The following tweet from @jesslynnrose has been going around this morning -

Quote:Technologists: is there a workplace benefit you would would value over higher pay?

original

I would be interested to hear what my fellow nixers thought of this in terms of working environments.

My job is that of a UNIX engineer, yet I have to work from a Windows desktop using putty in order to ssh onto the servers. This isn't such a bad process but personally I would prefer working from a Linux desktop (obviously). We are not allowed to bring our own devices, or in this job allowed to use a 'jumpbox'.

Does anybody else here have similar stories?

In an ideal world what benefits would you have in the workplace?

i'm a dev/op who wears many development hats: frontend / backend / sysadmin / system wide improvements, security/crypto/red team, etc.

i use arch on the mac air they gave me at my job. i told them in the interview if they gave me a mac i would wipe it, and told me as long as i can get he job done, and adhere to their security guidelines i was free to do what i wished.

idk about value over pay, but we have many perks at my job.

we have an arcade with video games, pingpong, billiards, darts, etc. as well as an indoor basketball court. endless supply coffee and soda. catered lunches everyday but friday (we have random food trucks on fridays). we have so many monitors, you can use as many as you can physically plug-in ;D

xero, that sounds wonderful.

(12-04-2017, 12:39 PM)xero Wrote: i use arch on the mac air they gave me at my job. i told them in the interview if they gave me a mac i would wipe it, and told me as long as i can get he job done, and adhere to their security guidelines i was free to do what i wished.

You Sir have balls. Not in an interview but I told my last place I wanted to wipe the supplied laptop, and install Linux. They wouldn't let me. The best I could manage was a VM.

As for the other stuff I can only express my envy. o/ <= shaking fist, not waving

i am a sysadmin and am allowed to run any linux distro that uses SElinux. i think i'm slowly warming up our sec engineer to allow any distro that can be protected with grsec/firejail... i'm hoping for that. that's about as far as my freedom goes. not allowed to listen to music, which is a big bummer. servers are mainly redhat, with some windows.

i would love 4 tens or even more so, fully telecommute. since it takes me a little over an hour to drive here and then home each day. working from home would be the ultimate.

I'm a backend software developer, but I rarely do some frontend too.

This all reminds me of an old discussion I had with z3bra about why he doesn't do software development for a living, he said it was because he would then get bored of it and that for him it wouldn't be a hobby anymore. For me it's the opposite, programming is my job and Unix is my hobby.

Some cool points:

• We use Redhat, Solaris, Oracle, a lot
  
• We have a PHP, Perl, C++, C backend and I get to play with a lot of different technologies
  
• From day 1 I installed a distro on my laptop, no issue with that
  
• Installers/support engineers get a lot of training but I can still help a bunch with knowledge they don't get in those "company sponsored trainings"
  
• Ironically I've been given many tasks where I got the responsability of making the compatibility layer between our Unix servers and windows services. But that puts my mindset back on track, we live in a connected world that has multiple kinds of tech.
  
• It's a very filtered environment full of interesting and smart people. I have many fruitful conversations with them. The company culture is very healthy.
  
• We recently got the ISO24K, for info security, and so we're getting tighter on that, which is good in my opinion.
  

(12-04-2017, 11:53 AM)pyratebeard Wrote: Technologists: is there a workplace benefit you would would value over higher pay?

For the moment that would be to spend less time on the road. It's slowly been killing me the last few months. The back pain is increasing, and it's been affecting my focus.

Even though the work schedule is flexible and I'm coming early to avoid traffic, I still have to do 3 to 4h of traffic a day.
Hopefully I'm in the process of looking for an apartment closer to work.

Working remotely from home would be a perfect option.

So on that note, maybe I've got a bit of a bias for beeing comfortable at work. In fact it's not really work but how tired it can physically be to get there to begin with.

(12-04-2017, 01:44 PM)robotchaos Wrote: am allowed to run any linux distro that uses SElinux.

So I started a new job last month. My old place was mostly Red Hat with some AIX. My new job is mostly AIX and HP-UX with a handful of Red Hat. I was asked to take on all the Red Hat work as the other guys didn't know much. I was given the documentation, in the build guide one of the steps was to disable SELinux!

I changed that.

Working remotely would be high on the list of perks for me as well.

yeah, while selinux isn't perfect, it's a good layer. so we use it and keep it on enforcing mode.

but i've got it pretty good so far. fully paid for medical/vision/dental. that is a pretty big perk when you have a wife at home and 5 kids. they pay for us all...

so whats the job pyratebeard?

