What kinds of code would you want to see in a portfolio?
Is there anything that a potential employer look for in any portfolio, or is it mostly job-specific? ...
employment
MBA for a Computer Science guy?
I am a Programmer with a BS in Computer Science and I have recently been considering taking the GMAT and applying for business school. I have been in the work force for nearly 6 years and am wondering if my career path is doomed to be a programmer with highest hopes of a lead programmer in years to come. For the managers out there will a...
How do you find out in an interview if the company will have a decent working environment?
I see a lot of discussions about what kinds of questions people ask when hiring programmers (eg. see here), but I'm wondering about the reverse: As the interviewee, what kinds of questions do you ask your potential employer to find out if it will be a good place for you, the passionate programmer, to work and grow? In particular, I'm c...
Government Work vs. Private Sector?
Besides pay and benefits, what would you consider the pros and cons of these non-contractor jobs: Working for a company that creates commercial (shipping) software. Working for a company on software used internally. Working on software for the government. ...
What do webdeveloper employers look for most in website contracting
I am a software developer looking to make money. I have been self-teaching myself C++, C#, PHP, [X]HTML, CSS, Javascript and SQL for the last four years and am very comfortable with each language listed. During those four years I was living at home; which made it easy to focus on programming more then if I had to support myself. My prob...
Experience Needed?
I am third year computer science major. Soon I'll have to start looking for a job. What sorts of things should I been doing before graduating, that will facilitate my job seeking experience? EDIT: I am interested in the field of software designer, mostly C++. ...
If a candidate for a full time dev position runs another company, is this a problem?
We have a candidate for a full-time development gig (contract to possible perm) who runs his own small business with 7 employees and lists himself as CEO. He's technically strong and his rate is reasonable for his skills. I understand he will not be here in 3-4 years, but if we need someone for 1-2 years should this be a red flag? W...
What percentage of software developers write custom/bespoke software?
What percentage of software developers are involved in the creation of custom/bespoke software? This should include both employees of companies with in-house development shops and freelance web developers, consultants, etc. (Basically everything excluding the folks who write the "shrink-wrapped" stuff.) NOTE: This is for research purp...
Full-time programmer or software development consultant?
In your opinion and experience, what's best - working full-time and long-term for one company, or part-time short-term on many smaller projects or parts of projects? What do you think are the pros and cons of both? I heard that being a consultant is more profitable and one would pick up more experience. Does that beat an 8 hours by 5 da...
Will a Masters Degree increase my chances of getting a good development job?
I've already read through a number of related questions about whether a Masters degree increases a developers ability and awareness, but one of the things I've struggled to understand is just how a Masters degree would help me. I'll be graduating in 2010 and with luck will have landed a place on a Masters degree course at a decent unive...
Is Oracle really all THAT different from other SQL databases?
So many companies today want someone with Oracle experience. I have none, but it seems to me that it shouldn't be hard to figure out quickly. However, when potential employers ask me if I've worked with Oracle, the line "No, but I'm an expert with Microsoft SQL Server, Borland Interbase, PostgreSQL, and MySQL, and I have no doubt that I ...
Maintainable programming jobs?
I am currently in my first year of college for computer science, and at the end of this month I must make the decision to enter the networking stream or the programming stream. The advantages i've seen with networking are that you usually have work at hand. Network administrators seem to have multiple tasks besides just networking to do ...
What are the pros/cons of local vs. remote employees?
This is specifically focused on a startup hiring its first employee, but also applies more generally. 37Signals says remote works well, but other people say only hire locally. This seems like a related question but is not exactly the same. ...
Job Applications - Addressing deficiencies within your programming skill set.
How do you address deficiencies that may exist within your programming skill set when applying for a new job? Say for example you are applying for a job and the employer wants someone who is: proficient in C++ able to write SQL queries has a strong understanding W3C standards like SOAP & XML. If you can only address the first two r...
Areas of focus for newly unemployed programmer?
For the last year I've been working in a small firm, mainly doing photoshop to HTML+CSS, and back-end development in C#; and of course a sprinkle of javascript here and there. My background is basically summed up by being half a year from completing a bachelors degree in informatics(put on hold because working/learning .Net took most of...
How to get my first programming job.
What is the best way to go about getting your very first programming job? I am currently going to college but have a few years before I graduate. I want to get out of my current "factory" job and into a computer related field as soon as possible. I found quite a few positions that I qualify for, but believe my pathetic resume has hurt me...
How bad is it to take a year off?
I've been working as a Software Engineer for around 2 year for a company, and I'll be leaving soon. This was my first job out of college and was a bit of a disappointment, since it didn't require so much coding and I didn't learn much related to software development. Now I feel my skills need some "updating", and I have some side project...
How do I request a transfer within my firm?
How would you go about requesting a transfer to a different team/role within your company? I've been at my job for the last year or so, and I really like the firm, the pay and the people. Without going into specifics, I'm really not enjoying my actual work and my department is a real mess to work in*. Though there is plenty of scope fo...
Snafu in a developer employment contract? Advice pls
Background: I'm fresh out of school with only solo contract development while I was going to school, so I've never worked as a developer for a company. So I've applied for a position at a company as a (jr) software dev. I had the interview, it went well, references checked out and the company wants to hire me. Yay me! I get the employm...
Where should a C#/.NET alpha geek be looking for a job?
Just curious, at which companies do really good C# developers work? (I'm talking world-wide, not just in USA.) ...