The Joel Test for system administrator jobs

Question

Based on “Organizational issues” — sore spots of IT? I think it would be fair to say that system administrators need to determine if a place is worth working at. There is a similar well known test by Joel for programmers.

What are the 12 questions system administrators should ask at an interview in order to help them decide if it's a good place to work at?

Following Joel's rules:

1. Questions should be platform and technology agnostic
2. Questions should elicit a simple response such as yes or no

EDIT: Please post one question at a time so we can see what users are voting for.

Answer 1

Do you use an incident/ticket tracking system?

Answer 2

One thing that I consider a must-have is a testing machine that has identical hardware specifications as the live server.

"How closely do your testing environments match Production?"

Answer 3

• Do you have configuration change control?
• Do you have data recovery policies?
• Do you perform daily backups?
• Do you have an issues database?

Update

• Do you have built-in redundancy?
• Do you have the best hardware money can buy?
• Can you setup a new laptop or desktop in one step?
• Do you have a policy in place for patching on a regular basis?

Answer 4

Do you perform system backups, and do test restores regularly?

Answer 5

Do you keep your critical hardware and software platforms licensed and under support, even when approaching end-of-life?

Answer 6

Are you willing to spend money for proper monitoring/logging tools?

-or, from the original Joel Test question:

Do you use the best tools money can buy?

Related Questions:

Server health monitoring software

Answer 7

Do you have response time policies/thresholds in place for critical systems? (or what's a better way to say, "Are you already familiar with the concept of what should and shouldn't get me out of bed at 3 a.m.?")

Answer 8

Do you measure service availability and are the required thresholds for each service agreed on from a management level?

Answer 9

Do you log on using the generic Administrator/root account?

It's always fun to throw a "no" answer in the middle of a bunch of "yeses".

Answer 10

Am I the only system administrator? It can be fine to be the only system administrator - in fact it can be fun, but only if the business understands the implications which brings us to:

Do you have SLAs?

Answer 11

• Do you have a security policy for all systems (not just the "important" ones)?
• Do you have an SLA defining, in case of a disaster, what recovery windows exist?
• Do you have defined maintenance windows for your production (and possibly test) systems?
• What is your on-call policy?

Answer 12

What are your policies regarding or how do you enforce documentation of IT systems? (This will have a direct impact on how quickly you get up to speed vs. time spent wallowing in an undocumented morass before you can begin to "make a difference".)

Answer 13

I'd note that, for those of us that enjoy working for startups or early-stage companies, the answer for most of these may very well be "nope, but...". What follows that statement is often quite informative.

Answer 14

If the system administrator has a suggested infrastructure/process improvement, is there a way to get it heard by decision makers?

Answer 15

Is the current environment documented?

Are both the policies and procedures documented and consistent?

Answer 16

Do you have a disaster recovery plan and does this include IT?

Follow-ups from the great comments: If so, does it include the entire organisation and not just IT? Does it include personnel and do you test it regularly?

Related Questions:

Disaster recovery plan development best practicies or resources?

Answer 17

Do all new system/software/application purchases go through IT and does IT have the power to reject and suggest another system, perhaps one that is already in use at another department?

Answer 18

Is IT a priority in your organisation or is it a necessary evil?

Answer 19

Can you add new user(s) in one step?

Homage to: Can you make a build in one step?

Answer 20

For a lot of these questions so far you have to take into consideration that the person you are asking needs to look like they know what the answer is - but in reality might not give you the real answer. Some examples:

Q: do you have change control?

A: yes, we use RT

Real answer: we have RT and only the previous administrator used it and and we haven't touched it in 3 months.

Q: do you have daily backups? A: yes, we use HP Data Protector.

Real answer: Since all our users storage is on a SAN and have snapshots we use previous versions to do day-to-day restores. We HOPE our daily backups actually run and if they miss something we'd never know until we start asking you where the backups are for superimportantfile.txt.

I think that the most important things you can do are:

1. Ask to meet your peers/subordinates. Not in an interview room but can you go see where they work and spend some time seeing what the day-to-day is like.

2. Ask what the company expects and provides for professional development.

3. Ask the interview and the peers/subordinate how often the company updates/upgrades/introduces new technology. The differences in answers can be enlightening.

Answer 21

Do internal accounting practices assess a value to the services IT provides to other departments, or is IT simply accounted as a cost center?

(This is very nearly the same question as Stick's "Is IT a priority in your organisation or is it a necessary evil?", but phrased so as to possibly elicit an honest answer instead of the blatantly telegraphed correct lie.)

Answer 22

Ask them if, when they say System Administrator, do they actually mean SA and DBA and Net Admin and Apache/IIS Admin and Email Admin and AD Admin and desktop troubleshooter.

Answer 23

Does IT have it's own budget?

Mine does not and we are reliant on other departments funds for everything we need. Sucks big time.

Answer 24

Can your system administrators write code?

Answer 25

May I have an allowance to continue my training and education and will you allow me to puchase materials to keep up to date on security issues?

Will you support my decisions to staff with regards to policies and procedures no matter how unpopular?

Answer 26

If the setup is a mess, will you have the authority to get in there and do something about it? This is very very important - if it's going to be your responsibility, they had better give you full authority. Even if the setup is perfect, and they provide all the right answers to every other question, if you don't have that authority you are better off not taking the job.

Answer 27

Do you know what to do when a disaster scenario happens ?

Answer 28

Can you tell which patches are missing for which systems at any given time?

Answer 29

The backup is finished after testing if recovering works?

Answer 30

How do you know when something that requires attention has happened?