Proffesional Programming...

[jimi_hendrix]

so soon i will soon be choosing what job to persue...and ive narrowed it down to something with computers (preferable programming (a job in best buy does not count)) and something with buisness

how is programming as a job? i have read in multiple places that its the number 1 rates job in america...would you say this is right? is it as entertaining as programming as a hobby assuming i like the type of programming im doing? does it pay decently?

thank you

[brian77095]

how is programming as a job? i have read in multiple places that its the number 1 rates job in america...would you say this is right? is it as entertaining as programming as a hobby assuming i like the type of programming im doing? does it pay decently?

thank you

Very good question!! And here is another one on the same lines.

Someone in the field tried to advice me to not get into programing because so much of it is going over seas.(I live in the US) He said that I should get an education in something more hands on like networking or infrastructure because you have to be at the location to do those things but, do not have to be there for programing. It seemed a little near sighted for me but I would like to here input on the matter.....

Thanks Hendrix for bringing this up!!

[jimi_hendrix]

by going over seas do you mean traveling or americans highering foreign programmers?

and besides cant you email code?

for the record i live in america

[brian77095]

American companies hiring foreign programmers to do there programing.

Its been my experience out side of programming (residential construction) that you can certainly find someone to do jobs for less but, when you want someone to do a very exacting A++ job it is going to cost you more no matter who does it. In other words the more difficult the job the more equal the pay.

[dwhitney67]

There are plenty of software development jobs in the US that will never be exported to another country. These jobs generally support US gov't contracts. Most of these jobs require the individual to have a qualifying university degree and possibly be able to obtain a security clearance of some sort. Only those with a squeaky-clean background (i.e. no criminal offenses on your record, no recent drug use, etc.) will qualify for the security clearance.

These jobs can pay well, depending on experience and the level of clearance one has. It all depends on the locale where the job is located at. In my area, Sr. Software Engineer jobs pay $100K+ per year for those with clearances.

[JohnFH]

by going over seas do you mean traveling or americans highering foreign programmers?

and besides cant you email code?


Email code? Of course. However working as part of a distributed team, training others to use your application, integration testing (testing your application on customers' hardware) all require travelling. My simple programming job requires me to travel worldwide (unfortunately - I hate travelling).

[jimi_hendrix]

i love it...but i would probably learn to hate it if i wasnt a CEO flying first class...

[Tomosaur]

I guess it depends on whatever it is that attracts you to programming in the first place. I like the creative side - solving a problem in my own way. I am a software engineer, so I get to both the design and implementation which I'm happy with. But then again, I am happy ripping apart clocks and stuff and messing about with contraptions :P

[jimi_hendrix]

i like the instant gradification (ZOMG I BLITTED A SHIP TO THE SCREEN RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and the feel-good problem solving

[imdano]

Someone in the field tried to advice me to not get into programing because so much of it is going over seas.(I live in the US) He said that I should get an education in something more hands on like networking or infrastructure because you have to be at the location to do those things but, do not have to be there for programing. It seemed a little near sighted for me but I would like to here input on the matter.....Honestly, I think the threat of outsourcing is blown out of proportion. When I graduated last May and was looking up information on the job market, Software Engineering jobs were projected to be one of the fastest and largest growing (see here (http://www.collegeboard.com/student/csearch/majors_careers/236.html)), and I saw it near the top of a bunch of "best jobs" lists. In general, demand for graduates with a CS degree was high, there were fewer CS grads than usual but plenty of jobs. I had no trouble finding interviews (YMMV, of course). That said, in 4 years the climate could be very different, even if the projections suggest things look good. I wouldn't let that stop you from pursuing a programming career if that's what you're passionate about.


does it pay decently?
In the US, the average starting salary for a software engineer with a BS out of college is about $55,000 a year, which is among the highest entry level salaries you'll find in any field. That number varies though, depending on where you work. A lot of larger, more competitive companies are likely to have higher starting salaries than smaller companies. Longer term, the ceiling is fairly high, if you're good at what you do, you could be making in the 90-100K+ range once you've got a lot of experience.


how is programming as a job?
Programming as a job can be fun and challenging, or miserable and boring. It all depends on what kind of work you're doing. If you really do enjoy programming and put the effort in to build up a solid resume you'll be able to find interesting work.

[doas777]

well, you may want to first determine what feild you would want to program for. you can work for a company that produces commercial software for sale to other companies, work for a tech consulting firm, work for a non-tech company that does some of their own custom developement (my personal fav), get into education/training, or even freelance as a consultant yourself.

The work environment in all of these catagories are vastly differant, and the perfect fit will depend on your personality. personally, I love my job for a medium sized company that has several small development teams. we get to work closely with our stakeholders, and take the project through all the steps, from conception, requirements gathering. design, implementation, testing, and maintenence. consultants often have a simmmillar experience, when a company wants a medium-large custom system. the big differance is that you don't get to know anyone, and your always an outsider where ever you are working that week.

as a general rule, the larger your project/dev team, the less of it you get to see/write, and the more rules there are. theres also less creativity. in large shops, your often given documentation and told to go back to your cube and code it. It's a fair gig, and really the only way to acomplish anything of scale, but I rather like the creativity I get with the freedom to architect my own project with my team.

cert training and education (corperate) looks like a sweet gig. they live well, get tons of certs, and they get out of the office at like 3. They basically read from a oracle circriculm, and tell you to "click ok" in your VM every once in a while. Please note: actual teaching at a real institution is a real job, and looks very fufilling, if you wanna go that route. it will be hard at first though (unless you already have a PHD and thus already know acadamia better than I).

good luck in your future endeavors,
franklin

[doas777]

oh, and the closer you work with the user, the harder it is to ship your job to the Philippines.

