Linux Expertise In Demand?

[Daniel Fussell]

On 02/10/2012 03:55 PM, Ryan Simpkins wrote:
> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/02/10/linux-popularity-sparks-salary-jump/tab/print/
>
> Looking forward to viewing the full results. The last survey Dice released
> showed relatively flat demand. Does this jive with what anyone is seeing?
> Anyone get a larger than normal raise in 2012, or a raise at all? Anyone get
> any recent offers that significantly lifted their salaries?
>
> I've talked to a few recruiters who have indicated recent salary offers for
> experienced Linux professionals have jumped 20-30%. I've not seen it
> personally, and I'm not at all inclined to believe what a recruiter tells me
> about salaries. My experience has been that the last few hold outs who were
> paying their IT departments poorly had to bring them to parity with the
> market. Not so much a raise as it is a flattening out of the industry.
>
> Curious what experiences, if any, people have had.
>
> -Ryan
>
I have a hard time recently finding part-time Linux admins.  Most have 
installed a distro, but not used it as their main OS yet, and the Ubuntu 
popularity has made them all GUI-based users.

Before Win7 came out, I had a lot more applicants that had figured XP 
was old hat and went looking for something cooler.  When Win7 came out, 
the same kind of people that would look hack an OS were glitzed and 
pacified by the fancy new Micro-Koolaid, and lost sight of the real prize.

Which is good I guess for the rest of us, as long as we don't go back to 
the days of the dime-a-dozen windows admin being the default 
justification for businesses buying Microsoft.  But then, those 
businesses don't usually last long.

;-Daniel Fussell