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Critiquing Claims of an Open Source Jobs Boom
Posted by
timothy
on Thursday July 24, @04:46PM
from the join-us-now-and-free-the-software dept.
from the join-us-now-and-free-the-software dept.
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Bill Snyder examines what appears to be an open source job market boom, as evidenced by a recent O'Reilly Report. According to the study, 5 to 15 percent of all IT openings call for open source software skills, and with overall IT job cuts expected for 2009, 'the recession may be pushing budget-strapped IT execs to examine low-cost alternatives to commercial software,' Snyder writes. But are enterprises truly shifting to open source, or are they simply seeking to augment the work of staff already steeped in proprietary software? The study's methodology leaves too much room for interpretation, Savio Rodrigues retorts. 'That's why the 5% to 15% really doesn't sit well with me,' Rodrigues writes. 'I suspect that larger companies are looking for developers with a mix of experience with proprietary and open source products, tools and frameworks,' as opposed to those who would work with open source for 90 percent of the work day."
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The cheapest code... (Score:5, Interesting)
...is the one you didn't have to write in the first place. Developers with some knowledge of BSD/LGPL code that could be used for rapidly creating complex apps without reinventing the wheel is probably in demand.
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Re:The cheapest code... (Score:5, Insightful)
No! The cheapest code is the code that doesn't require support, maintenance, or bug fixes! Development costs are trivial compared to upkeep costs.
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Parent
Re:The cheapest code... (Score:5, Funny)
No! The cheapest code is the code that doesn't require support, maintenance, or bug fixes! Development costs are trivial compared to upkeep costs.
I'm going to sell my "hello world" code for millions! :)
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Re:The cheapest code... (Score:5, Funny)
I have been reliably running my hello world program since my Apple II days. With more than 30 years of field testing, extensive debugging and hardening, it's probably one of the most enterprise-ready hello world programs in existence.
Yours obviously can't compete.
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Parent
This Is True (Score:3, Interesting)
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More on the front end than the back end (Score:4, Interesting)
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Duh? (Score:2, Insightful)
Companies want people who have open source experience - both use and contribution.
They want to use these people to implement open source projects that fit their needs, for free (beer).
They do not want these people because they love free (open) software.
Many businesses are open-source based accidentally (Score:4, Informative)
Given that Java is now GPL and open-source, and lots of the popular third-party Java frameworks are also open-source, I would expect that open-source is really hot in many businesses - just that they don't know it.
When your developers code an interface to XYZ in a short time, it's not because they're reimplementing the wheel. No, they're using Axis. Or HttpClient. With hibernate, spring, struts, tiles, and so on.
But if we look at databases, you'll see a large investment in proprietary systems still, for core business data, with MySQL running minor functionality around the outside. Cutbacks simply mean that upgrading your database platform won't happen, it's already paid for, why migrate from Oracle to Postgresql!
The other big platform is MS proprietary. You all know the story. It keeps TheDailyWTF alive.
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As a 17 year IT consultant... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've seen a lot of shops. And a lot of them like open source for one reason... it's cheap. Not because they're cheap bastards, but because free software often can circumvent the corporate BS associated with spending money.
Once a place has used some open source software, they tend to keep using it. And they tend to want to hire people who know how to use what they have. I wouldn't call it an open source hiring boom. I'd just call it acceptance.
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Re:As a 17 year IT consultant... (Score:4, Interesting)
That brings up a study I'd really like to see done: What is the correlation (positive or negative), if any, between prevalence of Open Source in a shop and the salaries they offer? Do most of them use open source so they can spend more on quality people, or do they do it because they're cheap and don't want to spend money on anything, people included?
I don't have enough data in my personal work history to make an intelligent guess, although the size of the company involved may have a lot to do with the answer. However, I think it would be valuable information to have. After all, specializing in a given technology because you hear there are lots of jobs asking for it is not a wise move if all of those jobs max out at 8 bucks an hour (exaggeration to illustrate the point, not what I really think Open Source admins make).
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Re:As a 17 year IT consultant... (Score:5, Interesting)
I use open source solutions often at my work, and its not because of the cost. (I don't mind paying for the right tool for the job) It has much more to do with the tracking.. If I go purchase SQL server and windows server, I have to keep track of licenses, versions, (are they enterprise, standard, etc) Are they CAL based, and do I have enough CAL's a few months later, are they processor based (and if so, did I move the app to a server with more processors). With virtualization, its an even bigger push for me, as its very, very easy to quickly deploy a new virtual OS. It takes much, much longer to ensure licensing compliance, and go through the approval and purchasing process if needed..
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Parent
Me too... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think HR just throws all in the listing... get as many applicants as possible, sort it out later.
