War Stories

Here's a third UNIX admin that'd fail your test, working from the assumption I was talking to a human, not a computer.

What's it supposed to prove again?

Ok, poor assumption on my part but it always passed in my environment (but then they never sent me a UNIX admin)..


suggestions?

Would it not be fair to say that windows admin are much simpler and easy to go around and talk around with. By no means I want to be disgraceful to anyone
My point is things when they are too simple as unix is meant to be as everything is a file they actually become complicated.
What feels more simple calling something as a device file or media just think from the perspective of every day user.
I feel unix was meant to be simple but people who carry it have made it complicated.
I recall my first job when I just had to bounce tomcat however I was fresh out of school and could not catch the terminology and went ahead asking a very senior guy and found out they just wanted a restart.
Why can't we call a restart as a restart although we type restart

Let's not turn this into a religious war. I'm sure Windows admins would complain at being called "much simpler", even

I disagree that Windows standards are more "intuitive". Ask anyone who's new to computing, they'll have no idea what they're looking at. It's just what everyone learns in the office...

UNIX can certainly be obscure in some ways. It's an operating system for programmers. The straightforward interface keeps programs simple, not necessarily the system. You don't need to be a programmer to use it, but you'll be at a disadvantage if you don't. It also opens up a lot of possibilities. It's just slang, not a UNIX term. Like all slang in all languages, it can be baffling to anyone who's not a native speaker.

So, I think one way to check for UNIX experience, would be to ask them to write a quick shell script without consulting a cheat sheet...

"Unix is user-friendly. It just isn't promiscuous about which users it's friendly with." – Steven King

"Unix is simple. It just takes a genius to understand its simplicity." – Dennis Ritchie

xkcd: tar

not a religious war on my part. I am the only UNIX admin in a mostly windows shop... yet I'm still here, not going anywhere and my footprint is actually increasing. We must be good for something....

I'd also like to add that I don't think windows admins are lesser beings, the implication was that they weren't used to our environment and it was something to watch for. Our app layer was coded by windows programmers so the numbering systems and naming conventions weren't consistent. If you made assumptions either way it would bite you...

It's best that you admit your mistake straight away. They'll hate you for it in the beginning but praise that you had the courage to do so.

I'm a windows sysadmin by day but use nothing but *NIX whenever possible and I know some very competent Windows guys but I think across the board locally at leas the *NIX guys seem a little more competent, are more flexible and have a better understanding of the technology they use.