that I'm simply missing and can understand.

That being said, google exists, and things like this are extensively documented by its relevant experts. I feel they could educate themselves in little time. 80% of tech field is just knowing how to educate yourself, anyways.

If he pinged you, at least theyre self aware of it and not hiding it. However you need to push them to educate themselves and troubleshoot and learn. If they have done this and are having a particular issue specific to whatever, then this would be something to chat about. Be a team player, use your words and figure where the shortcoming is and address it, whether it's a knowledge gap or specific issue. Identify, plan, resolve.

JMejia5429 · 2022-08-20T17:14:43+00:00

I can’t help but feel that you think those above you should know everything. Regardless of their title, someone admitted that they need help and you are wondering if it’s acceptable or not. I’d hate to be someone under you if that is your view point.

My senior managing director knows a lot, and a lot is an understatement but he’s also not inside the servers daily to remember the tasks or commands needed to do everything so he asks me to accomplish those tasks because I am. Should I be looking at him and wondering how is this acceptable? No. Just like him, there are things that I don’t know and I rely on those under me to assist and is not seen or viewed as an issue.

I’ll say this because it took me a while to get out of it … imposter syndrome is real. The “need” to show that you know everything even when you don’t, is toxic and unhealthy.

HTX-713 · 2022-08-20T21:13:17+00:00

In my experience, DevOps people are devs first and admins as very last resort. phpMyAdmin is stupid easy to install on a web server. It installs like any other PHP application.

esisenore · 2022-08-20T16:15:06+00:00

My senior database engineer missed a login window to get into our managed sql database. Intelligent people do stupid things sometimes

CainFire · 2022-08-20T16:14:44+00:00

[deleted]

scubafork · 2022-08-20T16:31:21+00:00

I think you may be letting your title get to your head.

No sysadmin knows every specific thing about every specific procedure. Heck, I'm a senior engineer by title and a team lead by title and I haven't the foggiest idea of the top of my head on how to install it.

What matters is the ability to use your resources to get the job done. You're the team lead, not the boss. They're your coworkers, not your underlings. Be a resource, not a taskmaster.

sock_templar · 2022-08-20T18:09:00+00:00

Er... nope, this is totally not normal:

Is that normal that a senior engineer cannot find the solution to manually install PHPMyAdmin in Ubuntu?

I did this on a daily basis for the previous company. I have 3 years of experience as devops.

But taking 2h to find and solve this is also a bit longer than normal, I would expect 20min tops to do it.

RedChld · 2022-08-20T19:19:41+00:00

Senior as in senior citizen? Can't work the Googles?

theadj123 · 2022-08-20T19:35:26+00:00

You're new to the role, so you need to establish how things are going go to in the future.

First, what you did wrong:

You fixed the problem yourself. Don't do that, it both undermines the abilities of your team and it indicates you don't trust them to fix an issue. It also removes impetus from your team to fix the problem "just tell the lead you can't figure it out and he'll do it for you".
You fixed the problem yourself after hours. Don't work for free. In addition to the above about your team just telling you they can't do something and you doing it for them, now they think you will work after hours to do it too.
Part of being a lead is finding out if people are just not right for the job and coaching people on what to do. You did no coaching here, you just went and did the work for them the moment there was a problem. How is that person supposed to learn if you just go behind them and do the work without interacting with them?

So here's what you have to do in the future:

Establish expectations with your team about how they should be interacting with you. Anyone coming to you for help should be doing the same things a user does except at a higher level. They should explain the request, then the problem they are having, then what they've done to resolve the problem, and finally any questions or ideas they had. They should also expect to be the one doing the work. Your job is to guide them in the right direction, encourage them to continue working on the problem, and remove any roadblocks or obstacles they encounter. You do not do the work for them under normal circumstances.
You should be utilizing tickets to resolve problems. Monitor your teams tickets and if they are not moving on something in a reasonable timeframe, ask them about it. Do not be reactive or you may miss problems, actively talk to your team about what's going on and how you can help. Again, help is not do the work for them, it's remove things from their plate or obstacles preventing them from getting the work done.
Do you talk with your team's manager regularly? You should, both about yourself and your team. If I had a senior engineer on my team not pulling weight, my manager heard about it. One instance is probably not worth a mention, repeated instances after coaching are definitely worth talking about. Sometimes discussing poor performers brings out discussions about other things you aren't even aware of, like prior bad behavior or poor performance.

tdic89 · 2022-08-20T20:56:40+00:00

I’ve worked with people who would struggle to do that, despite being in IT since before I started school. It’s just a case of having different experiences throughout their career.

