Open Source professionals higher skills, higher paid: survey
A new survey of companies and individuals supplying Open Source solutions and services claims to show that Open Source IT professionals make more money than their proprietary IT counterparts because they're more highly skilled.
The Australian survey, Open Source census 2007,
funded by IBM and Fujitsu, was conducted by Open Source strategic
consulting firm Waugh Partners under the guidance of NICTA (National
ICT Australia). The survey sample included 327 individuals working on
Australian Open Source projects in Australia and abroad, as well as 129
companies providing Open Source services. The Open Source census 2007
is claimed to be the first national research project to study companies
and contributors involved in the Australian Open Source industry.
According to Waugh Partners co-proprietor Jeff Waugh, individuals who
are doing Open Source work on their own time or who are getting paid
for it - tend to earn more than others in the IT industry.
"The median wage for Open Source workers is greater," says Waugh.
"Those who are working full time on Open Source tend to earn quite a
bit more indeed."
So why are Open Source workers getting paid more?
"Generally, they are more skilled and they are doing things that more
deeply technical," says Waugh. "Their experience of the Open Source
community provides them with a much deeper, more practical education
than others might get.
"In the average computing science degree, you generally learn about
writing software but you very rarely learn about reading source code.
This has been a problem for a long time now, The industry really wants
people who can do the most important part of practical software
development which is reading other people's source code and modifying
it rather than writing it from scratch.
