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Finding a Linux Job
Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier writes, "Kirrily 'Skud' Robert, CEO of Netizen [and part-time
freshmeat appindex maintainer], gives Linux job-seekers a few tips on landing a job with a Linux-friendly company. Netizen is an Australian Open Source and Internet training and consultancy company." It's a fun read, but eminently practical. Among her advice: Have opinions on beer, get involved in open-source projects, keep track of your source code ... just not necessarily in that order.
There's something about convincing the CEO that Linux has significant advantages for some project or other, and that it costs less too! The look of enlightenment on the face of a PHB who suddenly groks the advantages of OpenSource is priceless. And it gives a real chance for OpenSource advocacy when the BSA audits you and finds that you're using a whole lot of OpenSource software, so they can't say a damned thing! :)
Plus, it lets me put BSD in where I see fit too...
--
: remove whitespace to e-mail me
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
...the sort of questions that come up at interview time are:-
1) Can you survive outside Visual Studio?
2) Which edition of the "C programming Language" did you learn from? (trick question)
3) Which kernel version do you use?
...and if you get offered a job, they point at the tie you're wearing to the interview and say "You won't be needing that!"
All your ghosts are just false positives.
I have rarely had any difficulty ascertaining the skills of a fellow hacker. Its like a painter judging the technical skill of another painter, its easy, you can see why they do what they do and how. A few examples and a fairly short chat will do it. On the other hand, when I try and figure out whether a painter is a good painter, or whether a banker knows what the hell he's talking about, I'm in the dark, and pretty much no amount of evidence that they can provide will enlighten me beyond "gee thats a lot of stuff".
:) if they're trying to pull something. Simply find a friend or employee who is a Good Hacker (tm), explain carefully what you want in a new employee, then let them sit in on the interview, and if they want ask questions.
My personal urging towards employers at least is ensure that when you go to speak to your prospective hacker, bring along another one, one you trust, because they will see right through them (assuming a reasonable social ability
As far as going for a job, I'd be concerned if I was merely interviewed by management, unless said management is particularly technical. Kirrily may not see this from where she is, she is surrounded by the tech world and more importantly, a good judge herself, but if the interviewing group doesn't consist of at least one person fairly familiar with the stuff that you do, you simply aren't going to get a good show. The job will go to the person with the best social skills and the ability to sell themselves, which is all fine and dandy unless the person concerned can't actually do the job.
They say interview technique is important, but more so these days is Who you have at the interview, than what you do there.
You can't win a fight.
This is a really weird article. Getting a job that's Linux-based isn't necessarily a good thing, or at least it has very little to do with your personal satisfaction. Linux is, after all, just an operating system. What's more important is the type of work you're doing, the people you're working with, how well a company is managed, and so on. If you want a Linux job solely because you think Microsoft is evil, then you need to pull back and look at your personal crusades in perspective. If you enjoy programming, then you'll get the same problem solving and code writing pleasures regardless of whether you're working on a mainframe, a proprietary embedded system (much more common than either Windows or Linux in the job market), a handheld device, or some form of desktop PC. Ranting about how Linux is superior to Windows really does give the same impression as arguing whether Captain Picard could take down Captain Kirk. It looks really weird to most people, because most people, even the techies, don't fixate on which operating system their computer is running.
I'm currently a college senior looking for work and I'm having the hardest time finding a job for after I graduate. Just about all of the companies that I talk to are looking to fill immediate opennings, i.e. within two weeks. No one is interested in looking for someone who has the skills and the education, but isn't available for another two months.
At my school, most (if not all) of the recruiters looking to fill full time positions come in September. The Career Center says you should have a few offers by December. Then you should make a decision by Janruary. Well, that was true for CivE, ChemE, and MechE, but the only jobs available for CS at that time were from companies that "need people." Those are the jobs where you go to work eight hours a day and come home ready to die. *bleah* I had one this summer, I don't want another.
