Linux: a bad career move?

[JimmyJazz]

the past few years I have been using linux exclusively, I have learned all about and how to program in it, but after looking over my local job classifieds it seems like all the companies want strong skills with such things as Microsoft servers and VB.

Am I in trouble here and will my skills in Linux ever pay off?

[andlinux21]

your skills will pay off dont be frustrated there are lots of jobs that require some type of *nix skills at least here they do and you will have a leg up on a lot of people.

[briancurtin]

ive done a lot of looking at jobs over the last 3 years of college and i have never once came across a development job that wanted anything to do with linux. my current company (well i start after graduation on may 22) is looking to port our applications to linux from what i had briefly heard in my first phone interview with HR, but havent heard much after that. my team doesnt deal with that as far as i know, so i probably wont have much to do with that. if you are looking into being an admin and such, linux will come into play a bit more often there.

[aysiu]

Move to Portland (http://portland.craigslist.org/cgi-bin/search?areaID=9&subAreaID=0&query=linux&catAbbreviation=jjj)

[nocturn]

the past few years I have been using linux exclusively, I have learned all about and how to program in it, but after looking over my local job classifieds it seems like all the companies want strong skills with such things as Microsoft servers and VB.

Am I in trouble here and will my skills in Linux ever pay off?

Your skills will definately pay off!

I'm in much of the same position as your are, but I managed to stay mostly in the Unix world about 5 years after I graduated. I did a lot of Solaris system administration, which is where Linux experience really pays off.

Since 2004 however, I took a job that is more Windows focussed, only 20% Linux/Unix. And I have noticed that the skillset I aquired on Unix makes met better at Windows than most Windows-minded people.
The main difference here is that even the average windows sysadmin does not have a very deep technical knowledge. They admin a Windows network without knowing what kerberos is and how it works, what a principal or a ticket is, yet active directory works for them because it is click-and-run. Until something fails, that is.

In the words of Henry Spencer, "Those who do not understand Unix are destined to reinvent it, poorly".
The biggest drawback of your Unix/Linux skillset is that some things that are dead easy on *nix are very difficult on windows.

A recent issue I encountered was the lack of a linear internal system clock like the Unix epoch, stemming from the fact that windows stores its time internally in local time instead of UTC (as *nix does). It took some VB(6) code to get around this.

That said, Linux usage is rising spectacularly and in a couple of years, your knowledge of it may just make you a very wanted person.

[nocturn]

Move to Portland (http://portland.craigslist.org/cgi-bin/search?areaID=9&subAreaID=0&query=linux&catAbbreviation=jjj)

I'm packing already ;-)

[ssam]

http://www.ubuntu.com/employment

or if you are a student http://code.google.com/soc/