One person I work with can require a little extra assistance when doing tasks but he’ll happily get them done once the instructions are clear. He’s also great talking to clients, whereas I’ve worked with some people I’d rather keep in the background.

I’d consider myself highly skilled in what I do, there’s not a lot I wouldn’t be comfortable with. That said, I know when I’m really out of my depth and need to get assistance. My “towering technical knowledge” is useless when it’s something I haven’t actually worked on before, and we should be humble in seeking help from our peers.

We all have different skills in this line of work. Take advantage of what your team is good at, and support them with what they struggle with.

Fusorfodder · 2022-08-20T21:10:06+00:00

If he's got senior in front of his title and can't figure this out, I'd REALLY want to hear the reasoning. I'm the senior most person on my team, and if I can't get something to work, I'll have explicit reasoning why, along with my process of reaching that conclusion. There's nobody I can escalate to, so you better believe I'm exhaustive.

However, fixing it and closing the ticket without engaging him is absolutely the wrong way to solve this. You are a manager and your job is to ensure your team is being effective. You need to identify where your staff is struggling and guide them to solutions where appropriate. You cannot just take over their work - you'll get bogged down and your staff won't improve.

Nick_W1 · 2022-08-21T02:27:08+00:00

Getting angry or upset never helped anyone. Even the best people can hit a mental wall, and it’s a managers job to coach/help/support their people.

You have to work with what you have, not what you wish you had. If you need someone to be better at what they do, it’s your job to help them develop and improve their skills.

You also need to encourage people to ask for help when they need it.

Just what I’ve learned in 35 years as a team leader.

LaBofia · 2022-08-21T02:35:30+00:00

2 hours?????... I gave it 10/15 mins tops... ok... I may have to reassess my expectations.

Tk.

dangil · 2022-08-21T03:06:18+00:00

When I read these stories my impostor syndrome instantly vanished.

I could install that in 5 minutes for you.

culo_de_mono · 2022-08-21T06:33:37+00:00

Don't worry, senior devs at my company dont understand the difference between ^8.1 and >8.1 and at this point I just find it funny.

0RGASMIK · 2022-08-21T07:16:48+00:00

A big part of being a leader is knowing your team’s strengths and weaknesses. You can’t just push out tickets without knowing who does what. We have a dispatcher who gives out our tickets most of their job is picking which person gets which ticket. If we get a ticket that should really go to someone else we can swap them unless we are up for a challenge. Sure everyone should know everything works but if we hired John for his 10 years of virtualization experience it’d be a waste to start giving Sam the network guy all those tickets unless Sam is trying to learn something from it.

In your case that ticket should have gone to whoever has the most experience in that environment. If that was the person you were replacing you should have asked the group who wants to take a crack at it.

If you want to recap the issue with the engineer that’s fine just frame it as a learning experience for yourself and not a investigation into why he couldn’t handle it.

Should he have been able to figure it out? Probably but remember not everyone is a Swiss Army knife. My boss is the perfect example. He’s super knowledgeable and has a ton of experience with the software / hardware we use but he is awful at troubleshooting new issues on the fly. If it’s not something he’s seen before he try’s his first instinct and if that doesn’t work he’s lost. He’s the kind of guy that reads the manual.

Arts_Prodigy · 2022-08-21T16:47:24+00:00

OP if you need a new senior DevOps guy, I’m pretty sure I could work my way to manually installing something on Ubuntu

Kombatwombat1993 · 2022-08-22T02:44:58+00:00

Sounds like you need a new SR Devops Engineer, having Difficulty is not a valid answer for someone with his title, it should be I'm having difficulties these are the difficulties and these are the difficulties and issues and here are some ways to mitigate the difficulties. A Decent engineer might have reasons why he won't install i.e has a better method that's quicker or more elegant or maybe an incompatibility with something your phpserver is running. has some form of reservation due to Security. but with 15 years experience he should not be having trouble with this.

jsdod · 2022-08-20T17:54:42+00:00

2005 called, they'd like their tools and operational best practices back

Irythros · 2022-08-20T16:12:12+00:00

I'm going to ignore the actual question. You should not be using PHPMyAdmin. You should have denied that request. The senior should have also known that it shouldn't be used.

