LinuxFestNW 2013: How We Mentor “Rock Star” Students

How we Mentor
"Rock Star" Students
Lance Albertson
Director
lance@osuosl.org
@ramereth

About me
● Director OSU Open Source Lab
● Systems Admin Background
● Virtualization (Ganeti+KVM),
CFengine, Puppet, GlusterFS
● Gentoo Developer
● Trumpet Jazz performer
How we Mentor "Rock Star" Students
Lance Albertson | lance@osuosl.org | @ramereth

About the OSU Open Source Lab
● FOSS hosting for high-impact projects
○ 160 projects
○ Drupal, Apache Software Foundation, Linux
Foundation, Python Software Foundation
● Co-location, private cloud, managed
hosting
● 4 FTEs / 18 undergrad students
● Systems Engineering, Development, and
Media teams

Students
10 Years of FOSS Hosting at the OSU Open Source Lab

Powered by Students
● Systems Team
○ Server installation, machine deployment,
configuration management, service
deployment, ticket troubleshooting, etc
● Development Team
○ Python/Django, Some PHP & Ruby, IU, backend,
middleware, infrastructure dev tools, design
● Media Team
○ Public relations, blog posts, interviews, social
media, event planning

Post-graduation Careers
● 60 OSL alumni student and staff
● Types of careers:
○ Systems Engineering
○ Software Development
○ Management
● Startups - CloudKick (Alex Polvi)
● Companies they work at
○ Mozilla, Rackspace, Google, Facebook, Intel,
other small startups

Recruitment
● Mailing lists
● OSU Beaver JobNet
● Website / Social Media
● Class lists
● Word of mouth
● Beaver BarCamp

Traits we look for
● Problem solving skills
○ More than just "Googling it"
● Basic understanding of Linux
○ Can they install packages, setup services?
● Self Starter
● Do they have passion about the position?
● Can they adapt and learn quickly?
● What's their personality like?

Skills we don't require initially
● Configuration management
● Production environment skills
● Open source community experience
● Web frameworks
● Extensive version control experience
● Already being a "rock star"

Interview Process
● Understand their Linux experience
○ How long have they used it?
○ What have they done with Linux?
○ Do they like to tinker with Linux?
● Open book screening quiz
○ Basic questions through advanced
○ Gauge their experience level better
● In-person interview

In-Person Interview
● Non-technical questions (personality)
● Problem solving
○ Read through a bash script or code
○ Walk through a typical server
problem
● Basic programming concepts
● Hands-on coding

New Hires: Learning about Linux
● Read the Linux Training Guide
○ Linux Fundamentals
○ Linux System Administration
○ Excellent crash course on Linux
○ GNU Free Documentation License
http://linux-training.be/downloads/
https://github.com/linuxtraining/lt

Linux Training Guide

First six months as a new hire
● Learn about configuration management
● Understand how services interact with
each other
● Walk through common tasks
○ Machine deployment, setting up new services,
tickets, user creation, client/project interaction
● Learn about how our infrastructure works
● Full-root from the start, but mentored

Creating a learning environment
● Full-timers and senior students help with
mentoring
● Find a task, and walk them through it
○ Try to teach a group of students when you can
○ Let them do the task themselves
○ It's OK to make mistakes, just don't do it
repeatedly or delete data
● Show more advanced tasks later on
● Giving them root is important

Beyond the first six months
● Give a student a major project to work on
and own
○ Let them do the research, design, testing and
initial deployment
○ Full-timers assist when needed
● Gives them something to be excited about
● Something other than just doing tickets
● Learn new cool things for the rest of the
team!

Expect high standards
● Create an environment where we push
each other harder
● Competitive yet still collaborative
● Senior students set standards and new
hires tend to follow them
○ New hires want to become like the seniors
● Always be professional but always have
fun too

Working over Summer term
● Can work full-time 40 hour week
○ No class/schedule interruptions
○ More productive, less context switching
● Students learn 3-4 times more over a
summer than they do in a typical term
● Encourage younger students to work over
the summers
● Senior students eventually get internships

How the OSL is unique
● Give them root (early on)
○ Not many Universities allow this
● Very hands on mentoring from staff
○ We don't expect students to know everything
initially
● High-profile production sites
● Students interact with clients worldwide
on a daily basis
● Access to high quality internships

Future Plans with the program
● Moving to an academic unit (EECS)
● Building a program that impacts more
students
○ Impact 50-100 students
○ Start out with bi-weekly workshops
● Developing more FOSS curriculum at OSU
○ Offering classes on python, ruby, drupal,
sysadmin, foss development, etc
● Collaboration with other Universities

Questions?
Lance Albertson
lance@osuosl.org
@ramereth
http://osuosl.org
http://lancealbertson.com
Follow OSUOSL
@osuosl | fb.com/OSUOSL
G+ "Open Source Lab"
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Copyright 2013

LinuxFestNW 2013: How We Mentor “Rock Star” Students

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