career-development

As a Software Engineer, what would you look for in a Software Company before joining it ?

What would you look for in a software company before deciding to join it? Related: Dealbreakers for new programming jobs? ...

Beginning of a career, the online way

I am at the last year of my scholar curriculum (Computer Science Engineering, a pretty broad title but yes, there is no specialization at my university). I now wish to make my profile available online for job recruiting purposes. I am aspiring for an international career (I am French, but I've studied quite a lot abroad and currently li...

How to move to development after working on support projects for three+ years ?

I am working on support projects from last 3 years on unix environments. Where I didn't get much exposure to development work. Though I got good experience to solving critical problems and debugging code for finding the defects but not much to develop. I am performing good at work but sometimes I feel very low. What my question to all gr...

What would PHP bring to the table for a Java Developer ?

I am a Java EE developer working mainly with JSPs, Servlets, and frameworks like Spring. Will learning PHP be a wise decision ? What would PHP offer me ? ...

Is getting experience in Joomla a good career move?

I am using Joomla in my internship, and I'm wondering if it's an up and coming program. Is it a growing, popular program or somewhat stagnant? Are employers looking for people who know Joomla? ...

What PHP/Web technologies do I need to get up to speed ?

After graduating in CS in the last century I have been running my own business for the better part of a decade. Now in my mid-thirties I am going to move countries and for the first time in a long time I need to look seriously at actually finding a formal position as a programmer. I have developed and maintained several sizable websites...

Frequently Asked Riddles in Job Interviews

Were you asked any logic riddles in job interviews? Are you usually asking riddles in job interviews? What are they, and what are the answers? I was asked once how can you divide evenly 5 apples to 6 people without dividing any apple to 1/6 (or 1/12 or 1/18 etc.). (Would love to hear answers in the comments, I'm not sure my answer was ...

Part time programming job - does it exist?

Is there such a thing as a 30 hour/week programming job? Well, I know there is, because I'm currently working at one. But it's a dead-end job, and I'm looking to move on. I had a recruiter almost hang up on me today when I told her that I'm looking for part-time work. Until I told her that, she was very interested in my resume; I do, ...

Contracting: Accepting a job using older Visual Studio 2003... Career Suicide?

I'm a contract developer and have been for the most part of 14 years. I just took a stateside lead developer role managing a small offshore team of developers. Strike 1 was the environment... lots of contractors slammed into a small 16'x14' room. Seating is at tables. Hardware is so-so. I was able to overcome this by using my own la...

How to train new programmer without giving full source code access?

Hi I am just started to employ some new programmers for a trial period. They are students so nobody know if they're good or not. I would like to give them some typical tasks at the beginning to see how skilled they are. The problem I have is that I want them to write some bits for my asp.net mvc web application, but I don't want them t...

Shaping my career.. Comments on Java for webapps..

Hello All.. This time in life.. I have the option and time to move my career into a different technology and into corporate organizations. I was doing LAMP based web programming but with no seriousness. Now I want to revamp my tech skills by learning proper enterprise technologies. J2EE was always in my mind but now I think Java is an ov...

How to go from IT to Software Development?

I've been out of school for 2 years. I've worked in an IT shop and really don't enjoy it. I want to start working towards a career move to software development. One of the key things to know about my current situation is that I really shouldn't leave my current job for about 2 more years. So, I'm basically wanting to figure out what I ...

Diversity of learning technologies.

I am a student and preparing myself for job. Being an ASP.NET(C#) developer, do I actually need to learn JSP(Java) or PHP? Being a web programmer, do I actually need to learn CSS and JavaScript libraries(i.e. jQuery/ExtJS/MooTools, etc.)? And can I only concentrate on programming. I.e. keeping away from business processes. Please, I...

If I work in Java but I don't like the bloatyness of Spring and Maven-based projects what work should I try to get into?

... I really like extreme programming and get the sense that the Java community is moving further and further away from direct feedback, simple design and object-oriented programming. I love the sense of direct feedback you can get in Python, Ruby, Groovy (and if I could find work in it, Smalltalk) I'm really good at OO design, extrem...

Is 4-5 years the “Midlife Crisis” for a programming career?

I’ve been programming C# professionally for a bit over 4 years now. For the past 4 years I’ve worked for a few small/medium companies ranging from “web/ads agencies”, small industry specific software shops to a small startup. I've been mainly doing "business apps" that involves using high-level programming languages (garbage collected) a...

Is it necessary to be an expert in "X" to be a qualified manager of people that do "X"?

I've spent several years in software development, using many different languages/technologies. To be clear, I have 10 years of software development experience myself. Now as I want to advance in my career, it seems most companies that I would want to work for desire a very specialized technical pedigree - even for a manager/director le...

What are the overall most valuable/profitable programming expertises?

Hi, I would like to know if it's possible to point it out, and if so If anyone would know to summarize, considering things well beyond the basics and expectable of course, what would be nowadays the overall or statistical most highly regarded pieces of technical knowledge I better have if I wanna improve my chances of getting the highes...

If handcoded webpage displays the same as WYSIWYG generated page, what did I gain? Can I compete with WYSIWYG?

My friend uses DreamWeaver to create web pages and doesn't know any HTML at all. I know HTML inside and out and can hand code from the ground up. But our web pages look similar and he can get paid for his WYSIWYG generated sites. What have I gained from learning HTML and hand-coding? Can I compete with people using DreamWeaver or other...

Building professional self-esteem when you think you're a hack

Background: I'm 27, have an A.S. degree in Information Technology Management (it was basically a network admin program with some web design and a database class). I've had several jobs in a few years, all of which have been as a sole programmer/IT Guy and maintaining existing code (among other things), without writing anything new. I'...

Is it worth getting an MSc in Computer Science?

I finished my Audio Engineering degree two years ago, and since then decided that I want to do programming as a career. I'm worried that my lack of a relevant degree will be a hindrance when I start looking for a job, so I've been looking into my options. I really don't want to do another degree - too much time and money. I've seen that...