The Open Road

Microsoft is expected to announce layoffs soon. Google is laying off 100 of its recruiters as it slows hiring. (In case you're looking for a date, apparently Google's recruiting team is, ahem, well-favored in the aesthetics department.) Even Apple, as CNET's headline reads, is planning for life "without Jobs."

OK, so the "Jobs" in question is Steve Jobs, and he's scheduled to return to his day job in six months, but you get the picture.

The downturn is hitting open source, too. Despite earlier prognostications to the contrary, I'm hearing news of a swelling number of open-source companies that are shaving headcount, including some of the biggest names. (No, Red Hat is not one of them.)

I suppose that this was inevitable, as smart companies do smart things: when the economy tightens, these companies, along with leaders like Google and Microsoft, are going to ensure profitability.

I just regret to see good people released into the wild, and some of the people affected are very, very good (and mostly on the sales side, from what I've seen).

The point, however, is that no one is completely immune. That's not a surprise. But it is unwelcome news.

Ever since June, when Ed Boyajian left his post as Red Hat vice president of North America sales to become CEO of EnterpriseDB, Red Hat has been operating without an equivalent sales executive in North America.

Regional executives Ian Knight, Sean Doherty, and others have delivered the numbers under the guidance of Alex Pinchev, Red Hat's executive vice president of global sales. But the company needed to replace Boyajian.

Red Hat on Monday announced the appointment of Greg Symon as vice president and general manager of North American sales. Symon comes to Red Hat from Intel, where he has spent 22 years of his career, most recently as senior managing director and founder of Intel's Global Software Relations organization within Intel's Software Solutions Group.

Red Hat has close relations with Intel, so Symon will be intimately familiar with Red Hat's organization and should require little time to get up to speed in his new role.

Symon brings more than software sales experience to the table. He has depth in business development, a key need for Red Hat as it seeks to expand and grow beyond its Linux and middleware businesses. But he also fits the Red Hat bill with stints as worldwide director of Intel's Customer Solutions Group Influencer Sales Team, Americas director of the Architecture Management organization, manager of the Business Development organization, and director of the Strategic Relations Managers Group.

In short, Symon is not a one-trick sales pony, and he has the sort of breadth of experience and expertise that Red Hat has traditionally sought in its executives.

Boyajian was a great sales executive, and he remains revered by Red Hatters. By the looks of it, Symon is cut from a different cloth than Boyajian, but he should have the same ability to earn and eventually command respect within the Red Hat sales organization.

TechNewsWorld suggests that the technology industry may be relatively insulated from job losses in the recession. Yes, technology has its share of job cuts, and any cut is painful if you're on the receiving end, but there are bright spots in the economy.

Open source is one of them.

While the article points to a few different areas of technology that should comparatively thrive in a downturn, as I note in the article, open source is particularly well-suited to a troubled economy:

In a recession, headcount looks like a cost center, but open source can turn employees into profit centers -- or, at worst, into less costly cost centers.

Why? Because to the extent that you're savvy with repurposing others' code, it means you can write a lot less code while simultaneously getting a lot more done.

Google is perhaps the classic example of this. Google writes a heck of a lot of software, but it also borrows heavily from Linux, MySQL, various Apache projects, etc. Google arguably wouldn't be Google without open source, as it's dependent on the cost and flexibility advantages that open source delivers.

Enterprise IT can take a cue from Google and make its employees more efficient by encouraging them to use more open source, a topic that Google's Chris DiBona will be addressing at this year's Open Source Business Conference. For those that already do, you're ahead of the pack (and making a nice income as a result).

Do more with less. That's the open-source ethos, and one that should pay handsomely in a recession.

VMware, perhaps recognizing its exposure from open-source virtualization solutions, is looking for an open-source expert to help with a range of things, including help to create "a test framework for a custom Linux distribution." VMware is seeking a "Senior Software Reliability Engineer," as noted on an open-source group on LinkedIn, but perhaps it should be looking for an open-source savvy IP attorney?

Why? Well, VMware is on the hot seat about a possible violation of the GPL related to its use of Linux, and given its public disclosures of the significant amount of open source it uses in its products.

Regardless, it seems fair to suggest that VMware has got the open-source bug now, and is starting to get smarter about how it works with open source. Maybe you can help? You can send a message to Ernie Salle to get started. His email is in the graphic below.

Alfresco is hiring for a few positions here in the United States (Enterprise and mid-market sales executives, plus a consultant), and I'm always surprised by how much work it is to find good people for good jobs. We're doing extraordinarily well - people should be beating down the doors to work here.

Or take Ringside Networks. Shaun Connolly and I exchanged emails today about its search for a vice president of Business Development. Cool company with a great team. Why wouldn't people be beating a path to the Ringside door, so that Ringside wouldn't have to waste time hunting for good people?

And yet it requires a ton of work to find and hire good people.

Why? Presumably there is a wide range of people out there looking for good work. Why isn't a simple job posting enough to find them?

It's not hugely different from any consumer purchase. There are things that I want. Why can't I just post what I want and let technology lead buyers to me? Truly, search is in its infancy, both in e-commerce and in recruitment. But perhaps we should stop calling it "search" and focus on the "find" aspect of the equation...?

After all, I don't want to search. I want to find. Who will help me find?

Much has been written about Google's intensive hiring process (including its mind-vaporizing interview questions), and how it manages to land the cream of the engineering crop. But yesterday some friends of mine got to see it firsthand.

I was in downtown San Jose for a company event and was waiting for some colleagues over at the Marriott. They were a bit late and apologized, indicating that they would have been on time but had run into a swarm of beautiful young girls pouring out of the Fairmont Hotel. My CEO asked what they were doing and were told,

We work for Google.

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Dave Rosenberg hates getting emails from would-be employees who obviously haven't researched his company to know what MuleSource does, how they'd add value, what Dave does (He's CEO, but that doesn't mean he makes all the hiring decisions), etc.

I concur, though not as strenuously as Dave. It's not very hard to figure out what I care about and what sort of person my company, Alfresco needs.

All of which made me laugh at this "job request" from Javier Soltero, CEO of Hyperic and future sales grunt at MuleSource. Javier clearly gets these requests, too, since he writes them as well as he does his standard "I am an Nigerian prince" emails (Hey, everyone needs a side job):

Dear Mr. Rosenberg,

Do you need a strategically-tactical, salesy product genius who can help you achieve unmeasurable goals while understating expectations?

Allow me to introduce myself. I am Javier Soltero, experienced rookie, Puerto Rican, and a fan of your earlier death metal work. I believe my skills in coconut mashing, ninjitsu, and open sorse will most definitely be of use to your organization.

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Google remembers everything. Like what you wrote on your Facebook page that seemed so funny at the time. Until the hiring manager discovers that site and you don't get the job.

The Christian Science Monitor cartoon above refers to the kind of things you search for online going into personnel files, but much about us can be gleaned well before we're offered the position. As the article above notes:

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