How am I supposed to get one of these "linux friendly" companies to take a look at me months in advance? I have the education and an excellent GPA (3.5). I go to the conferences to learn about new technologies, not the freebies. I've been using Linux for four years and I finally use it on my desktop. I do linux programming when I can, but my coursework takes up most of my time. And most of all, Linux really excites me. All the IPOs are cool, but I really don't give a damn. I just want a roof over my head, food in the fridge, and small part in the Linux Revolution.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Nate
Two summers ago, I tried to find a job at a startup company. My resume is pretty good, at the time I had done a lot of work on Java, had been published in books on Java, etc etc. I had worked at Microsoft. I figured my chances were pretty good.
But, to my tremendous surprise, none of the resources that I had at my disposal resulted in any really strong leads. I emailed my resume around, I posted on HotJobs, Monster, etc. all the big sites. I did a lot of searches for open job postings. And although I got a few offers, it was an awful lot of work.
So, a friend of mine and I started our own company, which we called Catalyst Recruiting. It's designed to help students and recent graduates who are smart and have a high skill level get connected with startup companies. We've been in business since last August, and have a web site built 100% from free and open-source components. I designed most of the technology, and I think it's pretty revolutionary relative to what's out there for recruiting today. We even plan to open-source the software (check out enzyme.sourceforge.net)
But enough about me. I think that we are a great resource for
Anyway, that's my spiel, hope you didn't read it if you're not interested. If you are interested, there's a link in my sig. We don't spend a lot of money on advertising (except for our sponsorship of The Onion), so I try and get the word out any time I have a chance and a sympathetic audience.
Thanks,
Eric
Want to work at Transmeta? Hedgefund.net? Priceline?
Can your IM do this?
Exactly.. Even after you've hired him, that willingness to learn will make him better than his peers. You can stick that guy in anywhere, and have him swimming in a couple of days. Buy him a book, point him at a test system, and he'll be up to speed before management has sorted out the project specs. Many, many times I've been given the 'fun' stuff to do, not because I knew 'X' intimatly, but because I could learn 'X' well enough in a couple of days. Granted, I've been given some weird stuff 'Jim, you'll be taking over for someone in Marketing this week. Here's the proceedure manual' or 'We know you haven't touched VC++ since 4.0, but we need a .DLL wrapper to let the Unix box screen values coming into the DB', but on the whole it's been great for me and the company..
.sig: Now legally binding!
I was looking for a new job recently and I had some interesting experiences. I have been a C and C++ programmer for about 15 years (mostly C, only a little C++), with about 17 years of professional programming experience. My last two jobs, a total of 11 years of work, have been doing Unix work. My first Linux kernel was 1.2.8, back in about 1996. I live in San Francisco and was looking for work near home - I did not want a car-only commute. At my last job I used almost all the popular commercial Unicies - AIX, HP, Solaris, SCO, Digital, NCR and so on.
I was looking for Linux work, and got two hits on my resume from Linux-related companies. The first was a company making a Linux-based product. I had a somewhat unusual phone interview - the guy who was the chief tech wanted to know how much Debian experience I had. My preferred ditribution is Slackware but had installed Debian twice. I really didn't use it with any regularity, or have any specific experience. He semed to be interested in Debian install packages, and didn't seem to think that my experience building install packages for seven different Unix native installers meant much. I guess my lack of Debian-specific experience counted quite a bit against me, but I also got the impression that because I didn't use Debian I was somehow politically incorrect. The other problem I had was that I could not offer any code samples from my last job. All the code was proprietary and even though I am quite proud of my coding skills I could not prove anything. I have not had time to work on any outside of work Open Source projects so I could not show any code from that source. I think that this also counted against me in the "politically incorrect" category. The thing that most annoyed me was that after the phone interview, I never even got a call back from the company or their in house recruiter. I figure if you bother to do a phone interview, you should at least have someone call back and say "Sorry, we are not interested."
The other job was with a big name Linux distributor who was interested in doing alot of new kernel feature work, plus some interesting user space stuff. They were a much more professional operation, but once again I felt that the fact that I had not contributed to any open source projects counted against me to some extent. I felt I had a good shot at a position there because I had skills that matched one of their specific needs fairly well. Their main drawback was that they were a very bad car-only commute from my place.
In the end, I decided to take a non-Linux job doing Java Programming. This was because the vast majority of jobs I saw listed were Java jobs and I decided that I better pick up some new skills so I could continue working for the next few years. Also, a good friend works with me at my new company, and the staff is mostly older people who have a good sense for "quality of life" issues and are more interested in experience and proven skills than flash.
