Great to See Harvard Teaching Open Source

Having gone to business school, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Matt Asay's blog the other day about Harvard including a case study that involves open source in the Harvard Business Review. I always expected this to come, albeit perhaps a little earlier. But, as the saying goes, better late than never.

The biggest benefit to this though is that it is not limited to just Harvard. Anyone who has gone to business school has probably done their fair share of Harvard Business Review case studies. Therefore, graduate students across the land and abroad will probably get a chance to take a peak at this case study. As a result, the knowledge base on open source continues to climb.

In addition to weighing the pros and cons of utilizing open source software in a corporate environment, I believe the business schools will also start to analyze to great length the collaboration scheme that is open source if they have not started doing so already. That is of course the core of open source system and what makes it tick. They will try to dissect it to see if they can produce the same results in other areas of the corporation. That is what is really compelling, at least from my vantage point.

Selected for a BOF at OLS (Ottawa Linux Symposium)

Wow!! Great excitement that my BOF proposal has been selected for OLS this year! OLS is a show that I have always had a strong interest in, since it is essentially the de facto standard for technical conferences that entertain Linux kernel engineers. I am very appreciative that they are finally giving us a chance to speak. I am looking forward to this show, and I hope to see some of you there. I will provide more information at this conference approaches.

Good Article on the Ramifications of Social Networking Sites for Job Seekers

This is a good article in Businessweek that goes through some of the ramifications of your public profile on social networking web sites. I know not everyone will agree, but I tell people to lean on the side of conservatism when building your profile.

However, perhaps the most important part of the article is that they ACTUALLY mention displaying your open source contributions on your profile. Here here to Timothy Lee of the Cato Institute for throwing in a little open source mention in a Businessweek article. Makes a good article even more enjoyable.

Where have the PHP developers gone?

It seems as though there is a lack of PHP talent in the marketplace that has intensified over the last 6 months or so. In some of the select markets where we are always searching for good senior level PHP talent, it has been very slim pickings as opposed to just a year or two ago. Now, we have other areas where we experience the same phenomenon, especially in the area of Linux kernel engineers over the years, but the PHP market was not always that way. So, the question is, why is that the case? Here are a few of the reasons that I have come up with, but I would love to hear your thoughts as well.

1. PHP developers have moved to Ruby on Rails. That is one that I use to hear quite a bit. There is no doubt that there is some truth to that statement, but recently I have started to question it. Lately, I have spoken with a few PHP developers that ultimately became enthralled with RoR and thus made the switch. However, after developing with RoR for a year or so, they find themselves back where they started in the PHP world. And, that is by their own choice. So, I know that it is indeed taking some PHP developers away, but I am not as convinced as I was earlier that it is taking as many as I thought it was.

2. All the good talent already has jobs. There is no question that this is very much true. The market in our space is still a good one, and if you are a good engineer, there is no doubt it is not that hard to find a good position. But, even with that being said, before I would always see a new crop of PHP engineers emerge and join the ranks of their senior brethren. For some reason, I am not seeing the same in today's market. Perhaps we can go back to number one with this one, and all of the "up and coming" engineers, if you will, are more interested in RoR than PHP. I have not been able to come up with a conclusion on this as of yet.

3. The talent lies outside of the U.S. border. Well, that is a given just like everything other area of open source. We have made great strides in this country, but we are still behind the likes of the European Union in developing open source talent. And, I think you can lump PHP into this equation. I have seen a lot of engineering schools embrace Linux and other open source software into their education programs, but this takes some time to evolve. So, we are probably on the right track (somewhat), but we have a way to go yet.

4. Consulting firms are eating up all the talent. This is the one that I have come to believe might be the most crucial out there. It appears that lately when I come across a good senior PHP developer, they are tied to some consulting firm. Essentially, these consulting firms are applying for as many H1-B visa applications as they can, and then bringing in some of that talent that lies overseas. Why this is well and good, it does not help out the organization that is looking for a PHP developer to be their employee. They are nearly forced into the situation of having to deal with a consulting firm due to the lack of talent in the marketplace. And, ultimately this might be a hinderance in keeping these talented individuals on our soil long term. That is if they choose to stay. The consulting firm might just keep their visa current for as long as they can engage in client projects, and then send them back to their homeland if things dry up for that particular firm. Instead, a company that is able to bring this person on as an employee might fill out the necessary paperwork to try to get this person the documentation to keep this individual in the country for the long haul and thus preserving technical talent that this country desperately needs.