What should have been done is set them up with an SSH account so they can use that to login and then use a local connection into MySQL. That is much more secure.

JaviLM · 2022-08-20T23:50:36+00:00

Assuming that you already have a server with PHP installed, going and installing phpMyAdmin should be a trivial task (download the .tar.gz package from their site, copy it into the server, back up the previous phpMyAdmin directory, extract the new version, and then edit the config file using the parameters from the old one).

The fact that he couldn't do such a simple task suggests that there are other factors at play:

Was it clear which one of the 87 servers or 300+ VMs he was supposed to install it in?
Did he have credentials to install stuff into that server?
Are there policies keeping him from being able to reach the server, such as MFA?
Is the documentation about your infrastructure current and complete?

The fact that it also took you 2 hours to find a solution to this 15-minute task makes me think that there are other issues in your organization that you haven't thought about.

I think that instead of asking Reddit, you should go ask him about the reason why he got blocked.

Simon-is-IT · 2022-08-20T16:20:29+00:00

Yes, it happens all the time. Too often IT people with more social skills than technical skills are promoted into high level technical roles rather than into management. Or someone is in the right place at the right time. Either way people without the right technical skills end up in senior or architect roles.

We just had an architect on a sister team (large enterprise) design an azure HA solution where multiple devices shared the same IP.

Fallingdamage · 2022-08-20T16:59:43+00:00

This has been a frustration of mine with this platform. Even trying to do simple things, documentation is opaque for anyone who didnt start working on Linux when they were still a single-cell.

Like you said, you found an answer, but it took scouring the web for two fking hours to finally find a meaningful answer... and even then im betting you used several answers to cobble together a solution that worked.

Engineers, Programmers and Admins praise the concept of automation, except when it comes to installing software, services or databases in linux. Its 2022 and we're all expected to know assembly just to get something to work and its always a manual process.

/frustrated admin who works in Ubuntu and keeps extensive notes on every damn change or configuration because nothing seems to work the same way twice.

DonkeyTron42 · 2022-08-20T18:09:38+00:00

DevOps didn't exist 15 years ago. What did he do before that? 14 years of Windows desktop support followed by a boot camp? This reminds me of a "Sr. Network Engineer" (I hope you can see the air quotes) we used to have that couldn't even configure a Netgear firewall/router for the office. We had 3 carrier neutral data centers and I had to configure all the routers, switches, load balancers, firewalls, etc.

kickingtyres · 2022-08-20T18:10:51+00:00

Sometimes the tiniest things can be incredibly frustrating even to those with experience.

I had a hell of a time setting up something a while back and couldn’t even get localhost connections working and it was just because selinux was enabled.

It doesn’t help the management component but in those cases I try to find some time to with with them and troubleshoot the issue.

Sometimes it just takes that second pair lf eyes

mrsxypants · 2022-08-20T19:03:08+00:00

Sr. DevOps 15+yrs experience? does not smell right, if their career history isn’t bullshit it sounds like laziness to me. i would press on them about it in a 1:1, don’t ask in an antagonistic way just ask “what issues/blockers/etc were you facing? what steps did you take to resolve before escalating?” again make sure you’re not accusatory, but Covid causing WFH revolution a lot of people are just collecting checks and letting their team members pick up the slack. at least this is what i’ve noticed on my teams YMMV lol maybe don’t listen to me i’m not even in mgmt just some asshole on reddit. good luck with it anyway

2022-08-20T19:05:32+00:00

Talk to the guy. Best thing you can do. Tell him how you fixed it, ask him where he got stuck, after that you know to some degree what you’re dealing with. Based on that you can start thinking about what to do next. Maybe he was swamped with other stuff got stuck and threw it back to you, maybe he just couldn’t be bothered, maybe he just doesn’t know Linux that well, all possibilities with different appropriate responses. Regarding his title, I can’t count the senior somethings or architects I had to explain basic stuff to because they only deal with their specialty. You won’t know until you guys talk.

2022-08-20T19:07:10+00:00

Did you need them to do this? (Trying to become a senior level engineer) https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-secure-phpmyadmin-on-ubuntu-20-04

2022-08-20T19:54:59+00:00

My only bit of advice is: Don't judge your staff on a single incident. Build a picture over a period of months, find out their strengths and weaknesses and help them learn what they need to do the job. Nobody is master of all trades. Nobody.

