CIO's to Increase Hiring

CIO Update just came out with a summary of the hiring trend for the third quarter. The data was collected by Robert Half Technology. That was my old stomping ground years ago, albeit on the financial side, and their data is usually spot on for the most part. You can find the summary here.

In essence, it appears that CIO's are slowly looking to bring on more IT staff. This has not been a V-shaped recovery that a lot of people like to talk about. Instead, it appears more U-shaped if you ask me. And, it follows in-line with what we have been seeing. Since the first of the year, we have seen an increase in positions. But, one must remember where we were coming from, which was pretty much nil. Therefore, any increase is an increase no matter its size.

The trend is upward, and at this point that is all we can ask for. On average, a 6% increase in hiring in the technology field for the third quarter. At the end of the day, it is not time to dance in the street, but hopefully it brings more people out of the street and back into the employment market. Let's hope this trend continues.

Canonical Going Solo For Their Ubuntu Certification Program

Canonical has decided to go it alone in unveiling their new certification program. Up until this time, they have collaborated with LPI. The full press release can be found here. It will be interesting to see if this will eventually increase corporate demand for this certification. Up until this time, not surprisingly, the RHCE reigns supreme. Let's see if Canonical can put a dent in Red Hat's domination of this market.

Companies Grapple With How Much Leeway to Provide Outside Developers

A very interesting article was recently published by BusinessWeek. In it, Dr. Joel West and Dr. Siobhan O'Mahony share their research on the difficulty companies have had in creating a rich open source community based upon projects that have been initially developed internally.

On the surface, putting code out in the public domain sounds like a great idea. Take code that was written internally, release it, and then have engineers from far reaches of the world fine tune and enhance it. What could be better than that? It is the ultimate way of efficient engineering.

In general, the model works. Plenty of companies allow their employees to contribute mightily to a number of leading open source projects. That has had a profound effect on how we have been able to get to where we are today. However, the focus in this case is the success of projects developed internally with the hopes of being a success externally. That has posed a great challenge to a number of organizations.

So, why is it rare that there are so few successful projects that have originated within a company's four walls? As they discuss in the article, it is all about control. Even though there are a lot of companies that will market themselves as open source believers, and many of them may be, they still have difficulty when it comes time to provide developers freedom to tinker with their code.

Whether this is due to them following the advice of their legal departments, one can only determine that on a case by case basis. However, one thing is for sure; as great as the open source development model is, it still faces challenges from the inherent proprietary nature in which businesses have primarily been built.

Open Source Companies Hiring As The Tide Turns

Here is yet another article detailing the strength of open source companies as we slowly climb our way out of the deepest recession in decades. Bill Snyder, of InfoWorld, details the gains in hiring amongst a number of open source based companies.

As the landscape continues to thaw, it is open source companies that are benefiting. Granted, it helps that they are relatively small companies. This affords them the luxury of being much more nimble than some of their larger enterprise brethren.

One important point that Mahau Ma, of MuleSoft, makes is the lack of talent available as the rebound begins. We have witnessed this first hand. Even though the number of open positions that we are trying to fill is down in comparison to a couple of years ago, those searches tend to be difficult in locating the right talent. Therefore, the demand/supply equation is still leaning more toward the demand side.

All in all, this information is just another sign that the rebound is beginning. After a brutal 18 month stretch, that is something to get excited about. And, within it, the open source employment landscape continues to shine a bright light.

Startup Visa

I was just reading TechCrunch, and I noticed the piece by Erick Schonfeld discussing the startup visa. It can be found here. I was unaware of this idea being floated around until reading this. I realize the bill was just introduced yesterday.

Visas are always a hot topic in the field of technology. And, this bill is a great way to reward individuals with green cards that are successful in getting their startup off the ground. There is always fear of us losing our entrepreneurial edge. This helps keep that spirit alive. It is what differentiates us from many other nations around the globe. In addition, immigration is what built this country. Therefore, you add immigration to rewarding individuals with being successful entrepreneurs, and we get back to the core values of this nation.

Let's hope this bill gains momentum. Nice to see potential progress on some issues in Washington, instead of watching both sides of the isle bicker back and forth at one another.

Mobile Area Is Surging - Open Source Leading The Way Within It

Developers with mobile experience are seeing a surge in opportunities available to them. Not surprising given the success of the iPhone. But, within the sector, open source is thriving. The number of devices running the Android OS has assisted greatly. And, according to this RCR Wireless article, web development is the leading subcategory in the mobile space. The language that dominates that area just happens to be PHP.

Therefore, if your interest lies in the hot mobile market, having an open source background can prove to be very beneficial.

Importance of Corporate Open Source Activity

A lot has been made recently about Twitter having a page on its site that lists the open source projects it has released or contributes open source code to. A list of those projects can be found here.

One of the more interesting blog posts on this came from Dana Blankenhorn at ZDNet. It can be found here. In it he contemplates whether or not, by Twitter having a page on its open source contributions, it assists in recruiting top-notch engineers to the organization. It is a very interesting question, and one I am sure a lot of corporations think about.

Ultimately, I think it is a very wise move on Twitter's behalf to announce these contributions in plain view. Engineers that are involved with open source software tend to believe heavily in the principles behind the movement. They enjoy the fact that they can take existing code and continuously improve on it, and provide those changes back to the bevy of open source engineers that will continually do the same. In the end, it provides the best chance of building as solid a piece of software as possible. That is the idea at least in layman's terms. And, it seems to be working pretty well to this point.

Therefore, for a corporation to think and behave much like its engineers do is a benefit come recruiting time. You tend to see it time and time again. Much of the top open source talent that exists is employed by an organization that tends to view open source software favorably. Thus, they allow these engineers to continue to release code to projects in which they are active. In the end, it is a win-win for both parties. Engineers are happy that they work for an organization that shares their beliefs; and at the same time, the corporations are benefiting from the software that they are utilizing for their operations being continuously improved upon by the open source community.