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Can Open Source guy trusted ?

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by kudincendol

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I'm working in a corporate sector where my job is setting up and maintaining Linux servers. I have a lot of unnecessary problems when maintaining Linux servers and application. Most of them can be prevented or can be solve very quickly if it is done using my standard installation procedure (and it has been proven).

All of my collegue (except 1) and bosses does not have background in Open Source and does not understand the Open Source development model.

The problem is that they usually argue many of my suggestion to solve crisis. (Most of the crisis required team work to solve it) But when they did finally trust me, it already too late because my boss told me that I always took long time to solve the crisis.

The thing is it took long to solve problems because I have to argue and find prove of my solution or prove of what I said before I can implement my suggestion. Most of the time I have to ask the vendor for the solution though their solution is actually the same as what I have suggested earlier to my collegue and my boss. This is because they asked me to ask my vendor. Unfortunately it usually took 1 day to 1 weeks to get answers from the vendors, because most of the problem require them to analyse their log files or something. Whereas if they trust me usually it took only a few minutes to a few hours to solve.

Fortunately, I have one collegue who always understood technically the problem that I faced and so far never let me down. Let just called him Mr 'eye'. He always have some kind of the same thinking whenever a crisis arise. So, whenever we have problem or crisis where we do not have to ask other people to help us, usually it only took us a few minutes to a few hours to solve it.

Is there a way to make people trust my Open Source skill ?

Or is it me who having trouble explaining things to my collegues and bosses ? If so, why my collegue Mr 'eye' can easily explain it to others ? Is it because he has higher academic qualification and I'm not ?

Or maybe many IT professional still does not understand how support works in Open Source ?

Or maybe some senior IT have ego where they don't want to be seen as non-capable as the new staffs.

Can anybody explain to me how ? Or maybe just share their experience ?

17 replies

by denwasson

If you document that you had the solution at a particular time, then management tells you to contact the vendor, do it. If the vendor has the same solution, it should be apparent to your management that they can start trusting you. If not, start looking for another job.

In your posting, you asked "Or is it me who having trouble explaining things to my collegues and bosses ?". I'd have to say 'yes', as reading it was a bit difficult. This was due to errors in grammar.

by kudincendol

FYI, when I explained to my collegeus and bosses, I did not used English language but I use my country language.

If your judge me based from my grammar, I don't think that was the issue with my collegues and bosses.

On you suggestion to find another job, thank you. I have been thinking on doing that for a long time but the problem is that I don't have a degree. Many of my ex-employer look upon my skill but my current employer judge people based on their university qualification. Probably that is why people don't trust me.

Is it the same with other organization ? Did they also judge IT people based from their University qualification ?

Note: University qualification refers to Degree/MSc/Phd from University of bla..bla..bla.. but not CCNA, CCIE or RHCE.

by absolutely

Your English is no [b]worse[/b] than most US-born English speakers, but Americans may have trouble understanding you at first because you make [b]different[/b] errors than we do.

University qualifications help, but demonstrated competence in a professional environment is also important. You seem to have that.

by brian.kiser

Communication may be the problem. I am having trouble understanding what you're trying to get across. I understand what Open Source is, but am not sure how that's causing support problems in your situation. Plus, your question, "Is there a way to make people trust my Open Source skill ?" is a little bizarre.

I'm not trying to make you feel bad. I just wanted you to know you aren't coming across clearly to me.

Without knowing your situation, I'd hazard a guess at other potential problems:

1. Your boss doesn't respect your opinion (I've seen that many times),

2. Maybe you are taking too long to solve the crisis, as your boss suggested.

3. Maybe your boss has unrealistic expectations as far as time to solve a problem.

I've had situations where my boss didn't respect my opinion. Usually it was because a "more trusted" individual had the bosses' ear, and his advice was contrary to mine. I've also had bosses who thought any support problem could be solved in 5 minutes. :)

by kudincendol

Sorry about my written English. I'm not good in explaining things in English as it is my second language. I'm continuing my studies actually.

But thank you because finally I got somebody that probably understand what I'm going through.

In the department where I worked, we only have 2 people who have Open Source experience for not less than 2 years. That is my collegue and myself. 2 years ago when I joined this company, my direct boss is sceptic about Open Source. He tought that Open Source Software or Operating System are not reliable and most importantly there is not support. For him, he likes to get personal attention from the vendors. For me, it does not matter because I'm a fast learner.

Yes, you are correct about 2 things:-
1. That my boss does not respect my opinion. Don't know maybe because I only got Diploma while my collegue got Degree.
2. It taking too long to solve the crisis. Well yes, because most of the time, the crisis have to be solved with other IT people from other department. Unfortunately, those people always argue on my solution but listen to the vendors advice.

What irritate me is that when I talked to the vendors adding my own suggestion to theirs, the vendors totally agreed. And I think I'm wasting 2 or more days just to pass suggestion from vendors to my bosses. If my bosses trust me, would it be better if they just accept my idea and it probably would took only a few minutes to solve it ?

I don't know why some IT people holding a Degree, talking the same language as mine, face-to-face, cannot accept ideas from my collegue and myself. And both of us are the only Open Source people in the IT department.

by brian.kiser

I don't think the diploma/degree is the problem. Lots of good IT guys don't have a degree. The more I think about it, it's probably about his distrust of open source more than anything else. I've had bosses who would rather pay thousands for commercial software because it's "supported" by a vendor, rather than use free open source. I understand their logic, but don't always agree with it.

