Guide me to frame my career

Question

Hello All,

I am trying to scale my next step in my career. As far now i have worked in java, XML, JDBC. I have enough confident to take tasks in these technologies.

1. i have had worked on XML parsing. Other than Parsing, What are the other things involved with XML which i need to learn? For e.g. Web Services.

2. Does XML+Java+JDBC will alone help me to climb my ladder? i understand there will be new technologies emerging but still at least for next 3 to 5 years learning this deeply will help me?

3. Is there is any other technology that can be added to the above list which could be an added advantage for my profile?

Note: i am having around 3 years of experience now in desktop applications that begins with main(). i don't have any experience with Web.

Few techies suggested my to learn Hibernate first and then slowly jump into any framework like Spring or Struts.

Answer 1

Pick up this book... Apprenticeship Patterns : Guidance for the aspiring software craftsman by DaveHoover and AdewaleOshineye I'm reading it right now and I've not put it down since I began a couple of days ago.

Some suggestions:

• Years of Experience is not a yardstick to measure knowledge. A could be maintaining the same propietary system for 6 years whereas B could have worked on ten different technologies in 4.
• Your career map is your own. It is driven by your own value set and where you want to be down the Long Road. However great developers seem to have similar maps - that is because they share a similar value set. Draw your own map.
• Continuous learning: When you become the best in your group, find and join a different group where you are now the worst. To borrow a line from the book "It's a lifelong journey... learn to enjoy the journey"
• Be good at one thing first and then venture out instead of specializing in that zone. It gives you different perspectives from which to look at things. At the same dabbling in a zillion technologies for a few days each isn't of any use either.

Answer 2

Career Planning is vital to your happiness in one way. As @Gishu said, years of experience does not mean much. The Quality matters over Quantity. Another thing is as long as you love what you do, life will be a pleasure. Decide what you wanna do and be, for instance do you want to specialize in one particular technology or do you wanna learn a mixed bag of technologies. Personally I feel learning a mixed bag of technology is a good way to go about shaping your direction. Note that I am talking about only the Technology side of it, if you wanna be a part of management like Project Management, People Management then take appropriate trainings for a life in management.

This does not mean that once you move to a architect role you will not be able to move to project management. Anything and everything is possible provided you have the right attitude towards the path you are taking.

just my 2cents.

Answer 3

Whatever you plan to do, do it best. Rest(happiness, money, etc) will follow.

Answer 4

The desription of your experience makes it look like you have been working in a very narrow field. Getting experience with web applications is very important, focus on that. Make sure to gather the necessary knowledge to be able to build a complete application alone (at least in theory).

Answer 5

Since you're already familiar in Java, the logical steps to move to the web side of things shoud be to now learn (and practice) the following technologies :

1. HTML / XHTML
2. CSS
3. JavaScript
4. JSP/Servlets
5. Struts or Spring

...in that order !

But of course you can also choose to go off the beaten path and explore other families of language.

It should also be said that web programming is by no means the only or requisite way of going on with your career. If you don't have a real attraction for it, know that a lot of developers have a lifelong and happy career in programming without ever doing web apps.