[CALUG] [JOB OPENING] System Administrator at Intelesys Corp

[James Ewing Cottrell 3rd]

My comments are a simple application of Kirchoff's laws (in this case, 
the ones applying to Current) to the supply and demand of cleared people.

It is the responsibility of companies to clear people.

It is not the responsibility of people to be cleared before being hired.

I have heard that it is illegal to advertise a job where having a 
clearance is a requirement, but that you are allowed to required that 
people be clearable, and furthermore, to terminate employment should 
that not be the case.

In practice, the distinction is rather subtle. Companies will do what 
they want anyway, and perhaps they are doing us a favor by being honest 
with us. Sometimes, killing hope completely is better than being strung 
along.

I hold no bitterness towards John or his company.

But the attitude that I have been running into, "we won't hire you 
without a clearance because it costs too much money" is untenable.

It just won't work if everybody does it, and everybody seems to be doing it.

I could also argue that clearances should Last Forever, and that ANY US 
Clearance (DOC, DOE, NASA, Military, whatever) be accepted as 
equivalent. For all the preaching about consolidating various security 
agencys, essentially nothing has been done! Of course, I am probably 
preaching to the choir here.

I have 5 years at NIST and held a Top Secret clearance from 1979-1984, 
JEC Jr worked 30 years for the Navy (NSWC), JEC Sr was an Army doctor 
during WWII and later ran the VA hospital (McGuire) in Richmond, and I 
am related to Patrick Ewing and David Chadwell (like Ewing, a 
revolutionary war hero), so if the Government can trust anyone, it's our 
family, and they have already agreed to trust me!

I don't mind them poking about in my business, that's their job, but for 
companies to shut me out of the process, well yeah, that leaves a bit of 
a bitter taste.

But once again, it's not even bitterness that comes into play here.

It's about too many companies trying to take the easy way out.

And who gets screwed in the process? People.

JIM

Janos Gaspar wrote:
> John,
> 
> I have to admire you for your defense of the flame.  I'm with a defense 
> contractor and we do a lot of work at the NSA and CIA clearance levels 
> so TS/SCI is not a big deal to us.  We also clear people, although we're 
> a small company.  It does involve cost and effort.  And it is true that 
> programs out there are not willing to wait a year for their resource to 
> get through the clearance process.  It's very difficult and most 
> applicants understand and are actually grateful.  They would get 
> forgotten by the big contractors.  Small businesses that do cleared work 
> also take more care with their employees.  Being in a small business and 
> knowing what's involved in working with the department of defense and 
> knowing the high-level of security we are dealing with and the end 
> objectives, I can appreciate everything you've said and don't appreciate 
> James' insinuations at all.  But all in all, this is a good group of 
> guys and gals on this list, even though James appears to be bitter 
> towards you.  Maybe you should suggest you talk about the cleared 
> environment in relation to Linux and career development etc. at their 
> next meeting?  That would be interesting, don't you think?
> 
> And by the way... there are plenty of cleared sys admins who are looking 
> for work... just remember - they don't always get the best treatment at 
> the big companies.  If I can help, let me know.
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Szakmeister" 
> <jszakmeister-calug at intelesyscorp.com>
> To: "James Ewing Cottrell 3rd" <JECottrell3 at Comcast.NET>
> Cc: <lug at calug.com>
> Sent: Friday, March 17, 2006 2:52 AM
> Subject: Re: [CALUG] [JOB OPENING] System Administrator at Intelesys Corp
> 
> 
>> James Ewing Cottrell 3rd wrote:
>>
>>> Yeah, right! Like there are actually TS/SI cleared people out there
>>> without jobs.
>>
>>
>> There are some out there who may not be happy with their current 
>> position.
>>
>>> <flame>
>>>
>>> Any company doing cleared word had better be willing to clear everybody.
>>> Otherwise, that company is not qualified to be doing cleared work.
>>
>>
>> That was useful.  I'm glad you judged our company like that based off of
>> one line in one job requirement that we have. :-/  We do clear people.
>> However, for this job, we'd rather have someone *this year*. :-)  You
>> can't always predict a need in advance.  Waiting a year for something
>> you need today is just bad business sense.
>>
>>> Finding someone who already has a clearance is just gravy. You cannot
>>> expect it. Otherwise, there will be no people left with clearances.
>>
>>
>> ...which is the current situation. :-)  We're always on the lookout for
>> good people, whether they're cleared or not.
>>
>>> Companies who will not spend the time, effort, and money to clear people
>>> are just Stealing from the companies that are willing to do it.
>>>
>>> Yes, we all know that it takes lots of time, money and effort to clear
>>> someone. This is why traditionally only the bigger companies could
>>> afford to do it, or they had non-cleared contracts as well.
>>
>>
>> If a company had to clear every person themselves, then a small business
>> could not exist.  Also, dealing with government contracts is
>> fundamentally different than dealing with commercial entities.  A
>> company geared towards doing commercial contracts--which they'd have to
>> be in order to be competitive and still meet your requirement of
>> clearing people themselves--would have to change their business model
>> entirely to cope with the government (not an easy feat, and it's hard to
>> be competitive if you have to incur all that overhead of changing
>> business models).  In the commercial world, you don't have to deal with
>> fiscal years, and the fact that the budget doesn't get approved on time.
>> And, you'd expect a commercial entity to be responsive when it comes to
>> changing the terms of the agreement because their requirements have
>> changed.  The government doesn't operate nearly that efficiently.  It's
>> hard enough on small business without throwing the fact that we need to
>> clear every person ourselves as a requirement on top of everything else.
>>
>> I'll submit that large companies put out a lot of requirements where
>> they need someone already cleared.  It's not like small businesses are
>> the only ones in town hiring already cleared people.  And from what I've
>> seen, big business is just as likely to "Steal" people as anyone else.
>>
>>> </flame>
>>
>>
>> Not everyone is out to be malicious. :-)  I've grown tired of
>> administering the networks myself, and I see plenty of opportunity for
>> someone else to come in, help us out, and learn a lot of new stuff along
>> the way.  I'm not trying to commit theft, but rather offer an
>> opportunity to someone interested in learning more about administration,
>> Linux, networking and even web development, that a person wouldn't
>> otherwise have.  I can't say that there are too many companies out there
>> in the cleared community who are willing to teach and train people, much
>> less have opportunities that allow you to make use of the world's best
>> OS: Linux. :-)
>>
>> Let's get back to the regularly scheduled program. :-)  Speaking of
>> which, I've just set up a couple of servers as a high-availability pair
>> using heartbeat and drbd.  Looking at the past events, no one has done
>> such a talk... would people be interested in a talk on that?
>>
>> -John
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