

Big Data Puts Linux Talent in Hot Demand - aynlaplant
http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2013/02/25/big-data-puts-linux-talent-in-hot-demand/

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zx2c4
GNU/Linux is also really great platform for programming. Things feel right,
work right, and there are nice tools everywhere. I grew up in win32 land, and
this really gave me some warped ideas about the world. But after about a
decade or so of Linux programming, I'm finally feeling level-headed, as though
switching to the Linux world were an intense psychotherapy. The 'hot demand'
for 'Linux talent' might as well be motivated by HR requirements for a sane
workplace.

~~~
ericcholis
Agreed, I spend a large portion of my day in the Windows environment. It's a
nice change when I get to work in a Linux environment. With that being said,
Windows as a non .NET developer platform has come a long way.

I rarely have any issues finding Python libraries that don't work on Windows.
PHP Development has become much easier on Windows that it has been in the
past. One of my personal glaring exceptions is having a working memcached
extension for PHP on Windows.

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eksith
The key word here is "professionals" because, let's face it, there folks that
can look up an error code or warning and maybe Google around for a
configuration setting or two are dime a dozen. Read: Actual experts. In every
sense of the word.

How many people do you know that actually _know_ how to administer a system?
And I do mean administer, not throw on/off a few switches in a conf file and
hope it all works. I've lost count of how many times I've seen questions on
forums on how to get two or more pieces of technology to talk to each other
well enough. Sometimes well enough, isn't well... enough. Especially when real
money is involved.

"I work with x and I need it to work with y and give me z amount of
throughput" can be very complicated. Especially when the wiring is only sort
of familiar to the user from a previous encounter doing some home tinkering.

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sybhn
I work at a pretty successful SaaS start-up in the valley and one of my
responsibility is to hire system engineers. It's been one of the most
challenging positions I ever had to fill. We see many developers using Linux
nowadays - which is an improvement I guess, but there's a big difference
between building your little rail apps on your local Ubuntu instance and
setting-up/managing/scaling/troubleshooting Linux based ecosystems of
applications & servers.

[edit sp]

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DodgyEggplant
One issue is training and test environment. Easy to set up a VPS and play with
it, but the larger system you probably have to learn on the job, as
apprentice. What skills/resources do you suggest to improve for "my app runs
on linux" developer - towards "I know linux" in the level you seek for?

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pathy
This is a genuinely interesting question. I can manage my own linux server
well enough but I could not in a million years scale a larger system.

~~~
sybhn
'I know linux' is different than 'I know how to scale on a linux stack'.

Many engineers who build native apps on Linux can claim 'i know linux'. Native
is an important distinction, as many good java developers for example have no
clue what is going on down the stack.

For the 'I know how to scale on linux stack', I'd think the fastest way would
be for you to look into a (1) system imager (e.g. kickstart) and a (2)
configuration management system (e.g. puppet or chef). This will bring you
scale and management. Throw in a (3) monitoring/alerting system (e.g. nagios
and cacti). Finally, put your coding skills to work by building a small app
that glues all the above together.

