I chose this field against my family's will. My mother said that its better to be a civil engineer rather than a software since no one knew about this field back in 2002. computer field got my interest because of hacking but then it got shifted towards programming (started with C and Assembly).
I consider programming a skill rather than a real asset. Anyone who has enough intellectual can learn programming in couple of days, specially if you are dealing with high level programming languages and i don't see that working as a programmer is a real achievement (I learned it after working at a giant tech company in last 2 years). If i had a choice to study again, I would rather focus on some other field rather than programming only. Programmers are more or less the labour of software industry. When everything is done, call the programmer, hand over the specs and wait for him to complete the code. He wouldn't know why and how a business decision is made and WHY ?
There are lots of other reasons which i learned while working in this Giant company and now i am seriously thinking to consider programming as my skill rather than an asset. Still confuse though
Like I said, that used to be the case but not anymore. Software engineers are now more inclined with the business process as well as the technical process and are usually the ones performing gap analysis, etc when working with a project. Big companies don't want to hire a whole team to perform software development so they hire one person that can do the job of all the aspects of SDLC. Back in the say you would have Systems Analyst, Systems Architect, Programmer, DBA, QA, etc but now they try to get as much out of one person rather than hiring more.
Also, I beg to differ about your logic that anyone with enough intellectual can learn programming. I have seen code written by people who became programmers like what you have defined and believe me I have had to write all the code from scratch since nothing there looked like code but a patchy job of putting together pieces that worked together.
I m sorry that you don't see your work as an achievement but I m very proud to be in software development and at the end of the feel that I have achieved something if I can make someone's life a bit easier by automation.
jeolkhan but you have only just graduated or were you working along the study.
The software market is very cheap since India has flooded the market with all kind of developers.
Ideally I think the senior developers should assume the role of system/business analysts. I don't really like the idea of a developers doing the requirement analysis and working out the business logic. I have seen with agile many new developers re writing the whole code again and again.
The QA team should work under the system analysts.
Like I said, that used to be the case but not anymore. Software engineers are now more inclined with the business process as well as the technical process and are usually the ones performing gap analysis, etc when working with a project. Big companies don't want to hire a whole team to perform software development so they hire one person that can do the job of all the aspects of SDLC. Back in the say you would have Systems Analyst, Systems Architect, Programmer, DBA, QA, etc but now they try to get as much out of one person rather than hiring more.
Also, I beg to differ about your logic that anyone with enough intellectual can learn programming. I have seen code written by people who became programmers like what you have defined and believe me I have had to write all the code from scratch since nothing there looked like code but a patchy job of putting together pieces that worked together.
I m sorry that you don't see your work as an achievement but I m very proud to be in software development and at the end of the feel that I have achieved something if I can make someone's life a bit easier by automation.
I would like to know for how long you have been in Software Industry.
for me its almost 6th year. I did undergrad from paksitan in CS and then Masters in Software security from Canada. Been 2 years that i have been working in one of the top global firm. Having a passion for something is totally different but making a good living out of it is totally different. If i was in Pakistan, I would have been earning a lot or perhaps would have my own software house (as most of my friends do now). But things in those countries which are outsourcing software development to Pakistan/India/China is totally different.
The saturation in IT field is so much that you can't negotiate on your salaries. There is a dead end on your salary cap when you reach 90-100K (it will take you 4-8 years to be there) and after that, What ? Obviously you can't stay on that job just because you have passion for it ... will you ?
I am proud whatever i do as well since whatever i do, doesn't effect only million of users, it effect everyone in the globe. But again, if i have been doing that much that i should be satisfied with my salary/pay-scale as well. IT People put more effort and get paid less.
Yep. Companies dont want to hire more people anymore.....they want one person doing the work of 5 people....
Agree, but that is not what waterfall model standards suppose us do.
Waterfall model is an ideal model and mostly used as a reference model. Secondly, Waterfall model is suitable for very large projects where requirements are clear and defined. So for large projects, there should number different teams and hiring a system analyst and system designer for large and complex project is not a big deal.
Normally in traditional (not agile) development environment companies use iterative process models like waterfall *incremental model * and RUP.
Microsoft, I got rejected from final stage of interview .. and then started the never ending struggle to find my reason of being rejected. Long story, I don’t work for them
Technology i am working on or worked on
I have very vast tech spectrum
C, C++, Python, 4GL, PLSQL, ActionScript etc
I have been working as a software engineer for the past 15 years.
As far as outsourcing IT goes I m seeing a trend these days where companies are coming back to US rather than saving money. They have now realized that they might be able to get some cheap development done but the cultural gap between US and India is hurting their bottom line since they are having to re-develop solutions to US standards.
Like I said in my previous post I have been working in the software industry for more than 15 years. The IT market depends on where you are. It has gotten better in Houston in the past year or so. Thats when I saw a jump in getting calls from recruiters. I have moved about 5 cities in the past 12 years. In the past I would have gone to where ever the work was and believe that I have made a good choice to move to Houston since all the major players in the oil and gas field are here.
One thing I have noticed in the IT field in the past 10 years is that no company these days is looking for IT employees with just one skill set. You have to at least be able to work with 3 skill sets or more. That is the one factor that will work in your favor to negotiate your salary with the employers.
All of this is my own opinion and what I have observed in the time that I have put into this field. Just to give readers here some idea on what my last job was. I was performing the whole SDLC myself working with agile methodology and also I was the only application support person for the same enterprise wide application that I was developing along with being the DBA and Server Admin for our windows server. What does that tell you about the IT workings?
I think making 90-100K a year is a lot depending on the person/location but I dont think it tops out as some good friends of mine make more than 150K to 250K a year working on different projects.
Its not just IT that gets paid less. All the other professionals except management get paid less and work more.
Python, Django, PostgreSQL, Apache, Linux, subversion, Trac, Bash scripting, SQL Server 2005/2008 R2, PERL, JavaScript, Oracle,*MS Access,*Sybase 12, C++,VB.NET, ASP .NET with C#, ASP, Java,*SQL Server 200X, AJAX, JQuery, XML, JAVA, Eclipse (IDE), GIT (distributed source control system).
Hardware/Networking:
Virtual Servers (VMWare), Linux, Ubuntu, VMware applications, VPN, LDAP, Active Directory, Windows server Security, Switches, Routers, Bridges, Hubs, VPN, Windows 2000/2003 server and Windows 2000/XP workstations.
I don’t know if 90K is enough or not. I am making 70-80K, living alone and single and still i am living paycheck-to-paycheck. Either i have increases my expense a lot (which i sometime i think i do) or its just that i am not used to of thinking before buying stuff. REgardless, all of my friends who ended up doing engineering moved to Calgary where they are making 100+ right at the start of their carrier.
When i look at my future, I seriuosly think that staying just a SE isn’t gona something i should do. I better focus on MBA or something else.
Knowing that you have 15 years of IT experience, I would highly appreciate if you can advise
Great. Now tell me how to configure squid on CentOS. I have been trying for last 2 days but its not working properly. Do you have any idea ? I have searched the whole internet but there is still some thing missing… not sure what.
I know JAVA, C++, C#, VB, ASP, SQL but my professional experience is in open source web technologies… PHP, MySQL, CSS, HTML etc. I have worked with Yii, Joomla and you can call me a wordpress guru Currently working with Zend. Interested in python(django) and ROR in near future. Website development is what I love to do. And also I have some experience setting up and managing webservers… LAMP LEMP stacks on CentOS.
