You know what really gets me going lately?  Sensationalistic
journalists looking to muddy the waters of Open Source.  Take, for
instance, this article titled “Will Patent Battles End Free Linux.”  What a joke.

First,
patent issues have been going on for decades between proprietary
companies.  Heck, most lawyers know this already and many have
admitted that the only reason that Open Source projects are getting
targeted is that they play by a more open strategy to begin with. 
Many of the patent holding companies rely also on the sheer volume of
patents in the system, and the ambiguity of most of those patents, to
prevent an adequate search of patented technology so that they can lay
in wait while somebody else implements “their” idea, only then moving
in to say “hey, that’s mine, you have to pay me to use that,” after
much time, energy and (usually) money has already been spent on the
effort.

Anyway, I just wanted to point this out for what it
is.  Patent Battles are a problem with Business and Ethics, not
with proprietary versus open source.  I would venture to say that
at least as many, if not more, proprietary projects trample on the IP
rights of others and simply never get reported due to a lack of
informational access and the cost and risk of exposing potential
offenses.  Way to play your ethics cards people, way to go…

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Lately I have been going through a few classes and discussions about
general life principles and how to get by our current world.  I
have learned some interesting things about job searching, career
tracks, and the futility in which we seem to get caught in around the
topic.

<soapbox rant>

Today, I ran into a blog post found here,
that completely misses the boat, and continues to steer unsuspecting
people to the broken system that has no interest in actually helping
the potential employee find the potential employer.  The system
has the employer’s interest solely in mind as they reduce the masses to
a short bullet list of past experiences, skill sets and, hopefully, a
good indication of what they can do for the employer.  The system
is broken, plain and simple.

How can you possibly reduce the sum
life experience, environment, moral values, attitudes, intentions and
priorities of one human being into a single or double page resume that
would indicate what type of contribution they would make to an
organization.  There is no way.  Even the interview process
is streamlined to fit a complex individual into a cookie cutter slot
that fulfills only the CURRENT and narrow view of
what an employer needs to do at that moment.  Truth be told,
nearly every job that I know of is a living, changing set of
requirements, responsibilities and opportunities for growth of the
individual and the organization.  Organizations that foster this
view tend to keep employees longer, spend less time finding quality
employees and perform better in the business world.  Note that
this is backed up solely by my personal experience and gut instinct,
which has proven an effective idicator for me in my short lifetime.

</soapbox rant>

Now
that that’s done with.  What most people don’t realize is that the
most effective method of job searching isn’t done via online job
postings, or salary surveys, or anything else like that.  The most
effective method is done purely via networking and excercising that
network.  Most people also don’t realize that networking is one of
the best ways to generate sales leads, hire people (the other end of
the situation at hand), collaborate with peers, and a host of other
topics as well.

So the reason that articles like this really get
me going is that everything I do for a company can be considered
networking if done appropriately.  Since networking is also the
way I search for jobs, the only way they can (and should) protect there
assets and investments in me as an employee is to treat me fairly and
provide room for growth that will dually benefit me as an individual
and the organization(s) that I work for or with.

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