...Even though you're basically happy where you are? I've been thinking for a while that it might be a good idea to look around, but how do you go about doing it? Do you hide the fact from your employer? What do you tell the recruiters? Can you play your current employer out against the new recruiter or vice versa, and how do you do tha...
I'm thinking about looking around for another job, but I don't know when I should tell my boss because I would like to see what kind of opportunities I can land before I even mention it. The reason I'm reluctant to tell him right away is I'm afraid he'll begin the process of replacing me. If I don't tell him while I'm looking around, t...
From your own experience, what was the online recruitment website you felt worked most for you? Which one you get more phone calls through? ...
These days it seems to be all about .NET. I want to start getting into "enterprisey" development and I thought Java would be a good route to go. But looking at job sites there seems to be 2-3x more .NET jobs as there are Java. Do you think investing my time into .NET would be better than going after Java? Is Java losing ground to .NET? ...
Hi All, I've been working as an engineer professionally for 15 years for a number of different companies. My question is how do you stay motivated at work? I can generally be easily motivated if I'm working on design, but that seems to be about 5% of my actual work hours. Most of my work seems to end up being fixing problems in existi...
I will be graduating with a bachelor's in IT soon. I truly enjoy programming, yet I do not have any relevant work experience in IT. With the current job market, what are my chances of landing a programming position. I understand and agree that someone in my position will have to begin somewhere and most likely, that somewhere will be at...
As a student, I don't often get offers for programming jobs, however I was offered a job if I learned C#. I currently know Java, PHP, C/C++, and other supporting languages. What would be the best way to pick up this language quickly? What are its similarities, what are its differences, pitfalls, etc? Is it acceptable to use Mono, because...
When interviewing for a programming position, did you ever get an answer to your question that you didn't quite expect? The answer could've been quite smart that you didn't even know or it could've been a dumbest answer you never expected. I'm expecting technical type of questions but anything interesting is fine. ...
Jobs offering developers the flexibility to work from home are rarely published on job sites. So how is it that you landed your work-from-home gig? Is it worth it? ...
Doctor says: My job is meaningful because I save lives. Programmer says: My job is meaningful because I... umm... write DB queries?! Are you proud of being a programmer? Do you think that your work has positive effect on people's well being? Or you just happen to do programming because you have bills to pay... Note: Similar to this qu...
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 ...
What would be some efficient (economical) ways to recover from a creative burn out ...
From the job point of view, what should be the minimal tangible skills (languages, platforms/tools etc.) that an aspiring web programmer must possess? ...
Recently I have been looking at jobs, and all of them require "X Years Experience in Y technology". If you have experience in Z technology (or multiple Z technologies) how can you get into jobs for Y technology? It seems they use this requirements as a filter and you must have this on your resume before they even look at you. Do you jus...
I was recently approach by someone I don't know asking if I wanted to do some programming work for him (on behalf of a client he has). The job is a short term project which involves writing a small visualisation tool in Processing. Because I don't know this guy I am looking for advice on how to best manage the working relationship. For ...
One of my peers who reluctantly entered management is very technically capable, but an expert of an older platform. He is planning to get back into the Software Engineering side of things, and asked for my opinion on the most marketable platform to be an expert of for the next few years. I'm a Microsoft expert, so I offered up speciali...
When you have looked at new opportunities, or been lured away when happy, what are some of the most important perks that you look for? This isn't the typical perks question. I'm looking for real world experience: what perk caused you to make a switch? Was is a major influence in your decision, and why? ...
When you are looking for a new job, what types of things do you look for in a potential employer? What do you look for? Beyond the skillset match, what are some of the most important features to look for in a company to best fit intellectual work and development mojo? ...
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. ...
I have been thinking about Joel's comments on the podcast - and wondering, am I smart? I feel I get things done, but the "smart" bit seems to elude me. What I do seem to be able to do is see ways of using other smart ideas to solve a problem. But that does not seem to be smart, just using someone elses smart idea. I have been loo...