There were not many really good looking Linux jobs, from my rather narrow perspective, but this will change over time. The current jobs seem to prefer a certain amount of Open Source credibility. In the end I think I made the correct decision for my future, but I would have liked to have a job in the community. Maybe next time!
I've had my resume out there for a while, and while I wouldn't consider myself even close to the top echelon of linux coders out there, I get a whole lot of calls just based off of the fact that my resume is out there, and people are interested in hiring me.
I'm in college, and I'm going to be looking for a "career" soon, but so far, I haven't really had to look, companies seem to just find me on the internet.
It seems at times that with the economy that we've got now, and with the job market in our sector the way it is, here's my checklist --
1: Do you have a pulse?
2: Are you a crack/heroin addict?
3: Do you plan to immediately defraud the company?
4: Do you have any convictions for homicide?
If you answered 'Yes' to all of the above, congratulations, you're qualified for practically any job out there.
While that is a bit exaggerated, it has seemed to me recently like a lot of employers are desparate for employees. Good economy means expansion in business, expansion in business means that you need more employees. And there aren't any to be had as far as I can see....
(Note: stay away from consulting firms - I've interviewed with 2 - and they seem to be of two breeds - the sharks, and the pimps)
My $0.02
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Plain text or simple HTML are very good universal formats. If somebody can't deal with either of them, are you sure you want to work for them?
I once maintained my resume in MS Word format, but decided that it was a waste maintaining a Windows system at home just so I could maintain my resume. I now have my resume posted on my web site. I keep the HTML in it and my web site simple as it is there for information transfer, not glitz. If someone needs it in text format I will transfer it over to text buy having Lynx translate it. The resume is currently in flux as I'm updating it for a new job search. I'm looking for a place that will allow me to only work 30 hours a week preferably in web security or programming.
However, at the end they recomend four job portals: Linux.com, Linux Today, User Friendly's GeekFinder and Linux.org.au. I agree with the first two, and (since I'm in North America) have no valid opinion on Linux.org.au.
The problem with Geek Finder is that it is really just a front for Dice.com. Unlike all the other resources mentioned, dice.com charges employers for listings, instead of being community-based and advertiser-supported.
Instead, I would recomend the following additional job portals, where I have actually posted jobs:
- Superexpert.com: not great, but it does host linux jobs.
- JustLinux: a smaller Linux portal, with a nice jobs page.
- Free Software Jobs Page: This is the GNU jobs page. It is strictly for free software jobs, so only hard-core open source jobs get posted there.
Finally, WireX's research jobs are here and our production jobs are here.Crispin
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Crispin Cowan, CTO, WireX Communications, Inc.
Immunix: Free Hardened Linux Distribution
Jobs!
OK - Item number 1 (actually the 2nd item) dealt exclusively with source code. Do you have to be a programmer to be a player in this game? I hope not, I gave up programming about 10 years ago, I really got tired of dreaming about the code I was currently working on. I've now moved on to other things (project management, specifically) but I still love the whole Open Source/Linux thing. What percentage of /. 'ers are actually programmers? Would this make a decent poll?
mas cerveza, por favor politically incorrect stu
This isn't really anything new. To find a job in any field, the key is to demonstrate that you know what you're doing. Open source involvement and having the skills that you're looking to get employed in is of course good. But this article seems to be for the geeks out there who would like to code for 36 hours straight rather than actually develop some social skills as well.
Sorry to burst your bubble - but for most of you looking for a job, there's probably someone at least a qualified. The KEY to finding a job is how well you come off in person. Are you a likeable person...do you work well with others? This is a VERY important aspect of finding the right employee being that the IT industry seems to have a very hight percentage of assholes in it. (read: tech support). Many seem very aloof and overconfident in their skills.
Your resume should speak for your skills/interests, but that's only about %25 of it. Your resume gets you in the door. The interview gets you the job...so concentrate on that.
BTW - As far as the word format on your resume...sorry to burst most Ub3r h4x0rz bubbles, but most companies have lots of management, and management uses Windows...word is still the way to go in a resume, but that doesn't mean you have to like it.
-FluX
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"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume