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Grex > Coop12 > #187: Mom, Dad? Where do new Grex staffers come from? |  |
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Mom, Dad? Where do new Grex staffers come from?
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May 8 03:27 UTC 2003 |
They certainly don't come from under cabbage leaves, but it's not
obvious from reading the conferences where they do come from. Now I
haven't been here a long time, but I have joined and lurked and read the
coop, garage and helpers conferences. Granted, I haven't read every last
article and comment, but it's not exactly jumping out at me either.
While I see the occasional note about staff having more tasks than time,
I don't see much in the way of how one becomes skilled or apprenticed
into being a staffer.
Would someone point me in the right direction, please?
PS You can take issue with self-selecting volunteers, but I'm reasonably
certain there are several ways to weed out frivolous wanabees.
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jep
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response 1 of 56:
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May 8 03:54 UTC 2003 |
I like this guy.
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janc
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response 2 of 56:
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May 8 03:54 UTC 2003 |
Well, what little procedure there is doesn't work very well.
What needs to be done to become a staffer is to win the trust of the powers
that be - mainly the existing staff and board. There are multiple kinds of
trust involved. We like a staffer who
- Has useful knowledge. You don't have to know everything about Unix, but
you need to know enough to get some useful work done, and you need to
know what you don't know.
- Is careful. Some people "oops" more than others.
- Is calm. If a user insults you and your mother and your dog, can you
manage to keep your response within appropriate guidelines? The ability
to resist getting sucked into pissing wars is vital.
- Understands Grex. Do you know what we're trying to accomplish here?
- Communicates. Staff need to talk to each other, and to users effectively.
So we need to know how a person reacts under stress, how reliable they are.
It's very hard to form such impressions over the web. And some people don't
start acting responsible until you give them responsibility. So the best
way to find out how people would work out would be just to give people root
access and see how they do ... except we are afraid of the flops.
So staff needs to develop some sense of the person. This is easiest for people
who live around Ann Arbor and whom we can get to know face-to-face. Otherwise
it's hard and we tend to be over conservative about it.
Probably a good starting point would be to let people know unambiguously that
you want it. Which isn't all that easy to do either.
The whole apprenticeship thing has been tried - with little success.
I wish I knew how to do this.
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cmcgee
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response 3 of 56:
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May 8 18:26 UTC 2003 |
However, we _have_ successfully added staff from Australia, so it's not
unheard of.
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remmers
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response 4 of 56:
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May 9 17:57 UTC 2003 |
A few rambling thoughts:
I think that part of the reason that staff activities have become
somewhat opaque is that the staff doesn't get together for face-
to-face meetings very often anymore. We used to have monthly
meetings where we'd hash out various problems, and even discuss
who might be likely new candidates for staff. For a while we
even posted minutes of meetings (omitting security-related stuff).
This stopped around the time that Valerie and Jan started having
kids. Nowadays we're lucky to have as many as two f-to-f meetings
a year. In the face of that, it's difficult to set new directions,
and most of the staffers have carved out a niche where they do
one or two particular tasks on an ongoing basis. That works
for maintaining day-to-day operations, but new stuff -- like
moving to the next generation of Grex hardware and software --
tends to languish forever. (I'm not implying that all staff
members have to be local, but it does help to have a core group
that can actually get together in person.)
That said, I don't think the current staff is averse to new blood.
But since we never get together to talk about it, nothing happens.
Also, as somebody up there said, folks interested in doing Grex
staff work should let us know. I can think of a few people who are
active in this conference and elsewhere on Grex -- thus passing the
"we know you and you know us" test -- who are well-qualified to be
staff members, in my opinion. They haven't volunteered, though,
and we haven't actively sought them out either. But if we know
that you're interested...
One problem that I don't see an easy way around: People with
strong technical qualifications often also have a severe lack of
extra free time to serve as unpaid volunteers.
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spooked
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response 5 of 56:
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May 9 23:37 UTC 2003 |
This is a good point, John. I'm very busy in the middle of a PhD research
program, and casual university tutoring. I would love to give more time
to Grex, though it won't be huge amounts in the near term (I still
plan to write backend software, similar to Backtalk, for a web-based
party. As we move forward, I think it is widely recognised we need to
offer a wider web-based GUI interface to applications on Grex, other than
email).
