[TriLUG] New member re-location question

[Kevin Flanagan]

On Fri, 2003-06-13 at 08:39, Michael Thompson wrote:
[cut]
> ...and gone are the days where most IT professionals actually have the
> talent and/or experience to do their jobs properly.  I don't think this
> applies as much (if at all) to Linux or Open Source geeks, but there are
> less and less of the geek types who do this because they want to, and
> growing number of the 'boot-camp' types who do this because a radio ad
> promised that 'thousands of high paying IT jobs will go unfilled this
> year..'  Now the workforce is flooded with them.  I know an MCSE that
> could barely turn her computer on 30 days before, and was not much
> better after boot camp.  But she had the 'paper' and was able to steal a
> decent job that could have otherwise gone to someone more qualified.  Of
> course, that was a few years ago and there aren't many jobs to be stolen
> anymore, but you can bet the paper MCSE's are holding on to theirs for
> dear life.  I attribute *some* of the blame to these certification boot
> camps flooding the job market and pushing down salaries.  Of course, as
> Jon pointed out, things are much easier today.

Recently I had a conversation with someone from MS consulting that I'm
on friendly terms with.  He told me that the tide is starting to turn
against "Paper MCSEs". He said that at a customer site recently a CIO
told him that he had to go out to hire some folks with lots of
experience to help sort out the mess that the "Paper MCSEs" got the
place into.  With technical solutions getting even more complex, some MS
stuff, some U*IX, some Open Source, folks need to know a lot more than
one song, and they need to have the background so that they can learn
more new stuff quickly when it comes along.  The pace of change has been
accelerating, if you don't have the background, regardless of what your
OS leanings, you won't be as good as it appears that companies are
starting to realize that they need.

As for the MS vs OS thing, I guess that I'd say that when it comes to
coding you definately have a stronger talent, on average, in the Open
Source Community.  When it comes to Implementation, IE: "Systems
Engineers" the Open Source or die mentality can hurt you, but just like
in the above paragraph, if you have the background that covers lots of
bases, you are likely to be much better off.



At least I'm hoping that the experienced slots start to come up!

Just my $.02




	Kevin 

 
+--------------------------------------------------------+ 
   When all men think alike, no one thinks very much.
	Walter Lippmann