Want an IT Job? Add 'Cloud' To Your Buzzword List 187
jfruhlinger writes "There was a predicted uptick in IT hiring for late this year, but it's mid-November and it hasn't happened yet. Kevin Fogarty does see growth in one area, though: cloud and virtualization experts are being fought over, lured away from in-house jobs to cloud consultancies popping up everywhere."
clouds huh? (Score:2, Funny)
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Yeah my vision is foggy.
Please show my an example IT resume that revolves around "cloud" programming, so I can copy it.
'k thx. L8r
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Or maybe people were put off by the fact that you talk like that; and decided the Geek Squad was a safer (if no more competent) bet?
i like cloud (Score:2)
they purdy.
Today's word..."Cloud" (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's important to define the word "Cloud" as no one else seems to, yet the definition itself lends great insight to the concept.
The "Cloud", as referenced here, is nothing more than the delegation of responsibilities...specifically those of infrastructure. That's it. It's not some mystical cure all. In fact, it's nothing more than a glorified way to outsource applications.
Now there are specific technologies which lend themselves to this concept ( those of virtualization, certainly ), but the overall goal is the same; the business doesn't want to worry about the infrastructure behind their app. They simply want it to work.
Which is why internal "clouds" have always amused me to no end...
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What does "cloud" mean? It means that I will eat you alive if I see it on your resume.
People can not talk intelligently about this subject. There are completely open issues from SLA's to security to handling 20 different versions of the OS on the servers in the "cloud". I include Steve Balmer on my list of people who can't clearly define this concept.
You ask people what is the cloud and they give "e-mail" or YouTube or an e-commerce site as an example.
Re:Today's word..."Cloud" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Today's word..."Cloud" (Score:5, Funny)
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The symbol used to indicate parts of the network that you have no knowledge of.
That's the definition as it pertains to networking. It's now been extended to other types of hardware and certain types of software, and it all works on the concept of "I don't know where it is or what it looks like, but I do know that if I wave my hands like this then it all works just fine." As long as things actually do work, then that's a good thing: you're saved the effort of thinking about lots of frankly irrelevant crap (well, irrelevant to you; someone cares about it...)
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The "cloud" icon on a network diagram is often used to represent a portion of a network the details of which are not considered important for the purpose of the diagram. Whether or not that is because the person who drew the diagram didn't understand them is a separate issue. Perhaps the diagrammer didn't think his/her audience would understand them.
The "cloud" used in "cloud computing" seems to be used in two different ways. The first (less interesting) way is to describe IT services provided by a thir
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What does "cloud" mean? It means that I will eat you alive if I see it on your resume.
Tell them you worked on Cloud computing on "Plan 9 [wikipedia.org]". If pushed just say "I've been on cloud 9 for years now".
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Which is why internal "clouds" have always amused me to no end...
Personally, as a *nix generalist, even the idea of an external "cloud" is ridiculous to me. What the hell does a company actually do, if it outsources even it's own knowledge management?
But I agree that an internal "cloud" is just as misguided. The sad fact is that most companies with more than a few hundred employees are organized as collections of surprisingly small fiefdoms. Even until recently, the idea of centralizing something as common as IT infrastructure really was so foreign to the typical corp
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I sat through a cloud lecture by some Microsoft guy, and he said it's aimed at startups, that don't know what server load to expect, and want a scalable solution. Practically Microsoft hosts the app with database and everything, the app must be written against a specific cloud api (in some .net language), and they bill by CPU time, network throughput and database size.
I prefer the 'I' in IaaS (Score:2)
[...] the app must be written against a specific cloud api (in some .net language)[...]
That's PaaS (Platform as a service), that's what I would expect from MS, leading to vendor lock-in with specific API's, it could have been more open and portable to your own servers or other PaaS providers. This is the "here are my balls, can you please hold them for a while?" IT planning strategy. It's just not good for you, the party on the squeezing side of the deal however...
From a customers point of view, IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) would make much more sense: paying for VM domains, memory, ban
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Isn't this the same as Mainfraimes used to be?
