Linux: for all things great and small

Sam Varghese
Tuesday, 18 November 2008 06:24

Opinion and Analysis

Adds Appleby: "On the other hand, we are a fairly unique workplace. We are small, we are very flexible and there isn't a lot of competition for people with these type of skills. There is some competition from state government departments and universities but they have their own set of drawbacks and deficiencies in their ability to attract technical service people. So we don't have a very high turnover but we literally have to handtrain the people we need."

Samuel says they have been very lucky with the people they have. "I think because of the sort of stuff we do we don't have some of the staff retention issues that businesses have where it's always about the bottomline and about the next quarterly report and similar things. We have, I guess, a longer-term view of things and there is more of a reason for people to believe in what they do. And that inspires people and they like the work here."

Bannon says the nature of the organisation is one reason why staff stay on. "We are smaller and not as structured and probably more tolerant of individual people's needs and recognise when someone says I want to work in a different area or something like that."

"The tradeoff with that is that when we do get a crisis here, everybody is willing to put all hands to the pump. I guess you could say there is a kind of camaraderie," adds Samuel.

Bannon says there is a mutual respect too. "You know you have to have that mutual respect between the teams. Personally I would regard everyone on the team as a personal friend of mine. And I believe they think the same way about me."

The company's personnel are spread out over four locations - Monash University, Melbourne University, RMIT and Fishermen's Bend. There are a total of about 60 to 70 staff.

Appleby was involved in devising the model for the organisation. He says it's a bit like Robin Hood. "If we are doing work for an university then it is part of their subscription, if we are doing work for a hospital or a small research group then it's done as cost recovery. If it's being done for a large commercial organisation, like one of the large automakers, then it's done at a pretty reasonable profit margin," he says.

"We have to earn a fair amount of money each year to cover the depreciation of our machines. It's a very expensive game as we depreciate about $700,000 to $800,000 a year. You buy a million-dollar cluster and it's worth nothing after three years. And you have to be able to buy a new cluster every 18 months. If people think replacing their PC every three or four years is a pain, they haven't seen anything yet."