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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?"
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.
... we're hiring. Are you any good?
...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
Good for you.
Different strokes for different folks. I would not be willing to take the pay cut that comes with going from the Sr guy to a Jr.
I spend 8+ hours a day working, it had better be something I like doing.
The viewpoint expressed in your post is exactly why I can now bill myself as both an Android developer and also an iOS developer.
I'm not in the market for work right now, but you can be sure that I have two pools of jobs to pick from when it comes to mobile development now...
...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.
At my last job our team had 6 developers, 4 of us used Linux on a daily basis. The company decided it was going all Windows, we were able to hold out a while but the Linux portions of the environment were getting more and more marginalized.
We all had the option of moving over to the MS side, but frankly if we wanted to work with MS there were better options, and within a year all 4 of us were gone.
A job should be something you enjoy, and if you have the ability to find enjoyment in the tools you use that counts for a lot.
As for those complaining about him looking for a new job while everyone else is struggling with unemployment... Well I hear there's about to be an opening for someone willing to work with Windows.
I stole this Sig
They'll work. "Quite well" is open to interpretation. I'm not anti-Mac. I'm posting from one now.
My point is that there are aspects to most people's jobs that they don't like but they're willing to put up with. So if you're somebody who doesn't feel that Macs (or whatever) are the best choice, it's one thing to support a few of them, but quite another if the entire company is going to switch over. Especially if you think it's a bad decision, you made your opinion known, and felt you were ignored.
I'm an IT Manager. If I decided that we were going 100% Mac (even just on the desktop), my network admin would definitely voice his displeasure. If I decided to go ahead anyway, it would not surprise me in the least if he quit. He might decide to stay anyway but our working relationship would suffer, at least for awhile. His job performance may also decline.
Some times it's best if an employee and an employer part ways. It's far better for the OP to look for a job he likes than to stay and be a unhappy, crappy employee.
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!
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