jobs & salaries

[der.hans]

Am 15. Sep, 2005 schwätzte Josh Coffman so:

> 'tag

Tag.

>   Here's my dirty little secret. I'm a windows
> developer. I'm pretty good at it and make a good
> living. I've switched to linux at home(except a dual
> boot for some side-work) mostly because I was tired of
> MS annoyances, the cost, and I was generally curious.
>
>   One area I've still see MS more favorably is in
> development. Part of that is because I've been doing
> it for a little while. (Ok, maybe more than a little.)
> While I like Eclipse, I haven't seen dev tools that
> come close to Visual Studio even with it's stupid
> annoyances. Although, CVS has got to be better than
> SourceSafe; that's what I call crap.

I can't compare the GUI stuff. I have X, so I can run more terminals :).
Well, and for web browsing.

>   Also, I have no idea how one would earn a living in
> linux other than network or server admin stuff. So
> please educate me. What do people use develop apps?
> What sort of salaries or contract rates are out there?
> Anyone else ever made the switch from MS-dev to linux
> dev?

I was lucky to really never have used computers before discovering *NIX. I
have used other platforms on ocassion, but I generally avoid it.

I have also been lucky that I have generally been able to find good
employment doing GNU/Linux and *NIX work. Most of the time it's been as a
system administrator, but there have been times such as the last two years
at Cisco where I've worked as a developer.

All of my work is *NIX based. Mostly Perl, shell and PHP. Then again, at
Cisco I've mostly gotten to choose the languages I used and I decided the
best tools for the job were the languages I know :).

I'm earning OK. Dunno how it compares to others, but I'm far from
starving.

Over the years I've been contacted about many jobs I just wasn't qualified
to do. Many of them paid quite well. If I were half-decent with Java I
would likely have lots more opportunities and get more money.

There are lots of low-paying gigs out there as well.

Here's a place to see some of the opportunities that are available.

http://phoenix.craigslist.com/

Oh, and in the end you just need one good, stable gig anyway :).

ciao,

der.hans
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