Ages ago, I was hiring for a senior systems engineering position. I wanted to use a one-line requirements section: "Knows how a computer actually works"
Was blocked by HR/recruiting... :(
Was blocked by HR/recruiting... :(
So you want someone who
- Understands modern computer architecture and operating systems: Hyperthreading, power management, cache coherency, memory bottlenecks, filesystems, graphics hardware tradeoffs and related debugging tools, Intel/AMD/ARM.
- Understands the computer software stack including webservers & frameworks, high performance software libraries, GPGPU programming, clang & LLVM, JIT compiler, CPU and GPU virtualization stacks including VMware, Azure, AWS.
- Understands hardware tradeoffs, DRAM memory, multicore, ECC, PCIe bus tradeoffs, display techonolgy, Freesync, Gsync, server storage technologies both nearline and long term, WiFi and ethernet. Backups. Servers and server management.
- Database servers both commercial and opensource and their setup for for reliability, backups, production and testing servers.
- Computer administration, linux, windows, bash and perl/python scripting for sys admins. Machine testing and validation for production use.
- Computer security, firewalls, Meltdown & Spectre vulnerability fixes, VPN setup and admin.
So did you finally hire your senior systems engineer? the one who knows computers ?
I have a really funny story about this involving a recruiter deciding I wasn't a good fit for one role, and recommending I take another because I didn't specifically list any experience with CSV files of all things on a DevOps resume.
Turns out a friend worked at first company, in the support team-made a referral and I was hired two weeks later after interviewing with the team lead and department head. During onboarding week I'm talking with a few team members at lunch and one of them mentions how they've been needing to hire the role but never put much effort into it, HR connects them with an agency and the recruiting company they hired never sent them any candidates, and only even emailed to say they "maybe" had one person, but that they were missing a few 'key' skills.
I smiled discreetly and listened on, but the whole time I had this image in my head: https://i.imgur.com/JbzO6uM.png