Fastest Growing Market Segment (was: linux jobs?)

[Jon maddog Hall]

I would like to discuss this with the group:

fdiprete at comcast.net said:
> The trade rags are all stating that Linux as the fastest growing market
> segment but....

What I really see is that while Linux is eating into the commercial Unix,
proprietary system space and staving off Microsoft servers a bit, it still
is not expanding the over-all market that much, and in particular in the
"first world" countries.

What I have seen and heard is that companies, particularly large companies
that are profitable, are still squeezing their current employees to get more
and more out of them.  This, combined with a certain amount of offshoring, means
that although the economy may be recovering in total, the IT industry may not
experience that growth.

Also, while Linux is growing, a lot of the systems administrators who used to
do "Unix" are now doing "Linux" without much extra training or inconvenience.

Finally, we are starting to see students from high school and college come out
and enter into systems administration jobs at lower salaries than some of the
greybeards (me included).

I think the real growth opportunity is not in systems administration work, but
in consultancy with a strong programming background and a specialty in
integration work.  This eventually may lead to more system admin jobs, but
over a much longer period of time.

Comments?

md
-- 
Jon "maddog" Hall
Executive Director           Linux International(R)
email: maddog at li.org         80 Amherst St. 
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