Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab
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Okay so I finally read the 592 posts so I am not going to try to provide an answer or be an expert on this. I am always learning something, I have multiple electronic devices at home from Ubiquiti, Sonicwall, Dell Servers, Phones, and others that I test all the time. I am constantly learning new things online. That being said, I have 3 kids soon 4 and my wife that require my attention. I have a full time job in IT for a healthcare practice which takes a toll on you when you are the only IT Personnel in the office. My hours vary through the week spending up to 60 hours at work which gives you small window with family which I maximize as much as I can. My wife does have a problem with me being on a computer after a full day at work if I don't tell her the reason why I am using a computer, if I communicate there is no problem and mostly is good when there are no other activities and the purpose is right. I went to a private school all my life in the DR while my wife was home schooled which helps us since we both know the pros and cons of each one. The most important part is the social and work aspect from both because school is not the real world, and that is something both of us we are trying to instill on our children.
When I used to be at a MSP I was able to work Landscaping, IT and Family was also present. The hours changed when we went from 4 IT personnel to 2 IT Personnel and I went full time IT Manager and then grew up the team to 6 and then decided to leave because my hours had not changed actually they had increased and I had been able to teach my staff to learn and practice. If I didn't do that the company and them would not have been able to continue, that's why I like to teach others.
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@dbeato said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Okay so I finally read the 592 posts ...
You actually read it all?
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@scottalanmiller Yes, I actually did. I needed context.
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Another aspect of home labs, that I think that people often overlook, is that when you do work "at the office" it is almost always constrained by someone. Rarely do we, even if we are the head of IT, get carte blanche to do the best things for the company. At home, we can follow all best practices and learn not just "how things often get done" but "how things should be done." It can be a very different way of learning.
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@dbeato said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@scottalanmiller Yes, I actually did. I needed context.
It's a lot of context.
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@scottalanmiller Yes, it is correct. At work is so hard to implement all you would like to do.
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@dbeato said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@scottalanmiller Yes, I actually did. I needed context.
I did too but at times I was about to give up because they were posting faster than I could keep up
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@dbeato said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@scottalanmiller Yes, it is correct. At work is so hard to implement all you would like to do.
Not just what you would like to do, that's more about learning things to change the direction of your career. But how you should do, without artificial contrainsts that don't carry on from one job to another.
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@scottalanmiller said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Another aspect of home labs, that I think that people often overlook, is that when you do work "at the office" it is almost always constrained by someone. Rarely do we, even if we are the head of IT, get carte blanche to do the best things for the company. At home, we can follow all best practices and learn not just "how things often get done" but "how things should be done." It can be a very different way of learning.
Yes your right, there are many constraints here that keep me from doing the things I would do at home.
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@jmoore said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@dbeato said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@scottalanmiller Yes, I actually did. I needed context.
I did too but at times I was about to give up because they were posting faster than I could keep up
I had no hope.
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Its hard to test "what would happen if" if you don't have a lab. It doesn't have to be an exact replica, but if you have some "application" servers (plex/kodi, freepbx, nextcloud, or whatnot), and you make a simple change in networking or in infrastructure, then you should be able to see what happens and how that affects your environment. How to setup backups. What happens if I VLAN this off? What would happen if I put that in my DMZ? Etc.
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@nerdydad said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Its hard to test "what would happen if" if you don't have a lab. It doesn't have to be an exact replica, but if you have some "application" servers (plex/kodi, freepbx, nextcloud, or whatnot), and you make a simple change in networking or in infrastructure, then you should be able to see what happens and how that affects your environment. How to setup backups. What happens if I VLAN this off? What would happen if I put that in my DMZ? Etc.
You could, one would hope, have a lab at work as well.
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@reid-cooper said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@nerdydad said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Its hard to test "what would happen if" if you don't have a lab. It doesn't have to be an exact replica, but if you have some "application" servers (plex/kodi, freepbx, nextcloud, or whatnot), and you make a simple change in networking or in infrastructure, then you should be able to see what happens and how that affects your environment. How to setup backups. What happens if I VLAN this off? What would happen if I put that in my DMZ? Etc.
You could, one would hope, have a lab at work as well.
If your IT manager has the budget and the willingness to, then absolutely. Often times, that is not the case, unless you are a software development company where QA is absolutely necessary.
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@nerdydad said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@reid-cooper said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@nerdydad said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Its hard to test "what would happen if" if you don't have a lab. It doesn't have to be an exact replica, but if you have some "application" servers (plex/kodi, freepbx, nextcloud, or whatnot), and you make a simple change in networking or in infrastructure, then you should be able to see what happens and how that affects your environment. How to setup backups. What happens if I VLAN this off? What would happen if I put that in my DMZ? Etc.
