Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Where Are the Open Source Jobs?
stry_cat writes "My company has bought into the FUD and is going 100% Microsoft. Rather than work in this environment and be continuously at odds with upper management, I have decided to seek employment elsewhere. Where do I look for an open source job? I've started with the local paper's Sunday classifieds. I've looked on dice.com and monster.com. However almost all are Microsoft related. The few that aren't are some sort of dinky contract or temp job. So is there a place to find a job in an open source environment?"
Well, that may be a little more difficult.
You could always work as a contractor specializing in customizing software. Even companies that use FOSS often need someone to make custom modifications to said software to meet their specific needs. But I doubt you'll find many of those jobs posted in "Help Wanted" ads, and I'm not sure how many of them are actually out there or how you would find them.
And if you just want to avoid MS stuff on principle, you could always work as a Unix admin, Cobol programmer, Java developer, etc. depending on your skill set.
I would suggest you avoid Cobol programmer, though. I had to learn that godforsaken son-of-a-whore language in college and would rather eat glass while being raped by an angry Mike Tyson on top of a pyre of burning feces than to ever have to deal with it again. But some seem to find it a somewhat less suicide-inducing-please-god-give-me-the-strength-to-pull-this-trigger-and-end-it-all prospect than I.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
You're a douche. In an economy where many people have been unemployed for so long that they're just dropping out of the workforce altogether, you're fretting over "FUD" because your company did a normal thing and switched products? Get over it. Do you realize how insane you have to be to take platform wars so seriously that you actually quit your job and avoid any other jobs that have anything to do with Microsoft products? For god's sake, get some perspective.
Only source I know of outside the rare internal position is as a consultant being hired piecemeal to make modifications to existing open source software. Basically company A saying we want to use software B because its free (aka open) but we want it to do Y so hire X to make the changes. Dont know that you can make a carrier out of it, especially if you refuse to bid on non-open source jobs.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Why, there are plenty of open source jobs! Just last week I started working in Happy-Land, in a gumdrop house on Lollipop Lane!
Come join me, and bring your friends. We're having a tea party later.
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
You work your day job, and contribute to open source on your own time. Or, if you can swing it, you work on open source on company time, in the shadows.
Are you looking for a company developing something, which is to be released under an open source licence?
Or to support open source platforms, irrespective of what the company itself does?
Are you looking for employment, rather than offering consultancy services / self-employed? If you have expertise with particular open source platforms, are there jobs available to work with those platforms — even if the companies in question do not realise that they are open source?
Could you be looking for jobs where the company wants a solution which does [x], and is not worried how you get to [x] as long as you are on time and on budget, and so would be amenable to an open source solution?
I'm afraid this question is unanswerable as we don't know what type of job you:
a. Like to do
b. Have already done
c. Are good at
Please be more specific in future requests for assistance.
I would rather eat glass while being raped by an angry Mike Tyson on top of a pyre of burning feces than to ever have to deal with it again.
That can be arranged.
Pretty hard to find. Microsofts tentacles are everywhere and even the shops that are as much open source as possible, get infected somehow. We're pretty much a Debian shop, but accounting needed a Windows 2008 server for their proprietary accounting package and left and right there were supporting servers for little tasks where it was best suited. However, now developers are requesting a MSSQL server for a real production platform. Why? I don't know... Doesn't make much sense.
Pure open source jobs are very very rare. It's the level of Microsoftism that you want to accept, that opens some jobs. It is, alas, reality. I'd say: suck it up. I have no choice either. Well, except for the choice of starving and not being able to pay the rent.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
The beer is good and there are jobs.
http://www.careerjet.sg/linux-jobs.html
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Now grow up.
First learn an Open Source program well (like drupal or civicrm) AND learn the community.
You can do that from your house.
If you're good you'll get known.
Then you'll also get to know the companies that need people.
Do they exist?, i hope you didn't quit your current job, you're going to get disappointed.
Stop thinking of "desktop PC's" and start thinking embedded hardware products. Tons of things are moving that way anyway.
In general, I find that the embedded community is much more into open source solutions.
Windows is the king shit desktop OS. Linux is the king shit embedded OS.
Lots of them run Linux and use F/OSS extensively.
Look at the back of the manuals of your electronic gadgets - chances are you'll find a GPL or BSD disclosure.
Thank you for letting your petty ego and prejudices get in the way of your continued employment. I know there are many people who would like to know what company you left so they can properly address their resumes. Please provide that information.
I highly prefer to work on Linux systems (I am an embedded developer, but somethimes end up writing GUI's to control various devices). However I don't always get to work on Linux or even open source platforms. A few times I have even had to develop Windows based systems.
So what. I hate Windows, but I got paid, and I learned a lot.
I then paid my bills, and went on to the next task.
Amazon, facbook, google. To look for an open source job look at companies that do not implement dot net that use enterprise java systems and will probably have oracle databases. But majority of companies like the dot net solution because they think that it is easier to maintain which to a certain degree they are not far off. Open source companies usually use perl, python, ruby, java but also keep in mind a lot of times if it is an opensource place they may expect for you to understand and know the projects that your building on top of.
1. Contribute over years and years to open source projects with a large following. (like the Linux kernel, GNOME, KDE, any farting application for iPhone, etc.)
2. Wait for a large company with serious interests in open source (like Red Hat, Google or IBM) to notice you and offer you a job.
3. Profit!!!!
Yeah, that could happen.
Good luck starving... I drop a few quarters in your cup on the way into work
It sounds like you live in a small market. You will likely have to move to a larger city/metro area for this.
stry_cat sounds highly principled and I for one applaud him for it. It's not an easy step to take but it certainly can be the right one. If I were stry_cat I would look to get the new job sorted before quitting the old one, of course. Hopefully that's what they're doing.
As to the question of where to look, why not start with the big players? RedHat, Canonical, IBM, Google all (clearly) make serious use of open source technologies. Outside of pure IT there are plenty of others who do the same: Amazon, eBay, CERN, NASA, etc.
If you have a skill in a particular area (a language, an application, a protocol), most of those will have their own job board or similar and you probably know already where to look for that. Good luck in the search.
Burns: We're building a casino!
McAllister: Arrr. Give me 5 minutes.
Are you a janitor? Programmer? DBA? SA? Middle manager?
And what is "an open source job"? Is that a job where anyone can come by and do your work for you?
Your knee-jerk reaction makes no sense. You didn't say what you do or how the change will affect you, only "OMG M$!!!!!". In the end your company will be better off without you.
But some seem to find it a somewhat less suicide-inducing-please-god-give-me-the-strength-to-pull-this-trigger-and-end-it-all prospect than I.
You know, I once had a temp contract job because someone felt that way about perl. I was sure that wasn't the reason she'd killed herself (shot herself in the parking lot of the local airport), but all of her former co-workers insisted that it was the deliberately obfuscated perl code that drove her to it, and knowing that in six months, her usefulness as "the only person who can prop up this piece of garbage we got stuck with by a bad contractor" would be over because the other programers on staff would be finished making the properly documented, non-obfuscated replacement for the software. (In C, since none of them knew perl anyways.)
After experiencing the remaining five months as a temp contractor patching and propping up that pile of garbage, I began to believe them.
... we're hiring. Are you any good?
The entire setup seems bogus.
If you don't want to work with Microsoft products, there's plenty of room for you out there. Dice and Monster are full of such jobs.
The idea that you can't find any seems like some sort of lame attempt at propaganda.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
So you want to be paid for your work as you work for a company that doesn't get paid for their work? Just doesn't seem to make sense, I understand most of the open-source stuff as pure digital philanthropy. If you mean work for a company that only uses open source? I think open source generally costs more than the commercial counterparts in the long run.
Move out of redmond, move to silicon valley.
First, there is a big difference between being a programmer and working in IT.
Working as a programmer, you are able to make the choice between open source and closed source. Not everyone will have a job for you, but that's a risk you take by drawing that kind of line.
Working in IT, you would be stupid to go all open source all the time. In IT, you have to be pragmatic. You pick the best solution for the job. Factors that go into the 'best solution' concept are cost, supportability, and usability. Do you really think you'll make it anywhere if the first thing you do is say "Scratch Windows. Scratch Office. We're going with Ubuntu and OpenOffice.org. Oh, and accounting? You can't use Excel".
I expect the replies of "Well, OpenOffice.org Calc is a reasonable replacement for spreadsheets!". Well, it is except when it's not. A Prius is more fuel efficient than a pickup unless you need to haul a ton of bricks or plow a road (had to work in the car analogy). Try this for a cost benefit analysis: Your company has four accountants. You can either pay the $150 MS Office license fee, or have each accountant spend three hours figuring out this new-fangled OO.o thingy, plus limit what they can do in a spreadsheet. And worry about all the headaches when the spreadsheets are not compatible outside your organization.
Honestly, anyone who makes IT decisions based on some ideology over corporate strategy and pragmatism is foolish and does not deserve to make decisions. A closed source solution is often the better choice due to the support contracts and the fact that your users are probably already familiar with it. Open source also has many benefits and uses within a corporation. It's IT's job to pick the best solution, not just pick the solution that warms their heart. /rant
I dislike many Microsoft products as much as the next (Unix) guy, based on what I see as poor features/function in said software/languages. And IF you have the correct skill set, there are Unix/Linux specific jobs out there (think admin or consulting); if you are a developer, there are many OS-neutral languages. If you want hired, however, you had better have the documented experience/expertise to justify that hiring. Otherwise, (IMHO) you would be better served by continuing to get the paycheck and taking courses or otherwise getting the requisite experience and then making the change at your leisure.
I've encountered more than a few "wanna-be's" out there who fell flat when I put them to the test during a pre-employment interview.
Also...
Call it "the cloud", call it "software as a service" or call it "managed services" -- or just call it "running a web site". Companies that run services tend to use a lot of OSS.
You'd be *using* OSS software (Apache, memcached, Google Java libs, MySQL, all that kind of thing), and you'd be likely to be adapting it. Depending on the company, you might have to fight a bit if you want to contribute back to the OSS projects in a significant way.
Try IBM... then once you're in, work on getting moved to the right department.
Bad joke in the subject, but it's true. I've found that submitting patches to a established open source project is the easiest way to find a job, in fact without moving a finger.
Starting a decent open source program is even better. My pet project ccextractor is a very niche things yet I get offers for customizations / deployment / etc very often (to me often here is something like twice a month).
(speaking as a pure F/OSS user at home and any other chance I get)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
If you work for IT at a circuit design company you can be sure that there will be Linux. Microsoft won't be excluded, but you can only run Cadence on a Unix-style operating system.
If you can convince them to use Spring.NET and embrace dependency injection along with a mock unit testing library for easier TDD, does it really make a difference? C# is not a bad language and you can integrate with F# to boot.
On the other hand, if they bought into the MS stack without any sort of strategy for DI/mocks/TDD, leave immediately. They'll produce worse software than they did before.
My advice to you: drink the koolaid.
Seriously. While you may not like MS, knowing their products and how to program for Windows is a great set of skills to add to your resume/CV. In addition, having both on your resume shows you're versatile and can adapt to changing situations, something that employers find valuable. It also gives you an edge over applicants that know only one environment, especially in those places where both exist.
