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Linuxgruven Layoffs
Several readers submitted this story about layoffs at Linuxgruven. Some of them made allegations that Linuxgruven had bounced their last set of paychecks - we have no confirmation of this. We have previously run a story and a followup about a conflict between Linuxgruven and Sair - looks like that won't be a problem anymore.
This is funny? Really. My company supplies equipment and leases space to Linuxgruven for their classes. Aaron up there has a wife and a child to support. Another person I know from Linuxgruven just moved here from Chicago, staying in a hotel with his family paid for by Linuxgruven. He was looking for a house. What's he gonna do now, move his family into a car? What's so funny about that?
On monday morning 15 people are going to show up at the door to my company expecting to be trained. Will there be anyone from Linuxgruven there to explain what's going on to them? Or are we going to have a riot on our hands? Then there are the afternoon and evening classes....
45 people who paid $2500 (or whatever) for training they're not going to get, expecting to work for a company that just let 100 employees go.... This is funny to you?
On top of all that, as I've stated before Linuxgruven has always paid their bills.... until now. They just ordered 100 machines from us for new offices they were planning to open. Thankfully they haven't been picked up yet, however we have to restock those parts to our vendors. If we're lucky we'll get a low 10% restocking fee. That's a large chunk of un-recoverable change for us to swallow.
This is not funny.
--J(K) DOS is like Unix in exactly the same way that a pinto is like an aircraft carrier.
Why don't we make a distinction, on Slashdot. We will refer to EVERY commercial linux company / distro as "Linux-dot-com" and every non-commercial distro or organization will simply be "Linux" or "Linux oriented."
This makes a lot more sense. With the rate at which all of these "revolutionary" Linux capitalists are going under, no one is going to want to invest in linux, and in turn, linux will not do well on the market place.
Linux [corporations] resembles dot-coms in every way, shape, and form. They have no plan, they pick up a copy of linux from kernel.org, get a post on slashdot about an IPO (which needs to stop, btw) and two weeks later, are on Yahoo about a Chapter 11. Ohh, this really looks great for Linux / Unix as a whole.
Let's vote JonKatz off Slashdot island.
Let's vote JonKatz off Slashdot island.
The "St. Louis Business Journal" Article that Slashdot points to has a link at the botton labelled "Click for permission to reprint", and the page that it takes you to claims to be able to charge $5 for the right to link, as if copyright could restrict that. As I see it, this makes the "St. Louis Business Journal" a scam intended to take advantage of people who don't understand copyright and fair use, and, therefore, not a trustable source of news.
It's only social pressure, but I would like to recommend that slashdot label unconfirmed "St. Louis Business Journal" stories as rumour, since their misleading statements about copyright show that publication by the "St. Louis Business Journal" does not make it particularly likely that a statement is true. Also, keeping the "St. Louis Business Journal" in quotation marks helps make it clear that that site is not acknowledged as the journal of record for business in St. Louis.
I was Senior Systems Developer at Linuxgruven. I was working on internal projects when I got the axe. And here is what I know.
Yes it's a scam. The fact is that they count on people not passing the LCA. They do this by promising people that have no chance of becoming a Linux admin. Most of the time these are people that can't even use windows computers.
The owners ( James and Mike ) write checks out of the company's bank account. The reason everyone is fired is because the owners took a vacation and spent their paycheck.
Right before this happened everyone at linuxgruven was forced to sign a non-discloser agreement so that people would be afraid to speak out about what was about to happen. ( LG can fook off because I did not sign S#1t.
Everyone that was above me knew how the bussiness worked and chose to ignore it because they were getting great titles and pay.
I found out a month ago and started looking into the training materials. The instructors were top notch but the materials were so bad that I would not suggest them to be used as heating fuel. I see no possible way for people to study anything from the training materials.
In the beginning it looked like a real company. I was seperated from the rest of the company and told that support contracts for services were piling up. It was not till I went to the call center and saw everyone fooking around that I supected that it was the training classes that were the only form of income. Other then me. I was billed out for 170+ hour and got screwed out of my bonus for those jobs. Which by the way my bonuses were supposed to be in this coming fridays check.
I strongly suggest that people stay away from linuxgruven. I have been told personally by the owners that they will continue the training classes and look to other citys to make up for St.Louis.
Don't feel sorry for me. feel sorry for all the guys that thought they were getting a break. A chance to work with linux and get a real good pay concidering how much they knew. Instead these guys got screwed out of pay and the bills are coming fast for them.
The fact is that there was only one real admin job that linuxgruven had, and only one person did that job. The rest were sitting around waiting for people that wanted interviews.
This is a company to stay away from... If anyone wants to contact me they can do so though my home page www.mercybeat.com ( i'm mercybeat ).
There was some good work going on at Linuxgruven... there was a team that was working on creating real training materials that were to be released opensource.
My last advice to linuxgruven employees. Go to the courts and file a personal small claim against the company. If your in st.louis contact me and i'll tell you all about it. Or you can meet me in clayton monday morning and file with me.
I would still like to work for a linux professional services company if anyone has a job for a java programmer with 5 years or real linux experiance.
Damon C. Richardson
mercybeat@earthlink.net
P.S. Once again I have signed nothing at linuxgruven and I can say what ever i want to who ever I want.
Last one in jail is a fascist.