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spooked
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response 6 of 56:
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May 9 23:51 UTC 2003 |
I will be a little adventurous. I think Dan Cross would be a good
staffer. He has the technical competency, the will to get things done,
and the balls (skill, courage, and professionalism) to work well with
Marcus and STeve on a range of complex/important issues (hardware,
security, system software) - in my honest opinion. I'm sure he'd work
well in our team as a whole, but he'd also add excellence that we have
been extremely fortunate to have to date, but nothing is guaranteed into
the future... Whilst we don't always agree with Marcus and STeve, none of
us undervalues their contribution and opinions.
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cross
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response 7 of 56:
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May 9 23:58 UTC 2003 |
Regarding #6; Thanks, I'm flattered, but I honestly don't have the time
now or in the forseeable future to give grex the kind of commitment it
should expect from its staff members. :-(
However, I don't mind helping out perioidically on well-defined things.
If staff wants to tap me for a specific project, that'd be fine.
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spooked
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response 8 of 56:
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May 10 03:03 UTC 2003 |
We don't demand any predefined time from any specific staff. If they can
spare it, something gets done. I don't think you can expect much more on
a volunteer system (especially during tough times in the industry).
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davel
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response 9 of 56:
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May 10 14:09 UTC 2003 |
The lack-of-time factor is definitely a general problem. But, as John said,
there's a fairly large degree to which staff people take on particular jobs
("have carved out a niche") that they can find time to work on. In some cases
(vandal cleanup, for example) this can definitely be on a when-you-have-time
basis; there's usually some of it needing doing, & several people do it as
they can make time. Unending, thankless job.
cross is one I also would have suggested. Just my $.02. I'm not on staff
and it's *just* my $.02.
Oh. One more thing. It's helpful to have folks on staff reading the staff
mail; but my experience (during the brief time when I was on staff) was that
this quickly got to be a large time-sink. Some folks are better at just
hitting that delete key than I am, & something may have been done to improve
things since then ...
s/large/huge/
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cross
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response 10 of 56:
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May 10 17:17 UTC 2003 |
Well, if that's the case, then I'd be interested. What's the procedure
for getting involved?
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carson
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response 11 of 56:
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May 10 17:52 UTC 2003 |
(Dan's also been on my short list, and not just because he's still here
two years later.)
(I'll also admit to having been personally interested in joining the Grex
staff from time to time. both the "cfadm" and "partyadm" functions seem
like tasks that I could grasp, given enough patience. more recently, the
disk-cleaning chores have interested me, mostly because it can be a
time-sink and I have a surplus of time at the moment. however, it's
always been that word "root" that scares me off.)
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cross
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response 12 of 56:
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May 10 18:27 UTC 2003 |
I'd support Carson working on disk cleaning; the fact that the word `root'
scares him is, as I see it, a good sign that he's responsible enough. :-)
But seriously, Carson's always struck me as a reliable and dedicated user.
I think it's a good idea.
On a related note, has grex thought about using something like sudo to
give folks limited access for things like disk cleaning?
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scg
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response 13 of 56:
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May 10 18:54 UTC 2003 |
I'd like to re-look at the statement that "apprenticeships" haven't worked
here. I'm not sure anybody's come on as an absolute beginner and served as
long as many of the currently active Grex staffers. There have been a few
of us (Mike O'Leary, Rob Henderson, Carl Miller, me, and probably a few other
people I'm forgetting) who have started as beginners, put in a few productive
years as Grex staffers, and turned our Grex staff experience into lucrative
careers before fading away from the Grex staff. I don't know if Grex got as
much out of my time on the staff as I did, but hopefully we both got something
out of it.
On that note, if somebody has time to work with him, I'd like to suggest
jlamb. He appears to have free time, interest, and lots of potential.
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keesan
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response 14 of 56:
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May 10 21:03 UTC 2003 |
I second jlamb but he has to promise to act older than he is. Jeremy has
already set up his own little grex-like server with mail, party, bbs, and
backtalk (FreeBSD).
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mary
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response 15 of 56:
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May 10 21:26 UTC 2003 |
I don't think this works by nominating and seconding in
this forum. It's never that easy. ;-)
At the last Board meeting we discussed the need to add more
staff positions. STeve was going to take this to the staff,
in mail, and hopefully bring some agreed upon and willing to
serve candidate names to the next meeting. The Board usually
votes to to accept the staff's recommendations.
