I have been meaning to post about an observation I have made in recent months concerning the need for Linux System Administrators. This observation has come mostly in the form of my industry contacts asking if I can help them find Linux expertise especially relating to system administration. Now I still sense that my contacts do not feel they need to pay whatever it takes to acquire Linux help, maybe that is from the notion that Linux expertise could be found in poor college CS majors ready to give up on college and make some much needed cash. This does worry me for a few reasons. First there just aren’t enough poor students possessing Linux skills. Yes they are being snatched up as soon as they are ready to give up on college and yes there are opportunities that do pay them well. Second concern for me is that my employees with Linux resumes may want to jump ship. Valid fear but I fight that with quality of life, professional freedom and as much opportunity as higher education can muster up.

Out of curiosity I did some simple research. Indeed.com is a fairly large repository of IT job opportunities. On their site do a search for “Linux Administrator” or “Linux System Administrator” match that up against the “Microsoft” equivalent. The hits come out about 600 to 15 in favor of Linux. I confirmed this on a few other job search sites which may be enough evidence to get our Computer Science department to push a bit harder to steer our students in the Linux direction. So why the increased demand for Linux. What are the important applications requiring higher level Linux support. And it is not just the Web although Apache Web Servers do control the Web presence on the Internet. No, it is mobile computing which every entity with a Web presence is scrambling to get a handle on. It just so happens that mobile computing requires manipulation of traditional web delivery primarily driven by performance. Simple translates to fast and Linux is simple compared to Microsoft. Of course the main demand for Linux is to fullfil the need for maintaining Linux Operating Systems that many critical enterprise solutions depend upon. So this increase in Mobile computing is just the tipping point.

The world is shifting to the Web which is being accessed more and more by mobile devices and the Mobile modified Web runs best on Linux. Now the world’s content providers need Linux expertise for a competitive advantage. This is over simplified but it is a simple fact that can’t be overlooked.