Employers Want More Open Source Workers, Says Linux Foundation Study (zdnet.com) 164
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."
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."
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"Shortage" means either the people griping don't want to pay what the sellers are asking (whether it be software developers or fidget spinner makers), or the sellers have for some reason not chosen to charge all the market will bear (because they don't want to seem like dicks, they goofed on pricing or quantity, or there's a law against it).
Pony up the money and buy that Tickle Me Elmo on the, ahem, "secondary market", or pay people what it'll take to get them to work for you, or whatever, or quit yer grip
Re:Wtf is "open source professional" (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Do you miss the old days when Dice.com owned Slashdot?
Sometimes I do, yes.
At least you knew where you were with Dice.com. They didn't make a lot of promises they didn't keep. Better the devil you know, and all that..
Difficulty in finding quality talent? Bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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. (Score:5, Insightful)
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. (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's have HR get right on that.
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HR is doing their job.
Their job is not to hire you. Their job is to reduce risk and retention. That means less firings and lawsuits.
If that means hiring Indians who have that experience, but may not be A players that is fine as that reduces variation as they can't leave as easily. HR can show the numbers to MBAs that they reduced lawsuits and unemployment benefits.
Very good and very bad and unpredictableness is hated among the folks who do statistics at your workplace. Dull people who show up everyday you h
Re:Difficulty in finding quality talent? Bullshit. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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.
What's the profit motive?
Now if I owned a company where high talent was required like let's say a .COM company I would agree. If I were the CEO of Denny's I would pick retention. It doesn't take a genius to wait tables, put a steak and eggs on a grill, etc. I guess it depends on the industry, but as a worker I do find it insulting and hurtful frankly to be treated like garbage and filtered out using software applications that HR loves to use to prevent you from applying if you are not in a statistical aver
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The problem is HR is blamed when someone else makes a poor hiring decision and needs to fire of if they quit to find a job that pays better. So they are trying to reduce this by adding mediocre workers who fit the job description rather than great or bad employees.
Translation: when the business isn't successful, the C suite needs a scapegoat for their failure to be able to run the business adequately.
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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.
Read my post above. Do a Google search for "Evil HR ATS". There are actually online services you can use that can compute a score for your resume and cover letter. You can actually use this to inflate your score just by word-smithing the right keywords in. The whole system is broke.
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I love keyword searches. "I won't work with COBOL, and never touched CICS anyway. I have a friend who loves Python. I've heard about HTML, CSS, and Javascript. I own a .NET domain, and once played a musical instrument in the key of Csharp."
Re:Difficulty in finding quality talent? Bullshit. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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BUZZ Taleo or IMS filtered you out. HR won't even read your cover letter as a result.
Welcome to the world of automated hiring by cloud software. Taleo was designed as an example to score and assist, but the sales team promises HR they need to do 0 screening WE DO IT ALL for you! So unless your resume has node.js for every single job you ever did since 2007 your application will be deleted and a liar will get the automated email to the HR manager.
More than likely they will whine WE CAN"T FIND QUALIFIED appli
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Uh... that's highly doubtful. Either the ATS software has filtered you out based on the buzzwords in your resume--or because you didn't include certain oh-so-important buzzwords--or the lazy HR droid never even passed along your resume to th
Re: Difficulty in finding quality talent? Bullshit (Score:1)
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"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 [i.redd.it] 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."
I recently found the answer to this. During the great recession all companies down-sized to deal with the contracting economy. This also meant downsizing HR. HR also began receiving floods of applications for jobs due to high unemployment. HR's response to this was to implement a much more sophisticated ATS (Applicant Tracking System). These ATS's parse resumes and cover letters to do keyword matching to compute a scorecard. They also prefer a LinkedIn style resume. If you use certain fonts, formatti
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Update your resume *every single day*, by at least a few lines of text, even if you're just rotating among 5 or so resumes, so that the resume search engines report it as significantly modified and "fresh".
This presumes you have a LinkedIn profile. From what I understand, your chances decrease around 17% if you don't have one. IMHO, that's discrimination. It's almost Orwellian. The good news is when there are more jobs than applicants again, this will change.
Sort of... (Score:2)
Until you read the job description, which usually includes Active Directory, MS SQLServer, and so on. Drives me to distraction.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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systems administrator: write scripts, config management, handle infra. gotcha.
And clea out IT storage closets. ;)
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Clea?
