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Open Source Helps New IT Grads Get Foot in the Door
Yes, some US IT jobs are disappearing, but Linux.com (which shares a corporate overlord with Slashdot) has a recent story emphasizing the job advantage that involvement in open source projects can give young programmers who aren't planning to ditch their dreams of making a living in the field. The article focuses on one programmer's experience with Google's Summer of Code, which led directly to her job working on the Drupal content-management system. But the underlying message (that involvement in open source projects provides a background of experience otherwise difficult to obtain because of the chicken-and-egg problem of "experience required" job opportunities) is generalizable to many other forms of open-source involvement. Do you have a job that you landed because of your unpaid open-source programming?
But how does it help non programmers and PHB who say they want job experience in a office not side / school work?
Sounds like its not so much open source involvement, but generally ANY involvement with your field, helps. And thats true for any job, any field, anything. In IT, you could simply do unpaid internships and get similar results. Its just a bit easier to get involved in open source, because you can jump in a project just by writing patches and open they get accepted, and go from there...
But really, any field. Doing some volunteer work has always helped landing a job, its nothing new.
I have created open source programs as teaching aids that I also use as code examples which I've provided to employers.
That was a prime factor in landing my current job, one I've held for ten years now.
The projects illustrated key elements of my resume beyond coding skills, such as project management.
I also developed an open source program that was invited for inclusion on DEC's demo CD for their Alpha line.
That was quite a while ago, of course, but I noted it on my resume and it has been a talking point that has impressed potential employers and was a factor in their considerations.
Being an employer, running a successful business (high end consultancy and SW development) for 8 years, I'd say that a really good track record of Open Source engagements beats university. Putting it another way, I never employ a newly graduated engineer unless s/he has an interesting collection of hacks in the home directory. Finally, I put great emphasis on any potential employee's reading behaviour. Anyone reading less than some 25 books a year is less likely to improve as fast as people who read a lot.
I never went to school for computer science. I went to college for Philosophy. I had always been around computers since I was six. I started programming basic on the TI-99a at 7. Granted it following step by step out of books, but still the knack and want was there. It wasn't until 1998 when I was introduced to open source and linux that my career path really shifted. Within 2 years of working with Linux and open source software I had become quite sick administrating linux and as a by product decent enough to be trained on solaris. At which point I was hired by a contractor for our local school district as a helper monkey for systems administration. Since 2000 I have made incredible leaps and bounds, improving my skill sets to include networking, virtualization, clustering, and so much more. All the experience I gained was by reading man pages, how-tos, wikis and using the software in a dev environment. Now I manage all IT at a 20 million dollar a year company.
I got my degree in Physics, but my career path after that was in IT. My first job (January, 1995) was working as a UNIX systems administrator at a small geographics company. What helped me land the job despite having a different educational background was first-hand "experience" with Linux (SLS and Slackware.) I was the first at my university to try Linux (1993) so I became a sort of go-to guy for Linux questions when the CompSci students started to install it, and the university IT staff put it up on a few systems to try it out. "Something break? Happened to me too once, let me help you fix it."
When I graduated, and it was time to look for a job, a friend recommended me for the UNIX sysadmin job at her company. The fact that I'd had two years experience working with Linux, helping others to install it and get it working for them, really gave me a boost during the interview. I got the job.
Yes, this could have turned out the same if I'd just been helping at the computer labs (which I didn't, but others might have.) I think what gave me the extra edge was spending so much time with it at home, so when the technical interview questions came up, I was able to answer them very well. Nothing beats spending that extra time on your own desktop system, when you'll eventually mess something up and have to learn stuff on your own to get it working again and know how not break it a second time. That kind of "experience" says a lot to a hiring manager.
First "real" tech job I interviewed for had a job description focused around porting and packaging software -- two things I'd already been doing for fun (building RPMs for whatever the current Red Hat was at the time, and porting software to my university's Solaris and IRIX boxes); the CTO (well, it was less than a 20-person shop at the time) was floored by my level of relevant experience.
