Linux Administrator - Need a Job?

Whose definition of "Competitive Salary" are we using... your's or mine?

HR people all seem to live in a make believe world several decades behind reality.

I actually applied for a job that required two grad degrees and several years experience.

The interview went well and I was reasonably impressed and excited until the talk of pay started (the job announce had the oh so famous "competitive salary" tag line), "we're thinking somewhere in the mid 50's". I was a tad confused at first because I thought he was talking about my company car allowance - turns out that was the salary figure. Several minutes of laughing later, I was escorted from the building.

So it's not just a "Linux thing" it's pretty much any job that requires the person has a brain.

No shortage exists for "lack of brains" for the HR people in those positions.

A lot of problems exist with the whole corporate hiring process. For starters, managers have abdicated actual management about 10 or 15 years ago, instead choosing to rely on "objective" things like the quality of urine, how often employee's time cards come in late, etc.

This leads to managers who think that the important thing to focus on is "business". This is the Harvard MBA mindset where everything is a product, and it doesn't matter if the company makes toothpaste, is an architecture firm, makes fighter jets or produces software. At that point (and we reached it 5 years ago or so), people become "resources", and resources constitute a commodity, judged only on unit price.

So, you've got "skills sets" and other de-humanizing processes like poorly-typeset 20-question Java tests for determining whether applicants can even enter the process.

I think it's incumbent upon all current employees to attempt to subvert this dehumanizing, Taylorist agenda. I personally have filled out a "skill set" for my (off shore) replacement that probably requires at least 3 people to fulfill, and one of the required "skills" is pretty obscure.

I haven't managed to get employment of any kind going through the normal channels for at least ten years now.

HR departments have no idea what to do with me.

The last time I got hired, the hardest part was finding a way to frame my experience so the HR computer wouldn't reject me after the hiring manager had decided to hire me.

my company car allowance.... lol

I have only ever got one job through conventional hiring procedures (programming a Z80 in assembler), everything else has either been directly through word-of-mouth or occasionally by handing some random a business card when they mentioned having a computer problem.