[COLUG] Re: Musing on training, another view

[Joshua.Kramer]

Hi Charlie,

BTW, I see you posting on the xTuple / PostBooks forums off and on.  I 
'hang out' there as joshuak.  While I haven't had the chance to examine it 
in depth, PostBooks looks like an *excellent* Open Source ERP / CRM / 
Accounting app.

Anyway... you bring up many good points, all of which are spot-on.  For 
this particular discussion I want to concentrate on the training issue, 
and as time allows diverge into other topics.

You had opined that if you were big enough to have an IT department, you'd 
hire people with Linux experience and augment them with external 
resources.  Lets imagine for a moment that this isn't easy.  For example, 
many of the outlying smaller cities in central Ohio (Mt. Vernon, Newark, 
Commercial Point, etc.) are just far enough that travel on a daily basis 
is costly, and because they don't have much "IT" going on, the Windows 
cycle is prevalent.  I've discussed this with a few consultants who help 
out the companies that aren't big enough for their own IT departments; 
while they'd be open to learning Linux, they are afraid that if they get 
hit by a bus (or a great deal on a vacation), nobody will be around to 
service their clients.

Likewise, the mid-sized organizations - "county seat" community hospitals, 
small to mid-size banks, colleges - often don't even have Open Source on 
their radar because all of the people who "know computers" in these areas 
have their MCSE's and that's it.

An interesting side note is that of salary; most of these orgs pay below, 
or far below, going market rates in a Columbus-sized city.  While a 
sysadmin who is experienced in Linux may fetch upwards of $75k in the 
city, it is not unreasonable for such positions to be capped at $55k 
farther out.  Is this because the sysadmin can "sell" these skills easier 
because there is a bigger market for them?  Is it because smaller firms 
don't understand the savings that a qualified OSS admin can attain?  If 
the sysadmin does not have $75k worth of value farther out, can such value 
be created when the sysadmin demonstrates appreciable savings?

Of course, that is all an economics diatribe for now.  But here's a 
specific question: if someone is forming a new company, to be all 
open-source based, how easy would it be to tap the local pool of MCSE-type 
folks and train them on Linux?

Anecdotes don't help - if you scour the net you get everything from "my 
whole operation was shut down for a week because the secretary couldn't 
figure out how to move her mouse in Linux" to "We switched everyone over 
the weekend from Windows to Linux and they were just productive the next 
day."  (The latter claim was taken from the Blog of Helios...)

Cheers,
-J