[Discuss] Linux/Unix jobs on the island

[Cody Swanson]

R. Langkamer wrote:
> On 8/13/07 5:20 PM, Steven Kurylo wrote:
>
>> On 8/13/07, Ronald Schouten <ron at atomeo.com> wrote:
>>> http://www.viatec.ca/ is a great for the Vitoria Tech market.
>>
>> When I was looking for work last year I found viatec to be the best.
>> I usually noticed 3-4 linux related jobs a month.
>>
>> If you get desperate there seem to be lots of windows jobs posted 
>> there too.
>
>
>     Over 90% of the tech jobs I've seen in the past decade have had 
> heavy requirements for all things microsoft. Plus the requirements for 
> over 5 years experience or a degree as well as a lot of 
> "miscellaneous" experience in just about everything else IT related. 
> Basically, employers want a jack of all trades with all the 
> certificates and over 5 years of experience. Sometimes it's just a 
> "filter" weed out the wannabes, but given some recent information I 
> have read, it's worse than that.
>
> http://www.nwdocfinder.com/9228
>
>     Here's an idea, why doesn't the government provide certification 
> to local citizens through subsidy? Citizen gets a certificate to get a 
> better job and the government looks good, very good. Of course they 
> will say it's not that easy and that there is a brain shortage in 
> addition to an employee shortage. Yeah right!
>
>
>     Any ways, not to rain on your parade, just a little discussion 
> about the other side.
>     Good luck in your search, but don't be surprised if you have work 
> on and in places you wouldn't expect. I concur though, viatec is a 
> very good place to look. Lots of variety. Try subscribing to their 
> weekly newsletter.
>     As for me, I'm looking to move out of "the land of milk and 
> honey". People expect too much for too little here I have found.
>

Agreed, it's not just like that in Victoria, it's like that everywhere. 
I was recently job hunting in Calgary and lots of the interviews I did 
were for people that wanted 5+ years of every  unix variant, in depth 
knowledge of storage, networking and programming and they wanted it for 
40K/year. Most of the time I don't even let them finish the screening 
interview, no sense wasting their time and mine. It's funny, the same 
employers that are crying about the shortage of skilled labour are the 
ones making all these unreasonable demands. One thing I found that 
stopped a lot of those calls is I removed the windows experience on my 
publicly (monster, workopolis etc) posted resumes. Saved me a lot of 
headaches.

I got a job with a great oil and gas company here in Calgary. Great pay 
and benefits and lots of cool hardware to play on like a 1500+ node 
linux cluster. The only problem with the job is that it's in Calgary! 
:-) My wife and I decided a while ago that we want to get out of here, 
the city is getting too big, it's no place to raise kids. Thanks 
everyone for the tips and insight, much appreciated.