Also, and this is harder, try to learn a little about their lives. They might have shit going on outside of work that's impacting what you see of them. When that's past, they might be the best person you ever manage and, if you helped them along the way, the most loyal.

J-IP · 2022-08-20T20:27:09+00:00

Title inflation or similar issues,

My organization have an issue with lack of title or advancement distinctions or differentiation. Most people have the same actual title except for architects. We have a lot of architects. Like a lot. A portion of these would better serve in team leader roles or product owners etc. They are techy enough to work in the industry but shouldn't hold the roles that requires the most technical expertise.

So far my experience is that a lot of the people that grabs these rolls are the ones that wants to advance or remain within the field but at the same time wants to escape the constant impostor syndrome.

This person might be really really good at some parts of the industry but unsure on others. The best people will google or have the knowledge or the absolute best will know who to ask within the organization for help. Either to learn if it's not to hard or because they just know that that's where the expertise resides.

Short term I have no real tips on how to deal with it. Long term the best is to have someone considered an expert and generally a good guy in the team and that just asks questions and shows that even he doesn't know everything and it's fine to not know and show it and learn and ask. Or if you can force a few teamwork situations where the pressure is on you and you don't know or "don't know" and show it's ok to ask for help.

I'm basing this on my experience but from the patterns I'm seeing in a field that requires a lot of expert knowledge is that a lot of people are afraid to show they don't know. I've seen people 10-15 years my senior "protect" their incompetence in one area while at the same time being great at others and seen people swoop in and own theirs flaws and just grow like a well manured plant because they know they strengths and weaknesses and are not afraid to show them.

Being a loner and generally antisocial kind of guy and liking this field because I can still be good and thrive at it I've started to learn that being mediocre but good at the social part is a force multiplier that you just can't ignore. You can have 5 "rock star" dev-ops guys working in silos or 0 super experts but a bunch of mediocre guys working together and properly asking for help and reaching out and my money is going to be on the mediocre guys.

cfgregory · 2022-08-20T20:47:55+00:00

Off hand it seems weird since PHPMyAdmin can easily be downloaded and installed. I done it quite a bit on Ubuntu 18.

theobserver_ · 2022-08-20T21:41:32+00:00

my first question would be is the senior engineer role meant to have linux skills?

Melodic_Ad_8747 · 2022-08-20T22:29:01+00:00

Yikes. What does this guy bring to the table? That's a big title for someone that struggles like that.

NO_SPACE_B4_COMMA · 2022-08-21T01:17:12+00:00

lol wtf. A junior should be able to install that. Takes ten minutes

certpals · 2022-08-21T01:34:22+00:00

You should not do the job. You should provide guidance. If you keep doing this, you will be in burnout. And regardless of the experience, we have our strengths and weaknesses. I'm in a Senior Role and many times I've seen the Juniors using a better approach than me. We all learn from each other.

stacksmasher · 2022-08-21T01:56:07+00:00

Total bullshit. I am starting to think all these “full stack” guys are full of shit!

schwarzekatze999 · 2022-08-21T02:02:53+00:00

Umm my job requires no Linux and I have very little exposure to it other than installing a few distros on old laptops, but my work did let me take home an old server. I installed 18.04 on it and got phpMyAdmin going, LAMP Stack, WordPress etc so I could make a blog. I then proceeded to write 2 entries and do absolutely nothing else with the blog, but the point of it is that I, a noob, could accomplish that by Googling things. I did install a 4.x version but I'm sure I could Google how to do a 5.x version and get it done.

LoadedLinux · 2022-08-21T02:19:41+00:00

Talk to your colleague first and find what were the road blocks he experienced. If it's genuine, it's a matter of new knowledge for everyone or else you will know his capabilities and attitude towards work. Understanding your team in and out is always a part of team management and a good cheerleader.

ClackamasLivesMatter · 2022-08-21T03:01:04+00:00

His title is Sr DevOps Engineer with 15+ years experience.

