[wellylug] Ok, that was dumb of me, but I do have a question...

[Andrew Garrett]

On Mon, 14 Apr 2003 23:31:29 -0700
Bret Comstock Waldow <bwaldow at compuserve.com> wrote:

> Searching on Seek, and Dice, shows few opportunities to get paid to know 
> Linux.
>

There are a few companies out there doing Linux work, and it is out there in
the coporate environment.  However, you're right.  The job market for it
seems to be mostly word of mouth, and agencies don't really know how to
handle it for some reason.

On the local scene (just to add to Ewen's wee list)  Red Spider are
Wellington based and we tout ourselves as Open Source Specialists. We do
development, as well as the inevitable firewalls, fileservers, application
servers, VPNs, consulting,  Asterisk (of Auckland) were recently bought by
Gen-i, and claim to be planning expansion into the Wellington market.

Before founding Red Spider, I spent over 4 years at NZSE Ltd (formerly the
NZ stock exchange) working almost exclusively with Linux and Open Source
technologies (with the inevitable bits of Windows here and there, and a
brief foray into the World of Pain that is HPUX Virtual Vault).  We also
worked quite closely with Chelmer on one particular project; they have a
certain amount of Linux expertise as well.  Before that, I spent some time
in the ISP business (the low end of the market, working for the infamous
Alan Brown). 

All in all, I'm inclined to agree with Ewen, that yes, there's work out
there, but yes, it can be hard to come by.  Where you can, learn cross
platform - perl is perl, SQL is SQL (well, ok, but the basis is the same)
etc.  Unless your existing skillset is already heavilly Linux focused, why
not get work that suits what you can do, then work on growing it in
directions you want to head?  That's what I did, and in just over 4 years
the NZSE grew from one linux box (mail server/firewall/webserver) to around
50, and from a staff of one to a team of three.  Not only that, but I
learned a hell of a lot :)

Oh.  And, unfortunately (like Ewen), we're also not hiring yet.

Good luck.

Andrew


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Andrew Garrett           Analysis and Design          andrew at redspider.co.nz
Red Spider Ltd   Quality Open Source Engineering     http://redspider.co.nz/
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