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Dead on. (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the article is dead on in questioning the study.
Perfect example: the last two places I contracted at were looking to hire C# developers who had also been exposed to Subversion. Is it fair to look at a place like that and say they're now all about Open Source? Not really, no.
Open Source is getting somewhere in the business world to be sure, but the FOSS Rapture isn't quite upon us just yet.
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It Doesn't Cost Less (Score:5, Interesting)
Another fun thing we are experiencing is the total lack of knowledge closed source solution professionals have. We're finding the people to be very silo'ed without knowledge of what goes on around them. So when you are trying to implement something, you get very concerned with cross-technical area issues.
You ask an SAP basis person to come look at a screen and they'll say "Not Functional..." and wave their hands wildly with their palms facing you. Ask the Abaper and they'll shrug without a clue.
Hell, the Abaper is supposed to be a programmer you think, but they can't even teach you the basic parts of a program; you'll be lucky enough if they even know how to do proper error handling.
You see these types of people and they frighten the crap out of you. You just stare out the window and wonder why people are willing to pay 80 or 100 dollars an hour for these.... idiots!
I can go out into a University, pay a fresh graduate 40 dollars an hour and teach them everything they need to know... knowing that they'll leave after the project and still be better off than getting consultants.
Compare that with a professional in open source technologies. They need to know how things work together, because that's all they do. They can't learn just 1 technology, they need to know multiples, and how to fit them together. As they grow in their career, they know the big picture, and that is completely different than the closed source alternative.
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Hedging their bets (Score:3, Insightful)
A 5 to 15 percent figure for open source skills doesn't necessarily mean 5 to 15 percent of the projects will be open source. More likely, IT managers are getting smart, keeping their options open and making sure that they have a back door out of the lock in trap. A broader range of experience is also a sign of someone with a better background in CS rather than a one language/one tool technician.
This sounds like a smart tactic. In fact, I'm surprised that the figure isn't higher. And I'm particularly happy that the proprietary platform fanbois are getting their panties in a bunch over only 15 percent.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's like saying since drag racing cars are the fastest cars everybody should be driving one.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're making the insanely simplistic assumption that one language is appropriate in all parts of a given application/project. Yes, obviously anything that's truly resource/speed dependent will generally require a language like C or C++ to allow you to get intimate with the lower-level aspects of the given system. Which is why just about any newer language makes it simple to create native language modules and packages allowing you to take all the advantages of a tightly coded core with the convenience of wr
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A free Java implementation of MapReduce and GFS (Apache Hadoop) already works fine on 5000 computers cluster.
And there's no real reason why it can't scale further.
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Actually...
The largest "real, in-use" Hadoop cluster that Yahoo! has is around 2000 nodes, counting a dedicated name node. As far as we're aware, we've got the largest Hadoop cluster. [If there is a bigger one, we'd love to talk to you and compare notes. :) ]
That said, we do have Hadoop running on tens of thousands of machines. Just not as one big cluster.
It is also worth pointing out, that most of our clusters are multi-user, multi-application. The number of nodes is really more indicative of the size
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
(ITDegree || ComputerScienceDegree) Programmer
An IT degree can be any number of things... program management, Quality Assurance, etc. And Computer Science isn't programming either... it's really applied mathmathmatics and logic. My IT degree focused on Program Managment, and I have never used it because I'm not in software, but there are tons of well paying positions for software lifecycle management and similar jobs.
I agree that it's a waste of time to teach business programming anymore... those who are
Re: IT degree = waste of time (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
So the assumption is that someone who has worked with proprietary technologies is incapable of working with OSS technologies? Because I'd say thats pretty much completely contrary to my experience.
I work with propriety technology ATM. Didn't stop me from opting for CruiseControl.Net and NAnt over the proprietary build systems that were vying for our business. There are plenty of technologies we're using that I'd switch to OSS alternatives in a heartbeat (goddamn ClearCase...). Yeah, some of my coworkers
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"So the assumption is that someone who has worked with proprietary technologies is incapable of working with OSS technologies?"
I don't think so.
I think the parent poster is more on the line that if the candidate has not experience on the open source world, its ability to manage it is still to be seen. If there're candidates that won't have such uncertainty it's just reasonable to stick with them.
"Because I'd say thats pretty much completely contrary to my experience."
That's your experience. Mine is that e
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Depends on how you spin it. We use CruiseControl.Net where I work. When I had to justify it as opposed to a "superior" (not really superior technologically, but in a "we're paying for it so it must be better" sense) proprietary technology, I pointed out that since I have access to the source code I can debug issues with our build system without needing vendor support. And I have several times. Of course, people like the cost, but managers also understand "we don't have to depend on a single source if t