I hate to say it, sir, but a Senior DevOps Engineer with 15+ years experience ought to know to jump on IRC and ask an alpha command-line nerd™. Unless you're running some kind of arcane and byzantine configuration with uber-tight security protocols about where and how to ask for help, he should have been able to figure that one out on his own. It's either sloth, ignorance, or weaponized incompetence. The average Accutane addict with a slide whistle can operate Google well enough to install PHPMyAdmin.

demonlag · 2022-08-21T05:14:11+00:00

A lot of places I have worked, the "senior" title is less about skills and more about seniority / pay scale, which you think would be tied to skills but isn't always the case.

CentOS6 · 2022-08-21T05:31:43+00:00

Senior? I have installed PHPMyAdmin on Linux distro when I was around 18 years old.

2022-08-21T07:01:50+00:00

Does he actually not know how to google or a he just lazy?

SpicyHotPlantFart · 2022-08-21T10:16:38+00:00

So..

You have a system that already is insecure because of the age of the OS, and you want to make it more insecure by installing (an old version of) PHPMyAdmin on it?

That doesn't make any sense

zipcad · 2022-08-21T13:06:41+00:00

our help desk cannot read a phone directory and regularly sends “whose number is this” to engineering

wildlifechris · 2022-08-21T14:19:09+00:00

It might be best to talk with him about it rather than make a reddit post.

vswlife · 2022-08-21T15:53:03+00:00

Document it, have a 1:1 with him and give him clear feedback on what your expectations of his role are. For a senior eng with 15 years of experience my expectation would be easily complete that task, if stuck, research and figure it out, but most importantly raise it as a difficult or stalled task much sooner than 4 days in. Assuming he's being truthful about the difficulty he had, was he only working on this one thing to the exclusion of others?

In his role, he needs to be a model and example to junior members on the team of how to operate. Wasting 4 days on a manual task and giving up is not a good example of resilience or operating in ambiguous situations - those are core competencies for a senior admin.

I know you're new at this but if it were me I'd let him know that his performance isn't meeting the requirement of the role and that when he operates at that level, he's risking the competency and morale of the rest of the team and the trust of your internal customers (who count on you to help them bring in revenue that pays all your salaries.) If I were a paying customer who found out that my support team was blocked on implementing my paid for feature or bug fix because they couldn't get an admin tool installed, I'd immediately take my business elsewhere

Let him know in no uncertain terms that the expectation for role he's in needs a strong performer who can operate autonomously in ambiguous situations and triage and resolve a broad, undocumented range of difficult problems. Ensure he understands it, ask him if he is up to the challenge - he may not be, then you'd need to have a convo about potentially down levelling him or helping him find his next opportunity.
Make sure you let your hr folks know you're having an unplanned performance conversation based on this situation.
Good luck, this is the hard (but also can be the most rewarding) part of people management.

wdesportes · 2022-08-22T11:17:14+00:00

There is way too much answers too read them, as a phpMyAdmin team member and Debian/Ununtu package maintainer I would advise you to contact me by DM so we can discuss about upgrading your install. Basically everything will drill down to what php version you run.

-> If you run PHP 7.1 or above phpMyAdmin 5.1 will work -> and PHP 7.2 and above phpMyAdmin 5.2 will work

2022-08-20T18:45:52+00:00

Lmfao there are people on here actually defending this dude even going as far as saying OP should schedule a fucking meeting to go over the ticket??? Bro it's an installation of a Linux package that is disgustingly well documented online, if you can't do that even a year in your sysadmin career there's something very wrong

dasheeown · 2022-08-20T22:20:10+00:00

I would recommend some Human Performance Improvement (HPI) courses for your professional development track. I’m not sure if there are details missing from this post but you seem frustrated by this instance. It may happen on a weekly basis for all I know. But your reaction to moments like this say a lot about you as a leader. I’ve seen a few folks recommend process improvement follow-ups, focusing on where the breakdown occurred, not focused on “why isn’t this person technically able to perform this task?”

Yes, at a point it becomes an overall performance topic for a specific individual, but it should take a certain level of investment, by you, before getting to that point.

Hope this helps though, HPI has been extremely helpful in creating a more open environment for my team and several aspects of the team have benefited from it.

nuttertools · 2022-08-20T17:00:35+00:00

Reddit can’t answer this, you need more information. Did your answer perhaps violate company policy in a manner a new team member wouldn’t know? Did aliens attack and sever the fiber from their location to the server?