Were I in your shoes, I would definitely take the opportunity to learn and gain experience with MS products. If I still didn't like the situation later on, I could still leave, but with much broader experience than I currently have,
If you spent "hours upon hours" trying to configure samba to talk to a Windows 7 box then you need to turn in your college degree and ask for a broom.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I work in a large but otherwise nameless company. They picked up "linux" on my resume, gave me and interveiw and hired me without any real certs based on my linux knowledge.
I get a lot of emails looking for either linux admins or linux system tuners. its the hot new thing.
keep looking through monster and career builder. or mabey your city is just open source unfriendly?
You can always cross-compile COBOL into Java using this bastardization.
At elance.com and similar places. you will have a difficult time winning bids from 15/hr rate against indian houses at first, but as your reputation increases, you will easily win bids, and after a time your hourly rate will increase and people will seek you out. eventually, you will start working with a party in permanent basis and go off the market.
Read radical news here
The Mozilla Foundation is hiring. They even have a billboard on 101 near San Francisco: "Work for mankind, not for the man".
Most of the hosting, "cloud", data mining, and data warehousing industry is Linux based. The infrastructures of the big players like Google and Facebook are all Linux. Once you get off the desktop, Microsoft isn't dominant.
...most of the times, it's the Open Source job that will look for you. Create or join interesting projects. Let you skills shine. If you're good, someone will ask you if you're interested in applying for a job with them.
Check out my cross-platform apps
Do not avoid positions at companies that use Microsoft software.
While there are companies that buy into the MS FUD, there are also companies with high-level FOSS Zealots who will tell you that AD/Exchange/MS product X is evil and refuse to use it or any other commercial product. This is equally bad.
My advice: Look for a company with sane culture and managers who accept business arguments (cost/benefit) over technical merit arguments.
There are a lot of "open source" jobs out there, whether you mean working with open source products like Linux or PHP or Android OS, or working for a company that is an open source provider like Red Hat or Google, and the article is nothing but a troll. Mr. stry_cat completely neglected to give so much as a hint about his technical skill set, let alone enumerate anything specific. There are programming, admin, project management, and management positions in all parts of the country, across almost every industry imaginable, and the only constraints for any given individual are personal preferences as to where to live, and current responsibilities for where they are currently located.
Every time a slashdot editor allows a completely worthless article like this to hit the front page, they are devaluing slashdot as a brand. Given how often timothy does this, I am amazed he is still permitted the opportunity to do so.
As hard-up as Tyson is, he may do it for a tenner!
We are Open Source at the server level, with a mix of Mac/Windows at the desktop. You have to look and it helps to join local meet ups that do open source and like others say it helps to be involved in projects.
Since you work in IT, you should know by now that IT isn't just a single field.
Were you a... Linux admin? Perl programmer? Postgres Database admin (or [insert database here])? Network technician?
A mix of all of the above?
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
First off, don't quit your job because you don't like the software you have to work with unless you A) are filthy rich, or B) already know where you plan to go work, C) are a total fucking moron.
Secondly, specify what the hell you actually do.... Web/application/embedded/etc development? Network administration? Graphic design? Spreadsheets?
Do you want to work with open source tools, or develop open source products? I do embedded development with Linux running on my primary machine and do 99% of my work in open source tool chains, but my company wants to avoid using copyleft-licensed libraries in production code for business reasons. Not many companies will pay you to write software that you end up giving away for free unless it's client-side web development, which is essentially all given away for free.
Also, I don't think you know what FUD means. Most companies use Microsoft because it's what their staff knows / is trained in and don't allow Linux machines on the network because it's easier to administer when your network is homogeneous. Not because of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Believe it or not, most companies are in business to make money, not to tout idealistic world views.
I found my longest job via Craigslist. It was a small PHP project that turned out to be an awesome PHP project. My current job which is quite open-source friendly I found by talking to the best companies in a field that I'm interested in. I suggest you look everywhere. Many companies will not know that they need Open Source people until they see that you have serious skills. Of course conferences are designed to help with this as well, there are a bunch of good Open Source conferences coming up.
The easiest way to find a company who hires for open source work is to look at who is actually submitting patches back, participates on mailing lists, files bugs, etc. From my own experiences, it seems as though almost every Bay Area startup or former startup from the past 10 years (but clearly not all of them) are doing work in open source either out in the open or behind closed doors. Many positions don't have open source in big bright letters, so you might need to just flat out ask. If you are outside of the Bay Area, those companies exist but will require more legwork.
My fiancee is all about open source and best practice. She used to work at a University in Alaska, and their entire setup was based on Red Hat type systems. Pretty much everything developed and used were open source. She now works for Intel and while the kernel patches aren't open source, she keeps documentation on all her processes online and free.
There are also places that develop open source software which needs supported, such as RHEL, DRBD, etc. Maybe look into one of these.
As one poster said, you didn't even mention your skill set. Are you a programmer? Are you a support specialist? Systems administrator? Cluster specialist? Web developer? Geodatabase specialist? DBA? IT Manager? Desktop support? This matters.
The recruiters way outnumber the people looking for jobs there. At least they buy pizza and the first round of drinks afterwards.
In the past couple years this meetup has become indistinguishable from the Java User Group. And its spawned an Android, html5, and design meetups.
Sorry... I can't... I can't even answer this one without being a TROLL. Some many companies have a LOT of internal customized Open Source builds. They all prefer to hire internally... or low-ball price tag a new hire. They expect to have to train you regardless of your experience.
Every company hiring I've seen in the USA is looking to leverage the poor economy to low-ball new hires. Regardless of M$FT or *NIX.
Warning...go without a new position more than 6 months at your own risk. After that point, your price tag will be dropped lower as corporations especially are going to say you've "lost skill".
Personally I have been using PHP for about 12 years now. I prefer to "use" open source tools/languages. I don't need the product itself to be open source.
Today if you know PHP and some of the frameworks (cake, symfony, codeigniter) or even wordpress or drupal, there are PLENTY of jobs.
If you want one of the more groovy languages, like python or ruby, there are much less, but still lots of jobs.
I tend to program in the LAMP stack a lot. With apache, mysql and PHP.
I have had to use Microsoft as my dev machine often, but I use PHP, mysql ( i prefer linux)........
MOST IMPORTANT. I have NOT had to use ANY MICROSOFT API's and refuse to do so. This has not been a barrier to
jobs ever.
So what do you mean by open source job? A job where you use open source stack, or you write code that is released open source?
And also, by not buying the microsoft 'fud', do you mean you will not use a microsoft machine to check your email while using a lamp stack, .Net api's......
or do you mean that you refuse to use
One last thing, i never ever ever check monster or anything else. It's MUCH MUCH better to let head hunters do your work for you
Put you resume on monster publicly, and your phone number and get 10 calls the next day.......
One more tidbit.
Here is a TRUE open source company you can apply for.
http://www.couchbase.com/careers
they make a NoSQL database called couchdb. They need people. They are in the Boston area.
Wow, you really don't understand the OSS business model, do you? After all these years.
Here, let me try to help.
Al runs a web site in 1993. Bill also runs a web site.
Al writes some code that makes his web server more useful. He lets Bill have that code too.
That might appear to be "pure digital philanthropy", but it's not, it's quid-pro-quo. Bill looks over the new code and finds a defect, which he fixes. He sends the fix back to Al. Al has traded a feature for some bug checking. When Bill adds another useful feature, he gives it to Al.
Scale that to Chris, Dave, Evan etc. and you get a bunch of people getting *more value* by contributing to Apache, than they would by doing the alternatives (selling software, buying a web server).
Disclaimer: I'm making sweeping generalizations below. There are exceptions to the rule. Stakeholders who make the business decision to go with with open source software fall into: 1. Brilliant techs who run the show and eschew proprietary software 2. Clueless PHBs who have a minuscule budget and go cheap across the board (try not to pay for anything) The first type tends to go BK after running out of venture capital (because brilliant techs are usually bad at business and gauging the market) Google and Facebook are examples that buck this trend. Stakeholders who go with proprietary software are usually PHBs who go with the "industry standard" because of a google search or reading "industry rags" Usually, every work place has a healthy mix of everything. Bottom line is that programmers need to get work done and if the sanctioned M$ system doesn't cut it, they will download and install a system that will do the job. PHBs are clueless and tend not to go against programmer recommendations so they tend to approve free tools.
Only source I know of outside the rare internal position is as a consultant being hired piecemeal to make modifications to existing open source software.
I know several people who are platform agnostic, work on Windows, Mac OS X or Linux as a client needs, and who occasionally work on Linux based software targeting an embedded environment. However such a job may be philosophically objectionable for the job seeker in question. In addition to the Linux work on the device itself there is often a part of the project that requires a Windows based utility that interacts with the device.
Given that this job seeker is not platform agnostic being a consultant may not be the best idea. Perhaps he should work in academia, an environment where a person gets to choose the area they work in, accepting of course relatively lower salaries as the price for that freedom.
The unemployment line.... thats where all the open source is!!!!
I know my situation is unique but I found a local govt environment built on legacy tech. I had the opportunity to steer it towards Linux. Find a startup or a datacenter ripe for upgrade (UNIX, netware etc). Also there are a lot of federal positions for UNIX stuff. There will be a lot of Linux opportunities there too.
"All those moments, will be lost in time...like tears in rain..."
Every month they have a ton of job postings. Here's this month's:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3537881
A lot of *nix shops, more opportunities if you are willing to do OS X development.
I've seen tons of Drupal, HTML 5, jQuery and jQuery Mobile job openings (those are all "open source" if you will).
It also seems that at least in the past few weeks the number of job hunters that have been contacting myself and co-workers has increased, which is hopefully a good sign for my unemployed brother and sister college grads...
Custumizing CMS for Internet publishing seems to be very popular. Things like Joomla and Wordpress.
No. YOU get some perspective. MS is still a criminal company responsible for who knows how many years of stagnation in sector. Even if the rest of the world looked the other way, some of us will never forget nor forgive MS its past and ONGOING practices of stomping competition with all kinds of shady tricks.
OOXML? Netscape? IE6? Office file formats?
This is not about "platform wars". This is about working for criminals. If you don't have a problem with that then fuck you.
Wow! You are one angry asshole! You're the one that is likely to place yourself out of work because of your arrogance and inability to take the direction you're paid to take. Basically you just said fuck you to everyone that doesn't think like you, and you are part of the neck beard scene that paint the rest of us IT people as anti-social, rude, arrogant and awkward dip shits. So no, fuck you, jackass.
Try them as they are the largest contributor to open source software.
Intel was the top contributor to Linux 3.0 (by lines) (source)
IBM is in there, too at #8
Google pushed the Linux kernel and WebKit into an uncountable number of handhelds
Apple deploys Webkit, too, on a smaller number of handhelds
Amazon deploys Android, too (just without Market support), and they use Linux in their cloud offerings.
If you hate Microsoft, give in to your anger and join Oracle (there are a lot of angry JCP and OpenSolaris fans but hey, they made that Linux list, too!)
Remember those handhelds that run the Linux kernel and/or WebKit?
all made the top Linux contributor list, too.
I'll assume that other posters will cover the Red Hat and Novell bases.
