[CLUE-Talk] The Microsoft penalty that isn't - Tech News - CNET.com

[Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

On Wed, 17 Apr 2002, Jed S. Baer wrote:

*snip*

> Actually, I'm generally seeing less pigeonholing in the various ads that
> come through. More often, I see employers wanting somebody who knows
> almost everything under the sun. I've seen ads for Oracle DBAs which also
> call for VB, Java, ASP, MS Office, MS Access, Modeling and PL/SQL. I often
> see SQL-Server in the list. Oh, and a salary that would almost not have
> gotten you an entry-level Oracle DBA 2 years ago. What's happening is many
> companies are doing significant belt-tightening, so they want one person
> who can wear many hats - oh, and 24/7 on-call too. I've seen quite a few
> DBA/Sysadmin jobs, and often see NT server thrown in along with one or
> more flavors of Unix. This doesn't completely bode well for generalists
> such as you and I, unless we happen to have the right mix. It actually
> seems like employers are looking for "uber" specialists.

Yes, that's true - and I'm certainly not an "uber" specialist, more
like an uber generalist. :)

> However, you've hit the OJT issue pretty squarely. Many employers aren't
> even looking at non-buzzword-compliant resumes. And given the long list of
> buzzwords they're looking for, it's pretty tough. AT&T and Level3 have
> taken it so far as to require all contract recruiters to submit candidates
> via a web-based profiling engine. I've had one interview recently where
> the manager seemed truly interested in how well/quickly I could pick up
> new technologies.

I know - I had a conversation last year with a woman who was looking
for -- get this -- a technical writer with five years of experience
writing technical manuals about Linux. Now, considering the fact
that Linux was only 10 years old at that point - and that Linux had
only really become a commercial concern around 1997, and really hit
its stride in late 1998... they should be able to find someone with
five years experience around 2003. She wouldn't even let me talk to
the company despite the fact that I've written several books on Linux
as well as an ungodly number of howto articles.

> I could rant on and on, but I won't. One thing comes to mind though. At
> the last CLUE meeting, Crawford asked how many people used Linux at work.
> Several hands went up. Perhaps all those folks could post the name of
> their employers? Might be useful info for those of us looking for work.

Sure would...

Take care,

Zonker
--
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier -=- jbrockmeier at earthlink.net
http://www.DissociatedPress.net/
ymessenger: jbrockmeier / AIM: ZonkerJoe
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