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Critiquing Claims of an Open Source Jobs Boom
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Bill Snyder examines what appears to be an open source job market boom, as evidenced by a recent O'Reilly Report. According to the study, 5 to 15 percent of all IT openings call for open source software skills, and with overall IT job cuts expected for 2009, 'the recession may be pushing budget-strapped IT execs to examine low-cost alternatives to commercial software,' Snyder writes. But are enterprises truly shifting to open source, or are they simply seeking to augment the work of staff already steeped in proprietary software? The study's methodology leaves too much room for interpretation, Savio Rodrigues retorts. 'That's why the 5% to 15% really doesn't sit well with me,' Rodrigues writes. 'I suspect that larger companies are looking for developers with a mix of experience with proprietary and open source products, tools and frameworks,' as opposed to those who would work with open source for 90 percent of the work day."
...is the one you didn't have to write in the first place. Developers with some knowledge of BSD/LGPL code that could be used for rapidly creating complex apps without reinventing the wheel is probably in demand.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I just got hired in Manhattan by a new company and they have all expected lots of OpenSource technology knowledge. In fact, I recently worked for Barnes & Noble and one of my victories was convincing them to dump JRun for JBoss. Eclipse is everywhere and that is free. (I use MyEclipse, though, for $30 a pop). So, this is bourne out by my experience. The fact is, proprietary software is only supported by the company. Open Source is supported by the masses. And you know which ends up being better--the masses. I remember putting a note in JRun's forums and it went unanswered for a year. Nobody uses those forums. JBoss and Hibernate are teeming with activity. Open Source is "King" (sorry Gavin).
In job hunting, I'm seeing more Open Source skills being requested in the mixes, but they are part of a mix, and they definitely tend to be in heavier demand on the front-end web dev side than on the back-end dev side.
Start a happiness pandemic
Companies want people who have open source experience - both use and contribution.
They want to use these people to implement open source projects that fit their needs, for free (beer).
They do not want these people because they love free (open) software.
Given that Java is now GPL and open-source, and lots of the popular third-party Java frameworks are also open-source, I would expect that open-source is really hot in many businesses - just that they don't know it.
When your developers code an interface to XYZ in a short time, it's not because they're reimplementing the wheel. No, they're using Axis. Or HttpClient. With hibernate, spring, struts, tiles, and so on.
But if we look at databases, you'll see a large investment in proprietary systems still, for core business data, with MySQL running minor functionality around the outside. Cutbacks simply mean that upgrading your database platform won't happen, it's already paid for, why migrate from Oracle to Postgresql!
The other big platform is MS proprietary. You all know the story. It keeps TheDailyWTF alive.
I've seen a lot of shops. And a lot of them like open source for one reason... it's cheap. Not because they're cheap bastards, but because free software often can circumvent the corporate BS associated with spending money.
Once a place has used some open source software, they tend to keep using it. And they tend to want to hire people who know how to use what they have. I wouldn't call it an open source hiring boom. I'd just call it acceptance.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
That's like saying since drag racing cars are the fastest cars everybody should be driving one.
You're making the insanely simplistic assumption that one language is appropriate in all parts of a given application/project. Yes, obviously anything that's truly resource/speed dependent will generally require a language like C or C++ to allow you to get intimate with the lower-level aspects of the given system. Which is why just about any newer language makes it simple to create native language modules and packages allowing you to take all the advantages of a tightly coded core with the convenience of writing the majority of code in a high-level language.
I don't think there's anything truly new about that concept and I certainly don't think it's responsible for any kind of 'backlash'.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
C++ may be better than python/ruby/java for certain applications, but it will probably always remain in C's shadow.
Badass Resumes
Looking at sysadmin jobs, I also see things that want Cisco, RedHat/Some *nix, MS AD, some sort of DB, this ERP app, that specific app, Citrix, scripting, programming, web development, website hosting, blah, blah, blah... Those that have a salary range, are in 55-60K
I think HR just throws all in the listing... get as many applicants as possible, sort it out later.
No comprende? Let me type that a little slower for you...
A free Java implementation of MapReduce and GFS (Apache Hadoop) already works fine on 5000 computers cluster.
And there's no real reason why it can't scale further.
(ITDegree || ComputerScienceDegree) Programmer
An IT degree can be any number of things... program management, Quality Assurance, etc. And Computer Science isn't programming either... it's really applied mathmathmatics and logic. My IT degree focused on Program Managment, and I have never used it because I'm not in software, but there are tons of well paying positions for software lifecycle management and similar jobs.
I agree that it's a waste of time to teach business programming anymore... those who are good at it will pursue it on the side anyway... but most schools don't go much deeper than basic logic and structure now anyways. CS majors look at things differently, many are into robotics, embedded systems, and places where one must work in low level languages or where the applications are extremely complex and not easy to outsource.
Finally, the only reason either of these jobs have lost their prestiege is that so many people who have no business in the field said "I like computers" to their college advisors... a person who truely knows, loves, and understands computers and programming will not hurt for work. It just takes patience to wait while employers weed out all of the mediocrity.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
I think the article is dead on in questioning the study.
Perfect example: the last two places I contracted at were looking to hire C# developers who had also been exposed to Subversion. Is it fair to look at a place like that and say they're now all about Open Source? Not really, no.
Open Source is getting somewhere in the business world to be sure, but the FOSS Rapture isn't quite upon us just yet.
