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jpluscplusm

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London-based Sys(Arch|Admin). http://jpluscplusm.com/

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Entire article in one meaningless quote: "Honey badger employees, though, “say ‘Screw it! I’ll figure out how to do this!’ They’ll find a way to get things done.” says Seidman".

Don't waste your time. Truism crossed with BS. without anything /actionable/.

Andrew Carnegie's actions saved lives. Steve Jobs sold shiny tat.

You're right - he'll be in some museums; increasingly few over the years, inevitably tending towards one: "The iLearn Institute of Advanced Sycophancy".

We use Cotendo and CDNetworks. Both work, and your 140Mbps is /nothing/ to either. Can't share pricing, I'm afraid. Non-JIT contracts are probably your enemy here, though - there'll be minimum term lengths for most CDNs.

ShareLaTeX 14 years ago

Hah! I don't think I'll take that bet :-)

I'm bored this w/e, so do get in touch and let me know if I can lend a hand with some back-end systems tuning ... email, or via the phone number on m'webshite (also on devwiki, under "contact numbers" IIRC)

ShareLaTeX 14 years ago

Great concept and nice looking implementation, Henry! I'd not remembered to check it out since you mentioned it in the pub the other (last?) week, but I'll definitely kick the tyres over the weekend :-)

You're trying to find a technical solution to a people problem. That generally doesn't work.

Finding a people solution will yield better results: stretch targets; output quality reviews; regular 1-2-1s; discussion about career progression; more responsibility.

If they're actually at a low enough level where a program will obviate the need for you to fulfil your managerial responsibilities, why not outsource, pay for piece work, etc. There's no benefit to you to keep motivated workers employed - there's nothing to motivate them /with/.

No SEO can guarantee results. They aren't the search engine, so how could they?

I'd be interested in the changes to your site, your data architecture and your content that they have suggested because, if that's not how they've worked, you've at best (or worst) engaged a bunch of black hat SEOs whose actions may cause you extreme pain down the line. At worst (or best, depending) you've engaged people who have taken your money for no action, but at least there's no reputational damage.

If you /have/ had proper engagement from the firm, you will probably have derived value from their work in the areas I mentioned above, regardless of your SERPS position.

I suggest you stay away from any of the elance/rentAcoder type sites, even if some of their customers seem to offer the skills you want at a price you find acceptable.

I gave them a try a couple of years ago to earn some beer money (I'm a sysadmin), and the rates that people went for were /so/ damn low that I literally couldn't see the point and just negotiated a raise instead :-)

I somehow doubt the genuine expertise and experience you'll derive most value from during a couple of hours session /won't/ be found at those low, low rates. Sysadmin are expensive ;-)

[dead] 15 years ago

Reset the machine system state by deleting "C:\Windows\System32\". It's the only way to be sure.

I totally get all these points; is there any literature I can point our devs towards to convince them (a) #2 + #3 don't leave any corner cases and (b) they really should take the time to do it (ultimately so I can put an automation solution around the the DB)?

Very basic example, but an awesome concept.

I keep meaning to get started with R. Can anyone point me towards a decent primer for a mathematically-literate-to-undergrad level audience? (Not that I did a Maths degree, y'see ... :-))

So .. site is run by someone playing at being a Sysadmin who used a service s/he didn't grok (evidenced by their lack of understanding of the difference between ephemeral/instance storage and EBS), and is now trying to blame the service provider for their personal fiduciary failure?

Developers != Sysadmin. Deal with it.

Just because something is easy to get started with doesn't mean you understand it properly.

You should /definitely/ head over to reddit. Don't waste your time here. I mean, there are hardly any lolcats on HN. You'll love reddit - go for it!

Seriously. Go.

"I've tried lots of things to motivate them and didn't succeed." "I have to nudge them to get things done,constantly."

Sounds like the managerial and systemic failure is all yours, dude.

If you've not introduced automated systems to track what's being done and /help/ them (e.g. redmine, tracking relatively highly decomposed tasks, etc) keep on top of the work and the deadlines (and know why each deadline's important; i.e. who they'll be screwing over if they don't deliver) then you've only got yourself to blame.

Why would you think it'll be different with new people - because you'll just "be better" at hiring this time around? Unlikely.

J

As a sysadmin who wishes he'd discovered this book earlier, I have no problem with recommending "The Practice of System and Network Administration" as a great resource: http://everythingsysadmin.com/aboutbook.html

It's definitely an OS-agnostic book, so if you're looking for "how do we do task/process/design A with OS B?", it's not the right fit. It'd still be worth it if you're expecting to have to do anything except the very shortest-term systems administration.