Destroying Pool of Knowledgeable Devs and Admins
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Tracer Apr 04, 2006 6:11 AM EDT |
In your statement, "Many believe that Microsoft's intent in lobbying for H1B Visas had more to do with destroying the pool of knowledgeable programmers and administrators familiar with the UNIX operating system than in finding technology workers." This may be true for older workers, but perhaps not true for younger ones who are getting fed up with MS and leaving for Linux. I have a counterpoint to that. I am almost 40. Microsoft annoyed me so much in working with them that I went ape, 180 degrees, and jumped into Linux and Unix. I have *never*, repeat *never*, had any problem getting tech support on the Internet. It has helped me a tremendous amount, although often I have to RTFM and figure things by inference. But I make it. I used to work so close to the flame of Microsoft that I got to experience the fraternity that they are, complete with all the meanness and *serious* brown-nosing. At the very top, on the hottest programming gigs, life gets competitive and confrontational at Microsoft. They tend to spend way too long in meetings arguing amongst themselves. They are often rude with each other. They spend too much time doing OOP ad nauseum, not turning out code. They lose gigs because of it. And then comes the sub-standard products. I recall how angry the MSofters were, practically throwing stuff, when they lost a govt contract in Atlanta to a Linux competitor. In the room, a former Sun PM who was now working for this MS consulting gig, turned to me and said, "The Linux world is taking off. I've made the wrong decision by jumping to this. I want to go back to where programmers are cool again and we didn't have all these stupid arguments and use all these sub-par products that we cannot make better without hours and hours of work and negotiations. I think I need to go Red Hat." That's when I realized that I needed to take Linux seriously. Now here's the other part of this phenomenon. Many gigs are going outside the USA with offshore development. Fortunately for Linux advocates, the rest of the world is going Linux mostly because of cost. So when I left MS consulting and joined a company, and then all my code was offshored and I might have a slim chance of assisting them, I decided to do what they do -- use Linux. I did "sink or swim", making it my primary workstation. Within about a week, I discovered rdesktop to still do a little Windows work here or there (unfortunately). I was hooked. Within my second month, I figured out Xinerama on two humongous monitors. I wasted a year learning JSP before I discovered PHP. I wasted another year on MySQL before I started to take PostgreSQL seriously. Now I'm a big help to that offshoring team as a Linux sysop and with some LAPP programming that I provide for them occasionally. Instead of sitting long hours in meetings, I'm able to just code using effective, thin OOP strategies that I have figured out long ago, using them over and over again. Another thing I like about the transition is the ability to use different products and not get stuck with limited features. For instance, when I worked with MS stuff, they only wanted to push their stuff and take their products as far as they could go without much custom code. Unfortunately, the SharePoint Portal was really a kludge in some areas, like a round peg in a square hole. We had to add custom code that unfortunately was slow with little chance of being sped up. Many arguments occurred where the MS PMs clearly didn't have a grasp of the customer requirements that required the custom code, and they wanted to rule out needing it. A few accused me that I dared to not defend MS products enough, or that I didn't know all their features. Idiots. Anyway, in the Linux world, mixing and matching third-party stuff is the norm, and I can customize it without complaint. |
| tadelste Apr 04, 2006 8:03 AM EDT |
Tracer: great comment. |
Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]
Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!