I think of cloud infrastructure usually as VM clusters of some sort where you can have an entire computer fail and not lose services, and you can basically add more servers if you need more load without having to manually re-configure the services etc. vSphere etc.
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What I have found is that no one likes to deal with the database, so they regulate it to the worst programmer.
Pity, since most performance issues with applications are bad SQL queries/database design at the backend. Table walks, using read/write when you just need read access, excessive data retrieval (where they then write code at the app level to toss out the unneeded data, rather than use SQL to return what they actually need)
What they should do is get a production quality DBA in to do all that for them,
Indeed. (Score:2)
You seem to have left out bandwidth.
Indeed. Doesn't matter what this guy might have on the back - 5 boxes or 20 boxes. No bandwidth (or expensive bandwidth) -> no scalability (or scalability that will drive his coffers to the ground.)
This guy's analysis doesn't take into account other factors that affect one's ability to scale - electric foot print, hardware leases, etc.
And why would I want to have my developer doing basic sysadmin work on a regular basis. Yes, I want my developer to be smart enough to do just that (vital for setting
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A web-based startup can spend merely $3000, and for that they can get 4 to 5 servers. Using Linux, PostgreSQL, Python and other free and open source software means the only cost is in setting up the systems and maintaining them
4 or 5 desktop machines that you put a server OS on maybe. But if you want actual server-class hardware, that $3000 will get you one decent one.
Maybe he has never worked on an environment that actually requires server-class hardware or he thinks startups == home network at mom-n-pop's hardware store.
Re:Today's word..."Cloud" (Score:4, Funny)
What the hell does a company actually do, if it outsources even it's own knowledge management?
The good news is that they don't have to know what they're doing, someone external will know for them.
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IT service delivery has seen an interesting history (from my perspective). At first was the mainframe. There was only one in most companies. It ran lots of applications. It had its dedicated staff to feed and care for it. It cost a fortune.
Then came the minicomputer. It too ran many applications. It had a semi-dedicated staff to feed and care for it. But there were many of them in an organization, because they cost a lot less money.
Then came PCs - they were often dedicated to a single application
Re:Today's word..."Cloud" (Score:5, Interesting)
The "Cloud", as referenced here, is nothing more than the delegation of responsibilities...specifically those of infrastructure. That's it. It's not some mystical cure all. In fact, it's nothing more than a glorified way to outsource applications.
Well, no. The cloud they referenced was an "abstracted data-center infrastructure" and not necessarily a means of outsourcing applications. Yes, the downside/upside is that it eases moving workloads from internal to external clouds, but that's the point.
Now there are specific technologies which lend themselves to this concept ( those of virtualization, certainly ), but the overall goal is the same; the business doesn't want to worry about the infrastructure behind their app. They simply want it to work.
Is that a bad thing not to want to worry about the infrastructure? Traditionally servers are designed around the concept of a physical server. We used to name servers by rack number or some other geographic location. Virtual machines were often named according to what physical server they resided within. Cloud technology, once the marketing speak is burned away and the APIs get to a mature and standard state (i.e., an in-house or an outside hosted cloud looks the same to an application), would allow other ways of managing the hundreds of thousands of machines in large data centers.
For example, capacity planning is a big deal. One of the responsibilities of a system engineer is to ensure that workloads can run properly on the servers. When there is a planned outage on one server or an increased load due to seasonal or scheduled work, the admins have to juggle the resources of the servers. In a planned outage we may use VMWare VMotion or Workload Migration and swing the workloads across. But then we often have to worry about IP changes, hostnames, virtual host software levels, etc.. With a properly configured internal cloud, this is a non-issue. I can literally click a button and remove a physical server from the cluster and it's completely transparent to end-users. Need to add capacity? I SAN-boot a cloned disk and the new server is automatically part of the cloud and ready to take on work.
We used to build our environments around managing discrete servers. Even if we had streamlined the process, it was still very much centered around the physical box. For example, we can stand up a box in a manner of minutes using RHEL kickstart, but if we wanted to add high availability this often meant configuring heartbeat IPs, swing SAN disks, /etc/hosts files for private IP ranges, etc.. HA on a cloud is almost too trivial to detail.