Just Yesterday, when I logged into LinkedIn, which I do about 2 to 4 times a week, it pointed out 3 Linux ... LINUX! ... sysadmin jobs under "Jobs you may be interested in beta". Out of curiosity, I looked. Under each one it listed several more of different varieties under "People Who Viewed This Job Also Viewed" (scroll down).
For some reason it seems to be pushing a lot of jobs in the San Francisco Bay Area at me. Either it misunderstands where I am or there's an excess of such jobs out there someone is wanting to push. Are you near SF or willing to move there (I'm not)?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Even if you like, or dislike, a given technology you can work with it. For example I hate Macs, their enterprise support is shit. However, we have some faculty that use them, so I support them. I've worked out how to integrate them in to our system. I feel we would be better without them, and I'll advocate that, but I'm not a dick about it and I'll work with them.
Where I live, pretty much if you want an IT job you can have one. Other software fields are the same. Most people I know have very little problem finding a job or getting a different one. Maybe we're in a weird bubble though I'm not convinced of that. I have friends all over the US that say they have little trouble finding software jobs.
Most of them aren't open source though. However there are some.
If not, then you should probably stick with the Microsoft job.
This is pretty normal these days. If you want high pay you generally have to hop from contract to contract or take a temp-to-hire.
I have some serious reservations about responding to this, but so many red lights go off:
-What employer would hire someone who makes rash decisions based on emotion? You're not Steve Jobs.
-Considering the number of Fortune 500 companies that use Microsoft technology, I can tell you the decision upper management has taken is not just on FUD. Just as a way to put a check on your assumptions, revisit the company you have left in five years. Are they still in business? Did they grow? My guess is that moving to Microsoft was a business decision as much as a technology decision. There are pros and cons to all these vendors and ideologies. You want to stake your paycheque on it, don't blame the industry or others.
-The biggest error I see here is, regardless of why you wanted to leave...you were getting a paycheque. Storming off without securing your next employment hurts nobody but yourself. Unless you are in a position where you are being abused, taken advantage of, subjected to unsafe working conditions...why would you leave first? Being unemployed makes you that much more undesirable to any potential employer.
-Sunday classifieds? What are you, some sort of dinosaur? Even my non-technology friends do not "start" with the classifieds.
I'll just end with my personal feeling that perhaps you are the one who is under the influence of FUD. I've worked in Linux shops, shops with various Unix flavours HPUX/AIX/Solaris (even SCO back in the day when they weren't just patent trolls,) Apple and Microsoft shops. As technologists, we're pretty adaptable. I'd never take my personal preferences on vendors as the limiting factor on choice of employment.
Best of luck to you.
Check them out. I've heard that they are both looking. One of the devs at RedHat told me they are actively looking, especially on graphics stuff.
And how the hell did Bill or Al feed his family while giving all this shit away?
I don't know what kind of work you do but I for sure would seek other employment if I was asked to do a wholesale move of the systems I work on to Windows. I'd also find other work if my employer told me the only work they had for me next month was mopping the floors.
It isn't beneath me to mop the floor. If they need me to do that *today*, I will. But janitorial work won't move my career in the direction I wish to go so if that's the core work they have for me, it's time to move on.
I feel the same way about managing and/or writing code for Windows systems.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
I heard Mulesoft is looking for developers.
Anyway, I agree with someone up there who said it's best to start commiting to any established open source project - it's supposed to give you way more chances of getting hired by them.
Things can change year to year. One year our company was using Black Berry Phones with a Black Berry Server, and the next year we got rid of all BB phones and the server in favor of iPhones and Android. If you're not willing to adapt to changes, then you don't deserve to be in IT. Don't get me wrong, I like Open Source, but I'm not going to risk my job because I refuse to work with Microsoft Products, that's just stupid.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
If you are a developer, then develop something around open source and give it away. Then link to it in your resume/CV. Also get on Stack Exchange sites, and various open source related forums like LinuxQuestions, and ANSWER questions other people have (on LQ, see the "zero reply threads" link down the right side). This gets you more widely known.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I happen to have a job where all I do is work with open source. I use a lot of products from jasig.org such as CAS and uPortal. This really helps us cut back on licensing and I have a great time working with their software. I think a lot of higher education institutions are also following this trend.
However almost all are Microsoft related.
no, really ? let's check dice.com, searching by keyword/title/company:
Javascript: 9526
Perl: 4800
PHP: 3495
Python: 3080
linux: 11315
centos: 331
these are only those that are clearly either Microsoft-unrelated.
enough said ...
or maybe you need to move to a larger town
I think you're right with the things you've said.
In Holland (where I live) these things are the same. So that's the reason why I react to you're post.
Look what i've found btw, http://www.telefoongein.nl/1april-grappen
No. YOU get some perspective. MS is still a criminal company responsible for who knows how many years of stagnation in sector. Even if the rest of the world looked the other way, some of us will never forget nor forgive MS its past and ONGOING practices of stomping competition with all kinds of shady tricks.
OOXML? Netscape? IE6? Office file formats?
This is not about "platform wars". This is about working for criminals. If you don't have a problem with that then fuck you.
Comments like this are why people make "nerd rage" jpegs. If you're this obsessed with and focused on hating Microsoft, you need to take a step outside and get a much broader perspective.
First, disregard all the posts calling you a douche. If you're unhappy in your job, you're unhappy in your job. Anyone criticizing you for a 1 paragraph ask /. question that is just one piece in a much larger picture needs to have their head looked at. In my mind, you're being called a douche for staying on-topic and NOT going into detail on all the conflicts you may have had with management. I really can't express how frustrated I am with those posts and the lack of thinking that had to have happened to not only get them posted, but to get them moderated as INSIGHTFUL of all things. /rant
More on-topic, most major trading firms (at least the ones in Chicago) are heavily Linux/Unix based shops who are more interested in using tools that can get stuff implemented *now* (usually to fix an issue) than tools they have to negotiate a price on and implement in the next month or two. Obviously enough, however, this is only one side of the open-source coin. If you want to do more than just *use* open-source software and you want to be part of a company that is actively building and developing open-source tools, then I suggest you target specific companies like RedHat or specific roles in companies that own major open source tools. Most companies have job postings somewhere on their site, so if you target the right companies and sell yourself in the right way, you should be able to find a good fit.
90% of the time you'll have to work on a Windows workstation regardless of the target platform. In my opinion that sucks because out of the box Windows isn't a very good development environment. Out of the box Windows isn't a really good anything. Visual Studio kind of makes it a development environment, but it's still lacking. Now, I would say the same thing about Linux or OSX if the only tool I had on those platforms was NetBeans or Eclipse; they at least comes with grep. However, most PCs ship with Windows and most users have Windows so it's just easier to give the developers the same thing.
If you want to get away from Microsoft, you have to find a company that deploys to something other than Microsoft. So web development or embedded, especially iOS and Android. Android development is basically Java development so you're still going to end up developing on Windows. Microsoft will eventually have a tablet that works, and that's what companies will give their employees, so get used to it.
For now, Microsoft is the path of least resistance for most companies and will remain so until Windows can't do what most users need it to do (which isn't much). Most Windows admins aren't capable of managing a Linux box. Many programmers who code Windows applications really aren't that good, but that's okay, Microsoft does a really good job of making sure they're productive.
If you can find a job at IBM , they allow Linux Desktops based on RHEL and Ubuntu. And they activly discourage usage of M$Office. (in favor of symphony, but hey! at least it runs good on Linux)
I'm one of the developers of StartUpHire. We use open source software, and I can tell you that many startups are using nothing but open source software. So, check out StartUpHire. As an example, here are a pile of jobs which need some Linux experience: http://www.startuphire.com/search/index.php?searchId=945ed9ccb0bc3f21fd7b5aad0f6ed1fd
"Actually, I enjoyed this in the same vague, horrible way I enjoyed the A-Team" P. Opus
There is something of a slope of what FLOSS in an organization is, from Richard Stallman, who is a purist, all the way to companies which will use (but not contribute) Apache/BSD source in their code, or run a GPL application.
I've used FLOSS associated with my job for a long time. From the mid 1990s on this was as a Unix Systems Administrator. I've installed Linux (and back then, FreeBSD also) servers at companies since the mid 1990s. I've installed open source software like Apache, BIND for DNS, and Tomcat. Various mail packages like sendmail, exim, qmail. Some of the comments mention small companies, but I've installed and/or maintained open source tools in everywhere from small startups to Fortune 50 companies.
Also, over the past year I have learned the Android API better, and Android is, of course, an open source platform. My entire development process for Android is very open source based. I do development on an Ubuntu Linux desktop with the open source IDE Eclipse. I also often include Apache code in my code, or sometimes LGPL, or sometimes even GPL code. I even released Android open source - I was building a spreadsheet, got pre-2007 Microsoft Excel (.xls) loading OK, but hit a snag with Excel 2007/2010 (.xlsx), so I open sourced what I had so far ( https://github.com/dennis-sheil/android-spreadsheet ) and will do some more work on it if I have the time.
I released several of my own Android apps over the past year. You're talking about making money on this - I made over $15 in ad views yesterday. Not enough to earn a living, but an extra couple of hundred dollars a month does not hurt. Some independent Android developers have put up blogs, like Droid Blog, or Kreci, or others, they've been doing it longer than me and are making thousands a month, not hundreds.
Plenty of people have written advice on how to push for open source solutions at a company. Just suggesting often it isn't going to do the trick, you have to package it in a certain way, get buy-in from the stakeholders and so forth. You might not always succeed, but sometimes you will.
Start your own business around your own open source based ideas. Then you can be the boss and tell the guys from Redmond to buzz off.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
In many industries such as telecom, targets have moved from proprietary operating systems (such as VxWorks) to embedded Linux. When your target is Linux, there are obvious advantages to having a Linux-based development environment, especially around emulation tools. While some (okay, most) employers might still use Windows for the office side of the business, it is often possible, especially in R&D, to relegate the Windows world to a VM on your Linux development box. Good luck in your hunt.
Start a company that does the work you want, specializing in open source projects. Realize that at first you may have to take some projects you don't want - to pay the bills - but over time you'll get more projects where you want to be. That's my strategy for my next job. And it's relatively cheap to register an LLC to do it under (at least in the SC, USA). Costs: $200 for SC expenses, $500 for registration and lawyer, business license, 2 computers, a website, and whatever portion of the legally allowed expenses from your home you want to allocate to the business (see a CPA specializing in taxes on that one). So you can do it for under $5k of expenses.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
...that your company is probably better off without you whinging about how Bill Gates and Darth Vader have the same accountant, if you want to have 100% control over your technology stack, start your own business or become a freelance consultant. That way you'll be free to pick and choose what you work on.
Of course, the kind of person who would quit their job because they're scared of Microsoft probably doesn't have the right temperament to run a successful business.
First, put together a resume of your marketable skills. Then contact recruiters in the region you would like to work in (they can often be found via LinkedIn, careerbuilder, etc.). Research potential employers. Do not go into interviews to discuss "open source" or your philosophy, go in with the intention of leveraging your skills to deliver real value to the organization.
