I was Senior Systems Developer at Linuxgruven. I was working on internal 
projects when I got the axe. And here is what I know. 

  Yes it's a scam. The fact is that they count on people not passing the LCA. 
They do this by promising people that have no chance of becoming a Linux 
admin. Most of the time these are people that can't even use windows 
computers. 

    The owners ( James and Mike ) write checks out of the company's bank 
account. The reason everyone is fired is because the owners took a vacation 
and spent their paycheck. 

    Right before this happened everyone at linuxgruven was forced to sign a 
non-discloser agreement so that people would be afraid to speak out about what 
was about to happen. ( LG can fook off because I did not sign S#1t. 

    Everyone that was above me knew how the bussiness worked and chose to 
ignore it because they were getting great titles and pay. 

I found out a month ago and started looking into the training materials. The 
instructors were top notch but the materials were so bad that I would not 
suggest them to be used as heating fuel. I see no possible way for people to 
study anything from the training materials. 

In the beginning it looked like a real company. I was seperated from the rest 
of the company and told that support contracts for services were piling up. It 
was not till I went to the call center and saw everyone fooking around that I 
supected that it was the training classes that were the only form of income. 
Other then me. I was billed out for 170+ hour and got screwed out of my bonus 
for those jobs. Which by the way my bonuses were supposed to be in this coming 
fridays check. 

I strongly suggest that people stay away from linuxgruven. I have been told 
personally by the owners that they will continue the training classes and look 
to other citys to make up for St.Louis. 

Don't feel sorry for me. feel sorry for all the guys that thought they were 
getting a break. A chance to work with linux and get a real good pay 
concidering how much they knew. Instead these guys got screwed out of pay and 
the bills are coming fast for them. 

The fact is that there was only one real admin job that linuxgruven had, and 
only one person did that job. The rest were sitting around waiting for people 
that wanted interviews. 

This is a company to stay away from... If anyone wants to contact me they can 
do so though my home page www.mercybeat.com ( i'm mercybeat ). 

There was some good work going on at Linuxgruven... there was a team that was 
working on creating real training materials that were to be released 
opensource. 

My last advice to linuxgruven employees. Go to the courts and file a personal 
small claim against the company. If your in st.louis contact me and i'll tell 
you all about it. Or you can meet me in clayton monday morning and file with 
me. 

I would still like to work for a linux professional services company if anyone 
has a job for a java programmer with 5 years or real linux experiance. 

Damon C. Richardson 
mercybeat@earthlink.net 

P.S. Once again I have signed nothing at linuxgruven and I can say what ever i 
want to who ever I want. 



Lin-Ja-Foo self-defense against .NET