
Why you need a home lab to keep your job - iProject
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/02/07/home_lab_career_saver/
======
cup
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 yourself on things that interest
you in your own free time, but if staying at a job means investing unpaid
hours at home then one should probably consider whether the job is worth it.

After all, if a company expects you to do unpaid training in your own personal
time then what will it expect from you in the future?

Furthermore, these articles constantly push the message that more work is
better for your career than less. My father always told me its not the
quantity of time you spend at a task but the quality.

~~~
yen223
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skill-set would be severely outdated, and my career would effectively be dead
here.

~~~
purplelobster
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.

~~~
konstruktor
Great and meaningful distinction you are making! You are learning for
yourself, not your employer.

------
anigbrowl
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.

~~~
ajross
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.

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

> At the "rockstar" level, all learning is self directed.

This is a bit of brain damage that is, as far as I can tell, limited to
programming, for various weird cultural reasons.

Go to Goldman Sachs and ask them how many of their "rockstar" traders learned
the craft at home on their free time. Or go to a top research hospital and ask
them how many of their surgeons did the same. Or go to a top architecture firm
and ask them how many of their architects learned skyscraper design on the
weekends. They will probably all laugh at you.

Rockstars can be created through institutional processes by identifying,
nurturing, and systematically training talent. All industries have their
rockstars, but ones more mature than the software industry have saner and more
efficient ways of taking raw talent and nurturing them into rockstars.

~~~
plinkplonk
"Go to Goldman Sachs and ask them how many of their "rockstar" traders learned
the craft at home on their free time. Or go to a top research hospital and ask
them how many of their surgeons did the same. Or go to a top architecture firm
and ask them how many of their architects learned skyscraper design on the
weekends. They will probably all laugh at you."

The difference in all these fields is that the practitioner, to learn, needs
to things that cost significant amounts of money (trading/building
skyscrapers), cause people to live or die (surgery) or go to jail or be
executed (law), or need to do things that require significantly altering the
real world to create an artifact(setting up skyscrapers). Hence the need for
supervision, and systematic training with a lot of 'apprenticeship' feel.

In _most_ programming, the real rockstars (say Carmack or Linus or whoever)
_are_ self taught, and _did_ learn on their free time, because all you need is
a laptop and the internet and you are ready to go and creating a significant
artifact (a programming language, a game, an operating system) needs only
knowledge (easily acquired from books and the internet) and time.

Not to take away from your larger (and valid) point that company training
_can_ be effective. But your analogies are a bit 'off' and that affects the
power of your argument (imho, feel free to ignore).

~~~
rayiner
The comment to which I was replying stated: "At the 'rockstar' level, all
learning is self directed."

Parse this out logically. I read this as: "self-directed learning is a
necessary condition for achieving rockstar level skill." My point is that in
other fields, institutional training can create rockstars without self-
directed learning. That is to say, self-directed learning is not a necessary
condition.

Your point is that programming is different from those other fields, because
you can become a rockstar learning on your own. I.e. that self-directed
learning can be a sufficient condition for achieving rockstar level skill. But
that does not contradict my point, which is that it is not a necessary one.

~~~
plinkplonk
"The comment to which I was replying stated: "At the 'rockstar' level, all
learning is self directed." "

 _In context_ , that quote sounds more nuanced.

"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."

I suspect if you add "(In programming)" before the sentences "At the rockstar
level .. " etc it would make more sense,especially if those sentences are
describing present reality than some imagined future.

And as for "the fact that it's easier to learn programming on your own than it
is to learn other fields doesn't prove that", sure it doesn't prove anything.

But then if we are to descend to that level of hairsplitting, your quote about
other industries training programs doesn't really prove the point that
something similar would work in software/programming, and is equally 'neither
here nor there'.

It _may_ be true that you can create rockstars by company training, so you
have a valid point in that we should probably explore the idea, look for
supporting/opposing evidence and so on.

It still remains to be _shown_ to be true,and ajross has a valid _argument_
that " _as of today_ company training programs haven't produced programming
_rockstars_ (vs competent devs)", so your comparisons to surgeons or whatever
don't really counter ajross's statement.

ajross seems to be describing the present reality (and extropolating off that)
and you seem to be saying that a different reality is possible (but unproven).

Not much of a conflict that I can see. (but hey ymmv, I freely admit I could
be interpreting all this incorrectly)

And just fyi, I responded to (what I thought was ) excessive rhetorical
flourishes like 'brain damaged thinking' in your reply. That phrase conveys no
information beyond your annoyance and detracts from your main (and valid
imho)argument. You can make a solid point without 'name calling' (note
quotes), especially here on HN.

EDIT: rayiner changed his post from when I typed this reply(which is all
right, I do that all the time), so this answer may not make as much sense as
it should . Now his point is that "self-directed learning is not a necessary
condition (to become a programming rockstar)".

It is probably true and certainly an idea worth exploring.

One _possible_ answer to that, especially in a forum called _Hacker_ News, is
"Show us".

(to those fond of logic, to prove that a universally quantified argument, "All
X s are blah" is wrong, you need to prove that "Not all X s are blah" and that
in turn becomes "There exists a Z that not blah" and you have to show that
there does indeed exist such a Z - aka an existence proof, what can I say, I'm
a nerd).

And with that, I bow out of this thread. Have a nice day.