"Open Source" covers a lot of area. Are you a C/C++/Java/Whatever language-de-jour developer, a system administrator, a web developer, a network engineer, ... ?
I've been everything from a developer to a sysadmin, an engineer to an architect. While I have worked in environments heavily biased toward Linux and Open Source (management burned by too many orphaned 3rd party libraries and apps), in my experience most environments are heterogenous, and will have some combination of Windows & Linux Desktops, Linux and Solaris servers, with a smattering of Windows servers. One environment I've worked in was heavily biased toward Windows on the server side, and while they lived to regret it, they did not change direction as a result. The reality is you cannot dictate platforms, and your recommendations should be driven by value to the business, not personal bias or philosophy, however galling you may at times find that to be.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
You conveniently fail to mention that Al loses any competitive advantage he may have over Bill due to the software he wrote. Not every company is happy with handing over their competitive advantage to their competition. I know I certainly wouldn't.
I don't respond to AC's.
Apple and other companies regularly post job opening on the mailing lists.
...in the same sentence. Wait, isn't that kind of an oxymoron? OK, forget the oxy part.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
they could be a shop where as of now the Microsoft method is Preferred (but they will use FLOSS when needed)
or
a shop where if FLOSS is required to do something IT WILL NOT GET DONE
or
a shop where you will get escorted from the building by security for having FLOSS stuff on your person/computer
im thinking that the problem is he is dealing with case 2 or 3
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Wow. Lots of people calling the OP names, here. But for those of you looking for work, there are jobs out there. You may have to think outside the box, but if you're good, you can find work. (Disclaimer: if you're in an area with a really tanked-up economy, you may have to move. I'm speaking in general. I'm also speaking more of administration, IT and support than I am of programming; that's a different animal.)
Example: walk into a growing local business and point out that you can make them more efficient, save them money and/or give them a better presence on the Web. They'll listen. Be ready to demonstrate your skills, and/or be willing to work at reduced pay for a "trial" period while they check you out.
Take my business (broadcasting). A decade and a half ago, we had digital audio workstations, but I was on a Compuserve dialup for Internet access. Very few people even had a computer. Now, we're all high speed, everything is audio over IP, everyone not only has a desktop PC, but also has a laptop, tablet or smartphone, and we (engineering) are expected to understand and work with them all. And we DO.
So, to the OP: first, sorry, but you WILL have to be willing to work with non-open source stuff. There are few opportunities for open source-only jobs. Sorry, but that's life, get over it. We have to look after a mish-mash that includes Windows, Macs and Open Source.
Speaking from the employer's perspective, I'm willing to pay a decent wage, but I've got to get value in return. (It ASTONISHES me the number of people who come looking for work who can't seem to grasp that.)
My assistant, Todd, came to us as the computer nerd from his local church. Since then, he has become one of our company's top people and I love him to death. More importantly, he has demonstrated -- repeatedly -- that he can save money for the company and justify his salary.
Ex.: the vendor wanted thousands of dollars to upgrade the old Novell servers on our audio network to Windows Server 2008. Todd and I did it ourselves (yes, working with WINDERS, ewwww) and saved the company a ton of money.
BUT ... we use Open Source, too. A LOT. We get a lot of value from it. Example, Todd maintains a terminal server (based on Scientific Linux, i.e., a clone of RHEL) that allows us to use older PCs in the studios for employee Internet access. I maintain the company's mail server, Web server and a host of other stuff, all Open Source. It's a mix. Every job has what you like, and what you don't like. You learn to live with both.
And there are other bonuses: I still have the pictures of the first time Todd, the quintessential computer geek, had to crawl around at a transmitter site brazing copper ground straps. Priceless. :)
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
You're making M$ out to be some kind of war criminals on a genocidal campaign against the pure and noble OSS community when in reality they're just greedy. They don't want to get rid of OSS competition, they want to get rid of all competition. By the way, I am a huge OSS fan and have been using Linux as my primary environment for 6 years.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
You know who is going to be blamed when it all goes pear shaped. You have 10 years of experience in a mainframe product. Do you:
Some of the people posting here obviously think that changing architectures is just a five minute job. Perhaps, given the relatively simple applications on offer, that's the case for phones or tablets (I doubt it, in reality). But, say, a switch from SAP/Oracle to Dynamics for a senior developer? Not so simple.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
My hope is that your resume never crosses my desk. All the time and hassle to hire someone, get them trained, get them integrated into the workplace and then they quit because of some woolly-headed platform issue? I very much never want to hire someone like you.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
IBM, Red Hat, Union Pacific(yes Railroads use linux), HP, Dell, AT&T, Verizon, Conoco, Omaha Steaks, Royal Dutch Shell, Travelocity,etc,etc,etc
I never did ~~stink~~ on those big corporate job boards, though I guess I eventually got into some recruiters' DBs from there, which helped a bit over time. Oh, and "keep your day job until your night job pays!" :)
Bukowski said it. I believe it. That settles it.
To the OP, this looks like one of the 'start your own business' projects. In particular, take the landscape of Open Source projects out there, identify the missing elements that potentially prevent them from becoming major winners (apart from marketing issues) and pick a few of them to work on. But before you do, try contacting those projects and let them know that you're willing to do certain things - such as writing drivers, bug fixes or whatever you think you can achieve - but for a fee, w/ terms & conditions to be agreed on b/w you. The problem w/ most FOSS projects is that people do the fun things in it, while not focussing on the less interesting parts, such as the bug fixes. Making a career out of those parts might be the best way to go. But make sure that you have people willing to buy into your results once you achieve them.
... my data says that you can get a job working with FOSS in Iceland. Looking to move til klakkans? ;)
Seriously, though, it seems odd to me to hear that you've been having trouble finding ads for FOSS jobs; I never found them particularly rare at all.
Why must all aquatic villains play the organ?
There are companies that would embrace him and his ideals.
No company will hire this guy or anyone else that is going to quit because of selection of software.
It shows that he's not reliable and maybe a flake. What next, he'll get hired at another company and quit because they're switching to Oracle?!
If you're that much of a zealot that you'll quit because your company isn't using FOSS, then you really need to get a fucking life.
Let me know where your working, I need a job, and I am not about to let a operating system pissing contest keep me from taking yours.
Mmmmmmmmm! Burning feces. growlf!
Go for a job in education; in a school or college. They tend to be *way* more open to FOSS.
Moodle, as a virtual learning environment, is becoming the standard and is a great FOSS project. That leads to a way in for other open source stuff. At my college we work with Linux, Apache, PHP, Ruby, Moodle, Mahara and use (at least our team) Linux on the desktop. My employer has seen enough gains from FOSS that we're releasing major in-house developments under the GPL and getting other colleges and schools to join in. It's great fun!
I work for a C# / Microsoft shop. Previously I worked for a PHP shop (developed on Mac but hosted on Linux). I gotta tell you... I understand wanting to leave a Microsoft shop. There are just so many unnecessary daily annoyances that come from Microsoft software. But... in my case... the owner/boss of the PHP shop was an a$$h0l3. The Microsoft shop I work for now is ran by really nice people and treats us great. I'm probably going to stay a very long time.
Please, don't get me wrong, I'm not crediting Microsoft for the goodness of my current employer or blaming PHP for the last one. I'm just saying that platform IS important but it's not the MOST important thing in a computer job. If your current employer (you didn't leave yet right?) are good people then I would recommend staying. At least be very cautious before switching. Make very sure you won't regret it.
Seriously, I don't get it.
21st Century Renaissance Man
Don't overlook positions in government or higher education. Besides being OS agnostic in many cases, there are universities all over the country, not just the SF area.
Want to travel a lot, have a nice career path and instant usefulness due to linux knowledge? Try DISA. I'm not sure if they are still hiring for their intern program (the Army uses intern in a different way than business IT), but it was great opportunity for some people I know. DOE is another area that looks for reliable linux knowledgeable sysadmins.
Look at the top500 list and see how many big clusters are run by Universities and their affiliates. Then check out how many of those systems use windows- and then laugh. Higher education also runs a lot of smaller systems on linux. Lots of positions starting to open up there. if you have cluster admin knowledge, you're a shoo-in. If not, take a lower position where they do run clusters and let them know that you'd be interested in moving up.
Disclaimer- yes, I work at NCSA at the University of Illinois, Urbana, and yes, we have some linux positions open. Do the legwork yourself, however- it'll make you look smarter.
The Internet has no garbage collection
It's rare to see so much hate for a specific programming language, unless it happens to be C++
I am not bragging or even recommending it as a solution for someone else, but for me it is working out.
I wanted the same thing, to get away from spending all my time working on desktops with viruses. I grew tired of it and just felt it was a stupid waste to be doing the same thing over and over all the time. So now I run my own web hosting / Drupal hosting & design business. I started the business 9 years ago part-time. It has not always paid the bills, but has almost always helped to pay the bills. Now, although I am still struggling to get more business, (like everyone else) I am working for myself full time.
I run the entire thing from my Ubuntu (currently) based laptop. My servers all run OpenBSD exclusively. I am 100% Microsoft FREE end-to-end. One of my early goals was to demonstrate that readily available "off-the-shelf" OSS could be used to entirely run a business. It can be done and I do it.
If I had to work with Windows or Mac OS X, I would exit the computer field.
That's unlikely to happen since I own my own company and get to pick the platform, but I'm serious: No amount of money would induce me to work with products from Apple or Microsoft.
There's no such thing as an "open source job."
There are jobs where open source is used as the platform for development and deployment. There are jobs where open source is used, but the company culture is one where "We take, but we never share." And there are jobs where open source is used and the company culture encourages community engagement with the people who provide the platform. I've worked at all of these.
I find that companies with a culture of community engagement get to market faster and survive longer. I worked at a company where I was allowed to send bugfixes, patches, and extensions to Linux drivers, the Python standard library, and the Apache mod_log plugin; it was bought by a bigger company, lawyers got involved, all this "sharing" had to stop-- and the company tanked two years later.
I can understand not wanting to work for a company that has closed its doors to community involvement. But I've worked for a consulting firm that used MS products and contributed what work that wasn't it's core intellectual property back to the community.
If you don't feel that you can be productive in an environment where upper management has decided to lock the doors on core development and contribution, and tells you that your duty is to "work with or around the bugs, frustrations, and so forth" in MS products (I've got your SharePoint Horror Stories right here buddy), and you want to leave... more power to you.
And ignore the whingers who say you should be "grateful you have a job at all." If your corporate master is gonna screw you, screw 'em back and take your experience and skills elsewhere.
My best experience with "open source employment" is to put the things I know on my resume (http://www.elfsternberg.com/resume/), then send the resume out to people who use the tools you know best. Put it on Monster, and update it every two weeks: just deleting it and reposting it will make the recruiters call you. I know: Python, Perl, Django, Rails, Ruby, MySQL, Postgres, S3, EC2, AWS, Git, Subversion, LAMP, and a ton of other things in the end-to-end stack of web development: I can go from having a box of parts and a Gentoo boot disk to a full-sized website with Responsive Design, Database backing both SQL and NoSQL, and Ajax and Socket.IO sexiness in a day.