All you can do, imo, is hang with your boss and over time (and many good recommendations from you) he will learn to respect your opinion.

Good luck!

by wayne m.

I would suggest that the communication difficulty may be due to poor logical structure, rather than anything specific to English grammar or spelling. I would suggest some of the following.

Pick a specific topic for writing. Edit out anything that does not directly support the topic. If you have more than one topic to discuss, use separate e-mails, memos, or whatever. Multiple topics just cause confusion and prevent you from leading the reader towards your conclusion.

One of the most common structures for organization is the "tell them three times" form: introduction, details, summary. In the introduction, tell them what you are going to tell them. Let them know what details to pay attention to and why. Now provide the details. Finally, use a summary to bring it all to a close. The summary is usually a restatement of the intorduction with a reference to the more critical details.

Work on organizing your communications to your boss, vendors, and peers. With a well structured approach, you can get your point across despite mistakes in grammar or spelling.

by tony hopkinson

Show them before and after. saved this secured that ...
Get some procedures and practices going for waht you have in play, presentation / training.
How much does it cost to get a vendor solution. I fixed three problems in vendor supplied source, sent them the fixes. My boss cancelled their maintenance contract, also started supporting the OS(VMS) instead of through external vendor, saved the firm ?25k a year.
Money is where you get 'em.

by kudincendol

My boss is sceptic about Open Source solution. Usually he will keep arguing about "no support".

Maybe I need to call Torvalds to come over. Hahaha.

That's funny because I don't think he will. And further more it is not worth it every cents.

It is just some people will always sceptic about Open Source solution.

by tony hopkinson

is not the issue, it's cover. Either in terms of availability or expertise. I had enough expertise and I was half an hour away.
There are external suppliers of support for open source solutions. In fact that's how a lot of them make their money. Closed boys generally make it off the software itself, and to my mind introduce support issues so you can pay for it again. The only way you can come to appreciate the value of open source is to join in, if you aren't a member of the community, you gave to rely on other people with no contract in operation. Bean counters don't like that lack of guarantee, the fact that most support of closed source is utterly crap doesn't matter at all, it's written down, a provision made, ass covered.

by kudincendol

Thank you for your compliment. I take both of your comments as compliment. But my employer probably did not see that.

by wayne m.

I am mainly working on my inferences from the post, but it appears that your expectations do not match those of your boss. I do not think he wants his staff fixing software purchased from others. He does not want you (or others) rewriting the code; he wants you to coordinate the process.

I think the issue is not one of trust, but of expectations. Your boss expects the vendors to make the appropriate changes; your skill level is not in question. From the term "vendors" I presume that your boss is paying outside organizations to provide the software support for your systems. He has made the decision that they will support the software and your role is largely to report problems and install updates.

I can't tell you if your boss's approach is right or wrong, but he is your boss. He has chosen how tasks are to be delegated between staff and vendors. To fight him on this is to challenge his authority to make those decisions. When you are in charge, then you can make the decisions, but for now, you should comply with the boss's approach.

by x-marcap

The ugly guy make a suggestion. He is ignored. The good-looking guy makes the same suggestion, and makes a hand gesture. The committee eats up the second suggestion, because he did this (makes a hand gesture like a hammer blow with open hand.)

I think most of it is personal dislike. I started routing suggestions to people I know don't like me through other people. I still get the job done, but I get peeved about it also. There is no winning. You either find ways to deal within the situation or move on...

Good Luck!

by kudincendol

I teach a new linux-guy everything he should knew, and I even suggest that he suggest what I suggest to my boss, without even touching on my name at all, as if he was the one who made it up. And guess what, my boss and everyone else accept without argument.

And since then I started to do in that way. But I still don't like it. It shows how hiprokrit some people can be.

We should not judge the books by it cover.

by the chad

This has nothing to do with FOSS. It sounds like your management doesn't trust you or your skills.

There are three things you can do: find another place to work, regain the trust, or do nothing (status quo).

Usually when people start off a new position, management has a certain level of trust for that person (otherwise, why hire him/her?). Trust can be lost in any number of ways; perhaps you failed to keep a commitment, or are a victim of politics. Perhaps your supervisor is not trusted (guilty by association).

You say that your solutions are always the correct ones, so your technical ability is not in question from an objective standpoint. Therefore, subjectively, you must be "less trusted" in the eyes of your management. (Isn't it funny how external consultants/companies are _always_ trusted more than employees?)

Either way, in order to be successful at the current position, you must regain the trust. How you do that is another conversation in itself, but since you're a bright person, you can probably figure it out for yourself.

by kudincendol

Somebody posted a reply in Techrepublic discussion forums. He wrote that he was transferred to a country at middle east as a junior something. He was previously worked with a company is US.

He wrote that while he was just as a junior computer something title, he was the only person who have detail knowledge on ICT. Other ICT guys does not even understand what he was talking about when he made some suggestion to the company.

To tell you, in Asian country, our work culture is the same as in the middle east. Most of my collegues and ex-collegues does not have detail knowledge nor wanting to learn in detail about anything. But things change now because of KPI. Nowadays more and more ICT people keen to try to understand ICT in detail.

Previously they just simply want the project done, no matter what the implication in future. That's an end-user thinking. And we are not.

So, it is not just about distrust about Open Source, but more because some people just don't want to use their brain. They just want the easy way - oursource the support.

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