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

The Only Time I ever see "Open Source"

[Greyfox]

In job postings, the employer's usually shotgunning keywords. They'll want Linux, Windows, 3 forms of UNIX, C programming, PHP, Apache, Perl, etc. I don't know what they're up to but I'm pretty sure it's usually no good. Either they're idiots and I don't want to work for them or they're up to some sort of Evil and I don't want to talk to them.

If the real companies would actually advertize that they need open source people, they might be surprised at what they find.

Re:Good Article -- ROI, based on how long?

[anon mouse-cow-aard]

The payoff is going to be dramatic, but it isn't going to be quick. In any big shop today, there will be a small army of unix/linux guys, and a much larger army of windows people. There's more windows out there, and they take more people to run anyways, so you always end up with more windows admins.

If you're a shop with administrators with 20 years experience on windows, those folks are going to be quite cranky about moving to linux. Downright fearful, in fact. We had a few admins who were concerned enough that they considered retiring a little early rather than having to face upgrading from windows NT 4.0 to XP. Their job is to know exactly what to do when a client comes to them, and their "knowledge" is hard-won by experience. It will take a few years for such people to retrain to the same level of expertise on linux. It's deeply different. For a large shop:

• count on a migration period of about five years.
  
• Train the admins, make them your friends.
  
• Transition back-office stuff first, so that admins cut their teeth away from users prying eyes.
  
• For the desktops, try an easy one first, like firefox. Let simmer for a year or two.
  
• wean people slowly off of desktop apps, with more and more web applications, making sure they work with firefox.
  
• Then try a bigger one: open office. This is the really big one. take it slow, careful, and thoroughly researched (like how to transition Joe's macro's etc...)
  
• After that, users will barely notice when windows is swapped out and replaced. They'll already be used to firefox & openoffice. the linux thing won't be a big deal, especially if it's on KDE.
  

That, as far as I can gather, is Munich's plan. It is an exceedingly rational one. The main point is that the first two or three years are going to be more expensive. You're going to be paying all the MS taxes and adding massive training costs for techs, and parallel deployments of linux boxes. It's got to be more expensive at first.

You have to appreciate the complete mind warp we are asking windows people to do. After the admin's are onside (this is the really tough part.) They need to get comfortable (they've done some implementations, they don't look for D: anymore to install stuff from. They google for help, and don't think the only source of true knowledge is a vendor) And finally, they have to get attuned (When we need a new application, their first reaction is to check out sf.net & freshmeat, and spend some time evaluating open source before looking at commercial stuff.)

This is seriously relearning how to think kind of stuff. It will take a few years to adjust to. Rolling out desktops has to be the last bit on the end, once all the techies are comfortable and attuned. Because when a client comes to them, they are the expert. The techies will feel really uncomfortable if they are not comfortable.

So like the realistic plan is something like... training for a year, with some pilots, then another year doing some server stuff. That second year will drag into two. Third year you start handle the tougher apps (those without ready analogues), move the clients over to open office, and train the front-line user desk staff. (roll out desktops for the techies.) year four, you do the desktop rollout. I seriously believe that end users in large shops will not require much training at all. All the complications in linux arise from administration tasks: installing software, configuring services, network connections, driver support. All of this stuff is handled by techis in a big shop. So all that is left to users is navigating in the file browser, which, honestly, is not going the take much training.

So in year five, most of your licensing costs drop to 0. Remote administration, for managing applications, configuration, and patches become much easier and simpler (cron + apt-get for debian stable users.), and viruses are something others worry about. So the ratio of admins to users will be able to increase, and you can re-task admins for other fun stuff.

Re:Hard not to be cynical...

[Neo-Rio-101]

It's not what you know, it's who you know. I knew Jack Shiayte about Linux 2 years ago. Instead I studied Japanese, made friends in Japan, and got a job here working in an average paying IT company... who's lending me out to work in a research institute which has a supercomputer ranked 14th on the world listings. In a year or two, I should be able to get a job with a fairly sizable salary... mainly because of my ability to translate IT technical documents between languages. I only got that inital job because I knew somebody. It was only after that I began studying my butt off on Japanese, Cisco, Linux, and FreeBSD. If I were you, I'd study Korean, meet a few people in the Korean IT industry, and get yourself a job like I did.