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Why you need a home lab to keep your job

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Why you need a home lab to keep your job

#11

Post by purplelobster »

yen223 wrote: post #8
cup wrote: post #3

Unless I've misunderstood this article, I think this is a bad idea. When working for a company your work should ideally stay at work. Come 5pm, if you're privliged enough to work a 9-5, your day should be done. This growing push for work to be extended into the family home really erodes the necessary work life distinction that allows for a happy life. Thats not to say you shouldn't have a lab at home to train yoursel…

For my personal situation, this is a good idea. My current job involves me writing code for robots. This sounded interesting to me, until I realized that I am working with some ancient software here - I'm talking .Net 1.1 on Windows 2000! Not to mention that writing software for robots isn't really all that challenging. If it weren't for my after-hours exploration of open-source technologies, my skill-set would be se…

I work with something very specific as well, and completely missing out on the web and what's hot. I have to do something in my spare time to ensure I'm employable. But I'm not going to do job-related training at home, screw that.

Re: Why you need a home lab to keep your job

#12

Post by ChuckMcM »

Interesting discussion here. I've always had a home 'lab' because I've always been interested in a variety of technologies. At college it was half my desk and a couple of carrying boxes, (one for tools, one for parts). Once I got married I had a desk in the spare bedroom which had other stuff as well. Eventually I got a room to myself in the house. Back in the dot.com days before it went tango-uniform I was going to build a basement (machine room, library, office) but alas that was not to be.

Since learning is my hobby and my passion it serves me well. But I could certainly understand it if you hated what you worked on and wanting to get away from it when you were at home.

Re: Why you need a home lab to keep your job

#13

Post by ratsbane »

mctx wrote: post #2

The main problem with my rack is the noise - I live in a flat and there's nowhere but the living room to put it. I've seen a few noise cancelling designs around, but they're all too expensive. I wonder if I could build a simple noise cancellation system with an FX-LMS algorithm?

I have six IBM 2U servers in my home rack (36U). They're really well-designed and the noise level is not too bad even in the room with the rack, but there is also a 1U SuperMicro server in that rack with two Tesla cards and it is so loud as to be quite annoying anywhere in the house. I keep it turned off unless I'm specifically working on it, which isn't how I'd like it to be. The lesson I learned is that bigger servers (4U would be even better) have bigger fans and run more quietly. Also IBM servers aren't as loud as Dell and Dell servers are quieter than SuperMicro. I'm thinking the next addition might be a cluster of Raspberry Pis.

Re: Why you need a home lab to keep your job

#15

Post by s_baby »

mctx wrote: post #2

The main problem with my rack is the noise - I live in a flat and there's nowhere but the living room to put it. I've seen a few noise cancelling designs around, but they're all too expensive. I wonder if I could build a simple noise cancellation system with an FX-LMS algorithm?

Does your experimentation require you work on blades and not on virtualized environment?

Re: Why you need a home lab to keep your job

#16

Post by patio11 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #5

Companies that won't invest in training or research are not worth working for. If they want you (as an employee) to pay for that out of your own pocket and you do, then you're a sucker, unless you've negotiated a fat salary and a 4 day week.

Many companies will pay for training to enhance your value to them but may not always pay for training which enhances your value to you, in part because occasionally (good! ethical!) companies have a plan for your career which is not the optimum plan for you. In this case, it makes sense to pay for training personally when the day job won't subsidize it, or otherwise invest in one's own professional development. (Via side projects, OSS contribution, yadda yadda whatever capital-building exercise you can licitly do outside the confines of 9 to 5.)

For example, my old day job happily dropped $10k to fly me to JavaOne so that I would more effectively map XML files and JavaBeans together, but "Most efficient cog in an Enterprise Java consulting shop ever!" was not a long-term career aspiration of mine. They were pretty understanding about providing for career growth during work hours but when they didn't I did it on my own time. That eventually cost them my services but, hey, capitalism happens.

Generic career advice for everyone: You are the captain of your own ship. You will have mentors, employers, and other folks who you are to some degree reliant on, but at the end of the day you have both responsibility for creating and authority to mandate forward progress.

Re: Why you need a home lab to keep your job

#17

Post by dnewcome »

To get true understanding of what you're working with you need to be able to trash the configuration of your gear at will. I learned a lot buying up some big old Cisco Catalysts and EMC Clariion SAN boxes back when I was doing data center work. Later on though, when I was in charge of buying new stuff I'd rack the stuff up first and go crazy with it before it was in production. Either way works. I don't miss having those fans running in my house though.

Re: Why you need a home lab to keep your job

#18

Post by lelandbatey »

Wilya wrote: post #6
cup wrote: post #3

Unless I've misunderstood this article, I think this is a bad idea. When working for a company your work should ideally stay at work. Come 5pm, if you're privliged enough to work a 9-5, your day should be done. This growing push for work to be extended into the family home really erodes the necessary work life distinction that allows for a happy life. Thats not to say you shouldn't have a lab at home to train yoursel…

It's less about what your company wants you to do, and more about what you need to do to develop your career. If you want to stay on top and keep being employable, you'll have to invest in skills, and I see no reason why your employer would provide that for free, especially if those skills aren't directly useful to them. Company's job isn't to help you find a work-life balance. Its goal is to find the long term plan…

Yes, I think this is the spot on point. You don't need a home lab to do your current job, but you are going to need a home lab to prepare for your next job. Because your employer certainly won't be shelling out so that you can leave (well, probably won't anyway).

Re: Why you need a home lab to keep your job

#19

Post by ajross »

anigbrowl wrote: post #5

Companies that won't invest in training or research are not worth working for. If they want you (as an employee) to pay for that out of your own pocket and you do, then you're a sucker, unless you've negotiated a fat salary and a 4 day week.

True enough. And employees who wait to be "trained" on interesting new technology instead of learning it for themselves aren't worth hiring.

Obviously neither statement is (completely) true. At the "rockstar" level, all learning is self directed. And rockstar employers expect and rely on that. But for everyone else I think it's reasonable that there be some level of support for education from employers, and some level of self motivation from good employees. Neither is going to make up for a total shortcoming in the other.

Re: Why you need a home lab to keep your job

#20

Post by packetslave »

dnewcome wrote: post #17

To get true understanding of what you're working with you need to be able to trash the configuration of your gear at will. I learned a lot buying up some big old Cisco Catalysts and EMC Clariion SAN boxes back when I was doing data center work. Later on though, when I was in charge of buying new stuff I'd rack the stuff up first and go crazy with it before it was in production. Either way works. I don't miss having t…

The really nice thing about labs these days is how much you can do virtually. Before I changed jobs, I had 2 NetApp filers doing replication, two EMC Clariion CX arrays, and two complete VMware datacenters doing DR failover, vMotion, and DRS. All on two PC servers in a downstairs closet.
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