"Social justice warriors" and the people in media trying to push a particular narrative point of view.

Ok, I'll bite. m:tier, a two-person company worth about 100,000 Pounds Sterling, that has been around for 6 years is your poster child? A company that has a single reference on its web site for a, and I quote:

And somehow you want us to believe this is evidence that BSD is competitive on the desktop with over a billion Windows installations, or 66 million Macs in use?

I think you just proved my point. When everyone else has thought about what to run and made their decision, a billion chose Windows, 66 million chose a Mac, and a few hundred chose OpenBSD. OpenBSD has so few users, it has trouble keeping the lights on, literally.

There is a fleetingly small number of companies with BSD on the desktop, virtually all are involved with supporting BSD in the data center (including m:tier), and they all involve a very small number of folks.

Let's parse that, because there's a lot packed in that small fragment.

focus on usability, so your complaint is that a vendor is spending a lot of time and effort making the software easy to use? Huh?

mass appeal, it's somehow a negative if the best option available is something everyone likes? Or turned around, it can only be a good option if a lot of people hate it? Huh?

over flexibility and choice, in what? In software? On a Mac you can open up a terminal window and ./configure;make;make install pretty much any open source software I've ever seen. I think you'll be hard pressed to find any software that runs on FreeBSD that does not run on a Mac. Exactly how is a Mac limiting your choice of software? Perhaps you mean they only allow specific things in their App store? That's kind of like complaining that Ford limits your choice of tires by only selling Firestone in the service department. Maybe you mean in hardware? Except you can run any operating system you like on it. Plenty of people have installed Windows or even FreeBSD onto Apple hardware, it works just fine. You can throw out all of OS X if you want and still use the hardware. Now true, you can't do the opposite and run OS X on hardware of your choosing, so I'll give you that is a small limitation. But in the end what difference does that make.

You were drawn to linux to play. We've all gone through a phase where we tested 10 different window managers just to see what each could do. Linux, FreeBSD make that easy. It's fun. Other than a couple of guys at RedHat, I can't think of anyone who gets paid to do that though. Your job description probably doesn't include testing every software alternative in Linux.

You don't want to use BSD on the desktop.

I'm not saying you can't, all the usual stuff is in FreeBSD ports, there are distributions like PC-BSD that attempt to be good for desktops out of the box. If you really want to make it happen, you can. I've watched many Linux and FreeBSD folks spend countless hours making their desktops work.

Even going to a hard core sysadmin conference, you're going to see a sea of Mac's, some folks even using Windows, and a smattering of the hard core on Linux desktops. Why? To work with other people in their company or at other companies they need Skype, or WebEx to work. They need Excel to open the quotation for hardware, and flash player to view some mandatory training. They want resource browsing that just works so they can print to a printer in the office.

The reason BSD is great in the data center is lots of people use it for that. It's a network effect. You're standing on the shoulders of other folks. It's the same reason Windows and OS X dominate the user desktop market, the software you need just works on them, someone else has made it work. If I told you to replace all of your data center servers with Windows 8 boxes you'd probably laugh at me, and yet the opposite question does not provoke the same response!

So if you want to, try. It can be done, with much blood, sweat, and tears. You might find that fun, if so enjoy! You might work for a small enough company or even just yourself where you can mandate BSD, and LibreOffice and be happy. If so, you are extremely lucky. Otherwise as a long term, die hard, FreeBSD supporter I can tell you from 20+ years experience, you're going to just frustrate yourself.

A massive megaton explosion (As we found out that comets are harder then we thought) Blasting a gigantic creator wiping out thousands if not millions of people. You are worried about a little bit of radioactive waste?

I would have been more, if we only used Nuclear energy so we knew more about this object so we know what type of danger it poses if it actually hit the earth.

Which is why it was a bad depiction of a computer engineer.
Now the problem Computer Engineering isn't a spectator sport. While it is interesting the the worker, it isn't so much for the viewer. It is like watching someone put together a jigsaw puzzle.

FYI, on the average day it also accounts for 73% of the total generation of all power used.

The city council itself mainly doesn't want it. There are some behind the scenes crap without a doubt, but by and far the councilors themselves.

Pretty much, and everyone already knows why they're trying to expedite it right? Because the city council doesn't want it, but the previous mayor and incoming mayor are in favor of it. For people that don't know, or don't pay attention to the council meetings this should be an eye opener. I don't live in the centre of the universe, but I still get pulled into their gravitational well(130km away).

Well they've been trying really hard to push the whole green-energy crap here in Ontario. We just hit our "winter" and all that, the winds are now high enough that the windmills are stopped, and it's generally now so overcast that the solar stuff doesn't work. Thank goodness that we have a a pile of nuclear generation here, otherwise people would be freezing to death.

Next up, Halo light bridges!

Those same neurologists are still trying to understand the basic problems of the brain. Like why do people develop MS, but mainly in the norther hemisphere of the world. Or why do we have headaches, why do some people have migraines that go away when they hit puberty and why do some people like me have migraines that get worse with age. I've hit a point where I can no longer function most days, and spend anywhere between 10-25 days on medications to keep the "omg brain exploding" to "omg, the pain...make it stop." It's bad enough that when I walk into emerg, the nurses know me on sight and know what I'm there for.

It's not uncommon to "lose something" like this in a incredibly complex diagnostic field. Especially when it would have been taught as "common knowledge" and expecting that everyone already knows it. We see this in law too, especially common law where some things are so commonly known for a period that cases don't have to be cited. But then an oddball case comes up, and the original meaning of why xyz happened and is common was lost in the shuffle.

With Apple continuing to make a more closed ecosystem. And Google sharing all your data in the world, with little interesting movement in Linux. Now Microsoft trying to be more open.
Should we be a bit more welcoming to Microsoft?

Making the rules so strict, prevents innovation. Making the rules too relaxed causes abuse.

You need a happy middle.

However the company will be willing to pay a bit more to cover the agent cost to cover the risk of hiring a new employee.

Really the difference between an Agent and a head hunting firm, is that the agent should be having some credibility behind his name for offering quality workers.
So even if you are good at negotiating say you think you should be getting 250k a year. However most business will not be willing to hire you because, while your resume looks good with glowing references. You are still a risk. If there is an agent and he may get 50k for your job. The company may be happy to pay that amount if they know they will actually get a good worker.