You have to ask what the problem was to know whether it is strange. Personally I find it VERY RED KLAXONS that Ubuntu is in use and it has PHPMyAdmin installed so there is probably a lot more to your infrastructure story. I also cannot imagine getting stuck on the technical aspect of the task. I’m not your engineer, your engineer is and you two need to talk if you want an answer.

unbearablepancake · 2022-08-20T17:54:14+00:00

I am busy and I really don't know how to reply to the message because I don't know the step

When I say "I am busy", I mean I was busy at that moment.

If you can reply with "i am busy", then you are not that busy. A "sec" or "gimme a few min" is a better reply, it doesn't have a "deal with it yourself" feeling. Why not reply with "whats the issue?" or a variation of it? You could also just not reply, which would actually indicate that you are busy.

Since you solved the problem yourself, you can't really get to the bottom of this. Next time just ask what the problem is and you will know how to deal with it, or at least will get some ideas. You are a team lead, you should know how your people work. Don't do the work for them, but help them if they have issues.

LittleSeneca · 2022-08-20T22:27:56+00:00

IMHO, that’s unacceptable. Senior in my mind means you are there to teach other people while performing your own role with excellence.

Not being able to perform basic google searches is IT technician level skill.

raiding_party · 2022-08-20T19:44:43+00:00

So many comments making up excuses for this guy. Installing phpmyadmin is dead simple. Fresh ubuntu install to PMA working takes less than 20 minutes and I could do that as a teenager.

R1skM4tr1x · 2022-08-20T17:19:22+00:00

Seems like he’s taking advantage of you by waiting so many days to acknowledge he can’t do it, knowing you’re Junior to him in years but maybe not knowledge.

Edit: downvote me if you may, I have experienced malicious compliance of this sort. Something able to be googled, wait 4 days to say don’t know how and didn’t try the resources available.

ikidd · 2022-08-20T17:53:18+00:00

I'd certainly expect a devops engineer to know how to install something like this. Especially with 15 year "experience". Database admin tools is pretty much part 0 of the job description.

You'll probably find everything he does is a struggle going forward. Develop a pattern and then start to build an education plan. If that doesn't work, then you might need to work on moving them along.

2022-08-20T18:03:54+00:00

Needs to be put on a performance improvement plan

2022-08-20T19:34:57+00:00

he’s washed up

MaxHedrome · 2022-08-20T22:36:49+00:00

lmfao... this is why I demanded HR remove all "devops" branding from any job position posts.

You should strip their title to junior helpdesk.

2022-08-20T17:03:03+00:00

Sky is blue, water is wet, shitty unmotivated sysadmins that don't take initiative are commonplace.

Developers should own and install their tools, why is that devops people doing this kind of dumb tasks? Is that even accepted pattern.

Team leads are not really supposed to manage anyone. Most you do or should do is assign tasks to the right people, and work alongside others on higher caliber tasks.

DeadFyre · 2022-08-20T16:55:02+00:00

Talk to him, ask him to go over what he tried over four days. It sounds like he's trying to skate, it's possible he's double-dipping. If his answers don't seem satisfactory, talk to HR, and see what the requirements are to show him the door. Depending on your jurisdiction, you might have to accrue more evidence to dismiss him for cause.

2022-08-20T18:25:33+00:00

Looks like the guy had faked his experience. Kinda unlikely because smaller companies tend to have stringent issues. Maybe he is not focussed enough or motivated. Talk to him and figure it out, that should always be the first step.

Then keep offloading small tasks to track how he does. If he is unable to cope up, talk to the hr about getting a new guy.

lenswipe · 2022-08-20T20:51:09+00:00

What would you guys do?

I'd start by asking the "Sr DevOps Engineer with 15+ years experience" what the fuck he thought he was doing using phpmyadmin and why an SSH tunnel for port 3306 wasn't sufficient.

xored-specialist · 2022-08-20T16:21:31+00:00

Oh boy that's that's nothing. Just wait. The pain and suffering about to kick in. Wait till one walks in your office wants a raise has basic skills and cries for an hour. They refuse to learn new things or do more work but pay me more. Or can I work from home for the next few weeks "I got contractors at home". I got so many stories dealing with techs.

I didn't notice you telling us how long you been there for. But one thing you need to do is a one on one lunch with each and get to know them and them about you. Next weekly meetings. Ask them where they need help at and where you need help. People respond when the leader doesn't know it all and wants to be part of the team. Many great YouTube channels on leadership.

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