The myth of popularity

We must balance the idea of believing that just because something is popular that it will have a lot of support available in the market with the idea of practical support. Just because a product is popular or has many people offering support for it does not mean that support is better or easier to obtain in a practical sense.

For years, this is something that we have discussed about Windows and Linux operating systems. There were, and remain, far more Windows system administrators marketing themselves on the market than there are Linux administrators. But experience tells us that when hiring an administrator in the Linux world it is relatively easy to find at least reasonably qualified candidates. Run a series of interviews and almost every candidate will be able to do the job, even if not well. But run a similar interview looking for the exact same position but for Windows instead of for Linux and you will likely get twice or thrice the candidates to wade...