I had intentionally taken a break from my career for a few years and am trying to return to workforce. In the meanwhile I did some amount of freelancing but not quite a lot. While I get interview calls and do well at the technical front, I am asked this question about if and whether I can sustain a full time job. I have to tell you that ...
When you spend a long time without programming, and you start to code again, you can forget a lot of things and the programming stay slow... When you pratice some sport, it's easy get again the form: training in the desired sport. But in programming, what your method to regain the speed and memory to code after long time without job? I...
I'm currently contributing to a few open source projects to keep me busy as I am in between jobs. From an employer's point of view, is this just as credible as working in a company in terms of experience? Some people may hold a stigma and think that you were sitting at home and you weren't dealing with a large codebase or using your ski...
I have not been on hiatus. I currently make a good living implementing an ERP product. The problem is that the most complicated algorithm we ever have to work on is adding up a bunch of columns. I'm not saying there are no challenges involved, it's just that the challenges are no longer interesting to me. I graduated with a computer ...
Hi guys, What counts as real experience as far as securing a job goes? I've got about 7 years experience with different languages but I wouldn't say I know one particular language. I've never done anything really out of the blue. I've made a CMS using PHP and MySQL but thats the extent of it. How can I get some real experience? Do so...
My past experience has primarily been in the new media industry. My experiences were that while this industry seemed to be laid back, most places have next to no management protocols. This inevitably leads to disorganized chaos,a lot of firefighting and lots of late nights. I also find new media work to be mostly the same type of devel...
I don't know LINQ, but from reading a lot around this site and others, it's a MUST HAVE skill for C# developers. The problem is I am so booked on projects at work I have no time to pick up LINQ, I need to convince my boss to let me (and fellow coders) set aside some time so that we can become a LINQ house. So.. my question is, what ar...
I currently feel in a bit of a career rut and am looking for advice. I've been working in IT for 9 years. Spent 5 years working as a consultant and trainer for a major multinational for a couple of companies. Eventually the travel and corporate stress involved led me to quit for something new. However my boss offered me a new job as an ...
I'm 19 and have been a hobbiest programmer since I was a freshman in high school (2002). I recently graduated in May of '08. Right out of high school I had my first job programming contract work for a company (got noticed off of my personal website). Originally the CEO and I had discussed working for about a year from home before going o...
I enjoy Mathematics and Computer Science. Is there some interdisciplinary field in CS and Mathematics, that would "guarantee" high earnings? ...
Everyone says that IT work (the technical stuff like programming, etc) is always outsourced to India because the cost of living there is less, and thus the price of work (especially be freelancers) is therefore a lot less than someone doing the work in a developed country like the UK/USA. Being Indian myself (but living in the UK), I can...
I am asking you this because I got job offer, but it has nothing to do with technology. I am reluctant to take it though I am unemployed. so in this current economy, would you consider any other job than the tech jobs. if yes, what do you think the impact that it will have in your resume? how would the future employer interpret it? Tha...
I am currently working for a non-software-development company, and I often see my manager having to explain the existence of an IT R&D Department (outside infra support) to upper management. We have the IT infra support team, and we in IT R&D (Research & Development) know that the company needs us to build software here and there, provi...
If you write and maintain your own personal technical blog should that be listed in your resume? Any reasons not to? Would this be of interest to potential employers or would they be indifferent? If you do include it, how and where would you mention it? ...
I'm interested in career paths you can pursue Computer Science degree. Inspired by this post I'm curious as to what type of domains are out there. Examples might be system administrator, web developer, embedded systems, software tester, performance analyst, startup developer, etc. So very broadly, present a type of domain along with some...
I currently am an 'intern' with a managed services company (much more IT/hosting than development, to my woe) that pays the bills and puts experience on my résumé. The issue I am having is really with what defines the "core" of an internship - learning. I personally have always thought that an internship is an opportunity to receive a k...
Back in 2000, I got a bunch of programming certifications from Brainbench. However, they didn't seem to be doing me any good, and they needed to be renewed every year, so I let them lapse. Recently I've been hearing more about Brainbench, and I've been wondering - do these certifications impress potential employers at all, in 2009? What ...
I'm not asking if C++ is better than C# or vice versa. But if given the option of moving into a new job that exclusively used C++ or one that exclusively used C# (or .NET in general), which would you choose? And I'm looking at this entirely from the view of being a Windows programmer either way. I ask because I currently use both lang...
What was the background of the best manager you ever worked for as a software engineer ? I'm interested to know if my experience (which mostly matches the stereotypes of managers with a technical background understanding the task at hand but not being very good people managers or motivators, and vice versa for people with a management b...
This is a rather general question about how best to further yourself as a programmer both professionally and personally. As good Pragmatic Programmers, we have been taught that continual learning and self-improvement are things that we should consider a natural part of our lives as technologists. Part of this process is keeping abreast...