I thought that you were into manga or some other Japanese character. So, you fill IT closets with cleas or what?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Dear creimer,
I assume I can advertise my writing talents too, so please read this:
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
It pisses me off because at first, I intended to do a quick comment, in the style that you cherish and it finally took me half an hour to structure it better and I don't pretend it is perfect. This is an important part of writing.
Keep in mind that I am not bragging about anything. I humbly offer my services as an editor since I truly believe that you might have something interesting to say afte
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The fat fuck can't even correct his own bio on here!
You seem to enjoy bitching about it, I left it as is for now. It's not like you have anything better to do with your life.
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> My coworkers and I were joking around this week that we had absolutely no work do before the next data drop.
This is just the sort of thing my colleagues and I avoid, and try to help companies we work with avoid. There should _always_ be a stack of useful projects available for just such lag periods, to keep people engaged and to do work that didn't fit into the priority meeting. Whether it's evaluating the next software upgrades, training people on software they need everyday, or clearing away obsolet
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If there is not enough such work available to fill in the gap time, you're overstaffed and should look for another department that needs you more or prepare your resume.
That's the funny thing. The team I work on is the smallest out of the entire project. Most teams have an extra 20 people doing the same amount of work. We built up an extensive library of scripts and knowledge base articles that help us get the job done faster each month. Something that the other teams are not interested in. When the contract gets put out for rebidding in a few years, many of these teams will get downsized.
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You're like a cockroach in the hold speculating what the captain of the ship will do next.
The annual all hands meeting is probably the one time I'm not multitasking by running scripts and writing Slashdot comments.
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What some people might call "wasting your employer's time", you conveniently re-frame as "multitasking".
As an IT support contractor, management can tell me what work needs to be done. They just can't tell me how to get that work done. Otherwise, I would be classified as an employee under IRS rules. As long as the work is done, no one cares how I get it done. For some jobs, I can get everything done in the first hour and management is fine with that.
Any reason you haven't been replaced by a script?
A script can't fix a broken system that need repairs. I typically have ~20 systems per day that need repairs.
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A script can't fix a broken system that need repairs. I typically have ~20 systems per day that need repairs.
Well, if they had been repaired right the first time, there might not be so many to repair everyday.
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Well, if they had been repaired right the first time, there might not be so many to repair everyday.
Tell that to Adobe, Microsoft and Oracle. If the last update or patch failed to remove old registry keys, it will block this month's update or patch from installing. Or upgrading licensed software requires a site tech to coordinate with the user to update. Or the SCCM client decides not to talk to the server to get updates anymore. Or maybe the system was decommissioned, taken offline and wasn't removed from the SCCM database. Or the system that supposed to be behind an ACL is on the general network instead
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Just another slacker stuck in a dead-end job that students usually do on their way to a real job.
Except everyone hired for this project has 20+ years of experience in IT.
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The other losers just have the decency not to troll Slashdot and have the self-awareness to realize that no one cares about their opinion.
They have never heard of Slashdot. But they do troll Reddit. Go figure.
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Because for somebody in IT to NOT know what Slashdot is, but know and use Reddit, suggests that they're twenty-something year olds fresh out of college with maybe a few years of experience under their belts.
Slashdot is relic of the dot com bust in 2001 and ranks #5,555 on Alexa [wikipedia.org]. Reddit was founded in 2005 and ranks #9 on Alexa [wikipedia.org]. Seems like Reddit is more popular than Slashdot these days.
The only reason I knew about Slashdot was that I worked at a video game company where many of testers read Blue's News [bluesnews.com], Slashdot and The New York Times.
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And you are, lets say as an example; a relic of the pre-2000 spammers.
Something is a relic. Understood?
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To suggest that a 40-50 year old IT guy with 20+ years of IT experience would have "never heard of" Slashdot, while at the same time, being an active contributor on Reddit, is a pretty big stretch.
I'm not suggesting. I asked my coworkers. They have never heard of Slashdot.
A link back to my website 20 years ago would have generated 3,000+ clicks from Slashdot. Ten years ago, 300+ clicks. Today, 30+ clicks. Ten years from now, three or less clicks. Slashdot has been dying for a very long time.
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Really? Your co-workers don't notice that website on your screen 67% of the day?
My co-workers are scattered across the US. The only people who come into my office are those who are conducting an IT inventory.
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Then how do you know if they've heard of Slashdot or not?
Because we're all on the same conference call for eight hours a day. Not only do I have to multitask running scripts and writing Slashdot comments, I have to listen to the 30 voices in my head(set).
