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Open Source Stats IT Linux

Despite Layoffs, Open Source and Linux Skills are Still in Demand (zdnet.com) 36

Posted by EditorDavid from the growing-with-geeks dept.
ZDNet reports that Jim Zemlin, executive director at the Linux Foundation, recently noted rounds of tech-industry layoffs "in the name of cost-cutting." But then Zemlin added that "open source is countercyclical to these trends. The Linux Foundation itself, for instance, had its best first quarter ever."

As Hilary Carter, SVP of research and communications at the Linux Foundation, said in her keynote speech at Open Source Summit North America in Vancouver, Canada: "In spite of what the headlines are saying, the facts are 57% of organizations are adding workers this year." Carter was quoting figures from the Linux Foundation's latest job survey, which was released at the event.

Other research also points to brighter signs in tech employment trends. CompTIA's recent analysis of the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data suggests the tech unemployment rate climbed by just 2.3% in April. In fact, more organizations plan to increase their technical staff levels rather than decrease.

The demand for skilled tech talent remains strong, particularly in fast-developing areas, such as cloud and containers, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence and machine learning. So, what do these all areas of technology have in common? The answer is they're all heavily dependent on open source and Linux technologies.
While layoffs are happening at Microsoft, Amazon, Google, IBM, and even Red Hat, "the Linux Foundation found senior technical roles are seeing the biggest cuts," the article points out. "New hiring is focused on developers and IT managers." And companies are also spending more on training for existing technical staff, "driven by the fact that there aren't enough experts in hot technologies, such as Kubernetes and generative AI, to go around." Interestingly, a college degree is no longer seen as such a huge benefit. Businesses responding to the Linux Foundation's research felt upskilling (91%) and certifications (77%) are more important than a university education (58%) when it comes to addressing technology needs.
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Despite Layoffs, Open Source and Linux Skills are Still in Demand More

Despite Layoffs, Open Source and Linux Skills are Still in Demand

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  • Even better if you also know how to write code and how to manage a system (many IT Security people do not).

    The current job-market situation in the IT field is essentially just a bubble deflating. As long as you have good skills you are still in demand.

    • My current employer, financial industry, is leading in this. Tech jobs, programming, systems management, security, tech project management, all in demand. Ops, product, business analysts, virtually no postings. All I know are to be proactive in preparing for a real recession. Just the way they see the future, and I agree.

      I'm at or past retirement age, and I'm considering developing the hobby skills I have in Docker, Kubernetes, noSQL systems, all Raspberry Pi scale, but it's a lot to assimilate and I may no

    • Do you even notice a deflating? I mean, over here in Europe? US companies are throwing out people, but I can't say that the same is happening over here. My inbox alone is testament to an IT industry that is still desperate for good people.

      Just recently a headhunter pretty much wrote "what the hell do I have to offer you so you at least talk to me?"

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Europe? No, not at all. The only company where I expect that to happen is the CS bank near-collapse and that has other reasons. My students (I teach IT Security and Software Security at the moment) all have jobs way before they finish.

        As to that head-hunter, just say you are happy to talk to them, but you have to charge $250/hour and it gets rounded up to full hours and they have to pay for at least 1 hour in advance. Was how I finally got rid of the Google recruiters that kept getting on my nerves.

        • I can second that. I work for a large financial group (non-US) and we're quite desperately looking for people. As is everyone else, I noticed, since yes, the industry is talking with each other and we're trying hard not to poach from one another but ... the temptation is pretty big.

  • More than university education because they can pay non-grads less. Plain. And. Simple

    I got no problem with this. A degree is NOT essential for everything. But polling businesses about this is like asking them if they would prefer their employees to be cheap or expensive. Thanks for the insight, sherlock.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gmack ( 197796 )

      I make as much as the University grads but have no degree so no money savings here. I also have a lineup of recruiters in my voicemail/email/text messages these past two weeks.

      • The degree is only really about getting your first job (and using your time there to make connections that may help you later on down the road) but once you've had the first job, no one gives a shit where you went to school or what your GPA was. It's pretty obvious how few places even check given the frequency with which people are later discovered to have lied about credentials.

        If you're highly skilled you should be making more than some idiot with little more than a piece of paper.

    • Thing is, you can't pay them less. Because people talk and people know what a position pays.

      Whether you have a degree or not means jack shit today. A degree, at best, means that if you have zero experience, you might have a chance to get a foot in the door, because the catch 22 is that no experience -> no job -> no experience.

      I'm in security. In this field, the hierarchy of desirability is experience > show-and-tell > degree. Experience is king and will always be, but if you have a github accoun

  • I dealt with DoD contract positions and while job reqs specified a college degree it was never a rigid requirement. Most of the time my staff was OJT ex-military and they worked out fine. Certs were required but a formality most of the time.

  • If you as me... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jmccue ( 834797 ) on Saturday May 13, 2023 @03:26PM (#63519167) Homepage

    If you as me, many companies are taking a page from the IBM Playbook:

    https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/13/kyndryl_ibm_sued_discrimination/

    I suspect these layoffs are to get rid of Old Tech People who have high salaries.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gmack ( 197796 )

      More likely, fears of a recession were a good excuse to cut positions/departments that were just not making a good return on investment. If you make layoffs when times are good you risk bad press about the health of the business, during a recession means you get to blame the economy.

