Too many vmware engineer duties
Recently in an interview for a job, I was asked the question by a panel member why I had written a book on hiring VMware Engineers and Administrators.
The answer is that many traditional IT managers don’t know what to look for when doing talent searches…
…but of course, that is not what I told the interviewer, however; it is why I wrote the book!
TOO Many VMware Engineer Duties…
Don’t take my word for it, here’s the job listing for VMware Engineer Jobs to check for yourself.
While watching the job market, I’m amazed when I read job descriptions for VMware Engineers that go on, and on, and never seem to focus on the primary duties of what someone with the title should actually do.
Based on my own experience, most job descriptions that are posted were written by the manager.
These managers want storage, network, hardware, antivirus, backup, active directory, Citrix XenApp, VDI, and 100 other things that are the expertise of their own.
That’s why I wrote the VCP for Hire book, to provide managers with VMware Engineer and Administrator job roles, job descriptions, and list out qualifications for what they should look for depending on the size of their environment.
Good Grief!
vSphere is a cloud service that needs to be properly managed unless you want VM performance troubleshooting problems or outages.
Managing vSphere includes, but is not limited to: upgrades, updates, tunings, testing, evaluating, fixing, reconfiguring, migrating, consolidating, designing, redesigning, undoing — and a number of other things all just to keep vSphere up-to-date and healthy.
When VMware Engineers and Admins are expected to do 5 other jobs roles while at the same time doing their own, something will not get done correctly and what you will get is best effort instead of a premium service level (which of course is what is expected).
BTW, this job I was interviewing for expected me to be the manager of 18 people and participate in daily operations and engineering duties.
Managing 18 system engineers and admins is a full time job if you expect to properly coach, mentor, review, deal with people issues, resolve conflicts, track performance, and leave time…
… and attend manager meetings for planning, road maps, strategies, status, projects, and 20 other things managers do that nobody knows about.
Is there any wonder why so many infrastructure teams are a mess?
Everyone is an expert until they find out they don’t know what they don’t know until it hits them in the face in the form of an outage, performance problems, or staff issues due to ignorance.
How’d the Interview Go?
I’m guessing I didn’t do very well on the interview since I didn’t get a response back from the recruiter…
…but what I did do well was explain to the hiring manager and his boss that a good manager takes care of his staff (team) and makes sure they know what’s going on. He looks after their welfare and keeps them from being spread too thin.
I know how painful it is to change direction 5 times and never let my team finish anything because of poor leadership that can’t decide where they are going!
If you’re a manager looking for help, get a copy of my book – it’s only $7 bucks on Amazon, but it’s taken me years to learn the lessons I write about.
