Gentoo for Business?

[Joshua Zeidner]

On 1/30/08, Kristian Erik Hermansen <kristian.hermansen at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jan 30, 2008 1:38 PM, David <david at damnetwork.net> wrote:
> > Speaking only of the 'marketable skills' aspect, I disagree.   When we are interviewing
> > potential new linux people, I prefer one who has gentoo experience.   Specifically
> > because of what you need to go through to get it installed and working.  Now, thats not
> > to say I disqualify someone who doesn't have gentoo exp.   However, given 2 almost
> > identical candidates, I'll go with the one with gentoo exp.  Heck, they don't even have
> > to be identical...
>
> I'd have to somewhat agree with that, but not so strictly.  I
> definitely learned a lot from doing a stage1 install and being an
> early 2001 RC Gentoo user.  Another good interview question though is
> to ask your candidate to name as many two character unix commands in
> one minute.  See how many they get and compare that result against the
> others :-)
> --

  these kinds of folks may be useful in some situations, but I find
that they can be absolutely terrible when it comes to considering
costs.  You may know 1500 unix shell commands, but there are other
skills that are important in system construction.  Being aware of
solutions markets is one of them.  In most cases I find that people
have a strong tendency to hire what looks to be a smaller or dumber
version of themselves - which is a surefire way to have an utterly
useless company.  This is one reason why big companies can win out- I
find hiring practices among small companies (esp. in the Phoenix) to
be somewhat Kafkaesque.  Many of the business owners in the 'Valley'
are just sitting on (rapidly depreciating) house equity and are
generally pretty clueless about trends in media, finance, etc.  It is
these kinds of things that seriously weigh against Phoenix as a tech
center.  I find myself having to hobble my own skills and training in
order to please the various parochial department managers and other
kinds of 'self-proclaimed geniouses' when working in Phx.  For
instance encountering someone who insists that a CS degree is
meaningless but knowledge of 'smart pointers' in C++ is invaluable and
an objective metric of your total knowledge. -jmz