Open Source Expertise in Short Supply

whydoyouask writes "Information week has an article on the shortage of expertise for enterprise open source projects and it's ramifications for both enterprises and salaries for those possessed of these skill. While it is suspicious in it's timing and references to Ballmer's recent email it does point out some definite considerations that companies planning open source projects better account for. Those looking for marketable job skills might also take note."

Comments

Hard not to be cynical...

[wrinkledshirt]

A dearth of OS specialists? I remember back when they were talking about a dearth of programmers in general.

Went back to school and aced one of those year-long programming courses. Knowing that it would look like one of those garbage diplomas, I bolstered my resume with side-projects, including a search engine (powered by, coincidentally enough, on Open Source).

When I graduated? No jobs available.

It's okay. I like being an English teacher in Korea right now, but if that segue is amusing to read, it wasn't to live through.

Re:Hard not to be cynical...

[gcaseye6677]

Got to love how companies are always complaining about lack of experienced professionals, but then they try very hard to avoid actually giving someone experience. They've got to start somewhere, right?

Re:Hard not to be cynical...

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Back to business: you generally have a limited budget. While we have a couple interns, we still need skilled people NOW. We can't afford (from both a budget and time perspective) to train everyone in basic programming.

Well, as the saying goes, if you think training is expensive, try ignorance. If you you can't afford to train people, you sure as hell can't afford to employ good people who already have those skills, which might explain this:

System Administration is worse than programming. I just cant find anyone with decent "basic" skills, much less someone mid-level.

I suspect the problem isn't games, Linux fans doing their own thing, or newbies playing with your system. It's far more likely to be that you simply aren't offering the market rate for someone good enough to do the job you want done. If you pay peanuts, you'll get monkeys. :-)

See also my reply to the grandparent post.

Open Source != Linux

[Dancin_Santa]

Face it, Open Source is not as well-staffed as we'd like. Sure, Linux experts abound (many of them right here on Slashdot) as do many Apache administrators. But beyond that, most users are on their own when it comes to looking for good help with Open Source products.

There, again, did you see that word? Product. Open Source is mainly concerned with Projects, not Products. So while the person who initially opened the project on Sourceforge and the people who joined up early are all experts, those outside the main circle are not usually so well versed in the projects. Put a company behind the project, turn it into a product, and then you'll have a serious chance of getting "expertise".

When a project is just a project, no one benefits from having many users sitting around bitching on the mailing list. But when someone is trying to sell that product, the company trying to make a buck benefits by having people out there who are experts in the product and can provide support to a whole range of customers.

So yes, on the micro level some Open Source projects are well staffed with experts and companies can feel secure in their decision to go with that project because of the large pool of experts. But on the macro level, most Open Source projects are ill-funded, undocumented, and flat out bad.

Moral of the article

[jkitchel]

Use your knowledge of open source and *nix to help your company PLAN for the switch over to open source. Help them realize what it takes. This is your chance to shine. Otherwise, they may freak out at the extra effort needed to get it off of the ground when they realize that it takes SKILLED admins instead of the run of the mill Microsoft admins.

Matchmaker?

[Thunderstruck]

There are a jillion online dating sites.

There are a jillion online employment sites.

Are there any sites that match FOSS projects with potential volunteers?

For example, I'm a lawyer and I'm not doing anything this evening. I'm sure some FOSS project could use one....But I don't know which or where.

Hopelessly vague

[Anonymous Coward]

"open source experts" is rather vague.

For one, they're conflating administration and software development - I should think the difficulties of finding and/or training the two kinds of people are of different orders of magnitude of difficulty. (And it's not like learning Linux administration requires an expensive outlay on proprietary software, which is a big hurdle for commercial products.)

For another thing, as regards availability of open-source software developers, that's uselessly vague.

Do the need people who are highly experienced with the internals of a specific open-source project?

Or do they need people who are experienced with using a specific open-source system, for the development of their own projects?

Somehow, I don't think they're hard up for people who know how to compile with gcc and edit text files with emacs.

Wow

[ErikZ]

I've never seen such a blatant "hit-piece".

Vague "Unexpected costs", admins are 30% more expensive, Linux training is 15% expensive than Windows training, undefined problems causing a company to go from tomcat to IBM websphere, hiring open source programmers is a gamble, you may get sued for using Open Source, open source is harder to support than you realize...

Sheesh.

Title should read...

[stevens]

"Expertise in Short Supply"

I've been trying to hire recently, and I can say that it's hard to find good people. Not good in a particular topic, just good thinkers.

It's logical analysis and that's mostly missing. 99% of the applicants (to our java/perl shop) got into the business in 1999 after a quick nine-month certificate, and never learned how to program a computer. They don't love the art; they want a buck without having to think too much about it. They're not solving problems, they're "applying a skill," i.e., trying to slide through with old knowledge from courses.

For every good programmer, there are four hundred useless ones with "5 years experience" because anyone could be a programmer in 1999. And from what I've heard from the win32 side of the fence at my company, it's even worse there.

Re:Good Article -- NEED?

[anon mouse-cow-aard]

it is that admins NEED someone external to blame when the shit does hit the fan.

I see this idea all the time, and it is completely bogus. The admins are responsible for fixing the problem. Period. Are you going to empower them, or shackle them?

When we call up MS with an Exchange problem, they want us to de-activate our virus scanner, because they don't support that. In real life, there is usually a whole mess of interoperating bunches of code: firewall exchange Anti-Virus OS app environment.
No vendor will stand up and say, when you have an actual multi-vendor configuration, "this is my problem and I am going to fix it." The admin always has to prove absolutely that you are on a completely supported configuration (don't get me started on "compatibility matrices") and then run tests for each vendor, and figure out which one to sit on in any given situation.

What you really need is in-house admins who understand how the software works, in order to pin down where the problem lies in order to know where to apply pressure.

That whole analysis process is much more difficult on windows because it is much more obfuscated and complicated (layer after layer of compatibility, and unfathomable binaries) than linux (no binaries, can inspect everything, tend to have less depth and breadth in individual programs.)

It is really hard to have good windows admins, not because their aren't a lot of smart people running windows, but because those smart people have nothing to work with to develop anything beyond the most rudimentary skills.

If you run open source linux, (not canned binaries, and not applications built on ten layers of middleware) people who have the potential will grow skilled with time. but it is a long term thing. Skilled people are a long term investment.