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Where does The Linux Foundation believe ones time is well spent to catapult their career objectives? It is fairly apparent after reaching out to Clyde Seepersad, General Manager Training and Certification of The Linux Foundation, the cloud is the place to be. When communicating with him on a variety of topics that revolve around The Linux Foundation's certification offerings and education, the central point of focus is the cloud. Clyde provided us with a slew of information about The Linux Foundation's efforts to make sure FLOSS continues to succeed for the foreseeable future.

Interview Questions

Interview Answers

Linux Adoption

Question 1: What, in your opinion, is the biggest hindrance in preventing the Linux adoption rate within enterprise-level companies?

Clyde Seepersad: The shift to the Cloud has removed the biggest hindrance - which used to be the installed base of bare metal running other OS'es.
Question 2: What is the Linux Foundation doing to promote Linux and open source in the education space?

Clyde Seepersad: So much that it's hard to summarize. To mention just a few, our free courses are extremely popular as is our linux.com community site. We offer a generous academic discount program (email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for details) and many scholarship opportunities. 

Linux Career

Question 3: Do you expect a lower demand for Linux System Administration skills due to the increased adoption of automation and cloud technologies?

Clyde Seepersad: While it's true that improved tools now allow a single person to administer more servers than he or she could do on bare metal, it is also true that the growth of cloud based computing is astonishing. So many more businesses are now using Cloud based computing that a whole new sector has opened up that needs Admin talent.


Question 4: What technological challenges within enterprise-level companies do you anticipate to happen in the future?

Clyde Seepersad: The biggest challenge is keeping up with new tools and software projects as they become available and figuring out which ones matter for your enterprise.


Question 5: What skills would you suggest to current graduates to focus on to enhance their Linux career prospects?

Clyde Seepersad: Cloud, cloud, cloud.


Question 6: Are most of the individuals that take a training course currently employed?

Clyde Seepersad: We don't ask for employment info so couldn't really say.


Question 7: Of the individuals that may be unemployed at the time of their training, do you offer any type of placement assistance after the completion of their program?  Do you showcase their credentials to Linux Foundation corporate members?

Clyde Seepersad: We are not set up to provide one on one placement services but our programs are so well respected across the industry that most employers will take note of it on your resume.


Question 8: Does the Linux Foundation track how the training might have assisted the individual in locating a new position if needed?

Clyde Seepersad: We ask users to share their stories with us (and often feature their stories on linux.com) but we can't do comprehensive tracking. 

Education

Question 9: Do you feel that Linux should have a role in public K-12 education?  If so, what do you believe that role should be?

Clyde Seepersad: We encourage everyone to understand Linux, which is one of the reasons we made Intro to Linux available at no cost. We do recognize that each school district has to tailor it's programs to meet local needs so there's no one size fits all policy.


Question 10: What are your thoughts on integrating the Linux Foundation's training programs into High School or community college curricula similar to Red Hat's Academy program?

Clyde Seepersad: We encourage academic institutions to reach out to us via our academic partner program.


Question 11: It appears that you have provided training to universities, in particular Clemson University.  Do you partner with any particular educational institutions whereby you assist them in their engineering curriculum offerings?

Clyde Seepersad: We often provide advice and suggestions when asked but we don't have a public list of institutions we partner with.

Training and Certification

Question 12: What measures does Linux Foundation take to keep its training courses in sync with constantly evolving technologies?

Clyde Seepersad: Our courses are updated on a rolling basis e.g. with every Kernel release for the Linux catalog. We also add new courses  regularly (5 new self-paced eLearning courses already in 2017).


Question 13: What advantages does a holder of LFCS or LFCE certification have in comparison to other Linux related certifications?  For example certifications from CompTIA or Redhat?

Clyde Seepersad: LF exams are all performance based, meaning the candidate has demonstrated the ability to manipulate a live system. We also offer the convenience of web based delivery so that candidates can take the exam from their own computer 24/7/365.


Question 14: Does the Linux Foundation have any plans to expand their range of free of charge Linux training courses?

Clyde Seepersad: We're constantly adding new free courses to our eLearning catalog, just this past week we launched a new Cloud Foundry course and our new Apache Hadoop course starts June 7th.


Question 15: Is there any financial assistance provided to individuals from low income countries?

Clyde Seepersad: We regularly send out very attractive promotional offers to folks on our opt in email lists. One reason is to provide a low hassle way for folks in low income countries to access a more affordable price. 


Question 16: What regions of the world have shown the most interest in your training offerings?

Clyde Seepersad: We get interest from all over the world (our Intro to Linux course has registrants from over 200 countries). Our self paced eLearnning courses are very popular in lower income countries.


Question 17: What area within your training program offerings receives the largest demand? Low-level Linux development, application development or system administration?

Clyde Seepersad: It varies over time. Currently we see heavy demand for Linux Sys Administration as a lot of users appear to be adding Linux to their toolset as part of getting prepared to run/manage infrastructure in the Cloud (where Linux is the dominant OS).


Question 18: What is the breakdown between corporate vs. open enrollment participation? Which one garners more interest?

Clyde Seepersad: Hard to say for sure. We work with a lot of companies to deliver training classes on site or do subscriptions to eLearning but we also get a heavy volume via eCommerce, for which it is difficult to tell if it's sponsored by a company.


Question 19: Are all instructors employed by the Linux Foundation? Is there a way to find out who the instructor of the class will be prior to enrollment?

Clyde Seepersad: We have a mix of employees and contractors (most of whom have been with us for many years). Due to the flexible nature of scheduling between open enrollment and corporate classes we can't guarantee a particular instructor for any given class. All our instructors receive exemplary customer feedback though so it doesn't matter who you get!

About Clyde Seepersad

Image aligned to the rightClyde is responsible for the training and certification arms of The Linux Foundation. The goal of the team is to provide high quality training and skills development to the Linux community. Over the past decade Clyde has held senior leadership positions in the Education space, most recently as head of Operations at 360training.com and before that as a senior executive of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, a global leader in education.

Prior to his involvement in education, Clyde was a Principal at the Boston Consulting Group, a global strategic consultancy known for its cutting-edge thinking and value creation for clients. He started his career in the public sector, working within the Ministry of Finance in Trinidad and Tobago. He holds an MBA and a Masters in Economics from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

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