Ask Slashdot: Where Are the Open Source Jobs?

stry_cat writes "My company has bought into the FUD and is going 100% Microsoft. Rather than work in this environment and be continuously at odds with upper management, I have decided to seek employment elsewhere. Where do I look for an open source job? I've started with the local paper's Sunday classifieds. I've looked on dice.com and monster.com. However almost all are Microsoft related. The few that aren't are some sort of dinky contract or temp job. So is there a place to find a job in an open source environment?"

Unanswerable

[jemtallon]

I'm afraid this question is unanswerable as we don't know what type of job you:
a. Like to do
b. Have already done
c. Are good at

Please be more specific in future requests for assistance.

Re:What is an "open source job"?

[TheRaven64]

Exactly. I've never seen a open source job advertised. On the other hand, I fairly regularly get sent adverts from people looking for a FreeBSD or LLVM developer, and there are lots of jobs around for Linux or *BSD admins. Looking for an open source job makes even less sense than looking for a 'Microsoft job' (which, actually, sounds like a euphemism).

In Open Source, the job finds you!

[ccguy]

Bad joke in the subject, but it's true. I've found that submitting patches to a established open source project is the easiest way to find a job, in fact without moving a finger.

Starting a decent open source program is even better. My pet project ccextractor is a very niche things yet I get offers for customizations / deployment / etc very often (to me often here is something like twice a month).

Suck it up, whiny

[spidercoz]

MS has 80% of the planet. You can either adapt and deal, or continue fighting the wind.

(speaking as a pure F/OSS user at home and any other chance I get)

Open source areas

[Animats]

The Mozilla Foundation is hiring. They even have a billboard on 101 near San Francisco: "Work for mankind, not for the man".

Most of the hosting, "cloud", data mining, and data warehousing industry is Linux based. The infrastructures of the big players like Google and Facebook are all Linux. Once you get off the desktop, Microsoft isn't dominant.

Re:You're a douche

[kurkosdr]

+1 At least the company benefited by getting a fanatic of their backs. Can't people just use whatever software fits their needs? I understand people who reject things like the iPhone and WP7 because such platforms may prohibit them from loading software they want (see the Google Voice fiasco in iOS for more info), and they may not feel OK by having others decide for them even though they are the ones who pay for the device, but rejecting a piece of software because the author didn't chose to donate (yes, donate, it wasn't his obligation) the code under an OSI license? Also, is it just me, or most of the open source fanatics dream of working for a project like Fedora or Firefox, aka a project that allows them to give code to the community and get paid for it? Unfortunately most of the times "open source jobs" means either configuring some open source software for some corp, or maintaining some internal fork of some open source software, like Google does with Linux in their data center, and none of this benefits the community in any way. PS: Anyway, here is a list stry_cat may be interested in (though i doubt he will read past the first sentence of my post) http://www.fsf.org/resources/jobs [fsf.org]

Re:open source is a passion, not a paycheck

[slim]

Not at all.

Vast amounts of open source code are written as official, company sanctioned projects by paid developers.

  - all the Linux stuff contributed by RedHat - kernel and userland
  - IBM's work on Eclipse, LVM, lots of other stuff
  - er... lots more!

Re:You're a douche

[jellomizer]

I have issues of those Open Source Zealots who accuse everyone who made a conscious decision to drop Open Source and go with Widows as believing the FUD. The way a product is licensed has little if anything to do with its product quality. Linux is a great OS. But it isn't perfect Windows is better then Linux in a lot of Areas... Also Linux is better then Windows in a lot of areas.

Why Windows?
1. Office comparability... Oddly enough when you are working with other businesses they prefer to get Office Compatible documents. LibreOffice does a great job at office compatibility however it is 99% compatible, so 3 times a year you have an issue and you need to look like your company is to cheap to buy software that the rest of the industry uses.

2. Human Resources... You can find a lot of people who are Skilled in Windows and Open Source Tools, You can find people skilled in Windows only, and you can find people skilled in Open Source Only... However there are a lot more windows skilled people so if they are hiring they want to get a wider market to choose from.

3. Third Party Software... Often Business will buy those expensive enterprise systems that every employee hates. However they do do their job and make the business runs more effetiently. They have been tested to work in Windows and there are not to many Open Source tools that do that. The debate of if these Enterprise Systems are more valuable then if you get a custom program is an other debate.

Re:You're a douche

[Aryden]

I'm pissed at him for being silly enough to want to give up a paying job in the current economy. I have many friends out of work right now that are highly experienced and very good at what they do. It's a matter of job availability, and there aren't quite as many available jobs as there are people to fill them.

Re:All around...oh, wait, you mean the PAYING ones

[unixisc]

To the OP, this looks like one of the 'start your own business' projects. In particular, take the landscape of Open Source projects out there, identify the missing elements that potentially prevent them from becoming major winners (apart from marketing issues) and pick a few of them to work on. But before you do, try contacting those projects and let them know that you're willing to do certain things - such as writing drivers, bug fixes or whatever you think you can achieve - but for a fee, w/ terms & conditions to be agreed on b/w you. The problem w/ most FOSS projects is that people do the fun things in it, while not focussing on the less interesting parts, such as the bug fixes. Making a career out of those parts might be the best way to go. But make sure that you have people willing to buy into your results once you achieve them.

Re:You're a douche

[Missing.Matter]

I can now bill myself as both an Android developer and also an iOS developer.

More importantly, as both platforms rise in popularity, any serious employer is going to be looking for a developer who does not one or the other but both. If you had bailed as soon as your company started developing for iOS/Android, you would have found yourself in a difficult position where your skillset did not meet market demand.

To stay or to go

[morgauxo]

I work for a C# / Microsoft shop. Previously I worked for a PHP shop (developed on Mac but hosted on Linux). I gotta tell you... I understand wanting to leave a Microsoft shop. There are just so many unnecessary daily annoyances that come from Microsoft software. But... in my case... the owner/boss of the PHP shop was an a$$h0l3. The Microsoft shop I work for now is ran by really nice people and treats us great. I'm probably going to stay a very long time.

Please, don't get me wrong, I'm not crediting Microsoft for the goodness of my current employer or blaming PHP for the last one. I'm just saying that platform IS important but it's not the MOST important thing in a computer job. If your current employer (you didn't leave yet right?) are good people then I would recommend staying. At least be very cautious before switching. Make very sure you won't regret it.

Re:You're a douche

[brainzach]

If he has a hard job finding an open source job, then he lacks the skills that are in demand. Technology evolves and you must adapt your skills if you still want to be relevant.

Re:You're a douche

[Johann Lau]

Just answer his questions or don't. Y'all are basically wanking over assumptions about the OP. Who gives a shit, really?

Re:All around...oh, wait, you mean the PAYING ones

[Grishnakh]

There's tons and tons of open-source jobs out there. One of the keywords here is "Android". The other keyword is "embedded". Linux and Android are being used for all kinds of embedded devices now, and there's tons of jobs for people using C and C++ (C more at the low levels, kernel, device drivers etc., C++ at the higher levels for applications). People who can work with and build embedded Linux systems are in high demand, and there's good demand for Qt C++ programmers too as that's being used a lot on these embedded devices that have touchscreens.

Now, this doesn't necessary mean you'll be doing a lot of contributions upstream to the open-source community, but you will be working with a lot of OSS components, and developing proprietary software that interacts with them. And you definitely won't be doing any work with MS technologies, as those have no place in an embedded system (there are some places using WinCE, but they're dying out and many are switching to Linux or Android).

Re:You're a douche

[Kalriath]

Because getting a senior Microsoft admin costs just as much as a senior Linux admin, contrary to popular belief.