Jim O’Halloran’s Weblog

Published April 25th, 2004 by Jim O'Halloran

Funny Job Ad

Just saw a very funny job ad on Seek. Full text posted below, because that link is likely to break in a few weeks.

Unix Specialist

Ah, Unix. Its cheapass cousin, Linux, is what all Microsoft users turn to just as their sanity reaches a crossroads. Did you know that Microsoft Word stills spellchecks ‘Unix’ as ‘UNIX’? Man, how 80’s does that look? I can imagine something like that flickering on the screen of a computer you assembled yourself from a crystal radio kit.

Trouble with Unix is that nobody really knows what it’s all about. Oh, sure, you’ve got your poindextrose types who type in things like “bash” and “grep”, but really, what does any of that mean? Well I’ll tell you. “bash” actually stands for “Bourne Again Shell” and what it is is an interface. It’s fairly unlikely that you’ll see many people typing “bash” in on a Unix machine. It’s like, with Windows, would you type “windows”? Of course you wouldn’t. You’d type “exit” and then “format c:”.

“grep” is a slightly more delicate subject. It’s a very complex and powerful search tool that I don’t much feel like getting into here. Which is exactly why we need Unix Specialists - to not explain things to you. Here’s a tip: next time you’re using Linux, and you’re stuck on a problem and don’t know what to do, don’t go to one of the online Linux forums and say “Hey, can you guys help me with this?” because I’m telling you, it ain’t gonna happen. What you need to do is go on and say “Hey! Linux is a pile of crap because it can’t do this!” and you’ll have people falling over themselves to get in there and prove you wrong with about a million different solutions for doing that one thing. That’s a little tip I’m giving you for free.

But the point of all that is, Unix is basically a sort of secret society where you either know it, or you don’t. And since most people just really can’t be bothered going through the agonies of learning it, it’s why we have jobs like this: “Unix Specialist”. Of course that means nothing, or at least it means about as much as “Car Specialist” or “Bread Specialist”. Bread Specialist? What the hell is that? What kind of bread? White, multigrain, mixed grain, wholemeal, sourdough? Sliced or unsliced? If sliced, sliced for sandwiches or for toast? Crusty or soft? No matter! Just eat your bread!

Requisite skills:

# Solid Solaris 2.6 - 9 administrative background
# Strong Red Hat 7 - AS 3.0 administrative background
# Jumpstart
# Sun Cluster
# TomCat
# SunOne Application Server/Web Server
# Kickstart
# Volume management of Veritas VM 3.5, and Solstice Disk Suite.

So, if you’ve got those things, then we’ve got this job. We can explain it in more detail if you want to give us a call or shoot us an email or whatever. You can do that by typing ‘pine’ at the ‘bash’. Freak.

| Post in Humor |