Of course it's not there yet, but it's where the more recent virtualization technologies was 5 years ago (and yeah, virtualilzation has been out for decades, but it has only within the past decade really surged).
Yes, it is a very bad thing (Score:4, Insightful)
Is that a bad thing not to want to worry about the infrastructure?
Yes, it's a VERY VERY bad thing if your business and it's reputation relies on said infrastructure.
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Is that a bad thing not to want to worry about the infrastructure?
Yes, it's a VERY VERY bad thing if your business and it's reputation relies on said infrastructure.
I agree. Which is why I would assume that your company manages the following infrastructure internally:
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Re:Yes, it is a very bad thing (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Yes, it is a very bad thing (Score:4, Insightful)
And by the same token, smaller companies don't provide that infrastructure. This is exactly why "cloud computing" services are commonly targeted towards smaller companies. When you have three people in your office and a total budget of $500,000/year, buying and managing any infrastructure--for computing, power, communication, transportation, or water--can be daunting. Outsourcing management of these functions allows you and your employees to focus on your strengths.
And despite what the business weeklies may pretend, a massive part of our economy flows through small businesses rather than megacorps with on-campus roads and storage ponds.
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None of the things you've mentioned are anywhere near as complex, new, poorly understood, or fast changing as IT infrastructure. Power is a couple of centuries old, and you can buy backup generators and UPS, data, voice and mobile you can mitigate by going with multiple suppliers. Transportation is as old as civilisation and very much a commodity. Likewise plumbing.
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We "clouded" one of our primary apps, and it's been hilariously error-fraught. Given our spending on networking gear (and redundant networking gear for a backup), we could have brought the whole thing in house.
No skin off my nose (actually made my life a lot easier to get rid of the app), but I think the whole thing was a bad decision based on short-term savings.
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Phft. That's just pre-cloud thinking, in this post-cloud world we currently live in!
Get with the times grandpa!
Beowful synergy!
There is nothing wrong with The Cloud! (Score:2, Funny)
Wait a minute. I'm a manager, and I've been reading a lot of case studies and watching a lot of webcasts about The Cloud. Based on all of this glorious marketing literature, I, as a manager, have absolutely no reason to doubt the safety of any data put in The Cloud.
The case studies all use words like "secure", "MD5", "RSS feeds" and "encryption" to describe the security of The Cloud. I don't know about you, but that sounds damn secure to me! Some Clouds even use SSL and HTTP. That's rock solid in my book.
An
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Yes, it's a VERY VERY bad thing if your business and it's reputation relies on said infrastructure.
You mean, like how they utterly rely on the network (true of many businesses) and so are their own ISP?
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Yes, not only should I be an expert in my core business of making and/or selling widgets, but also in IT, Power, DR, redundancy, etc...
How about I let others be core at those things and I focus on selling my widgets, or making them or what ever.
We outsource our building management, lunch, plumbing, furniture making, cleaning, electrical generation, water, sewer, phones, Internet connection, DNS and domain registration, ssl certificates, why not all of IT?
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For example, we can stand up a box in a manner of minutes using RHEL kickstart, but if we wanted to add high availability this often meant configuring heartbeat IPs, swing SAN disks, /etc/hosts files for private IP ranges, etc.. HA on a cloud is almost too trivial to detail.
A cloud doesn't magically give you HA. Unless you're using a very different definition of "HA" than I'm used to.
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I like your definition. I love working on applications, and I hate dealing with infrastructure. Yet infrastructure always seems to involved somehow. If "cloud" computing will help me to abstract infrastructure away and ignore it, then I'm all for it.
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...but the overall goal is the same; the business doesn't want to worry about the infrastructure behind their app. They simply want it to work.
Which is why internal "clouds" have always amused me to no end...
It's understandable that you'd think that way if you don't understand how wildly organizational structures vary from organization to organization, and you're used to organizations where there is "The IT department" and customers of that IT department. In that case, yes, why on earth would The IT department build a "cloud", when the only customers of it would be themselves?