Also, find the craigslist in your area. Get yourself an RSS reader. For me, the feeds I took from Craigslist were "Web/HTML/Info", "Internet Engineering", "Software/DBA/QA", and "Computer GIGS" (the last is for short-term contracts... I've made $1000 in one day with some of those). Scan them every morning, pull up the interesting ones in your browser, and send them a resume. Have several, tailored to different skillsets, along with cover letters. You might get one hit for every twenty you send out. Also, if you're in a decent-sized city, you might find it has a "startup community." Check their blog-- startups love open source, and they love good talent. They might even have a job feed-- Startuply in Seattle does.
Good luck finding a new job.
If you're so smart, why aren't you naked?
Most of the "open source jobs" in Brazil are related to Operations, like user support or server configuration. But you can find many jobs here as a programmer for closed software using open source environment for the development.
The submitter didn't say "he does not have enough knowledge with" Microsoft products.
What the submitter said was:
My company has bought into the FUD and is going 100% Microsoft. Rather than work in this environment and be continuously at odds with upper management, I have decided to seek employment elsewhere.
The submitter literally states that he is going to leave his job solely because he doesn't want to work with Microsoft products. He says nothing about not having the knowledge and skill needed. His decision is based solely on management choosing MS over a FLOSS solution.
You are not just assuming things, you are putting words in other people's mouths.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
There was a story here on /. a few days ago about New Hampshire's big move to open source. I know Wyoming is moving toward it, and Washington, D.C. has adopted an entirely Google-based platform. Other governments may be on their way.
Here in Wisconsin, we've had some movement as well. The city of Kenosha has had an extensive OSS IT platform in place for years. And here in Milwaukee County, where we have a Windows-centered IT policy, I scored a significant chip at the monolith. In my days since being the guerilla marketer for LinuxPPC, I won election last year as a Milwaukee County Supervisor. That means I'm one of 19 members in charge of policy for a $1.3 billion body of government. Because I now help craft policy — code, even, for code = law — I couldn't let the all-MS policy continue.
In the 2012 budget, I had an amendement that directs our IT department to do a study of open source software integration. I just got an update on the progress of the study: it turns out that rather than writing a white paper, we're going to have a working production model in place within a few months. It will be built entirely upon open source products (some flavor of Linux, Apache-Tomcat, MySQL, PHP, Alfresco, and so on). So we'll have actual documentation of the cost of production, and cost of maintenance. Beyond that, once it's tested, it will be ready for deployment to replace a set of commercial packages that the County Department of Administration uses. The coding will be done entirely in-house, which is a big win. And the programmers are very excited to do it!
That's only the beginning. Milwaukee County still uses Lotus Notes. (Pause to allow groans and shouts...) It's easy to imagine possibilities to replace Notes. And MS IIS. This is going to make a great story for Slashdot in a few months, and I hope it will make a great story to share with my constituents. The trick there will be to put it in terms that they can understand, as most of them don't have what I presume is our shared background. But, that's part of what they elected me for.
I suppose the story here is "get elected, and make a subtle policy (with profound future impacts) that you can sell by saying it will save money." With any luck, the rest will come like gravy.
-- haaz.
Look for the places that are in the top-10 places to live. Most of the cool jobs (aka use open source) are there. Try places like NY, San Francisco, Seattle or Austin.
And, where is Al, Bill, etc getting their money? Are they hiring programmers? If not, how does that apply to this situation?
And, DogDude has a very valid point.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
There's tons of startup activity right now in the Bay Area and most startups run their software on Linux/Unix. Look there.
Normally this is for stuff outside your core market. For instance the company I work for uses an open source DB, we have a guy who commits fixes upstream. We are not the in the DB market, nor do we want the cost of keeping our own fork with the fixes we need. So we upstream it.
The fact that you are too greedy to see the advantage we gain by having only one guy instead of a whole team needed to keep a fork alive is your own fault.
I find this "your a douche" thing to be very comical. A few years ago when the economy was good, if he would have quit for this reason everyone on Slashdot would have called him a hero for taking a stand against 'the man' (i.e. MS shops in general). Yeah brother, open source or die. Now the economy sucks and maybe the shops using OSS are thinning out which would make sense, since most/many shops using OSS are startups (where he should be looking). And if investment dollars are less, so will the start ups be (except in say the BRIC countries). But anyway, now that people are forced to see reality... NOW the folks on Slashdot are speaking with perspective (and talking as if they have all along. Regardless... yeah, he's a douche. If he was going to quit for this reason he should have had another job lined up.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
There's tons and tons of open-source jobs out there. One of the keywords here is "Android". The other keyword is "embedded". Linux and Android are being used for all kinds of embedded devices now, and there's tons of jobs for people using C and C++ (C more at the low levels, kernel, device drivers etc., C++ at the higher levels for applications). People who can work with and build embedded Linux systems are in high demand, and there's good demand for Qt C++ programmers too as that's being used a lot on these embedded devices that have touchscreens.
Now, this doesn't necessary mean you'll be doing a lot of contributions upstream to the open-source community, but you will be working with a lot of OSS components, and developing proprietary software that interacts with them. And you definitely won't be doing any work with MS technologies, as those have no place in an embedded system (there are some places using WinCE, but they're dying out and many are switching to Linux or Android).
OP isn't asking for validation or sympathy. He simply wants to work with Open Source products. Respect his choice even if you don't share it. All these bizarre posts lecturing him about having to justify his decisions seem like projections of insecurity.
It's not there yet, you have to create it...Like any open source project.
Use open source software and offer individuals and businesses service at a charge, so you charge them to set it up all awesome for them. But because you are using open source software and tools, there's almost no cost of operation either to the administrator or the user.
We should also Open Source business, so that we can maximize production and share productivity.
http://s31tech.com
It's not greed. It's business 101. Businesses succeed by doing things better than other businesses.
I don't respond to AC's.
By selling trinkets on his self-built website to people on the internet, you fucking moron. Not everyone's in the business of making money directly from software.
I would suggest you avoid Cobol programmer, though. I had to learn that godforsaken son-of-a-whore language in college and would rather eat glass while being raped by an angry Mike Tyson on top of a pyre of burning feces than to ever have to deal with it again. But some seem to find it a somewhat less suicide-inducing-please-god-give-me-the-strength-to-pull-this-trigger-and-end-it-all prospect than I.
So you really did study Cobol, didn't you! When in college (before university) I took a Cobol course (actually I *had to take one* in university too), and after taking Cobol (in college), I took a course programming in C. For one assignment, I had to create a small video game (complete with graphics/sound, etc). I titled mine "Revenge of the Cobolians", and you got to shoot them out of the sky with exploding bombs and gunfire! If you win, you get to go onto a unix type of existence where everything is sane. If you loose: coding hell: Cobol for breakfast, Cobol for lunch, Cobol for supper! You are forced to 80 column line widths, with nothing starting before column 12 (so the punch card deck will be happy), and procedure divisions, environment divisions and all manner of other ungodly crap shoveled at you: ie compute puke-chunks by shooter-count giving liquor-holding-capacity;
Bill is selling clothing items on his website, and Al is selling electronic parts. They find another buddy, John, who's really good with software, and he's selling woodworking items he makes. Later, Brad joins the project, and his business is selling refurbished auto parts. How the fuck are they competing with each other?
To a certain degree? The only thing easier about maintaining my current network, mixture of FOSS and ADUC/Exchange is that it's easier to create a user account. Instead of 4 systems it's 1 system that gets propagated to the rest. Otherwise it's just as tedious if not more. I'd rather solve a problem by looking at syslog or messages than trying to decipher an event log about App hang 0x0000012C in pick-your.dll.
For the record used to be complete FOSS with NT4 handling Windows auth, we got an update/upgrade. Glad to see the NT box go.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
your first mistake is basing your employment decisions on the os/platforms in use.
if you really want to be better at what you do you should take this opportunity to at least become familiar with how that side of things works.
personally, i'd rather higher someone for a linux position that has linux and windows experience than a person with 30 years of linux experience.
scale your knowledge and ability horizontally across multiple platforms and disciplines and stay as far away from platform specific or application specific jobs because they are dead ends.
just because you have windows servers doesn't mean you can't use a linux vm to automate the entire windows environment.
Google, and Facebook come to mind, off the top of my head as best place to work for non MS environment, usually government offices too I have seen use open source as much as possible to save some bucks. What other option do you have other then keep yourself updated. Many places have linux environments side by side MS environments.... so you could start adding anything MS based to your resume, but make it really about your linux exp.
Good luck finding something...hope it works out
Maybe Ernie Ball is hiring.
Free Martian Whores!
Countries that refuse to buy into the Microsoft "FUD" as you call it, have plenty of jobs paying poor wages, and have a lack of basic 1st world luxuries such as clean drinking water, working sewer systems, and medical facilities. They all cut cost with open source products. The fact that you are looking in "local paper's Sunday classifieds" sounds as if you out of touch with reality. You have to be willing to travel / move for something as nich as open source. And contract jobs are how you get a foot in the door to show of your skills. So please take that advise and stay away from the Microsoft Empire, the last thing i need is some snot nosed OSS turd telling me how well "linux could do that better than Microsoft" and only produce Vaporware as proof.
Do you really mean open source? Or do you mean *nix? You don't mention what your area of expertise is, so the difference may actually be irrelevant. Consider imbedded systems, firmware, device drivers, etc. Down in the guts, the difference becomes somewhat meaningless.
Rapid7 is hiring.
Most companies will have linux products and a few open source software, but majority of companies will use MS and any other brand name due to support options. It's far to risky for a company to go pure open source, because when something fails, and it will, how do you get it working again if you go past your knowledge threshold and there's no one to call for assistance?
Find your new job before quitting.
In the meantime, learn all you can about a MS shop. Who knows; your next gig might be migrating a shop from MS to OSS.
The guys responding in the (you can almost hear the) butch tone, well gee duh of course there's no work in FOSS! say 'MS shill' to me far more loudly than the original poster. Give me a break. Have you ever had a mission-critical project hovering on failure because of flaws in MS software that your oh-so-helpful tech support rep in India can't even grasp, much less solve? Well, I have, and lemme tell you it's a position I never put my business in again. FOSS is the only way to go if you ever, truly want to get the job done because at the end of the day you can make it work yourself if you have to.
The other posters who have recommended embedded work such as in Android are the ones you should be listening to. There are significant areas of tech now that rely exclusively on FOSS to function. High-end rendering like what they do at Pixar? FOSS. High-end trading systems in Finance? FOSS. Any kind of advertising/social media/startup/innovators? FOSS. In fact, in a down economy, the attractive cost profile of FOSS means it's proliferating even further.
So assess what your particular area of expertise is, and begin a focused search accordingly. Asking the question on Slashdot is a good start. Just be sure to disregard the comments from the peanut gallery about closed-source: they're either actual MS shills or complacent techs who fear the rapidly approaching tipping point that will end their personal gravy train. They put me in mind of a haiku from Basho: "When the eyes of hawks darken, quails call."
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I have done this myself, early on I had the choice between going MS or Unix at a large ISP and I went the Unix route and never looked back. A few years ago I worked at a small sub division of a large telecom that was merged back in and saw the writing on the wall and quit.
