RedHat to add at least 1000 jobs in 2012, CEO says
11–19 of 19 posts
Re: RedHat to add at least 1000 jobs in 2012, CEO says
#12I currently work for AWS in Seattle, but am wanting to move back home to the midwest in the next 6 months or so. I want to stay relevant and involved in a cloud related job like I have now. Does anyone know if Red Hat would allow me to work for them as a consultant but out of the midwest? Any help our advice would be appreciated.
Re: RedHat to add at least 1000 jobs in 2012, CEO says
#13Don't get too excited. The jobs will likely be focused on India and other cheap destinations where the hiring process is quick. Red Hat is a pretty average company. Having nearly all of the talent drained into first-tier companies (Google, Twitter, Amazon) and second-tier companies (Oracle, VMware, IBM) it's closer to a third-tier company now.
Re: RedHat to add at least 1000 jobs in 2012, CEO says
#14I currently work for AWS in Seattle, but am wanting to move back home to the midwest in the next 6 months or so. I want to stay relevant and involved in a cloud related job like I have now. Does anyone know if Red Hat would allow me to work for them as a consultant but out of the midwest? Any help our advice would be appreciated.
Re: RedHat to add at least 1000 jobs in 2012, CEO says
#15Don't get too excited. The jobs will likely be focused on India and other cheap destinations where the hiring process is quick. Red Hat is a pretty average company. Having nearly all of the talent drained into first-tier companies (Google, Twitter, Amazon) and second-tier companies (Oracle, VMware, IBM) it's closer to a third-tier company now.
Twitter is first tier and Oracle is second tier? Are you aware that one company has a product that a 10th grader could prototype in an afternoon and the other sells gigantically complicated software packages that can run 100K/CPU? And IBM sells multi-million dollar computers. Maybe I don't understand the term "tier" though.
Re: RedHat to add at least 1000 jobs in 2012, CEO says
#16Don't get too excited. The jobs will likely be focused on India and other cheap destinations where the hiring process is quick. Red Hat is a pretty average company. Having nearly all of the talent drained into first-tier companies (Google, Twitter, Amazon) and second-tier companies (Oracle, VMware, IBM) it's closer to a third-tier company now.
Twitter is first tier and Oracle is second tier? Are you aware that one company has a product that a 10th grader could prototype in an afternoon and the other sells gigantically complicated software packages that can run 100K/CPU? And IBM sells multi-million dollar computers. Maybe I don't understand the term "tier" though.
Re: RedHat to add at least 1000 jobs in 2012, CEO says
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twitter is first tier and Oracle is second tier? Are you aware that one company has a product that a 10th grader could prototype in an afternoon and the other sells gigantically complicated software packages that can run 100K/CPU? And IBM sells multi-million dollar computers. Maybe I don't understand the term "tier" though.
Please don't feed the troll. ;)
Re: RedHat to add at least 1000 jobs in 2012, CEO says
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please don't feed the troll. ;)
Which part you disagree with?
In any case, even the standard you're trying to apply is ridiculous. People at Google or Facebook might believe that their puzzle-solving interview process ensures that they get only the best employees (how ego-gratifying such a belief must be) but I also know dozens of people who've gone to Google so I know better. On average those people are pretty good, probably even a little better than the Red Hat average, but only a little. By the standard of actual talent that's acquired, Red Hat does just fine. It's simply not true that "nearly all" of the talent goes to any three or four companies, no matter how big or prestigious. The Red Hat contribution to the Linux kernel alone shows that they can match or exceed anyone when it comes to talent in some areas.
In fairness, I should point out that it's not all daisies and starlight at Red Hat either. It's a billion-dollar global company. Yes, they (we) hire quite a few people in other parts of the world, because - believe it or not - engineering talent is not an exclusively US trait. Like any company we try to get the best bang for the buck, and sometimes that means hiring elsewhere. It's not Red Hat's fault that wage scales in the US are unrealistically high. When you have the ability to coordinate teams in many locations, and talent is available in many locations, you take advantage of it. This can be difficult to deal with as an employee, as can the fact that the average level of social ability at Red Hat seems a bit lower than average, but it's not an issue of low technical ability as you portray it.
Re: RedHat to add at least 1000 jobs in 2012, CEO says
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which part you disagree with?
First, I disagree with the characterization of Red Hat as somehow being a lower tier than Oracle, IBM, or VMware. During my mostly startup-oriented career I've worked with hundreds of people who later went to those three companies, and in not one of those cases has anyone described an interview process any more rigorous than Red Hat's (with which I'm familiar from both sides). That's not to say that Red Hat's process…
Oracle, IBM and VMware are some of the top companies where redhatters go to work after Red Hat. Due to their size Oracle and IBM have to allow less talented people in, that's what puts them in second tier and not first. I agree that Red Hat shares some of the talent pool with Oracle and IBM, but unlike Red Hat, Oracle and IBM share some talent pool with first tier companies as well, which puts them in the superior second tier.
I think you have the realistic picture, but you are presenting it a bit more positively than it should be.
Everyone can do the math for NumberOfH1Bs/TotalEmployees or compare the normalized inflow/outflow of employees between the companies. You can take rough (but unbiased) numbers from myvisajobs and linkedin company statistics page. Last year on both accounts Red Hat was losing by far more than 1:2.
It doesn't matter how Google or Facebook hire, what matters is if a Red Hat employee is asked to move to Google or Facebook even without pay raise the number of those who say yes will be significantly higher than those from Google asked to move to Red Hat.
I apply this rule, account for the salaries, the H1B visas and other indicators from linkedin to purify the results (exclude non-engineering employees).
Even if you throw away workforce analytics and look at innovation opportunity both Oracle and IBM make cooler things than Red Hat which attracts top talent - Watson, IBM Research, Oracle Labs and so on. You have to give them credit for that.
Engineering talent may not be US trait but again it all boils down to asking someone in an asian country to stay home or move to US. The answer predominantly will be yes. When you hire talent in Asia you demonstrate that she is less valuable to you than companies who do H1B or other. This is one of the reasons H1B is a good indicator about talent level in a US company.