Employers Want More Open Source Workers, Says Linux Foundation Study (zdnet.com)

As in past years, "Open source is professionalizing, and employers are seeking staff with demonstrable skills," says the executive director of the Linux Foundation, describing the results of a new study with Dice.com. An anonymous reader quotes ZDNet: According to the two groups' 2017 Open Source Jobs Survey and Report, "Not only do 89 percent of hiring managers report difficulty in finding qualified talent for open source roles, but 58 percent report needing to hire more open source professionals in the next six months than in the six months prior"... Seventy percent of employers, up from 66 percent in 2016, are hunting for workers with cloud experience. Web technologies placed second, with 67 percent of hiring managers hunting for workers with JavaScript and related skills. This is up five percent from last year's 62 percent. The demand for Linux talent remains strong. Sixty-five percent of hiring managers are looking for Linux experts. That's down slightly from 2016's 71 percent.
The three most common positions that they're looking to fill are developer, DevOps engineer, and systems administrator, according to the study, and "a growing number of companies (60 percent) are looking for full-time hires, compared with 53 percent last year.

"Nearly half (47 percent) of companies will pay for employees to become open-source certified."

Comments

Difficulty in finding quality talent? Bullshit.

[nctritech]

"89 percent of hiring managers report difficulty in finding qualified talent for open source roles"

When your job ad demands 7-10 years of experience in a thing that isn't even 10 years old then yeah, you might have some difficulty "finding quality talent" because you're being ridiculous.

Job ad bullet points are used as filters and do a great job (ha!) of filtering out all of the ideal candidates in favor of the ones that will gladly lie about their skill sets yet can't write anything more trivial than strcpy() on a whiteboard. Maybe you stop looking for "workers with cloud experience" and start looking for "workers that have great system administration skills who we'll train to use the specific 'cloud' thingy we're using this month." After all, what these job posts that demand a "hit the ground running" candidate fail to realize is that they have to train the new employee in the operations and peculiarities unique to their business anyway.

Pay a decent wage and write realistic job applications and give everyone who applies in earnest a fair shake and you might not have so much "difficulty finding quality talent."

Re:Difficulty in finding quality talent? Bullshit.

[Gravis Zero]

Job ad bullet points are used as filters and do a great job (ha!) of filtering out all of the ideal candidates in favor of the ones that will gladly lie about their skill sets yet can't write anything more trivial than strcpy() on a whiteboard. Maybe you stop looking for "workers with cloud experience" and start looking for "workers that have great system administration skills who we'll train to use the specific 'cloud' thingy we're using this month." After all, what these job posts that demand a "hit the ground running" candidate fail to realize is that they have to train the new employee in the operations and peculiarities unique to their business anyway.

This, sooooo much this!

HR is the real problem here and they need to be fired.

Re:Difficulty in finding quality talent? Bullshit.

[El Cubano]

When your job ad demands 7-10 years of experience in a thing that isn't even 10 years old [i.redd.it] then yeah, you might have some difficulty "finding quality talent" because you're being ridiculous.

I really would like to think that this is a good way to filter out the liars or a way to test the applicant pool's BS filter. Though, I have never applied for a job that asked for more experience with something for longer than it has existed. However, if I were faced with that, I would specify my actual experience with the item and in the cover letter add a note about how what they are asking for is not possible. I would probably also add any related experience that I might have. So if they asked for 10 years of Node.js, I might put that I only have X years of Node.js experience, but I also have Y years of experience with these other dynamic server-side languages.

Going through that will tell you quite a few things. If they reject your resume/cover letter then it was probably for the best. If they are really sharp (remember that you could have a sharp hiring manager stuck behind a not-so-sharp HR department), then they will see you for what they are worth and they are likely to also flat out reject anybody who claims to have the impossible qualification.

Of course, a job posting that has an impossible to meet requirement might be a warning flag (e.g., dysfunctional or incompetent organization) or just a pretext to be able to say that no US citizen is qualified and that the situation calls for an H1B.

I would like to look at it more form the positive perspective than the negative. However, after re-reading what I wrote, I suspect that might just be wishful thinking.

Re:Difficulty in finding quality talent? Bullshit.

[omnichad]

Let's have HR get right on that.

Re:Difficulty in finding quality talent? Bullshit.

[arth1]

HR is doing their job.

Their job is not to hire you. Their job is to reduce risk and retention.

They often do an excellent job at reducing retention, I give you that.

Now, reducing attrition would be a more noble goal. I would suggest that HR should have a forced attrition matching the company's overall attrition, for both senior and junior positions. That would give them some incentive.

Re:Wtf is "open source professional"

[arth1]

What does it mean? Someone willing to work with open source? Someone willing to write it? How does skillset differ from closed source professional or blue tie professional?

Someone who can help management get something for nothing. People who can understand the licenses and allow the company to use as much as possible without paying for it, while avoiding the pitfall of in-house software becoming open source because someone was lazy.
Ideally, someone who can also eke free support out of open source, getting others to fix bugs for free.