But that old-school way of getting an IT job isn't just old, it's ineffective. The evidence is mounting that you must be open to open-source if you want to sell yourself in this day and age.
The Internet ushered in this era, bringing distributed computing and collaborative software development more into the mainstream and helping change open-source software development from a pipe dream into a practice that's gaining broader acceptance among large businesses.
Throw in the lingering economic downturn and the expectation that revenue for Unix licenses will diminish in coming years, and developers have compelling reasons to learn -- and to apply -- open-source technologies.
Although no one is tolling a death knell for Unix -- much less for Windows -- open-source-based computing systems are becoming permanent fixtures in many enterprises. Projects like Linux, Apache Web Server and Mozilla shattered an erstwhile belief of proprietary software companies: Namely, sharing source code would never result in usable enterprise-wide computing systems.
One example of open-source's deepening traction: Through September 2002, according to the Netcraft Web server survey, about 63 percent of Web sites were running on Apache Web Server.
Within the next year, it's expected that more and more enterprises will move toward the Linux platform for high-availability applications, for the purpose of hosting database management systems such as Oracle and other programs.
"People who have experience and are able to improve performance and tune [proprietary] applications to run on Linux will be in big demand," said Bill Claybrook, an analyst with Aberdeen Group Inc. in Boston.
Enterprises are placing greater emphasis on working collaboratively, too. The days of the isolated programmer pecking out code in relative seclusion -- with a "trust me" attitude -- could be numbered. In his forthcoming book, "The Business and Economics of Linux and Open Source," Martin Fink writes about the changing structure of companies that work on collaborative software projects. Open-source programmers who want to move up within the engineering hierarchy, he writes, "will need to demonstrate not only technological talent, but some degree of architectural vision, and maybe more importantly, significant interpersonal skills."
Virtually all large IT companies are performing some degree of collaborative software development using open-source applications, according to Brian Behlendorf, co-founder of the Apache Web Server Project and chief technical officer for CollabNet in Brisbane, Calif. This includes large vendors, like IBM Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Sun Microsystems Inc., but also encompasses firms in the financial services and pharmaceutical industries.
Collaboration forces developers to be social animals, extending the concepts of pair programming and peer review even further.
"It's learning how to work in an environment where lots of people look at your code. You have to expect to be challenged to explain how things work," said Behlendorf, whose company provides collaborative software development services.
The strongest argument for learning about open-source tools is the added value you can bring to your company.
"A developer who knows about open-source products is going to be able to save his or her employer money by building internal systems that use those open-source systems," said David Truog, a principal analyst with Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass.
For example, you might be a Windows developer charged with building a system that must house a company database. Your first instinct may be to choose Microsoft's SQL Server. "But if you also know the open-source equivalent, MySQL, you would be able to save the company quite a bit of money," Truog said.
Windows developers will continue to have plenty of career opportunities. For Unix programmers, shifting to Linux likely will be an easy transition. Still, competition for jobs will intensify. Younger, hungrier Linux-trained graduates will enter the labor pool in vast numbers in coming years, and they'll be willing to start for less money than experienced Unix developers make.
As Fink tells IT managers in his book: "As your enterprise grows and you need more talented personnel to run your network infrastructure, application servers and data center, Linux-capable talent will be one of the most readily available resources."
Garry Kranz is a freelance business and technology journalist in Richmond, Va.