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So they've managed to isolate their "miracle worker" safely away from the productive staff, and cleverly stashed you in a storage room and called it your office.
That's because I'm regional and not local. Plus my office has a window with an excellent view of the roof.
https://twitter.com/cdreimer/status/858056822648750080 [twitter.com]
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Listen dude, the guy has explained everything;
"It is because he is regional and his office has a window with a view of the roof"
Period, that's it, that explains and justifies everything.
I believe that we now have strong enough evidence to close the case.
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You're right. It perfectly explains that he knows everything about his 30 co-workers that speak to him at the same time, while being in a smaller group than the other teams of 20 people.
My co-workers and I have been working together for three years. You can learn a lot by listening to the people whom you work with on a daily basis. Our team has 30 people. Other teams have 50 to 75 people. We all do the same amount of work.
They don't understand (Score:1)
"Nearly half (47 percent) of companies will pay for employees to become open-source certified."
So nearly half of the companies are incompetent, then!
You don't get open-source certified anywhere. Unless they actually look at your portfolio of open-source contributions. There is no certification instance. Look at Linus Torvalds or Richard Stallman - neither is "open-source certified", although they define large parts of the open-source landscape.
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You don't get open-source certified anywhere.
It depends. You can get certified by various companies (like Red Hat) for using their particular open source products. But general open-source certified, no.
Some job seekers are open-source savvy and definitely certifiable...
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And my studies show (Score:3)
What is an 'Open Source' worker? (Score:2)
A developer who doesn't use Visual Studio/Oracle DB/...?
A developer who will take his employer source code and drop it on GitHub?
A developer is a developer. Using Linux/Postgres/OpenLDAP/... doesn't make you an "Open Source" developer.
Re: What is an 'Open Source' worker? (Score:2)
No it isn't bro. You're thinking of VS Express I think.
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> Visual Studio is free bro.
The lessons it teaches are not: they can cost years of employment and thousands of hours of painful labor to unlearn destructive lessons.
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Most of the certifications that have been suggested to me over the years have been part of a racket. 1.) Pay $$$ to take the course and get the certification. 2.) If you lucky, your employer gives you a token raise because you're magically more valuable. The raise pays for the cost of obtaining the certification over a three year period. 3.) Certification is only good for three years. Return to step 1. Nice treadmill this cottage industry has created.
If step 2 never happens--and lately that is more than l
must be former IBM marketers (Score:2)
There is no difficulty in finding workers (Score:2)
There are many more qualified programmers sitting on the sideline than they need. The problem is not that it is difficult to find workers. It is that it is difficult to find workers who will work for the low wages that they want to pay, especially if it requires moving to some of the ridiculously expensive locations they insist on placing their operations in.
They know this and often advertise jobs that they have no intent to pay to fill to create the illusion that there is a shortage. This helps in their ca
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Indeed. The only thing that sticks in the minds of employers who don't understand the open source model is that talented people will spend countless hours working on something basically for free, so they want that cheap talent, willing to work long hours, for themselves.
Re: No, they don't. (Score:2)
'Cuz tweeting is far more valuable than actually making software.
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I imagine that gets easier to judge a good candidate from a bad one when you can actually read his code.
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money-making is not compatible with open source.
... unless that software is of secondary importance to the business. For example, websites make more money from a free OS (Linux), a free webserver (Apache), a free DB (MySQL), because they don't have to pay for all that software.
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What is with the extraneous "an"?
Re: No, they don't. (Score:1)
All of those things apply to proprietary software too. And in top of that you need a team of lawyers to negotiate contacts plus full time staff, expensive tools and often nasty workarounds just to manage license compliance alone.
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Wrong.
You can't sell open source, but you can make plenty of money supporting it. Like redhat. Or make money using open source for providing services. Apache is popular for being good - being free too is not a disadvantage. You make more money when you don't have to pay royalties. Even better if you have some people who can program the occational fix - so you won't need a consultant for that.
Re: No, they don't. (Score:4, Informative)
Re: No, they don't. (Score:2)
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Re: No, they don't. (Score:1)
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You can't sell open source
Yes you can sell open source software under various licenses. However, you have your terms confused.
Free software is a subset of open source software often licensed under the GPL [gnu.org]. There is nothing in the GPL that says you can't sell the software. When you transfer your binaries, however , the GPL license requires that you provide your customers with four freedoms: [gnu.org]
The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does yo
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