The people who say you got to roll with things are those with no backbone who are suffering from the economy. Not going to make friends with this but if you are worried about your job in this economy, then you fucking suck at it. Granted, i do live in Holland whose economy isn't as down the drain as the one in the US but I have been getting recruitment offers from the US and US companies. They still are looking for skilled people.
Mind you, I don't know if the OP is one. He doesn't actually mention what the hell his job is? He might be an accountant or a painter or a jet pilot.
For me, it is easy, I am a web developer and the intresting stuff is being done with open source tools. If you want a steady non-intresting job on projects that take years for the government where the latest craze is those new fangled animated gif's, then you go ASP but for startups and the like, the opensource LAMP stack just beats everything else on performance, costs, availability of knowledge and personel and general acceptance. But is this guy suitable for that kind of job?
There are still jobs out there. In my experience, what you need most is to hit the right note with the interview. That has nothing to do with something you can measure objectively. I submitted a piece of code where I tried something out. I have had responses ranging from "you suck" to "this is wonderful, just what we are looking for". Job hunting is like dating, if you can't handle being utterly humiliated and have your ego ground in the dirt while they laugh at your penis... eh cv... then you just ain't suited for it. Stick to that go-no-where job, swallow it all and lash out against anyone who dares to break free (see a lot of the above posts for examples).
Or ask yourself, where is the cutting edge considered old hat, has opensource been accepted for over a decade as not so much an option but the norm and people care about results not certificates or fud? Then go web development. Granted, if you are old office tech, it will take some adjustment.
If you believe in something you got to fight for it, or be just another sheep. Nobody said it was going to be easy, just because you refuse to bend in one direction doesn't mean you don't have to bend at all. Look further afield for jobs where MS is not even dirty name anymore but rather just the maker of a rather bad browser a small percentage of customers still use. (One intresting result I found with one niche webshop is that while MS browsers were still in the high percentage for visitors, for actual buyers, it didn't even reach into the double digits and then it was version 9, I have been developing the opinion that people still on IE6 and such are also not likely to buy costly racing bikes, odd that eh?)
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
FOSS has plenty of people to call if you are willing to pay, as clearly the case is for companies that choose MS.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
There's a reason MS stuff is out there.
I can't remember where I read it, but there was an article about how you can't make software too easy to use and install. That would not leave much work for the consultants and IT folks, and they would thus not push the product to their clients.
You need that right balance between having a good product and leaving enough work for the IT workers to really get that into the market.
Now, that changes a bit with 'the cloud' to some extent as now the goal the software creator can deliver and charge for the service directly. They don't need the IT consultants as much to 'push' their product.
This is one the bigger reasons for MS dominating the general PC environment including the office. They leave their products with boatloads of customizability and scripting and push the IT folks and consultants with training to build out that ecosystem all tied to their platform of course.
Open source environment typically lack this push. To emphasize again... this is not an engineer or technical push. There are generally equivalent open source projects... but a business and marketing and ecosystem push.
Even something as simple as how to develop for 'Windows'... it is easy for anyone to start... get Visual Studio is the answer.
This is why you typically find far fewer custom FOSS shops. Most companies I've seen want to use FOSS as a replacement. They don't want to/think to do the kind of customization you can often do with Windows for desktop apps.
So where are the open source jobs?
Generally you can find Linux development jobs in embedded systems. But if you have worked for a 'Microsoft Shop', I'm guessing this is not your niche.
You could also go with Java, and many corporations and banks use Java.
Many 'cloud' based solution typically have FOSS backends... as again... no need to have consultants push the solution.
But in the end, they are just different models. I've never had the kind of anti MS passion many people have.
http://www.hotlinuxjobs.com and search for linux in craigslist.
Don't look for an "Open Source" job. Look for a "Linux" job or a "Apache/Mysql" job. Or a "PHP" or "Ruby on Rails" job.
And don't waste your time with the paper version of the newspaper. You won't find the high tech jobs there. Go for Monster, Career Builder, craig's list and other online job sites.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Move to the DC area... I've been a PHP developer here for 12 years, every company I work for struggles to find qualified "open source" talent. The recruiters here even have open source teams specializing in recruiting open source talent. There is tons of work here, and it pays just as well, if not better than closed source development shops.
There's tons and tons of open-source jobs out there. One of the keywords here is "Android". The other keyword is "embedded". Linux and Android are being used for all kinds of embedded devices now, and there's tons of jobs for people using C and C++ (C more at the low levels, kernel, device drivers etc., C++ at the higher levels for applications). People who can work with and build embedded Linux systems are in high demand, and there's good demand for Qt C++ programmers too as that's being used a lot on these embedded devices that have touchscreens.
Now, this doesn't necessary mean you'll be doing a lot of contributions upstream to the open-source community, but you will be working with a lot of OSS components, and developing proprietary software that interacts with them. And you definitely won't be doing any work with MS technologies, as those have no place in an embedded system (there are some places using WinCE, but they're dying out and many are switching to Linux or Android).
Your options are good ones, and so is going to work for academia, National Labs and other government agencies like NIST, NASA, etc. All use open source extensively with Microsoft and Apple all in the same bag. It's a fun environment if you get the right management and people around you. The nice thing about academia in particular is that it is relatively easy to move from department to department, college to college, or to any central IT unit if you find yourself in an unpleasant situation due to personalities, changes in management, etc. Most of my open source experience comes from working in academia for almost 20 years, supporting and managing software development and IT resources. It's one of the best places to experiment and contribute to some exciting projects using open source, closed source, crowd sourced (hehe!) IT tools and research projects, depending on where you might end up. Good luck!
I'm thinking of starting an open source business, we're willing to pay you cash donation
whenever people donate after subtracting other business expense cost and my salary
if it sound like a good deal, please email me your resume.
But not for a baritone I take it?
OP is very light on detail about what type of job he's even looking for.
Is he a programmer, a system administrator?
What, prey tell, does OP want to be when he grows up?
These things are the FIRST questions we need answering, before we start looking at specific technologies (i.e. MS vs Open Source).
at universities you can put all your work online for everyone to see, and are encouraged to do so
Only if it helps you. The money we would spend on such a team to keep a fork would cost us more than the value of those bug fixes. What we have is called first mover advantage. We get these fixes first, but we don't have to continually pay to keep them alive.
Get a PhD. Write more challenging software. Release it open source. Get hired by google if you burn out.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, or the most intelligent; it is the one most capable of change."
This. My parents and I were born in Singapore. We came to the US when I was 6 months old and I became a US citizen when I was 8. If I ever go back they will seize my US passport, throw me into jail for 2 years and then force me to serve in their army for 2 years before deporting me back to the US (because I want to remain American and thus need a permit to stay there).
A professional gets the job DONE. Period. He walks in to any situation and gets to work. Why? Because that's what professionals do. That's why they are HIRED. Do you think Red Adair turned down jobs because it was too hot?
You get hired to make things work. You aren't hired to sooth your ego. Want ego soothing? Move back in with mommy. Leave the real work to US professionals, since you obviously aren't one.
I assume the "point" to which you are referring is the comment regrading "handing over their competitive advantage".
If the software is your "magic sauce", why do you need to use someone else's code at all? Create your own and be done with it. If, on the other hand, you aren't capable / willing / financed / interested enough to do this, then you can use someone else's code with the understanding you will follow the license.
Lots of companies don't make a product, yet they sell support for it. If support is your "magic sauce" then this method works best for you.
Almost all embedded projects use FOSS and embedded devices outnumber desktop devices by two orders of magnitude, so there actually are bazillions of FOSS jobs out there, they are just not advertised as such.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
You'll be surprised what you can find in the major markets. Seattle, for instance, often has lots of jobs asking for some experience with Linux.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
I would suggest you avoid Cobol programmer, though. I had to learn that godforsaken son-of-a-whore language in college and would rather eat glass while being raped by an angry Mike Tyson on top of a pyre of burning feces than to ever have to deal with it again. But some seem to find it a somewhat less suicide-inducing-please-god-give-me-the-strength-to-pull-this-trigger-and-end-it-all prospect than I.
I have a friend who works for IBM programming mainframes with COBOL. He absolutely loves the job, and the language. I asked him how that was possible, given how COBOL is usually seen out there. His answer was something along these lines: "People look at how COBOL was in the past and believe it's still like that. It isn't. The language has evolved and incorporated modern programming paradigms and techniques. It's still verbose, but no more than Java, and with the advantage that, thanks to decades of debugging, libraries and reusable code are practically bug-free. It's a joy to work with."
Well, I never worked with COBOL, so I have no opinion on the matter. But it's interesting to see how diametrically opposed opinions on this language are. I wonder if there's someone out there who, knowing COBOL, neither hates nor loves it, but thinks of it merely as another language, good for some things, bad at others. Maybe there isn't. :-)
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Some of the comments appear to assume that by "open source jobs", you mean "making FOSS". (c.f. "oh, wait, you mean the PAYING ones", etc.) Did you instead mean "using FOSS"? One can be paid well to implement closed-source with FOSS[1], but the jobs being paid to *make* FOSS aren't nearly as common.
The best I've been able to do on the latter is contribute to FOSS projects as part of my jobs writing closed-source software that use open source libraries and tools.
[1] Greater GPL excluded, obviously.
http://careers.redhat.com/.
If you spent "hours upon hours" trying to configure samba to talk to a Windows 7 box then you need to turn in your college degree and ask for a broom.
They cover this in college now?
Take a look here: http://jobs.github.com/
They're global, and they're always hiring.
https://careers.redhat.com/ext/search
"Red Hat®, the world's leading open source and Linux® provider, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC, with satellite offices worldwide. Red Hat is leading Linux and open source solutions into the mainstream by making high-quality, low-cost technology accessible."
- http://www.redhat.com/about/
Open Source enough?
Now, this doesn't necessary mean you'll be doing a lot of contributions upstream to the open-source community, but you will be working with a lot of OSS components, and developing proprietary software that interacts with them.
Get a job with Rovio and you can use OSS without even giving credit to them!
I don't mean that as a sling at Rovio, honest. Read the article and you'll see they were pretty good about dealing with it.
But having more developers working in the industry who really do give a damn about OSS can only be a good thing. I noticed the credits of Ghost Trick have 3 pages of OSS licensing.
Keep at 'er.
And document it all. Then, when the problem happened, I'd show them the documentation. I wouldn't get all asshurt about it though and bitch at people. I might look for a new job, but I wouldn't need to ask Slashdot for help.
I'm not a zealot about it. If it was making me unsatisfied in my job, I'd look for a new one, but that it true no matter what the situation is. If I found I liked, or at least could tolerate, working in that environment to the extent it was worth the other job benefits, I'd stay.
37signals job board
github job board
ruby jobs sites
If they want to change your job description, which is what is needed for you to be responsible for something different, they are also required to provide you with any and all training necessary to be able to do that (HR policy). So they suddenly say "You are responsible for X OS now!" you say "Sorry I don't know that," they say "We are changing your job to require it," you say "Off to training I go!"
I'm not saying that is the way everything works, but it is not uncommon. Companies decide to do something new and they retrain the workforce to do it.
Not every skill is worth learning.
More importantly, if he stays in MS-only shop for too long, his other skills will deteriorate.