I landed the interview in the first place through some folks I met helping out at the university LUG. So yes -- of course -- open source experience helps. That employer was an embedded Linux shop, and learning from some of the other folks they had on staff (a bunch of kernel developers, including two of Linus's lieutenants, a gdb maintainer, and a bunch of other really bright folks) is what I credit for getting my career off in the right direction; every job I've held since then has included some level of interaction with the open source community, and I've had a great deal of fun.
I built a business with unpaid open source programming. I say unpaid, because even though I was working as a consultant, the paid hours were very few and far between. I worked thousand upon thousands of hours over a period of years building a software package that sustains me to this day, almost thirteen years later.
At the time I did it though, there was a dearth of open source software. The space I chose, the electronic shopping cart, was wide open, and people were crying for anything that worked and was supported.
That is the key -- support. Decent programming and software is a must, but it doesn't need to be knock-your-socks-off great. If you can demonstrate you will be reliably there, month after month, year after year, I believe you be able to do what I did.
However, I don't think it has much to do with "50,000 IT jobs lost". What I described takes hard work and initiative, as does any substantive contribution to an open source software package. The people demonstrating that type of ability are not the ones who are marginalized.
Open Source didn't really help him land a job for what 9 years?
Skip ------ See the latest from http://www.anArchyFortWorth.com
Lumpy is correct, and that goes for everything, every job, open source, close source, non-software job, everything. All job market experts and professional resume writers will confirm it, too.
When you write your resume (or talk during an interview), you don't say "I worked on XYZ". No one gives a flying duck about what you worked on, because there's at least 10000 people who worked on the same thing, no matter how niche. What people care (and not only dumb ass PHBs and HR), is your achievements. The net gain you provided, the "out of the ordinary" stuff that pushes you ahead of others.
So that line : "and I saved project Z and single handed brought it from a failure to a viable product" is the most important one of the bunch, and thats a sure fire job lander.
"only if the office PHB is not a moron."
Not really. I see lots of open source contribution as more likely to leak commercial code into open source projects.
Also, with the FSF going after all of these companies in court over GPL violations, why would I want to take a risk on a programmer that might "accidentally" add GPLd code in our codebase and risk the entire company's IP.
I happen to be a F/OSS advocate. But, I'm a little skeptical about the career value of volunteering your time for F/OSS projects. The problems, as I see it, are:
1) Most employers want five years of recent, verifiable, full-time, professional experience. That would be an awful lot of time to volunteer.
2) Offshore, and guest workers are still much cheaper. Maybe it's best for Americans to give up on software development, and let the offshore workers have it.
3) Even if an American can manage to get a development job, salaries are going down the toilet, as the market becomes glutted.
Both presidential candidates, and almost all of congress, are pushing for more guest workers. Bill Gates is petitioning for unlimited guest workers. Once the election is over, I think guest worker caps will be raised substantially, if not eliminated entirely.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Anyway, any place that looks at those certifications is likely to eat up anything you tell them anyway, because they usually don't know any better. A place where they ask you technical questions usually won't care where you learned the stuff, as long as you know your shit. I prefer the later type of setting myself.
Well, it's not that these courses are useless, it's just that most of the stuff in them is stuff I knew how to do back in the late 90's (and which are apparently considered advanced UNIX skills these days, like building apache+mysql+php on your own instead of running Synaptic and clicking on Apache, MySQL and PHP followed by the "install selected packages" button). So I'm basically taking these courses so that potential employers will know I'm not lying about my skills.
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Well thank you for your insight, I appreciate. I'm glad to know that there are people out there in charge of recruiting me who would dismiss my work based on the fact that its version number starts with a 0, like it's more important than what it actually does?
No offense but I think I'll keep it like this, sounds like a good way to weed out people who need a clue ;-)
You just got troll'd!