[Wftl-lug] Sysadmin hires in Canada

[Jon Biddell]

> In our Oakville, Ontario office, I am hiring (or rather, people in  
> my office are hiring) a new manager of system administration. We  
> need a Windows guy because I am fighting a losing OSS battle: M$ FUD  
> and marketing has won, and our CEO, supported by sales managers, has  
> mandated (against my wishes) Office, Outlook and Exchange. The  
> latter of course means active directory, NT servers, etc etc.  Sad,  
> but a reality I will live with. Inferior systems, and systems  
> designed to sell more M$ stuff, not to  make our lives easier.

Welcome ro reality - as I have always said, Microsoft is not primarily  
a software company, they are a marketing company - and unfortunately a  
bloody good one at that..

Oh, and you'll be wanting Windows Server 2000 or 2003, not NT id you  
want to run Exchange. I've just completed the Advanced Exchange 2003  
course (hey, the company paid $3k for it, who was I to argue !!) and  
Exchange is the only mail system I've ever found that is more of  pain  
to configure than sendmail - and if you've read the O'Rielly sendmail  
manual you'll understand how bad that is..;-)
>
> Anyway - I also need the new hire to be a Linux guy - all our  
> systems are Linux based (the ones we sell as well as the ones tha  
> trun our business, and the SaaS servers).
>
> Resumes are pouring in, but to my surprise, even though we are  
> asking for Linux knowledge as well as Windows knowledge, everyone  
> who responds has deep Windows knowledge, and most fail miserably in  
> the UNIX/Linux department. Where are we not making progress? Is the  
> Canadian market heading closer toward "no-one has ever been fired  
> for buying Microsoft" instead of less? Opinions?
>

This is no different to the Australian market - when I was job-hunting  
I found exactly the same situation, even from companies that had a  
large number of *nix or Solaris servers - Windows experience in even  
more depth was a paramount requirement, even in one company where they  
advertised for a Linux Sydadmin.

Why ? Microsoft's marketing. It used to be that no-one ever got fired  
for buying IBM, now it's Microsoft. It's the "safe bet", even in  
companies that know it's the wrong way to go. After all, ANYONE can  
administer a Windows system (HA !!).

Until companies have the guts to make the hard decisions, like Ernie  
Ball (google it - they took Microsoft on and won !!) then the  
situation won't change.

Jon



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