~~~
rayiner
> But then if we are to descend to that level of hairsplitting, your quote
> about other industries training programs doesn't really prove the point that
> something similar would work in software/programming, and is equally
> 'neither here nor there'.

It's not hair splitting, it's the fundamental question of whether self-
directed learning is necessary to achieve rockstar-level programming skills.
This seems to be commonly assumed in the programming world, which I think is a
bit of cultural brain damage. Indeed, I think the proposition that programming
is somehow different from those other intellectually demanding fields in
trainability is the exceptional proposition that has the burden of proof.

~~~
ajross
plinkplonk already pointed it out, but I'll say it again: _this fact is
commonly assumed in the programming world because it is empirically true_. If
that's "brain damage" then you have a strange definition for that term. We
observe facts ("at the rockstar level, all learning is self directed") and
make hypotheses to support a theory ("self-directed learning is necessary to
achieve rockstar-level programming skills"). If you want to assert a theory
counter to that, then I'm sorry but it is _you_ that needs to provide some
evidence to support it.

And seriously: there is none. There are no "trained" rock stars out there that
I've seen. Can you find just one? Someone who through diligent classwork or
apprenticeship reached a top-tier position in their field? I've never seen it.

~~~
rayiner
First, even if it's empirically true that there are no trained rockstars in
the programming field (which is a point I'm not going to concede), that
doesn't mean that "at the rockstar level all learning is self-directed." There
is an obvious difference between "all the rockstars I can see are self-
directed learners" and "self-directed learning is necessary to become a
rockstar." Asserting otherwise is a basic failure of logical reasoning.

My theory is that programming isn't any different in this regard from other
intellectually demanding fields except culturally. I think the assertion that
it is different is the one that requires proof, or at least an explanation for
the mechanism by which it might be different.

As for self-directed learning, I'll point to Dennis Ritchie as an example.
He's arguably somewhere in the middle between self-taught and trained. On one
hand he started at Bell Labs concurrent with/immediately after Harvard. On the
other hand, UNIX was something of a side project. Compare him to his father,
who was a scientist at Bell Labs working on switching theory, and received his
training in the AT&T engineering machine. What's different about the two men?
Why is Dennis's field not trainable but Alistair's field trainable? My
assertion is that there is no difference except the fact that there was an
established framework for training engineers but not really one for training
programmers.

------
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.

------
codex
TL;DR: An evangelist for a company that sells software for virtual labs says
that everyone should have a lab at home.

------
No1
His $1,362 per month spend (not including hardware, which it sounds like he
gets for free) seems a bit spendy for just a hobby "lab". Since when was a
rack of computers called a lab? Does a few servers in the closet count? I want
to know if I'm in danger of losing my job.

------
mctx
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?

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

~~~
mctx
They're 1U and 2U servers on which I've installed ESXi. I love it - I can run
a VM locally then transfer it across, then if I'm travelling I can chuck it
onto VMWare Fusion on my laptop.

------
c141charlie
Who needs a home lab when you have AWS and other on demand cloud computing
providers at your disposal?

~~~
elchief
But AWS uses Xen and not VMWare!

------
femto
If an employee is going to have invest effort into a significant home lab,
it'd make sense to go the extra mile and start using the lab to earn an
income, reducing reliance on said employer.

------
joshbaptiste
Yep, having your own personal lab allows you to do what you want and can
actually be a sort of pretest bed for applications and/or hardware you want to
recommend for your employer.

------
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.

~~~
packetslave
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.

------
esperluette
"Girlfriend Impact" -- bleh. Yeah, I know, 99.99whatever9% of IT workers, esp
in the ops role, are guys, but would it have taken so much extra thought to
put "family impact"? Or even "balanced life penalty"?

And I say this as someone who has spent a ridiculous amount of money on tech
books in the past year (probably four figures) and who is giving up 1.5-2
nights a week, on average, to tech meetups.

~~~
mathrawka
I'm pretty sure he was referring to his own personal "Girlfriend Impact". It
was not a general statement about all IT workers, just the one who was talking
about the lab.

------
peterclary
"Today, the lab costs £870 a month thanks to the presence of a pair of Dell
EqualLogic arrays."

To paraphrase that fount of wisdom, the hippy from The Simpsons: Sounds like
you're working for your lab. Simplify, man!

------
ssharwood
Oooh! I got aggregated. Thanks for the nice discussion

~~~
Swannie
So you did!