You could, one would hope, have a lab at work as well.
If your IT manager has the budget and the willingness to, then absolutely. Often times, that is not the case, unless you are a software development company where QA is absolutely necessary.
One could argue that QA is always absolutely necessary.
QA isn't a lab, though, it's QA.
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@nerdydad said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Its hard to test "what would happen if" if you don't have a lab. It doesn't have to be an exact replica, but if you have some "application" servers (plex/kodi, freepbx, nextcloud, or whatnot), and you make a simple change in networking or in infrastructure, then you should be able to see what happens and how that affects your environment. How to setup backups. What happens if I VLAN this off? What would happen if I put that in my DMZ? Etc.
yeah we should have tested all of our network applications before we moved to win 10 but we did not. The management decided to move us there and new computers for around 400 staff so we have had some hiccups. Applications and other things have reacted differently than expected. Then one of management left and I am now picking up some of that workload. Its been enlightening.
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@jmoore said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@nerdydad said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Its hard to test "what would happen if" if you don't have a lab. It doesn't have to be an exact replica, but if you have some "application" servers (plex/kodi, freepbx, nextcloud, or whatnot), and you make a simple change in networking or in infrastructure, then you should be able to see what happens and how that affects your environment. How to setup backups. What happens if I VLAN this off? What would happen if I put that in my DMZ? Etc.
yeah we should have tested all of our network applications before we moved to win 10 but we did not. The management decided to move us there and new computers for around 400 staff so we have had some hiccups. Applications and other things have reacted differently than expected. Then one of management left and I am now picking up some of that workload. Its been enlightening.
Ouch. That's just bad management, lol.
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@scottalanmiller said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@jmoore said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@nerdydad said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Its hard to test "what would happen if" if you don't have a lab. It doesn't have to be an exact replica, but if you have some "application" servers (plex/kodi, freepbx, nextcloud, or whatnot), and you make a simple change in networking or in infrastructure, then you should be able to see what happens and how that affects your environment. How to setup backups. What happens if I VLAN this off? What would happen if I put that in my DMZ? Etc.
yeah we should have tested all of our network applications before we moved to win 10 but we did not. The management decided to move us there and new computers for around 400 staff so we have had some hiccups. Applications and other things have reacted differently than expected. Then one of management left and I am now picking up some of that workload. Its been enlightening.
Ouch. That's just bad management, lol.
Oh! Btw, we bought this. See if you can get it work by next Thursday.
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@scotth said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@scottalanmiller said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@jmoore said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@nerdydad said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Its hard to test "what would happen if" if you don't have a lab. It doesn't have to be an exact replica, but if you have some "application" servers (plex/kodi, freepbx, nextcloud, or whatnot), and you make a simple change in networking or in infrastructure, then you should be able to see what happens and how that affects your environment. How to setup backups. What happens if I VLAN this off? What would happen if I put that in my DMZ? Etc.
yeah we should have tested all of our network applications before we moved to win 10 but we did not. The management decided to move us there and new computers for around 400 staff so we have had some hiccups. Applications and other things have reacted differently than expected. Then one of management left and I am now picking up some of that workload. Its been enlightening.
Ouch. That's just bad management, lol.
Oh! Btw, we bought this. See if you can get it work by next Thursday.
ThanksYeah thats pretty much how it was. No one did any testing. We have had tons of issues with network apps because win 10 does things a little differently than win 7. I mean, who would have figured that and we should have tested...
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@jmoore That's real life for you
Since you had the basics you are able to troubleshoot (Not the best scenario but nonetheless troubleshooting) Then you can give them guidance so they don't do it again -
@scotth said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@scottalanmiller said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@jmoore said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
@nerdydad said in Would You Hire Someone in IT Who Does Not Have a Home Lab:
Its hard to test "what would happen if" if you don't have a lab. It doesn't have to be an exact replica, but if you have some "application" servers (plex/kodi, freepbx, nextcloud, or whatnot), and you make a simple change in networking or in infrastructure, then you should be able to see what happens and how that affects your environment. How to setup backups. What happens if I VLAN this off? What would happen if I put that in my DMZ? Etc.
yeah we should have tested all of our network applications before we moved to win 10 but we did not. The management decided to move us there and new computers for around 400 staff so we have had some hiccups. Applications and other things have reacted differently than expected. Then one of management left and I am now picking up some of that workload. Its been enlightening.
Ouch. That's just bad management, lol.
Oh! Btw, we bought this. See if you can get it work by next Thursday.
ThanksOr LAST Thursday!