I'll give you an example of where this is arguably a good idea: NASA. Across ten or so centers, there are hundreds of generally self-
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A big problem with cloud computing at NASA is likely to be in the security of the virtual hosts deployed from the cloud. The science projects using these hosts are likely to downplay security issues, and to fail to comply with NASA security policies related to risk assessments and security controls based on system criticality. With cloud-based "Infrastructure As A Service" virtualization multiplying the number of entities needing to be managed/secured by reducing the costs of individual servers, it will l
Re:Today's word..."Cloud" (Score:4, Informative)
Essentially, the "Cloud" has three main points:
It is a set of infrastructure resources.
It is dynamically provisioned.
It is self-service.
Note that it has nothing to do with whether the resources are internal or external. I run an "internal" cloud at my company.
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"I would like to present the software solution MyCloud from the company MyCloud. Here we are. We're the princes of the Internet. Here we belong, fighting for survival. We've got to be rulers of your world. Is shall have no rival!"
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Yea, I hate the cloud for pretty much the same sort of reason...People use it as an excuse to poorly define their hardware needs, assuming the magical cloud has infinite capacity.
When something in cloud-land breaks, the managers get this look on their face like santa claus just died. It's priceless.
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Which is why internal "clouds" have always amused me to no end...
Why is it amusing? There's no difference between an internal cloud and an external cloud, except who runs it. You can even download Rackspace's software to roll your own, if you want to.
You need: spare capacity, arbitrary scaling, on-demand provisioning, and high availability to have a cloud.
Example: you work in a Wall Street bank as a developer. You need 5 new linux 'servers' and 6TB of storage to work out an idea. You submit a ticket to
enumerate overrated job-providing buzzwords... (Score:3, Informative)
To the Cloud! (Score:2)
Sadly, the term means nothing if we're to believe MicroSoft.
If using a remote desktop application to watch pre-recorded video is considered cloud computing, then they must also classify single molecules of water vapor as "clouds" (or single droplets clouds, if you count routers).
Dilution of important terms like these into meaningless buzz-words is a shame.
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Running a remote desktop session for a single app that could just as well have been installed locally is pretty much the definition of "cloud computing" according to Microsoft.
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But only those with experience are wanted. (Score:5, Funny)
I bet experience is the key here. Only candidates with at least 8 years experience in managing cloud computing in a virtualised environment will be considered.
And don't forget to list your four years experience with administering Windows 7.
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Of course, you should bringt your Ph.D. in computer science to the table as well. Oh, and if you're older than 24, you've got a lot of splainin' to do about how you wasted all that time.
We're a bit cynical, aren't we?
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Very.
And referring to all those job ads asking for more years of experience in a certain tech than that the tech is around. This has been featured several times here.
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Ironically, having worked as a consultant for far too long, I probably interviewed for hundreds of jobs, and usually, they don't care about how much actual work you put into the tech, only how long its been. So someone who worked with Java 3 hours a week for 6 years is ahead of someone who worked with it 40 hours a week for 3.
Stupid as hell.
Ah, little fluffy clouds ... (Score:2)
Finally, these wound up IT types have found a way to chill out: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7b6hw_the-orb-little-fluffy-clouds_music [dailymotion.com]
buzzward savvy (Score:2, Insightful)
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The demand is there, like it or not (Score:5, Insightful)
One very simple example: Do you have ever set up Google Apps for a domain, with email, contacts, calendar, Google sites and so on? Yeah, it's all in the cloud and all you have to do is clicking on buttons and filling out forms. Now go and look at some user trying to set this up. More likely than not he will get as far as configuring the MX-records and then he will cry for help.
All this cloud stuff seems to be so simple, but it very much isn't. And yes, this actually is nothing a real pro would like to bother with (you'll be fighting more with the UIs than anything else) but there is high demand for this, people think they can finally get away without someone who knows what he does, but they can't.
Most of this is in no way interesting or satisfying work but just fighting half-wit user interfaces. It's sometimes insulting, actually. Instead of really setting up things and controlling things you're hanging off someone else's setup and try to beat some sense out of it. It's often frustrating, you often will have to come to the conclusion that things you would like to do just can't be done because they're not offered and you can't do anything about that. But hey, it's just work.
