[PLUG] We need more Linux in this town...

[Scott Garman]

Mike Connors wrote:
> Please excuse me for this selfish rant. Howerver, I'm frustrated w. the 
> lack of Linux job opps in PDX and and the rest of the state too for that 
> matter. Especially for entry to mid level people (3 - 5 yrs exp, 1 or 2 
> distros, light scripting w, other know/exp such as networking, 
> virtualization).

Hi Mike,

 From the sounds of it you're interested/looking for a job in IT, 
particularly system administration. When I graduated from college 
(2003), Linux was just starting to establish itself in industry, and 
from my perspective back then there were only a few niches where you 
could potentially have a career working exclusively with Linux:

1. Kernel development
2. Compiler (gcc) development
3. Sysadmin/IT

I had some decent Linux sysadmin skills working for the university while 
I was finishing my degree, and assumed that was going to be my default 
career.

It turned out that having a solid background in sysadmin skills, 
especially knowing how to customize Linux distros to act as appliances, 
set me up well for jobs working on embedded systems. While I have 
occasionally had to do some serious C development and customization of a 
kernel module or two, the vast majority of my time has been spent 
leveraging my higher-level OS knowledge and working with scripting 
languages and web technologies (particularly for user interfaces).

I just wanted to suggest this as another possible avenue you could be 
looking down in terms of finding work you can do exclusively with Linux. 
Best of all, many single board computing platforms are cheap enough to 
collect and start working on side projects of your own to build these 
skills and build a portfolio of sorts of interesting things you have 
worked on.

If there is some way you could bring in to an interview a device or demo 
project you have worked on, whether it is a commercial product or not, 
you are sure to make big impressions on a potential employer.

Just some thoughts,

Scott

-- 
Scott Garman
sgarman at zenlinux dot com