My question is of the chicken and egg variety -- I want to get a job working on high-traffic, highly scalable websites, but I don't have much experience with high-volume sites. I've worked on dozens of web applications in my career spanning almost a decade. Most of these projects have been smaller, intranet systems or public websites th...
I've received 100+ recruiter calls in the last month, had about 10 tel screens, 5 in-person interviews. Finally landed a short-term gig. This was in the Seattle market for C#/.Net. What has your experience been? ...
I haven been recently laid off and was considering what to learn in the down time while trying to get another job. I had heard that Adobe's FLEX was starting to become more in-demand, and have seen it increasingly on job postings. Has anyone else been successful (career wise) in learning FLEX? Is it worth spending time to learn FLEX to ...
A while back I posted a question about learning what the job market wants versus learning what you think is cool. Now let me ask the reverse: When looking to pick up a new language, do you think it can hurt your career to learn a language and/or framework that isn't used in your local job market? To recap, I live in the Tampa area, an...
Imagine someone who loves system building and design, issues of code reusability and maintenance, and knows many languages, tools and tricks. But he doesn't like pure algorithms, questions about permutations, runtime analysis or the intricacies of sort algorithms. Can that person still be a good software engineer / developer? If yes, d...
I have left jobs immediately in the past because the environment seemed like something I could not handle. One job I literally ran away screaming - took lunch and never came back - because the environment seemed dead; there was no communication among the programming "team" I was a part of, just a bunch of guys with their heads down typin...
Prompted by the responses to How important is the environment at a job? I thought it worthwhile to pose this question: Is it ever OK to just walk out the door and never come back? If so, under what circumstances? If not, why not? I've never done that but I think in the first 2-3 days this isn't that unacceptable. There's no drama, n...
So I am a long time .Net developer looking to branch into something new to further my professional development. I have reduced the next language to learn as one of c++, Python or Ruby and want to hear everyone's thoughts on what I should pick, and why? What trials and tribulations have others found when moving from c# onto one of these...
Is there some common method or methods they use? I can't believe they go to agencies because you just don't seem to get the really really good and passionate developers from those sources. So where is it that they go? I realise that a certain percentage of startups won't even need to look because they already have contacts that they ca...
My head is starting to spin from all the new stuff that Microsoft puts out, and so I'm trying to get a handle on what the current trends are that development teams are using; there's a very good chance I'll need to brush up on my .NET skills, and I want to make sure that I'm choosing the right things to (re)learn to maximize my employmen...
Greetings, Stack Overflow. My question today is, "How do I get from where I am at in my career and life to where I want to be?" Being unable to wander through every path in life, I seek heuristics (advice) from those who have or are travelling different paths. The Initial Condition I went to a technical school to become a video-game ...
I've heard say that in Canada to call yourself a "Software Engineer" must be certified by the authorities just like a civil engineer. I'm curious what the process for this is? Is it about taking a test? Is there required, accredited coursework involved? What else? What resources are available to help someone with this process? Also, is t...
Did you get lucky and stumble on your ideal job immediately? Did you find a local small software house and send your CV off? How? Did you go through graduate recruitment? Did you start on an internship? I know this is not programming related and off-topic but it could be an interesting question to those just starting their careers....
Athletes often peak in their early twenties, this can be later depending on the sport. In some cases experience can offset the slowness and tiredness which comes with age but only up to a point. Mentally we also slow down a little with age, although keeping an active mind can help this. Is there a time where age affects your ability t...
I have been programming in VB.NET for a few years, but it has always been in a Desktop Support/Engineering Position. While I've made some passable applications, it has never been in a professional development environment. I'm content with working on Desktops, but I really enjoy programming. My main problem is that I have worked up to ...
A few weeks ago at out local .Net User Group meeting we had our sponsor from TekSystems give a quick speech in return for the pizza and soda. He mentioned that Software employees are less affected by the down-turn. He threw out a figure that Software Apllication developers were still experiencing an unemployment rate of only %1. He al...
Silverlight is enticing from my C# background. But I'm concerned about it's penetration. Is it likely to catch on ? OR perhaps I should just bite the bullet and learn Flash. Does anyone have any advice on which to choose ? ...
The comments here got me thinking. If you are a new Developer without a mentor and no one to collaborate on for your projects; can a tool, ReSharper in this case, stand in that capacity? Does it need another tool or process, system or human, to accomplish this. I am in no position to get a fellow dev soon and I fear StackOverFlow wi...
We are planning to adapt Professional Development Ladder (PDL) approach to accelerate and structure professional growth of engineers. This approach is introduced by Construx Software and popularized by Steve McConnell in his Professional Software Development book. Can you please answer to the next questions: Do (or did) you use this a...
While browsing answers to several popular questions, I keep coming across the FizzBuzz test, and more generally, the observation that a lot of people who apply to programming jobs don't know how to program. Now, I certainly wouldn't consider myself a star developer. I don't have a CS degree (though I did take a few programming classes ...