Me? I'd rather setup a full server park from scratch with old PCs and Linux than fighting the "cloud", but guess what's in demand more. And yes, there's a whole army of trained monkeys out there, knowing every cloud service under the sun and with superhuman point-and-click abilities, but if you really know your job and also know about problems and limitations you can still easily make some money with this. Fun is this not, though. Fun is making things, not using things.
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Fun is this not, though. Fun is making things, not using things.
This. I recently started a job where management's decided to migrate as much as possible to the cloud. No in-house application is safe.
The smell of death is in the air. All of the developer-admin-types are gradually seeing their responsibilities degrade as the cool things they love doing are being replaced by having to fight the limitations of some web UI.
What's the endgame here? I won't be able to stay, I've worked too hard to see my skillset rust away while I fight some foggy battle with pretty but re
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I agree generally with your sentiments, but I think your points are tangential to what the article is about. That said, here is one example [rootbsd.net] of a setup [standard "no affiliation" disclaimer goes here] that doesn't present any of the issues you describe.
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One very simple example: Do you have ever set up Google Apps for a domain, with email, contacts, calendar, Google sites and so on?
I have recently been trying to set up a small business using Google Apps infrastructure. I want to be able to work with people from around the world, so some sort of "cloud" infrastructure seemed like a good idea. The more I try to do, the more I'm convinced Google has no fucking idea about what people like me want from it. So, the cloudy sorts of things I want:
Email: great! (which is why I though google might be good in the first place)
Calenders: okay, no to-do lists
Contacts: disaster, no syncing to the ma
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I'm not sure what point your making exactly, but why isn't it a (startup) business in a box? That would be really damn useful. They've gone halfway there, but left enough stuff unfinished or slightly broken, that it just won't do.
Even if we accept that it's really just communications infrastructure, it's still broken (contacts especially). "Cloud", done well, should mean that I can keep a bunch of stuff in sync with people over the internet. I can't really do that.
Google attracted me because it looked like
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Sorry, won't sync to-do lists with software I use,
It is just a hype (Score:2)
Cloud is a buzzword. And while it might be a good idea to add it to your resume, it will be gone in a few years. However, what will increase in the next decade or so are:
- Application services
- Platform services
- Virtual systems
All these services will be on demand. But this has different meanings in the different "cloud"-types. If you outsource your mail-service than this has to be available 24/7 the only thing which is variable is the system load. So the company providing email-services to you can do some
Lets use a global, everlasting variable for it (Score:2)
when the employer sees this keyword in the resume, s/he should understand that whatever latest buzz is about at that time, the applicant, 'has it'.
that could save both the employer and the applicant a lot of time - the employer, from trying to determine expertise of the applicant in an area employer has no knowledge about, and the applicant from lying about it.
Buzzwords (Score:2)
"We're an IT solutions provider. We help small to midsized companies leverage the same technology that larger companies have today by providing these technologies in a solutions package to scale."
"You sell small business servers."
"Yes."
Now people are lapping up "cloud."
"We're a Cloud Solutions provider. We enable small to midsized companies to leverage the power of cloud technology by moving data from dated technology into the more vast infrastructure of cloud
Cloud eh? (Score:2, Funny)
Soo... (Score:2)
"I'm experience with administering various cloud computing techniques." = "I setup a SQL Azure account a couple months ago and I know how to use Google Docs." ?
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I believe it's the latter, plus data mining.
What better way to collect and sell valuable data than to have your customers entrust you with their confidential files and emails?
If the company that does no evil does it, what about those who don't care about what's good or evil?
I've also witnessed said "cloud" companies hold customer data ransom (ie, you cant just grab your files and go home, forget to pay the bills? bye bye data, and good luck pulling them out of some systems.)
Remember everyone's fears in 2003
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Soon your logins (unless joined to a domain) will be handled with a .Net passport and your documents will be synced on "the cloud" and if you dont pay for the cloud services, the local copies will become locked and will not be accessible otherwise due to being stored in a encrypted and DRM locked down file that mounts as a filesystem.
the year this happens would be the year of linux on the (home)desktop(simply due to piracy in such a scenario being virtually impossible)
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Job market slow? Not everywhere. (Score:5, Informative)
In my experience, there's plenty of choice. Not all of it great, of course, but there are some real gems passing along every now and then. They just get swamped in job offers for big Java enterprisey stuff. I try to scare them away by mentioning I don't want to work with Java, JSP or Struts, but since my CV contains the word "Java", they still contact me.
