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Open Source Professionals Are Preferred Over Others: CollabNet
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"If I have to hire for the engineering teams, I would look for open source exposure in every hire. We are always glad to hire such professionals," said Karthi Swaminathan, vice president, site operations and engineering, CollabNet.
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Wednesday, August 01, 2012:
If you are an open source professional, you have an advantage over others, when it comes to finding a job. Professionals with exposure in open source technology are considered better engineers and have an edge over others. Companies like CollabNet are always on a look-out for such professionals and provide them adequate platform for exploring their love for open source.
In an exclusive conversation with EFYTimes.com, Karthi Swaminathan, vice president, site operations and engineering, CollabNet, spoke about how exposure in open source technology helps a candidate get an edge. Excerpts:
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What portion of your business is based on open source technology?
Subversion, one of the very successful and popular open source projects, is core part of our enterprise applications. We also use some emerging open source technologies like Git. We are the only enterprise product provider, which supports both Subversion and Git in our products. A portion of our business is based on open source technology but having said that, we also have proprietary products. When it comes to product development, our core DNA of the company is behind the open source principals. We don't try to monetize heavily on the open source part of it but we do use open source stack in our enterprise products. We also provide a lot of value added services for Subversion. We have come up with an extension of Subversion called Subversion Edge, which is a popular download and we offer that for free as well. We have made it easy for the start-ups and early adopters of Subversion to get started pretty fast using Subversion Edge. We provide value added services like support and consulting for open source Subversion.
What advantages do you see in developing solutions for open source?
Open source by its nature attracts some of the greatest talents across the industry to come together and contribute. A mature open source product is will solve a specific issue and is technically sound.
The point that you mentioned about open source attracting the best talent in the industry, does that apply in the Indian context as well?
Yes. If we look at this scenario in India 5-6 years back, the level of talent available for contributing to open source was minimal and we were one of the pioneers in that space. We have engineers who contribute to the Subversion project from India. I believe one of the first committers from Asia to Subversion project is an employee of us. But of late, things are changing for good. We are starting to see many people making a lot of contribution to various open source projects, which is really good.
Do you see a rise in people adopting open source technology as a career option as well?
It is an interesting thing. It basically depends on a person's inclination as well. There are people who have completely adopted open source as their option, irrespective of the remuneration. They just want to contribute to the society. People now know that by working on open source projects, they get to collaborate with best minds across industry. It gives them lot of respect, visibility and marketability.
Does that mean making career in open source is becoming attractive because the number of options available have increased?
I don't know whether I can say jobs are increasing but open source contribution adds value to the profile of the candidate. It certainly depends on what contribution they are making and what open source project are they working on.
What kind of exposure of open source technology do you look for in a candidate when you hire at CollabNet?
We at CollabNet look for a variety of technologies. We obviously look for the best and the brightest in the industry when hiring. Any kind of exposure or direct association with open source projects is an added advantage. We contribute a lot to the open source projects. That also gives the candidates a lot of opportunity to not just work for the business needs of the company but also contribute to the open source community.
What portion of your hiring includes professionals with exposure in open source technology?
Like I said, while hiring for the engineering teams, I would look for open source exposure. We are always glad to hire professionals with open source contribution. I cannot say a percentage in this case but I can confidently say that professionals with experience in open source technology are preferred over the others. If there is some very good talent which does not have experience with open source technology, we encourage them to get associated with any open source projects of their interest when they come on board.
Diksha P Gupta, EFYTIMES News Network
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(2 Votes)
Karthi is right.