Does IT Pay More To Be An Open Source Developer?

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Well, yeah - according to Matt Asay according to Channel Web according to New York City based consulting company Blue Wolf. As far as Matt goes, "If you want to make more money as an enterprise application developer, you're in luck -- if you know open source."

Now this is a Matt Asay blog post on www.news.com. He's got an interesting blog but he's also way too biased towards anything open source. I mean, with reference to open source bringing developers more satisfaction, how can he ever advice the powers that be to "Let people do interesting work, and they stick around. Make them mindlessly monitor that Windows machine, and they'll bolt." Interesting. Now where in the world did he get the notion that developers on a Windows platforms mindlessly monitor Windows machines? I'll give him the benifit of doubt. Maybe he was talking about Windows administrators in which case the same question still applies: Where in the world did he get the notion that Windows administrators in enterprises mindlessly monitors Windows machines? Or I'll still give him the benifit of doubt: maybe he's comparing LAMP developers to employees who mindlessly monitor Windows machines which is like comparing apples to elephants. I fear his bias towards open source (which I'm okay with) makes the way he presents developer and administrator work on Windows very very misleading (which I am not okay with) inorder to prove a point or two (which I'm not okay with).

So this forced me to read his advice with a pinch of salt and check out his source which was the CW article. It's good to do your own research on "research" and the last stone I could turn was the Bluewolf press release which is based on their 2008 IT salary guide which is a summary of the actual research and which you can download here. It's just two pages but the only thing I saw interesting was the expected salaries for possibly all roles you can think of. If you want to see where you stand in the industry in terms of industry standard salaries, check it out. Now I didn't get access to the actual research or the white paper so I don't know the details of how they came to their conclusions except for a few extracts I read from CW:

"The rise of open source software in application development puts developers with a specialization in those technologies in a position to ask for a 30 or 40 percent pay increase, Kirven says. "We've gotten more requests from our permanent placement division for open source developers in the last six months than in the last five or six years combined," he says. "It's not as easy as getting free software, someone has to get it up and running. LAMP is everywhere now -- these types of technologies no one heard of 18 months ago are all the sudden becoming a hot commodity."

I don't exactly buy this argument. Agreed that salaries depend on demand versus supply but coming with such a conclusion based on simple observations for a matter that has lots of variables is a bit misleading.

Consider who the type of developers we're talking about are. If you're talking about the average open source developer who is into LAMP vs the average JAVA or .Net developer, I don't think there would be a significant difference in pay scales. Who is going to pay tons of extra cash for a normal Php / MySql developer to create simple CRUD based websites over a Java/.Net developer who can do the same on their development framework? That's not something I've heard atleast from IT Service companies. Sure, maybe the industry might be close to saturation with tons of average .Net / Java developers but I'm not sure how far fetched it would be to say that you can find the same number of similar developers in the open source community too. And I know for a fact that when it comes to the need for experienced professionals for real development projects, no one is keen on hiring an average developer.

But if you're talking about high end software development by developers and architects with a good number of years in experience, I still think the conclusion in question would be debatable because both development platforms would require real skills and real experience on a wide range of projects and this is especially true when you are also talking about enterprise level systems or even internet based websites where you just can't afford to write "normal" code. I would say the same thing if someone told me that high end .Net developers and architects are paid much more than their open source counterparts. The fact is that getting the right talent with the real skills and experience for high end development on Windows based platforms is very much in shortage and I am sure many over here can testify to this. Now I am a .Net fan boy but I'm not biased in anyway against open source development and infact I love it and am keen on getting pretty deep into it. That .Net keeps evolving and getting better and better keeps me hooked on.

I would encourage anyone who reads this post and is involved with recruiting or project management or has more information to share, to let us know so we can get a clearer picture right from the front lines. Much of what I've said is based on work requirements I've heard of in places I've worked with during my stint with different clients and teams which makes me take the conclusions of the research with a pinch of salt. I know department managers who have complained about the lack of finding real .Net developers who know their stuff and are able to get deep with anything. Ditto for architects. If you notice, the same research predicts that pays will increase drastically at a time when the industry is slowing down, lay offs kicking in with companies trimming down on less productive employees and some projects being either dropped or postponed and almost everyone predicting a recession (and some guys who don't know the definition of a recession have already proclaimed we're in a recession!).

If you really need to get down and dirty with open source development, you really need talented developers just like if you need to get down and dirty with development on a Windows platform, you need really talented developers too. Both pay well.

But does the pay differ by 30% to 40%???

I don't think so. I'm very skeptical... unless someone in the know can show me the numbers or share something more that they know.


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