Interestingly, they also contact me when they need an Erlang or Python expert, despite the fact that I have no experience in those languages. But my CV says I want to learn them. Really, nobody ever reads CVs. They just do basic pattern matching and assume that's good enough.
My most interesting recent offer was from a company that wanted to switch to Scala. They had no Scala expertise yet, but needed some people wiling to learn and guide the transition. But it was almost an hour commute, partially by train, and I want to go to work by bike. But there's enough choice to be this picky, so the job market isn't exactly slow where I live.
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Is it difficult to get a work visa to come over there for awhile?
I've always wanted to hang out in Amsterdam for awhile...it sounds like a fun place!!
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Just never give your name to "Cybercoders". I am primarily a senior level systems and network guy, but I once programmed some simple stuff in Java so it's on my resume. I get fricken "Senior Java Programmer" pushes from them on a weekly (occasionally daily) basis. Even assuming I wanted these jobs I'm not even remotely qualified. I could learn what they need, I have no doubt, but since most of the jobs are 3-6 month contract gigs by the time I did learn it I'd be looking for a new job anyway.
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Amsterdam, Netherland. I guess it's different here than in much of the US. I was unemployed for over a year after the dot-com crash, but I hardly noticed the current recession.
On the other hand, I just googled a bit, and found figures that unemployment in Dutch IT was over 12% last year. So maybe I'm just lucky, or maybe I'm in a different branch of IT? I've been switching jobs quite regularly over the past few years, and have never had trouble finding anything.
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Leeuwarden doesn't really sound like the center of all programming activity to me. Most jobs I see are in Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam, Den Bosch, Almere, or even Apeldoorn. Not a lot north of that, I'm afraid. I do recall something in Drachten? Beesterzwaag? But I can imagine it's harder to find something good up there.
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"Sorry to break it to you, but most computer related jobs are quite boring."
That really depends on the person. Some people could find them boring while others could find them quite fun.
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It isn't as much the job but the attitude of the person doing it. To some people Every Job is boring, mostly because they are slackers and are trying to find reasons not to work. For most of the population there are some jobs they like and jobs they don't and know that and willing to stick threw the parts they don't like as they can get back to the parts they like. Then you get the nuts who love EVERYTHING or they are just Ass Kissers.
Every Job has good and boring parts to it. They saying "If you find a
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You are exactly right. To get a good IT job, one needs to have additional expertise, besides coding what he is told: mathematics, biology, physics, non-IT technologies, business. There are very few good jobs left for experts in only computer science. If you look at the successful famous programmers, they all have something extra to their coding skills, vast majority of them being quite shrewd in business.
The only pure CS successes (admittedly, rather dubious) I could think of are hackers, people who are abl
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" To get a good IT job, one needs to have additional expertise, besides coding what he is told"
I disagree. There are lots of good coding jobs and ample time to get to know the various market areas as you go. Besides which, spending even more time in education is time you could be using to gain experience.
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Depends on what you mean by "low level"
I'd rather work on some obscure network and infrastructure issue than solve some end user problem. End users ARE boring. Their problems are always stupid or caused by some misconception a bout computing they have(for example being convinced that computers are able to really perform human like reasoning and wanting to offload to a computer their managerial and intellectual work)
The first part of your statement after "End users ARE boring." made me think... now there is a true programmer. *My program is perfect, its the end user that is the problem*. But then you quantified your statement further. However, the end user is right. It just depends on how much money they want to spend to "automate" their desired outcome.
Re:Users (Score:2)
MCP : "What's the matter Sark? You look Nervous."
Sark: "It's just we've never had a user before."