"I would suggest you avoid Cobol programmer, though. I had to learn that godforsaken son-of-a-whore language in college and would rather eat glass while being raped by an angry Mike Tyson on top of a pyre of burning feces than to ever have to deal with it again."
Meaning, in other words, that you would be willing to PAY someone a considerable amount of money to do it for you? Sounds like the basis of a good-paying career choice for our young friend here. :)
Initially Win7 didn't talk to samba. I did a quick google, found the setting ***inside Windows*** to fix the issue. Bob's your uncle. Done.
I prefer not using Microsoft stuff, but sometimes it really is the best answer. Other times, it most definitely IS NOT the best answer. File/Print should be owned by Linux. Sure, there are special situations where Microsoft file services should be used, but not most of the time.
Who wants to pay you to waste hours upon hours configuring samba to talk to Windows 7 when that shit works out of the box?
Did this yesterday, took me about half a minute to get it mounted as a Z: drive.
People with a brain. But that's not something a spineless dumb MS shill like you would understand. Why not move along? Your bitterness about having no cojones whatsoever is not relevant here.
Just saying.
I've been deving fulltime ever since 2000 and the only proprietary technology I dealt with was Flash/ActionScript. Now that that universal platform is slowly going the way of the dodo, thanks to a new era of plattform fragmentation and the rise of serious rich client webapps in HTML5/Ajax I'm slowly moving away from it. I didn't join my former employers team of Unity developers, simply because I didn't want to learn another proprietary technology. Instead I left the team, eventually the company (for reasons unrelated - i was doing PHP at the time) and now picked up C++/Qt for a small, out of the norm Freelance deal building a desktop app. My bread and butter still is web stuff, but I enjoy filling the Flash/AS gap with another compiled language that does solid OOP.
Yes, I would do Mac OS X / iOS developing for a living, I would even do MS, SAP or Oracle (even though the last time I've done MS deving was back in 1999) but only if they'd pay me big time. 80 000 Euros/year or more in a good shop with resonable working times. Don't think that's going to happen, especially since I'm not actively looking for it. Yes, I can be bought by the dark side, but it has a price.
Aside from that, I'd rather sit in a room in a shared flat with little money and spend my time doing FOSS technology based development than earning a mediocre wage in a full time MS shop, learning skills that will become obsolete by design and strategy in 5 years from now the latest. I'd rather spent my time learning Emacs and Lisp, even that would have more future. And I could very well imagine that there are many FOSS type people who actually do put their money where there mouth is and do the same.
Anybody with more than 2 braincells who understands computers knows that with all the proprietary lock-in and patent-ridden bullshit in our field somebody eventually will pay the price if we don't keep the banner flying and give in to the dark side. RMS may be a crazy person with appalling table manners but he is right and dead-on with this freedom thing. Our jobs wouldn't be as good as they are today without his pioneer work - it is important to uphold the spirit and the values of the FOSS community - for our childrens sake.
No, turning down a MS job or even a Java/SAP job like I did last autum feels really good, and no money in the world can by me that feeling.
Maybe that's different with you, but never the less, I'd still be careful calling others a douche when it comes to this.
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Joke apart, they are in embedded and servers
I can't be too sure, but there *might* be a couple of OSS jobs over at Red Hat....
http://www.redhat.com/about/work/
You might want to try looking at jobs in academia too. Lots of universities open source their research projects and divisions outside of the traditional business IT and computer science departments regularly hire software developers to build interesting tools to support their research efforts.
a bad workman always blames his tools
Were I forced to go 100% MS - I would quit my job immediately. I definitely prefer to make less money and like my job than make twice that and hate it... Even if it means demotion... I have just one live and I don't want to spend it doing things I hate.
On a purely anecdotal experience, around 2007-2008 sometimes I had a box where WinXP -> samba/ubuntu worked like shit with 100 kbps transfer speed over GigE while standard TCP/UDP tests ran at 3-400 Mbps and WinXP -> windows server worked fine, and the people I asked for help were nothing but insulting and obnoxious and insisting that despite having no clue what the problem was, it must be my "wintendo" box. Wasted many hours on it and it never worked right on that machine, so yeah... like most things on Linux it's just quirks instead of just works.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I work as a java developer.
Java itself is open source now, so is all libraries, tools and servers that I currently work with.
Our "product" (a website) is not open source.
So depending on what you mean, it might not be an open source job.
- But it is open enough for me.
Usually the faggots that choose Microsoft as their platform have no idea what they are getting themselves into. From first hand experience I can and will elaborate:
Choosing Microsoft as your platform leads to:
1) Instant vendor lock-in. For servers this is completely retarded, to get the latest MSSQL update your OS, to get the latest Exchange update your OS and MSSQL, it's fucking theft! The upgrade of a single Exchange server does not warrant the upgrade of every single fucking underlying mechanic. If you think it does go kill yourself; obviously you have no idea how *nix works.
2) Alpha-male-IT-ism. Stupid faggots that think they're IT gawds and the "alpha male" of the office often have no idea how to fucking do anything but google for solutions. When faced with a real problem it can take them hours upon hours if not days to fix the issue because they're the "alpha male".
3) A sudden "anti-FOSS" movement. Yes; I've had idiot bosses who love microsoft dick so much that using anything NOT microsoft is bad and can have a negative impact on your IT JOB. "Why aren't you using IE, it's standard." The first thing I think is "What fucking planet are you from boss?" or my favorite is how "Exchange servers are standard" when they are #4 in most used, or how IIS is standard when it's #3, or how MSSQL is standard when it's what, not even on the map...
Yes I've experienced all of these in the office because so called "IT managers" think they know what they're talking about, but when in reality they haven't got a fucking clue.
The question doesn't even say if he's a developer or a user. Or whether he's really serious about finding a new job, or whether he's just venting about his current employer.
If he's an open source developer, he shouldn't just look passively on dice.com or monster.com. That's one advantage of being an open source developer, you're generally more easily identifiable and accessible to potential employers if they browse through your code contributions and try to track you down through that (and if you're worried about your current employer finding out about your current open source activity, just make up an internet online persona for yourself and write code on the weekends through that). Usually, developers of proprietary software are purposefully hidden away from view by their employers (for fear that they'll be recruited away), so if those guys do not know anyone else -- those are the guys that are forced to go through sites like dice.com or monster.com.
And similar advice goes if you don't have much open source code out there to begin with. If you don't have much code out there, the second best thing is put yourself out there at least socially and become an active part of the social fabric of the programming community you want to specialize in.
It's often the case that the best developer jobs, and by best -- I mean some of the entry level developer jobs that all the newbies want, or the most lucrative/coolest jobs -- if you happen to be a veteran, often get filled long before they're even advertised (or long before they're even given out to third party recruiters to recruit for). So if you don't want to see yourself scraping the bottom of the barrel after everyone has already taken a drink from it, you'll have to get to it before those jobs get to third party recruiters (or sites like dice.com) because by then -- all those good jobs may already be gone.
There's no lack of well paying open source web development positions.
>The language has evolved and incorporated modern programming paradigms and techniques. It's still verbose, but no more than Java,
Dear God they've created COBOL++
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
I was pretty much weened on FOSS since the time I was a young teenager. For a while I was stuck using both Windows and Linux due to issues regarding hardware support, but things changed rapidly so that by the time I was in college I hadn't really used Windows on any of my personal computers until Windows 7 came out (occasionally I'd dual boot XP just to play with Windows). I was and still am a free software ideologue and all-around social/economic activist.
When I finally got my first real IT job, boy was I in for a surprise. In school I and everyone I knew used Linux; we also used Linux on school servers and in computer labs (we were the comp sci students so we generally had out own computing facilities separate from the main student body). At work I discovered, naturally, that all systems ran Windows. A few execs had Macbooks because they thought they were fancy and needed an upper class image.
Company management wasn't even against using Linux. Frankly they would have done anything to cut corners on cost, including using free software (some of their commercial software was pirated anyway). The problem is we just couldn't deploy Linux. Over the years the company had developed a software infrastructure that was so heavily based on Microsoft products, we literally couldn't function without them. I used Linux whenever I could, mainly in computer maintenance, backup, diagnostics, and repair, where Linux live CDs/USBs performed spectacularly well (if you're handy with the CLI tools).
In the end, I got used to administrating a Windows environment. In many ways it's an awful thing to have to deal with, but at the end of the day you get the job done. There are many times when Windows would fail for inexplicable reasons, and you either a) had to be a programming genius to isolate and repair the problem, or b) you could just do system restore and forget about it. Worst case scenario involved doing a factory restore. Windows is severely lacking in facilities for system maintenance and repair; you basically set it up and pray that nothing goes wrong, and then when it breaks you look for a workaround. This was totally different from what I was used to administering Linux at home, where I was totally unaccustomed to any type of system failures.
That's the thing about software and businesses--the software is not the pinnacle of computing; it just has a strong institutional backing where there's always someone else working on it so you don't have to. Software doesn't work? Call the vendor. For every problem there exists an official, textbook solution that you can just follow without having to really apply yourself. This is bound to drive computing purists nuts, but a job's a job. If a company is willing to pay you full wages for handling their Windows infrastructure, it's better to just shut up and take the money. Having secure employment and working on programs you dislike is rather important compared to using only programs that you like and not having a job. You don't have to like the programs--it's called work for a reason.
Oh, and cloud computing ... linode, ec2 ring any bells?
Every day on hacker news I read about how hard it is to find good people... and almost none of them are on Windows.
#6495ED - cornflower blue
Most large stock exchanges run Linux, the last one to move was the London Stock Exchange http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/open-source/3260727/london-stock-exchange-in-historic-linux-go-live/. This is not because they can not pay for Micro$oft rubbish, but because reliability, speed and security
That would be called "ADD 1 TO COBOL".
Look there and you shall find open source employment.
Anything in C is unlikely to be Microsoft stuff.
Embedded systems are usually Linux- or BSD-based.
Dear God they've created COBOL++
Hehe. Google tells me it's actually nicknamed OOCOBOL, but yeah, maybe COBOL++ would be better, given that Wikipedia tells me it (the ISO/ANSI COBOL 2002 standard) includes pointers and memory management functions, and there's support to work within/compile to .NET and Java. Quoting:
The language continues to evolve today. In the early 1990s it was decided to add object-orientation in the next full revision of COBOL. (...) The 2002 (4th revision) of COBOL included many other features beyond object-orientation. These included (but are not limited to):
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
Dude, I don't know what economy you're referring to, but in the tech world, we can't hire fast enough. There are way more positions open than people to fill them. I'm constantly getting cold calls from reputable companies asking me to leave my job and go work for them. My friends in the industry are getting the same. I even know of a several people who have quit their high paying jobs to start their own companies.
The whole bad economy bull shit is for non-techies.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
My mod points expired yesterday.......this is LOL-worthy.
"You are forced to 80 column line widths, with nothing starting before column 12..."
Not since 1985.
"... merely as another language, good for some things, bad at others."
All languages are this.
I've been developing with Microsoft tools since the mid 90's and recently switched to mobile development for Android. I've never been happier at work. I get to use all sorts of open source tools and frameworks. The only hard part is dealing with companies that aren't familiar with open source software and have legal teams frightened of using it.