So, that is just a few of the areas that I feel might be causing this imbalance in the marketplace. But, I would like to hear from anyone that might have input on this as well. Look forward to hearing from you.

Status of the Open Source Labor Market

I have been contacted by a number of Linux engineers recently asking me about the status of the market. Everyone seems to have been sucked in by all the rhetoric about the looming recession or already being in one. I leave that debate up to the economists, but I figured it was worthwhile to let people know what we see from our minute vantage point.

The fact of the matter is that the market for established Linux/open source based engineers is still relatively strong. Overall, I would tend to say that the number of openings that I see is down slightly, but nothing drastic. That probably does not hold true for the entire labor market. I watched an interview yesterday on CNBC with the President and CEO of Craigslist, and they have seen their first negative growth in overall job postings since 2001. But, luckily in tech land, and especially in Linux land, things are not as dire.

As a result, people are constantly asking me, "Why is that the case?" The worst market that we have witnessed was right after 9/11 and the bubble burst (not surprising). However, at that time, there was a lot of excess to get rid of. Things were way out of proportion; not too much different than the housing market in the last couple of years. It takes time to bring everything back in line.

This "slowdown" is much different. Even though the labor market and overall economy has been relatively strong the last couple of years, there is not a lot of excess. I do not expect to see the amount of mass layoffs (exception being in the housing and financial sectors) that we witnessed from some of the technology companies back in '02 and '03. In addition, we are fortunate that a lot of the technology companies revenue streams are pretty diversified throughout the globe, thus the emerging markets are assisting us greatly at this time.

But, I regress to the open source market specifically. The trend continues in regards to corporate adoption of Linux and other open source based software. As a result, corporations are always going to be in need of so called "experts" to assist them in any migration of platforms or modifications to software that they are making. Therefore, opportunities for qualified individuals will always exist.

So, the Linux/open source labor market luckily does not sync up with perhaps the rest of the market at this time. Be thrilled that you selected to contribute to the BEST way to develop software, and one that continues to provide growth for you both personally and professionally! Long live a strong Linux/open source labor market! At least let's hope that continues to be the case ;)

And the Survey Says.....Aussies Anteing Up for Open Source Talent

According to a recent survey conducted by the Australian Open Source Industry Census, individuals that participate in open source are earning more than their counterparts down under. A synopsis of the survey was revealed in a recent LinuxWorld article .

It is a trend that we continue to see throughout the globe. Let's just hope that it continues. We strongly believe that it will!

Allow Participation if You Want the Best Talent

If your company wants the best talent on their team, please allow this talent to participate in open source projects! As long as their contributions do not violate the company's NDA, I am not sure why there is continued concerns about open source participation in some cases. Is this due to recent examples such as McAfee , or prior to that the likes of Tivo feeling corporate pressure as a result of their use of open source based software? Whatever the cause may be, it seems like the battle still has to be fought from time to time.

The reason why I bring this up is that we recently ran into this on a search we were conducting. In this case, a candidate for the opening had created a successful open source project over the previous 4-5 years. From all we were able to gain from the IP attorney, it appeared that this project did not violate the company's NDA. Even with that being the case, the company decided to stick to its' guns of not allowing employees to contribute to open source projects.

Thus, there still seems to be a fear factor when dealing with candidates that have contributed code to open source projects. On one hand, the companies love to see this involvement, because they can gauge the level of the candidate's development prowess. And, like I have said in the past, if your code is accepted in a particular project, it is a pretty good sign that we have a talented engineer on our hands. On the other hand, there appears to be great fear that somehow some of the company's code is going to find itself in open source projects. As a result, this code would have to be GPL'd, and the company could lose its valuable IP.

At the end of the day, there are always going to be risks with whomever you hire. But, I plead to the companies that prevent their engineers from participating. PLEASE find a way to have some trust in these individuals! I understand fully the investment that is at stake. But, if you want to take your organization to the next level, you are going to need the best talent. And, in these days of open source software, the best talent is contributing to projects.