Slashdot Mirror
Linux World Domination Creates Shortage of Linux-Skilled Workers
Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin doesn't use the phrase 'world domination' in these videos, but he could. He lists enough computing niches where GNU/Linux is the major player -- from supercomputers to the next generation of automotive systems -- that with or without world domination, Linux has obviously become an extremely important, widely used operating system that has grown amazingly since Linus Torvalds first shared his humble kernel with the world in 1991. With great popularity has come a great need for people who know how to administer and otherwise work with Linux, so the Linux Foundation is developing new courses in tandem with massive open online course (MOOC) provider edX. Unlike some of the Linux Foundation's previous course offerings, their edX ones are free to audit, and the cost for certification (if you want a cred, not just knowledge) is lower than many IT certification tests and certificates.
These videos (both visible today) were made remotely, with Timothy Lord at one end in Austin, TX, and Jim Zemlin at the other end in Tokyo, Japan. Their sound quality suffers from the distance involved, but they are generally intelligible -- and, of course, you can always choose to read the transcript instead of watching the videos.
These videos (both visible today) were made remotely, with Timothy Lord at one end in Austin, TX, and Jim Zemlin at the other end in Tokyo, Japan. Their sound quality suffers from the distance involved, but they are generally intelligible -- and, of course, you can always choose to read the transcript instead of watching the videos.
Not on mobile, I can't.
And mobile apparently truncates the subject of my comment. Good jarb.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
For s second, actually make it third time today /. front page feels like it is April fools day. May be it is time to lay /. to rest and go to soylentnews?!
HA! systemd will leave you on the ash heap of history!
According to Slashdot, there's no worker shortage at all, & the H1-B program should be cancelled! Who should I believe, the Linux Foundation Executive Director, or various nerds who live in their mother's basement?
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Slashdot, now with double the videos!
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
I just found my next certification for my employer to pay for.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
without coreutils and the other GNU stuff. Nor was Torvalds the starting point, Stallman was, Torvalds just added one more missing piece.
And Alfa Romeo's dominance of the car market is why it's so hard to find a certified Alfa Romeo mechanic, or Alfa Romeo parts for that matter...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
taking on IBM and DEC. That was so long ago, though, and their period of dominance went on for so long that hardly anybody mentions that anymore. I suggest we adopt a similar policy with the Linux kernel.
This is digital audio transmitted via the Internet. How is distance affecting the quality of the sound?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
They're not being paid enough
How can you post a video with such a horrible sound. Wouldn't it be possible to agree with the interviewee to use a decent microphone?
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
But wait, many of them are over 30 and so too old and so don't have the right skill set. Will this skilled worker shortage ever end?
Oh, and also work 10-12 hour days because we wont hire more people.
In one sense I disagree of the need for solid Linux skills. The rise of short term systems (in general, DevOps) means that you don't need to be concerned with the inner workings of the system and you just use something like chef to configure the system on an as-needed basis. You won't care how long the system is stable because it'll only be around for a few hours. After that it's destroyed only to be recreated later on. You can build entire systems without even enabling SSH and having interactive access.
On the other hand, there is still a need for qualified people since not everyone has bought into DevOps. They want systems that exist for years with little to no unexpected downtime. I see this as a bit of a pendulum swinging back at some point. Not sure when.
... cheerleaders abandoning jocks for nerds, supermodels marrying geeks in increasing numbers, and my alarm goes off in half an hour.
The worst phone/laptop mic wouldn't create that kind of distortion. It sounds like overly aggressive compression.
First off, I'd like to say that I use Linux at home instead of windows, and am actively developing open source IOT devices using the ESP8266 platform and the MQTT protocol on Github.
If there is going to be more demand for linux adminstrators, than what's available in the medium to far term, then someone will solve that problem with more code
which automates the administaration of the linux systems. Additionally, if IOT devices require system administrators to configure, they'll never take off! Home users require systems which don't need administration.
For IOT to take off, the devices need to self-configure, and and also self-administer.
There is no shortage of Linux devs. If there were, two things would be true:
1) salaries for Linux developers would be going up
2) people with two decades of Linux development experience would have no trouble getting a job
Neither of these is true. Ergo, there is no shortage of good developers with Linux experience.
Pretty much every Linux job I've seen posted in the past few months requires (that is, not "nice to have" but "requires") a dozen other skills that make up a combined skill set that only one in a million people have. Got Linux experience plus sockets plus Python plus git (this is a clue to what's going on...) OK, you also need experience with OpenGL and have three years CG coding on major animation projects.
People aren't looking for workers, they're looking for replaceable parts. The "git" thing gives it away: rather than burn, I don't know, an hour or two teaching someone the basics of git, or asking them to read a book on it, they won't consider anyone who can't simply sit down and start working.
The specific-industry-experience requirements are likewise a give-away: it isn't enough to have 3D experience, it's gotta be in animation, or they won't touch you, because those skills, man, they aren't transferable in any way.
Bytes used in animation are totally different than bytes used in medical imaging, and your understanding of one kind of processing pipeline precludes you from learning any other. You'd have to unlearn all that other stuff to make room for the new, and it would be at least a couple of days before you're a 110% productive member of the team! We can't have that!
[This is a synthetic example of things I've seen over the years, but it's all too prevalent an attitude and seems to be getting worse, and all the while the whining about "no devs available" gets louder.]
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
I'm was laid off in February. I have been using Linux since 1992. I have 15+ years of work experience writing c++ for Linux and Solaris. I still have not gotten a job offer.
Most companies are not desperate enough for talent that they are willing to have remote workers, so I'm limited to what is in my area (trust me when I say I CAN NOT relocate). A larger Seattle based bookstore has contacted me 3 times but they want people in their main office.
The other issue is that most companies want at least 2-3 years work experience in the relevant tools and technologies (like rails or java) There doesn't seem to be anyway to get a job in these areas without first having had a job in these areas
(Although I put the question to y'all, does there exist a technology I can learn in 3 months or so that will increase the number of jobs I'm qualified for)
I'll believe there is a shortage when I can get a new job in 1 month and not 6.
I retain just enough to advise my customers using our APIs on how to log the data, fix some permissions, and point out the error is their hosed-up SSL install, and to go to StackOverflow and try not to be too annoying lest they be ridiculed and get no real help at all. No, I do not install packages for my customers, I do not wish to be their OS support.
Some beg me to fix their code. Ha. But I do point out when they are misspelled some directive or other, despite having good working sample code available to them. Credit card processing seeks a black art to them.
My own purposes have become minimal, but I am working on understanding some ISP control panels and VM architecture so I can manage things when the situation is desperate. I don't feel the need to run Linux for my desktop.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
The only IT certifications worth anything are the high end Cisco certs....
all the others, it seems, can be had by going to a boot camp and brute forcing taking the tests....
Meanwhile I've had my RHCSA for over a year and can't land a position due to a mistake I made in 2007. My college was a Redhat academy for about 6 years and I am the ONLY student that got a cert. Funny thing is that one of my study partners who failed the cert is now a junior admin.
Linux skills with ... what? Do they want embedded systems experts? Knowing Linux is only a tiny part of that world. Do they want kernel experts? System administrators? Perl script writers? What exactly do they want? I used to be a highly skilled Linux C application developer (I knew pointers, low-level data structures, C inside and out, you name it), but moved on to Java and .NET because no one was doing that kind of work any more. What are these niches that don't have skilled people, anyway?