[L-mental]

If you really do enjoy programming and put the effort in to build up a solid resume you'll be able to find interesting work.
What's a solid resume in the software environment? Which things should we build first, what's the way to go to be into that solid ground?

[vandorjw]

The schooling and training to become a Software Engineer is basically Hell.
Know what you are getting into before signign up for software engineering.

1) There are very few girls, I think the least out of my entire faculty.
(Some people might say that this fact is irrelevant, since when you are working, there will also be few women.)
2) Courses go at lighting fast speed, (so far, 3 of my friends failed out)

just my 2 cents

Cheers - CC7

[namegame]

There are plenty of software development jobs in the US that will never be exported to another country. These jobs generally support US gov't contracts. Most of these jobs require the individual to have a qualifying university degree and possibly be able to obtain a security clearance of some sort. Only those with a squeaky-clean background (i.e. no criminal offenses on your record, no recent drug use, etc.) will qualify for the security clearance.

These jobs can pay well, depending on experience and the level of clearance one has. It all depends on the locale where the job is located at. In my area, Sr. Software Engineer jobs pay $100K+ per year for those with clearances.

The Mathematics and Computer Sciences majors at my University were invited to a presentation from the NSA about careers in Cryptology. The NSA was there to recruit/hire people.

If I can find the e-mail I'll post a little snippet of it. :)

EDIT: Found my email.



Speaker:
Jeff Farr (Ph.D., Clemson, 2003)
National Security Agency

Description:
The National Security Agency is the United States' cryptologic organization. Its mission is to ensure the security of all sensitive government communications and to derive intelligence from the collection of foreign signals. Of course, mathematicians play a central role in this vital mission. We will give an overview of what it is like to work at NSA, the largest employer of mathematicians in the country. A number of job opportunities for mathematicians, both permanent and temporary will be discussed, and a Q and A session will follow. Employment is limited to U.S. citizens.

[glok_twen]

i chose the tech consulting path as an intern in the summer of 1987 and have stuck with it ever since. it's of course different than pure in-house software dev day-to-day. it's been a lot of long hours and a lot of travel but i wouldn't trade it for anything. as i'm starting to feel like it's time for me to share more and collect less, here are some of my ponderings in reflecting on 20+ years in the IT industry full force. this will give you a flavor of what can be possible. in the spirit of fair disclosure i would speculate this is not typical but is certainly possible.

pluses:
- worked in or visited 26 countries in that time
- experienced several booms and crashes
- worked in silicon valley for a tech industry dominant leader. what a buzz in the air in the place in 95-98 when the place was soaring
- met people and worked closely with them at dozens of different organizations from the tech leaders to cool retailers to non-profit charity enterprises
- got to be a part of companies truly re-inventing their futures and to see them 10-15 years later still using that capability is rewarding
- got to do technologies hands on through out the years in many ways that changed the industry - eg in 1989 we were hand coding home-grown basic middleware at the socket level. in 96 we were releasing early enterprise integrations and customizations on java, etc.
- work every day with very energized people who challenge the business problems, tech problems, and political situations. it gives you something to look forward to getting out of bed for in the morning.


minuses:
- can be a lot of hours and/or travel even past the glory periods
- have spent actual miles flown of over 1.7 million - can be a staggeringly boring experience after a while
- at some point even being a good technologist only gets you so far. you must have one or more of the following to get to cool places and good assignments: real knowledge of business practices that work; genuine and recognized leadership ability; luck in getting your own start up to be one of the ones that succeeds; political skill; ability to learn the next technology very quickly and be ready to change gears when the market does; charm :) or at least i've seen others have it
- "the future ain't what it used to be" - for pure pure tech, i am certain that the median salaries have come under intense pressure with offshoring in the past 10 years.
- if you're a code monkey and sling work in response to pre-created designs all day it can imho be mind-numbing and you can be subject to always being in the one-down position and stuck taking orders, doing the grunt work, etc. need one or more of the attributes listed a couple points ago.
- YMMV dramatically across the spectrum - i've spent a couple years at back-asswards stodgy IT shops locked in the back room in cramped quarters with flickering fluorescent lights. the technology was slow moving, the people were victims of it, and it was painfully boring and slow paced. and of course there are the plus sides.
- most of the business world i've seen seems to start work by 9am latest. as a tech guy, i am a night person. this has never resolved itself.


in all i'd say your tech skills and programming in particular are really one piece, albeit an important piece of the puzzle. you can use it to open doors to a great experience. you can use it to get into anything from cool commercial gigs to research activities, to the next high-adrenaline start up. or you take good enough, work 9-to-5, have a real work-life balance, fiddle with the cool technolgies as a hobby outside work and forgo some opps that might otherwise impose lifestyle pressures such as traveling, very long commutes or long hours. in summary i think you ought to: first make sure you have honed and know how to market your hard-core tech/programming/content skills; second have some sort of vision of what you want the business/govt/research context around it to be; think of whether you want to climb a ladder or focus on balance; then work the set of opportunities to find a team of people to work with who you think you will really like. in the end game i think picking the context as listed above, and selecting the team you want to commit to are what make the most difference in what you get out of it.

[supirman]

I'll chime in...

If you're simply looking for decent money, then it probably wouldn't be a wise choice. Certainly, if you have the abilities, then the money can be, in fact, very good -- but you'll likely end up hating it if money was your only driving factor for choosing it.

I currently create embedded linux systems for a small company, which means that I have total control over what gets implemented on my products. It's great for learning since I have a hand in choosing the hardware, implementing the bootloader, kernel drivers, integrating and developing application code, learning new processor architectures, etc, etc. Every day is something new, which is a lot of what keeps me going. When things get too mundane, then it's time for a change.

If you're good and have luck on your side, you can attain six figure salaries in a very short time.