      As for IBM, I struggle to understand their long term business prospects. Plenty of places for older people to go, just not tech startups. Banks for instance pay good money for the 60+ crowd. Where I work, there are plenty of

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by khchung ( 462899 )

        More likely, fears of a recession were a good excuse to cut positions/departments that were just not making a good return on investment.

        Hahaha. You think management even knows what each department do, much less how much return each produces for the company? Think, IT Support department. What kind of return is it producing for the company? Management has no idea.

        The layoffs are just management trying to realise as much short term gain as possible so they can reap the most gain from their stock options. Doing layoffs during a downturn (perceived or real) just makes it easier to explain to the board and get less push back from the employe

    • I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together?

  • What's open source skills? Fuck it, I am putting that on my resume anyway. I'm great at open sourcing. Whether you need the GPL, MIT, or even the GNU Affero license .. I'm your guy.

  • "Open Source and Linux Shills are Still in Demand"

    Freudian slip? Don't know.

  • I'm having trouble, but it may be because I have the breadth but not the depth. I dunno, I'm good with linux, but not kernel developer good, but linux seems to be an afterthought now. It's a must, but they don't go into depth with me but want almost day to day, python skills, where I'm more occasional. I'm learning Devops on my own, I've used some at work but only spots. I hate the IT job Market. Least all the contract stuff, and they all say they want the 20% and you can learn the 80, but it's not really t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DMJC ( 682799 )
      Mostly the market is about wage suppression. Earn a cert? they want a guy with the cert and experience. Get into corporate IT, ask boomers how they got their jobs. All trained on the job, no degrees or certs. Most of the under 40s are foreign. Trained in Bangalore etc on the job at Cisco with free cert exams as Cisco employees. It's all designed to push wages down, dodge training costs and lock out locals from the industry.
      • I agree, If you see my other post it's all about H1-B and no I'm not anti-immigrant! It's just what you said, cheap labor, replacing American workers and not even high paid ones. 60-160K largely Indian H1-B, it's organized cheating. (see earlier article about fraud found by Biden administration)
        • I found the article above to be quite intriguing. While layoffs can be unsettling for many, it's understandable why companies resort to cost-cutting measures during tough economic times. I hope the laid-off employees will be able to find a job. I actually ordered an essay on a similar topic from https://phdessay.com/free-essa... [phdessay.com], but if I had written the essay myself, I would have focused on the ethical dilemma of forced employee layoffs. I`m sure that the ethical implications of such decisions cannot be ig
      • Get into corporate IT, ask boomers how they got their jobs. All trained on the job, no degrees or certs.

        Of course it was. Back then there were very few CS or related degree programs, and most of us were more interested in getting jobs than in getting sheepskins. And we didn't get certs because there weren't any yet. Back then, employers wanted to know if we could do the job; now, they're more interested in the credentials.

  • Most layoffs were from companies hoarding employee (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Saturday May 13, 2023 @04:28PM (#63519243)

    A lot of the layoffs, came from big named companies, who spent over a decade of trying to get talent, so their competitors don't. Not because there were any demand or business need.

    Smaller companies now are able to get employees, and I bet these employees may be happier working for a smaller company. Where they have more control on what they do.

  • As there was an article about this in Slashdot just a little bit ago, there is a lot of fraud and coaching, A-Z help from these Indian firms with their H1-Bs. So they cheat and we have to have everything forefront in an interview because they may have lied on their resume, but they can answer more questions point-blank with much less experience because of coaching. Two banks I've worked for were more Indian H1-B, than any other nationality/ethnicity, and most other companies seem to be more or less like th
    • I wanted to add that the fraud is very frustrating. H1-B was never meant to replace American workers, but that's exactly what it does now. At a major bank, one girl that was over here on H1-B admitted to me that it was her first IT jobs, the other Indian team members later tried to correct her, but I never believed them. She just didn't know very basic things, and it was in a session in which I was asking how she didn't know some of these things that she admitted it to me. I've never named her; I never repo

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DMJC ( 682799 )
        The answer is for the government to force on-job training/traineeships for locals for every H1-B they bring in. Corporates are using the Visa system in the USA and Australia and probably Canada and UK to dodge training costs and suppress wages. There is no skills shortage it's a lie. They are outsourcing the training to Cisco and the other vendors in third world countries for $5/hr. Most of the visa IT Engineers are leaving high school, working for Cisco etc immediately and being trained on the job and gett

    • Any job that pays above minimum wage is doing so because of a shortage in those types of workers. Nobody's salary is because that person "deserves" it. It's because the supply/demand structure dictates it. If very few people knew how to make fries at McDonald's, fries would cost $100 and the person making it would be paid $200k. Of course it means much fewer people would get to eat fries. As it is, if you advertise a fry-making job for $200k you'd have a million applicants and you can haggle down the price

  • If you can perform any software development skill well, you are in demand. Those tech layoffs have not made much of a dent in the demand. Good people are still getting multiple offers.

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