Re:no I won't (Score:5, Interesting)
YMMV, but in my experience there are three types of "low level" jobs in IT (not programming per se, though there are definite corollaries here, but "support IT"):
1) Low level tech support grunt for a large company. You're going to be dealing with nothing but users. They are the entire focus of your life, if you get to deal with an "obscure network and infrastructure problem" it's purely by accident because your user happened to discover it. Even then, since you probably have minimal access to servers and network equipment, the best you'll probably be able to do is escalate it.
2) Systems/network admin for a small company or facility. You'll still have to deal with users. You're probably the entire IT department, or at best the junior member of a very small team (all of whom want to push user issues off to you for the same reason you don't want to do them). On the bright side you're far more likely to be directly involved in building, deploying, and supporting the infrastructure. On the down side, unless it's either a really odd company or in the infrastructure business, the stuff will be incredibly vanilla. Windows AD and file servers attached to a few workstations on one or two logical networks and getting to the Internet via some form of SDSL. Probably a firewall appliance sitting between you and the DSL modem, and, if the company actually hosts its own Internet facing presence (most small companies don't), a small DMZ with the web and mail server. Not much for obscure here.
3) Data center lackey for a large company. On the bright side, no users. On the downside you probably mostly haul boxes, rack system, replace parts, and make accounts. If you're both smart and lucky though you might be able to get yourself in good with the higher level guys and they'll trust simpler (for relative values of "simple") problems to you.
Three offer the best possibility for what you want, though you usually have to be patient. Two is how I came up, and frankly I thought it was the best overall situation. You'll have to deal with users, a lot, but I don't really mind users to be honest (I'm a fairly social person, IT geek or not). The thing is, you pretty much to get see every aspect of IT. It's all on a smaller scale of course, but you actually get to do the planning, executing, and maintenance of your very own setup. You don't get a lot of obscure problems, but frankly those sound a lot sexier when you're sitting in college looking for a challenge than when you have a guy breathing down your neck wanting to know when things will be back up while you're still trying to figure out what the Hell happened in the first place.
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Powerball jackpot winner!!
All I need is a few million dollars to invest...live off the dividends...and NEVER have to work again a day in my life.
I'd never be bored...I'd like to have the Charlie Harper lifestyle...
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My wife is in the same boat. She's currently enrolled in Innumeracy 201.
"All it takes is a dollar and a dream."
"Gotta be in it to win it."
Great ads and they work better than the truth of: Have no bloody clue what a probability is.
Re:no I won't (Score:4, Insightful)
I know, I know.
I heard it put once that the best definition of the lottery was: " A voluntary tax for those that can't do math".
But when I buy $5 worth every once in awhile....it buys me about 2 days or so of daydreaming of what I'd do if I won all that money....
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Number two is how I came up also. I started at a small company (5 servers, about 50 users) in 1996. After a couple of years everything there was stable and I was out of things to do. That is one of the "problems" with a small company. They only have so much budget for IT. Once you get everything squared away, you have a lot of down time. That is great for relaxation but not so good for career advancement.
From there I went into consulting. As a consultant I learned more, but basically did what I did f
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3 years of work experience isn't bad. If it's good experience, you should be way better off then a starter.
I get the impression that location may actually be the biggest issue. Maybe IT companies cluster together. My guess is that in particular cool, small, innovative start-ups probably prefer to be in hip cities with lots of students and startups.
Every time I hear people claim the job market is slow, I'm thinking: not in Amsterdam (where I live). There's lots of small companies here that care more about wh
Re:ignoring the 5 brain-dead replies so far... (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, I think it's easier to be a convincing generalist than a convincing specialist there's always someone with more experience than you). So don't do just SQL, or just .Net, or just Linux. Show them you know a bit of everything, and can learn new stuff quickly, and tell in your CV what specific kinds of things are still on your to-learn list.