Open source software is actually costing my institution more than a closed source alternative. The drive for moving to open source software is more about being able to maintain a solution, and customize it to exactly what the requirements are.
Another fun thing we are experiencing is the total lack of knowledge closed source solution professionals have. We're finding the people to be very silo'ed without knowledge of what goes on around them. So when you are trying to implement something, you get very concerned with cross-technical area issues.
You ask an SAP basis person to come look at a screen and they'll say "Not Functional..." and wave their hands wildly with their palms facing you. Ask the Abaper and they'll shrug without a clue.
Hell, the Abaper is supposed to be a programmer you think, but they can't even teach you the basic parts of a program; you'll be lucky enough if they even know how to do proper error handling.
You see these types of people and they frighten the crap out of you. You just stare out the window and wonder why people are willing to pay 80 or 100 dollars an hour for these.... idiots!
I can go out into a University, pay a fresh graduate 40 dollars an hour and teach them everything they need to know... knowing that they'll leave after the project and still be better off than getting consultants.
Compare that with a professional in open source technologies. They need to know how things work together, because that's all they do. They can't learn just 1 technology, they need to know multiples, and how to fit them together. As they grow in their career, they know the big picture, and that is completely different than the closed source alternative.
I make about 3x that working as a Java developer for an investment firm. And I can make even more as a contract dev. But that is in SF where the cost of living is very high. 60K in a rural area is probably a better salary adjusted for cost of living than I make. But 60K in the bay area is very tight and means you will either live in a dangerous area, live very cheaply, or live far away (long commute). Your choice. But if you think a programmer's salary isn't very high then either you aren't very good at programming or you have a very different idea of "making a good living" from most people. Try living on a construction worker's salary (or a junior QA person's salary) in the bay area and you might change your opinion.
"Those that start by burning books, will end by burning men."
So the assumption is that someone who has worked with proprietary technologies is incapable of working with OSS technologies? Because I'd say thats pretty much completely contrary to my experience.
I work with propriety technology ATM. Didn't stop me from opting for CruiseControl.Net and NAnt over the proprietary build systems that were vying for our business. There are plenty of technologies we're using that I'd switch to OSS alternatives in a heartbeat (goddamn ClearCase...). Yeah, some of my coworkers have drunk vendor kool-aid, but plenty others are open to the OSS side of things too.
I would say that putting that kind of arbitrary restriction on your hiring process may be cutting you off from some valid talent. That is unless you're looking for someone religious about it, then I guess it would be perfectly valid. Just some food for thought though.
Depends on how you spin it. We use CruiseControl.Net where I work. When I had to justify it as opposed to a "superior" (not really superior technologically, but in a "we're paying for it so it must be better" sense) proprietary technology, I pointed out that since I have access to the source code I can debug issues with our build system without needing vendor support. And I have several times. Of course, people like the cost, but managers also understand "we don't have to depend on a single source if things go to hell." Well, some of them do.
Actually...
The largest "real, in-use" Hadoop cluster that Yahoo! has is around 2000 nodes, counting a dedicated name node. As far as we're aware, we've got the largest Hadoop cluster. [If there is a bigger one, we'd love to talk to you and compare notes. :) ]
That said, we do have Hadoop running on tens of thousands of machines. Just not as one big cluster.
It is also worth pointing out, that most of our clusters are multi-user, multi-application. The number of nodes is really more indicative of the size of the Hadoop distributed file system than the number of nodes given to a particular application in our (grid team's) use case.
There is a lot more about Hadoop, and Yahoo!'s particular Hadoop usage for internal utility-type computing, at http://wiki.apache.org/hadoop/HadoopPresentations .
"So the assumption is that someone who has worked with proprietary technologies is incapable of working with OSS technologies?"
I don't think so.
I think the parent poster is more on the line that if the candidate has not experience on the open source world, its ability to manage it is still to be seen. If there're candidates that won't have such uncertainty it's just reasonable to stick with them.
"Because I'd say thats pretty much completely contrary to my experience."
That's your experience. Mine is that even at the code monkey level there's people that just don't grasp the open source "thingie" as there is people that is heavily uncomfortable using closed source software.
"I would say that putting that kind of arbitrary restriction on your hiring process may be cutting you off from some valid talent."
Quite true, the point being "arbitrary". It's arbitrary to only hire blond people for a java developer position; it's not arbitrary to hire someone SQL fluent for a DBA, and I don't think it's arbitrary to hire people with open source experience on a shop pushing open source "philosophy" (it *might* be arbitrary to push "the open source philosohpy", though, but that's out of scope).
A 5 to 15 percent figure for open source skills doesn't necessarily mean 5 to 15 percent of the projects will be open source. More likely, IT managers are getting smart, keeping their options open and making sure that they have a back door out of the lock in trap. A broader range of experience is also a sign of someone with a better background in CS rather than a one language/one tool technician.
This sounds like a smart tactic. In fact, I'm surprised that the figure isn't higher. And I'm particularly happy that the proprietary platform fanbois are getting their panties in a bunch over only 15 percent.
Have gnu, will travel.
the sudden outbreak of common sense that yes, while a $25000 all-in-one load balancing appliance can do the job, the companies cost-advantage is to just pay you to use stuff that already exists for free, and has been around longer in most cases. the downside is you dont get any cool vendor swag, and lunch that day is provided by you. it does however save about an hour and 20 minutes in powerpoint BS from a guy who spends more time in airports than he does at a computer.
Good people go to bed earlier.