I'd suggest those interested and willing in helping out
as staff either state so here or write to staff letting them
know you'd like to be considered and where you think you
could most easily help out.
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other
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response 16 of 56:
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May 10 22:51 UTC 2003 |
I'm interested.
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gelinas
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response 17 of 56:
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May 10 23:07 UTC 2003 |
I'm interested.
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cross
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response 18 of 56:
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May 11 01:53 UTC 2003 |
Okay, I'll do it, but I'm afraid I can't promise much time.
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spooked
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response 19 of 56:
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May 11 04:42 UTC 2003 |
I'm glad I was a little adventurous :)
Hey, root is an exceptionally privileged role... BUT, there are many tasks
you can do without root, or limit yourself to less risky root-tasks...
The general rule is DON'T DO ANYTHING WITH ROOT ACCESS THAT YOU ARE NOT
1000 (yes 1000%) SURE IS SAFE, AND EVEN THEN YOU SHOULD TAKE CARE - Did I
scare anyone off? It really isn't as hard as it sounds. But, care is
needed! Knowing your limits, and knowing when to ask questions BEFORE
taking a new activity on are both critical success factors.
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scg
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response 20 of 56:
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May 11 04:55 UTC 2003 |
Speaking in my current role as a consultant dealing with a lot of process
issues for ISPs, I'd suggest some sort of change management system to ensure
that nobody's diving into making system changes that aren't well planned in
advance, but that's probably too bureaucratic for Grex.
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cross
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response 21 of 56:
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May 11 05:23 UTC 2003 |
Regarding #19; Bring it on! No, I'm just kidding; I try as hard as I can
to do things as a user other than root (this includes creating a bunch of
users to run specific services as), but that's just my style. Under Plan
9, which is what I work on most these days, there is no root user.
Regarding #20; I once worked on an academic network of a couple hundred
Sun's, Alpha's, SGI's, and the occasional other weird machine thrown in
for good measure (VAXen running VMS, a DECstation or 2, some old Stardent
Titans). The systems team consisted of about ten people. The arrangement
we used worked pretty well; we had req for ticket tracking, all sysadmin
activity was logged in req (this would be something like RT these days),
all systems changes were done under RCS or SCCS (it'd just be straight
RCS these days), all access to root was through a program I wrote called
``runas'' that checked a user's credentials before authorizing home
or her to do something, and logged everything, (it'd probably be sudo
these days), and once somebody changed something, they'd drop an email
to an alias called ``changes'' that everyone got a copy of, and that got
archived in a text file that we indexed with glimpse. If someone came
up with a really clever fix to some sort of problem, they'd drop it to
another alias, called ``sysinfo,'' to archive it for posterity.
All in all, it was a really comfortable environment, and once everyone
got used to playing by the ground rules (new hires, typically students
who had limited experience and just knew ``you su to root to administer
a Unix system'' were especially thrown off by runas and RCS), we almost
never had any problems with people knowing in advance what was going on,
or knowing who had changed what.
I admit I'm frankly a little surprised that grex hasn't implemented a
couple similar things; particularly something like sudo or runas to give
limited access to root. If nothing else, the logging is really great
if someone accidently messes something up.
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carson
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response 22 of 56:
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May 11 05:45 UTC 2003 |
(I've observed that Those Who Have Root have special root accounts.
is that similar to either sudo or runas?)
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scg
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response 23 of 56:
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May 11 07:02 UTC 2003 |
re 21:
That's the less bureaucratic half of what I was talking about, and the
half of it which the Grex staff has done pretty well at times. The other part
is what happens before changes are made, in terms of whether the person making
the change figures out how to do it on the fly, or has everything carefully
planned out, step by step and command line by command line, along with testing
and backout procedures, beforehand. It's that last bit that really prevents
outages, but as I said it's probably too bureaucratic for Grex.
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spooked
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response 24 of 56:
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May 11 08:32 UTC 2003 |
Carson: No- woot, soot, moot, etc all have equal root privileges (i.e.
same root UID).
They're possibly there to each have their own home directory, and for
logging/audit reasons? Any of us with root-level access can simply login
as root, though this is not desired (correct me if I am wrong other
staff?)
Perhaps staff who preceeded me could ellaborate/clarify the reasons for
the alias root logins.
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