Fastest Growing Market Segment (was: linux jobs?)

[Frank DiPrete]

On Sun, 2005-06-26 at 14:18 -0400, Jon maddog Hall wrote:
> 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.

Makes sense.

> 
> 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.

Tell me about it. After being downsized, chapter eleven'd, outsourced,
layed off, merge'd, moved, shut down, closed and lopped off since 1990
there seem to be a lot of us in the same position as a machinist after
nafta.


> 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.
> 

True

> 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).

Old saying: What do you do with an engineer over 40? Take 'em out back
and shoot him. Still true I guess.

> 
> 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.
> 

That seems to be the case. All postings now require a specific mix of
expert/experience in 3 or more specific technologies.


> Comments?

"sigh"

> 
> md