Definitely this. When I'm hiring a contractor/freelancer for a one-off job, I want specialist knowledge. When I'm hiring someone permanent, experience is always great but really what I want to see is that they have some interest beyond just slotting into a specific role for the sake of job security. If nothing else, showing that you have a broader interest than just .NET gives the impression that you're not just in this for the 9-5 but actually have a genuine desire to learn. I would also add that, even while out of work, there are things you can involve yourself in to show potential employers that you weren't just bumming around. Try writing to local business and offer your services cheap or even free, try and get involved with local charities or community events. It might pay little or nothing short term but if it lands you the job you want long term then it's as good as money in the bank. Finally, depending on location, you might consider doing some contracting - the lack of experience is a bit of a draw back but I know plenty of successful contractors who started out with less (just be realistic about earning potential until you get more experience), even during a downturn there's usually plenty of contract work (often more so, because companies look to get people in for short term projects rather than hiring permanent developers).
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If nothing else, showing that you have a broader interest than just .NET gives the impression that you're not just in this for the 9-5 but actually have a genuine desire to learn.
Why this? I've been around in the development scene for over a decade now, more or less, I've done PHP, Python etc, I've done MySQL, Postgres, I've done Linux, AIX, the various BSDs.
You know what I do these days in my "9 to 5"? .Net.
You know what I do these days in my own time, for my own projects? .Net.
According to you, that shows I do not have a genuine desire to learn. Why is that? What about .Net doesn't allow someone to have a genuine desire to learn? Do I have to continue to learn "other" stuff? W
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.Net is only a platform. Have you looked at F#? That's also something that can show you're looking beyond what you already know.
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No idea about WPF and WCF, but the others are pretty old, well-established technologies. They show you do exactly the same things that everybody else has been doing for quite some time now.
If I want to hire a good Java programmer, I'd rather hire someone who also knows a bit of Scala, than someone who knows just Java. The Scala guy is more likely to be someone interested in new technologies, and more likely to be aware of new ways of doing stuff.
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You still haven't answered the question - why would you consider someone who knows another seemingly random language to be more interested in new technologies? Why should the fact that I like to continue to program in my daytime language in the evenings and weekends have any negative bearing on whether I like new technologies or not?
I have answered that question. Having those new technologies actually listed on your CV shows a lot better that you like learning new technologies, than listing only the same technologies that everybody else has, does.
Of course it is great to keep your .Net knowledge up to date with the latest version. But simply listing ".Net" on your CV doesn't distinguish you in any way from someone who relies on 5 year old .Net experience. If ASP.Net MVC is any different from old fashioned ASP.Net, then you should defin
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What about using a different technology in your spare time to the one you make money with makes you more likely to be considered? What does it show? Because it certainly does not show an automatic interest in "new technologies", it just shows that you may have divergent interests outside of work.
If you are just plonking shit down on a CV, you don't just put ".Ne
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If nothing else, showing that you have a broader interest than just .NET gives the impression that you're not just in this for the 9-5 but actually have a genuine desire to learn. I would also add that, even while out of work, there are things you can involve yourself in to show potential employers that you weren't just bumming around.
That reminds me of something I forgot to add:
Don't reserve programming just for work, do it also fr play. Especially when unemployed. Join open source projects, for example. Write a blog on programming. These make excellent references.
Also join local user groups for your favourite languages. I don't know how it is in your area, but in my (pretty small) country, there's a user group for Groovy and Grails, there's one for Scala, there's groups for pretty much every other language out there, I presume, and the
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In a tough economy, there will always be people with more experience, or willing to work for less money, around.
I'm guessing that the 3 years work experience weren't directly related to your CS degree? If so, one thing that might help would be "work" experience on local voluntary projects (something that sounds like actual work to an employer in a way that contributing code to an open source project from home might not - it's the perception that's important here, not the actuality).
I'm not convinced that t
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It's really hard to say from your post (Where are you? Are you willing to move? What was your three years of experience in?) but my immediate reaction to your post is "you're talking to the wrong recruiters". When recruiters call me about jobs they want to get more specifics about which distros I've worked with, what daemons I've got specific experience with, or my level of experience with integration of *nix systems into Windows environments. There's lots of of *nix jobs out there, a technical recruiter
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I swear it's all they know how to do. I've also found they think they know about 'X' when all they know was condensed in a potentially not even very accurate article. Not that you can tell them "I don't know where you learned that, but it's horseshit", that sort of response makes them think you are dumb instead since obviously a nationally published magazine would somehow be infallible...