On Oct 31, 2007 6:12 PM, Tracy R Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > For professionals who want to move up in the world, Golden suggested > they develop skills that set them apart from the certified crowd: "When > somebody needs that skill set, they'll beat a path to your door." >
For me, I have to admit, that first getting employed in IT, Linux or otherwise, boiled down to being willing to knock on enough doors until I found somebody willing(sufficiently desperate?) to take a chance on a person with no experience. I have A CCNA, and, of the many interviews I've done, it was only even mentioned in three of them and only made a difference in getting a job in one. After that, I worried less about certs and concentrated more on finding out what potential employers needed done and acquiring the needed skills to perform those tasks. Linux did get me in the door a lot because of its security, flexibility, and lower costs. The difficulties I keep running into with Linux are related to application functionaltiy. GNUCash, SQLedger, and Kompozer, for example, still can't compete effectively with Quicken, Quickbooks, and Dreamweaver. Since most non-computer people couldn't care less about whether Linux is a better OS than Windows, if Linux can't do all the things they are used to doing in Windows with very little transitional difficulty, it doesn't matter how many other things it can do that Windows can't, they will still tend to reject it. I view this as the last hurdle to be overcome to make Linux a fully competitive replacement technology for Windows on all fronts. A successful replacement technology not only has to perform all the functions of the technology it is intended to replace better, faster, cheaper, or more easily than the existing solutions, it must be able go beyond the existing technology and provide additional features the current technology can't. This is why steam-powered horseless carriages and trolleys failed and the internal combustion engine ultimately supplanted them. Linux has the second part, doing more than existing technologies down six ways from Sunday. It's coming along, but still a bit weak, on duplicating existing functionality easily IMO. Robert Donovan -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
