How To Get Hired As An Open Source Developer

An anonymous reader writes "Todd Cranston-Cuebas, tech recruiter for Ticketmaster, offers insider tips and tricks for landing an open-source job -- or for recruiting new talent to your IT staff." Make yourself googleable.

Comments

Hiring with or without a degree... my thoughts.

[dagg]

"Companies looking for open source skill sets are very focused on the proven abilities of the engineer in the work environment. In other words, if you can do it, you are the right candidate. With proprietary systems, like Microsoft technologies, there's a tendency to look at things like certifications as a prerequisite for hires. In the open source world, there are very few certifications that matter."

My experience is this:

• People without degrees will willingly hire people without degrees.
• People with degrees usually hire only people with degrees.

Re:Hiring with or without a degree... my thoughts.

[MattW]

That hasn't been my experience. My experience is that good managers who are knowledgable about the workforce will hire people without degrees. People who are poor managers and in over their heads are too afraid to hire non-degreed personnel because they feel it will reflect poorly on them. It's the HR equivalent of "no one ever got fired for buying Microsoft".

Same as getting any job

[BigGar']

Have skills applicable to the job and a few others that might come in handy.

Be flexabile on salary, understand that pay has come down in a lot of markets.

Interview well when it gets to that point.

Get lucky.

How is any of this different than getting any job?

Ticketbastard

[timothy_m_smith]

I find it almost funny to hear Ticketmaster being associated with free software since they provide a service that adds almost no value and charges a boatload. Good thing they are saving so much money on software systems.

Re:Ticketbastard

[Soko]

Creators of apps like Microsoft?

Welcome to capitalism, and (for good or ill) one of the roles of OSS. How many times have you heard "RedHat is cheaper than Windows, so businesses should use it!!!", or worse, said that yourself? Don't like it when the other edge of the OSS sword swings around and hits you, eh?

Since when does the GPL say "No money grubbing, evil monopolists allowed to install and use this software to further thier cause."? Oh, that's right, it doesn't - only rules about re-distribution. Hopefully 2.0 of the GPL will stomp out all monopolies, hunh?

Grow up.

Like it or not, we get the good with the bad. As "evil" as TicketMonster is, they _are_ forwarding our cause in a way that businesses understand - namley that OSS makes good business sense. I'll take that over a tin-foil hat any day, bud.

Hell, maybe our way "of goodness and light" will rub off on them by association, making for a kinder and gentler monopolist. You just never know...

Soko

Well...

[Snork Asaurus]

It's easy to forget that there are several different categories of software development, each with different things driving them. Here's a gross simplification of how I see it:

There are 3 distinct major groups of developers:

1 - people who earn money developing software for sale as a product: to them, open source generally != good

2 - people who earn money developing software (embedded, hardware device drivers, etc.) to support another product that is sold: to them open source: sometimes == good and sometimes != good (gives away, architectures, secrets)

3 - people who earn money developing software for IT purposes and/or in-house use: to them, open source generally == good

Of course, there are many other groups of developers (academic, recreational, etc.) and there is intermingling, so the above is not a hard and fast rule.

I also think that this is also one of the reasons that you often see acrimonious debate here at /. - each group has a different set of objectives and priorities.