Maybe get rid of the Windows 7 box. Spend more time getting applications to your users, less time configuring for windows crap. The trick is that for a large business, you should be making work flows and client apps for desktop thin client users. Otherwise you are wasting time and money.
No he find those a bit too filling.
If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
a little known but invaluable resource, www.hercjobs.org. It's a regional consortium that laboratories and universities post jobs to. I always check it every month or so.
This article is obviously a ploy by big brother employers who want to check which of their staff are looking for jobs elsewhere. Who else reads a slashdot article about where to find a job? I can't believe the slashdot editors fall for this.
At least here in Chicago, we can't get enough good open software developers and engineers.
If you are competent in Ruby on Rails or Python, it is a sellers market.
The financial firms are dying for good systems engineers.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Is this question a nostalgia post from 1997?
From what I've seen, it's the 'Microsoft' jobs that are getting more and more scarce. There's a general shortage of devs and competent ops going on right now and the companies i've seen aren't even considering Ballmer-ware for anything but bizops desktop machines.
If you're actually looking in your local paper for tech jobs, and expecting to find anything half decent.... you need to relocate somewhere with an actual tech industry.... seriously
I'd like to voice that the Wikimedia Foundation has open source jobs! All the Wikipedia code is open source and we treasure our open source developers.
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Work_with_us
http://slashdot.org/story/03/07/13/1557256/dont-be-a-sharecropper
Try Vancouver - plenty of open source jobs and a good job market with strong demand.
If you search for jobs mentioning c# you'll get MS jobs only. Search for python, perl, php, ruby and you'll find the open source ones.
C, C++ and Java are a mixed bag for obvious reasons.
Spelling lol.
It's that you're an absurd, overgrown child. Management want to run the company their way? Let them. Do you have a religious hatred of all thing Microsoft? Then I'd suggest your next stop is the psychiatrist - and I'm not even trolling. This question is so ridiculous that if you only stepped away from your closeted little internet world (of which Slashdot is a large part; thousands of nerds slapping each other on the back is just validation, and enhancement, of unreasonably extreme views) for a few days I think you'd see that.
You conveniently fail to mention that Al loses any competitive advantage he may have over Bill due to the software he wrote.
Depending on circumstances, having your own proprietary software could be a competitive advantage, or it could be a millstone around your neck. Ask yourself, who's got the competitive advantage -- the company using a home-grown web server with no user community, and 2 developers who know the code -- or the company using Apache, who's two developers participate in the Apache development process?
Maintaining code is more expensive than writing it. It's worth sharing that cost.
(I know what you want to say: the leechers who use Apache without doing any coding. But think back to when Apache was new, and people wanted new features all the time. Adding it yourself was the fastest/easiest option.)
Think of Memcached - written for LiveJournal. Would hoarding Memcached for themselves have given LiveJournal a competitive advantage? I don't think so. Someone would have written something functionally equivalent in no time. LiveJournal do better by building an OSS community around Memcached, and reaping the improvements, than they do by hoarding it.
Seriously, if you're anywhere near New York, London, Chicago, Singapore, HK, etc., or can get yourself there, you'll find that the big investment banks run just acres and acres of Linux gear. Hedge funds, too, and some of the exchanges themselves. And they pay very well, even in this day and age.
Yes, I've got bloody Outlook on my desktop PC, but other than that it's just an X server and terminal emulator. The real development is all on Linux, gcc, Eclipse, emacs, whatever you want.
As you might imagine, a lot of the end product is proprietary, for internal use only. But some organisations do contribute open source code too; the LMAX disruptor is an interesting recent example.
Then there are the fringe benefits, like the cool "We are the 1%" t-shirts... (Kidding; just kidding!!)
Where the rest of us look.
If you need more help on that, go to some career planning sites. Lots of info there. Less bullshit than here.
I also like the "Oh, it's easy" answers. Great guys, how about a little info for the dude rather than "it's easy?"
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Start a consulting company that provides an easy presentation to the NH government who just recently passed a law making it a REQUIREMENT to review open source alternatives.
I know a number of committed open sourcers who are also skilled Windows admins. They get hired into Windows admin jobs, then proceed happily to bring Linux systems into the organization wherever they find opportunity. And find it they do. Meanwhile, with nice fat paycheques for all intents and purposes written straight from Microsoft, they fund lives of relative leisure and ongoing contribution to open source projects in their off hours. Which tend to be plenty, because frankly they know more and get their jobs done more efficiently than your average MSCE. Just by way of pointing out that an open source job may not always be exactly what you might expect.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
ADD 1 TO COBOL GIVING COBOLPLUS
ADD 1 TO COBOLPLUS GIVING COBOLPLUSPLUS
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
You could start by doing what you used to before it became impossible when your bosses took the MS pill.
Get the best former colleagues and try it, might go well.
Even if it doesn't you get invaluable experience.
C'mon, if the guy can't figure out how to hunt for a job, I wouldn't hire him...he doesn't deserve it.
The nice thing about academia in particular is that it is relatively easy to move from department to department, college to college, or to any central IT unit if you find yourself in an unpleasant situation due to personalities, changes in management, etc.
The keyword is "relatively".
From my 15 years experience, the easy move from department to department is nothing short of dreams/lies/advertising. In practical use, performing such move requires huge amounts of politics, networking and influence. If you already are good at those, you may as well aim for the CEO position. If you are not good with those types of skills (probably most of Slashdot audience), on such request you get the "finger". I.E. responses like "we actually need you here", "there aren't any other positions available that fits your expertise", or any other politically correct "finger".
Its much more easier to actually find yourself a whole new fresh job, at least there you start with a clean slate, unpolluted by internal politics. The funny part is that when you finally actually find a new job and you tell them you are leaving, they suddenly have available options for you. Slimmy fuckers.
(a) pretend to be gung ho
(b) go on as many training courses as you can
(c) get as many magick certificatez as you can
(d) find job in windows/unix hybrid shop on back of said pieces of paper
(e) profit
I know a number of committed open sourcers who are also skilled Windows admins. They get hired into Windows admin jobs, then proceed happily to bring Linux systems into the organization wherever they find opportunity. And find it they do. Meanwhile, with nice fat paycheques for all intents and purposes written straight from Microsoft, they fund lives of relative leisure and ongoing contribution to open source projects in their off hours. Which tend to be plenty, because frankly they know more and get their jobs done more efficiently than your average MSCE. Just by way of pointing out that an open source job may not always be exactly what you might expect.
Microsoft Scientologists, you should not be modding down truthful comments, you will only get stronger ones later.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
I think the OP has commendable perspective. Microsoft is a convicted illegal monopolist. Taking a stand against them in the way presented is no more unbelievable than choosing to not work for a defense contractor, if you're opposed to warfare.
Mentor, once CodeSorcery, does gcc/binutils ports.
http://www.mentor.com/embedded-software/codesourcery
Qualcomm Innovation Center does lots of open source development.
http://quicinc.com
Maybe it's just Seattle, but when I was job hunting, there weren't a lot of Microsoft enterprise type admin jobs available. Everyone was looking for different open source linux distos, hadoop, open souce programming languages. I don't get the huge difficulty here, but you'll have to have some skills. I started out in Solaris, which pretty much became obsolete. Although it's still around, most of that business has gone to RHEL. This seems like one of those questions that ignites a lot of passion in the general geekry, but isn' really an amazing question. The answer is to do a search on craiglist or linkedin for the type of position you're looking for. If you're new to different open source linux distros, you'll have to start at entry level, assuming you understand computing/networking concepts. And as far as huge fortune 500 or 100 companies, a lot of them are running RHEL and Centos, etc. They only use MS for their internal email, etc, but they wouldn't dream of putting anything mission critical on Microsoft. I ran text and picture messaging for AT&T and T-mobile and set up a network monitoring system for Clearwire...there's very little windows used in enterprise production services environments. It's a mix of Unix and Linux. The only reason paid Linux and Unix are used is due to vendor support and contracts and but for those, they would surely go open source linux and save on massive contract costs. You can't count on just your internal engineers to solve every problem and a customer affecting outage can't wait for development. Maybe you just need to get into enterprise type work instead of internal IT. Yes this is an almost Ulysesses style rant...w/e.
It sounds as though you are the one who bought into a shitload of FUD (of some airy-fairy principle around open-source), and not your company who took a rational decision in terms of its IT footprint.
I'm not saying that anywhere is particularly booming in IT (or related industries) at the moment but Open Source adoption is fairly big amongst telecoms equipment providers, where there's been a big push away from commercial UNIX distributions like Solaris and HP-UX to Linux.
The company I work for first moved into Red Hat Linux servers when the world started to go Voice Over IP about a decade ago, now I think someone is looking a lot more at margins on our appliance servers as we move into virtualisation - Red Hat seems to be slowly disappearing in favour of CentOS, presumably as we move into more self-supported Linux distros rather than paying Red Hat for support (not that I have a particular problem with either methodology).
You also might want to keep an eye on the Raspberry Pi. It may never be "the Year Of Desktop Linux" (not that I care anyway) but many people here in the UK are predicting a big uptake in schools over here for it - so presumably that will need experts to support them also in educational departments. Even I'm getting to the age now where big wage packets are becoming slightly less important as the mortgage on the house gets a lot smaller and I feel like giving back some of my accrued knowledge over 30-odd years of telecoms, IT and security experience back to the youngsters. If the Raspberry Pi kicks off a new-found interest in youngsters taking up programming, there may be something an old git like me can bring to them...
It might be worth seeing how it takes off where you are... and have a look around some of the telecoms manufacturers like Cisco, Avaya, Siemens, etc., not to mention those companies that do third-party applications that interface to their kit for voice recording, predictive dialing and call-centre reporting.
Windows 10 is great - I used it to download Linux.
Loads of open source jobs out there, one word: LAMP
Go find a job working as a government contractor. Especially in the defense sector, there's plenty of open source / unixy stuff going on (all the military simulations have been ported from SUN / SGI / HPUX to Linux nowadays). My old job is available... that is, once they lift the budget freeze pending on Congress agreeing on something.
I'm a big Linux guy, but just started working at Microsoft itself last week. Ironically, there's actually lots of open source here... my development machine already had cygwin and the gimp loaded on it. The official policy is that it's OK to use, just don't put any time into developing OSS or looking at OSS source code... pretty reasonable efforts to prevent compromising their closed source revenue stream.
Sorry to say that, in my experience, the staunchly open source shops around here aren't just saving money on their software licenses. I found a shop that programs all their apps in Qt, and I happen to have been programming in Qt for the last 5 years - awesome fit, but when I interviewed, the head of software decided he liked me but then cut straight to salary discussion and frankly came out and told me that my last job (and the two before that) were paying 50% more than he was making, and he was making 50% more than any other software guy on staff (translation: other than him, software guys were making 44% of my previous salary level, and even he was only at 67%.)
It's a management decision thing, I could surely deliver massive return on their investment in my salary, but they choose to seek salary costs as low as they possibly can. Thankfully, I found a company willing to continue to support me and my family (and I still program in Qt), and we have a mutually beneficial relationship, they pay me better than the jerks down the road, and I deliver product they can sell for far more than they pay me.