(12-04-2017, 02:28 PM)robotchaos Wrote: so whats the job pyratebeard?

I'm self employed, currently contracted to a life insurance company in Ireland. I'm a UNIX engineer but trying to move more into a developer role. Building up my coding knowledge all the time.

Speaking of; a few of you have mentioned long commutes. I also have an hour commute each way. How do you find time to work on all these fun little projects along side family life?

I'm a sysadmin at the state govt level. So pure Windows stacks, everything web in ASP.NET running on IIS, and Windows 10 only on desktops. Low pay compared to private sector. Also I have to support VB6 apps.

On the pro side, the health care is insane for the US. Everything 100% covered even the very expensive drugs and equipment my wife and I need. Pension is pretty good too. And they're big on accomodation: I got a nice ergonomic desk, chair, and keyboard setup when I started that probably ran 2k or so.

There's pros and con to everything, so I'm ok (for now) with sticking with a tech stack I hate for the good benefits.

that's a pretty dismal landscape for infrastructure, evbo. godspeed. but you gotta take care of your wife and yourself, so i know exactly that and commend you for doing so.

its just like any hobby, pyratebeard. if you wanted to play soccer, you'd likely have to be away from your family for some amount of time. though i spend my time working on *nix projects at the counter of the kitchen. talking to my kids and wife all the while. they know its my hobby and so are grateful to have me home at least there to converse with while i'm trying to do something. i don't do this everyday or even every other day. just occasionally i will work on what i want to work on.

I tend to have "my time" on the PC while the gf watches TV, although I sometimes find that I spend too much time reading comics instead of working on my projects!

Also, kudos to evbo for putting up with all the Windows!

Microsoft has a 99.9% lock on government systems, it's pretty abysmal. That's not to say it's all bad: Docker is a big hit here, and PowerShell has become a very nice automation tool over the years. But yeah, right now taking care of my family is more important than enjoying my work.

yeah exactly. my wife also likes to do things so we just do our own things near each other and still talk and interact. i really hope i didn't come off as "preachy", just trying to explain how we do it

/salute evbo

(12-04-2017, 03:50 PM)pyratebeard Wrote: How do you find time to work on all these fun little projects along side family life?

(12-04-2017, 06:16 PM)robotchaos Wrote: yeah exactly. my wife also likes to do things so we just do our own things near each other and still talk and interact. i really hope i didn't come off as "preachy", just trying to explain how we do it

(12-04-2017, 06:01 PM)robotchaos Wrote: they know its my hobby and so are grateful to have me home at least there to converse with while i'm trying to do something. i don't do this everyday or even every other day. just occasionally i will work on what i want to work on.

Indeed, I can relate to that.
Long commutes eat up a big part of my day and so I have to take drastic time management measures.
And also when I have downtimes at work I can read things or work on a side project.

pyratebeard Wrote:Speaking of; a few of you have mentioned long commutes. I also have an hour commute each way. How do you find time to work on all these fun little projects along side family life?

Usually, I listen to podcasts or read something tech-related while commuting. I also moved this month, which reduces the one-way travel to 30 minutes if no public transportation vehicle is delayed...

To answer your question about benefits of a job:
I value quality hardware. I'm currently interviewing for a new job and discovered several things that are more important to me than money:
- quality hardware. No matter if it's a nice notebook, monitor or a mechanical keyboard
- Freedom to self-organize me. I am usually on site at the same time every day. But if i have some private appointment, i don't want to ask for permission to come in late. Trust me, i get the job done.
- A High Quality development environment. I'm a long time intellij user - and every day at work i start hating eclipse more and more. This slow, sluggish, feature-lacking piece of junk slows me down.
- Room for (self)improvement. Keep my mind busy. Give me books, courses or just time to let me try something new. The studying dev of today is the relevant dev of tomorrow.
- Linux usage is a bonus.

Regarding family time: My girlfriends job has a huge lunch break and therefore she's coming home at least one to two hours after me. So i have plenty of time to either do something tech-related or prepare food... Ofc she prefers a nice meal ;-)

(13-04-2017, 12:32 AM)venam Wrote: when I have downtimes at work I can read things

As long as I'm reading tech related things I can get away with this as well. Nixers counts.

(13-04-2017, 05:16 AM)mrtn Wrote: Freedom to self-organize me.

I agree with this point. I'm more than capable of managing my own time. The only reason I need to give a heads up is if it's my week to attend the morning briefing and I can't make it.

(13-04-2017, 05:16 AM)mrtn Wrote: or prepare food...

The noodles go in the microwave...