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Re-Tooling Your Skills for the Future?
nojayuk asks: " Over the decades I've re-skilled myself several times, from mainframe FORTRAN through minicomputer PASCAL to microcomputer C. In between I've done microcontroller development and programming in Assembler, robotics, graphics design and 3-D animation for TV, PC build and repair, Website design etc. Currently I'm looking for work and I'm wondering what new skills do I need to stay in the computing biz. What OSes do I need to know, what technologies do I have to have under my belt for the employers to come hunting for me instead of me passing my obsolete CV around and being told to get lost? I'm looking for advice, not just for next week but for a few years down the line. What can I do to acquire these essential new skills?"
Just find an employer who understands that your vast experience should be enough to master any new interresting field. IMHO you just need to run into the right employer, not the right additional skills.
Well the brief CV that you have presented it seems that you haven't done a lot of OO in your programming life - it maybe a good thing to learn as OO is a beast it is still one of the best programming paradigm available today.
;-p
Don't worry about the programming lanaguage - as you have learnt so many new langauage in the pass I don't think you have problems picking new things up - have a look at C# and Java - they are the "same" aren't they
I say: Operating Systems and Programming Languages come and go, but good Software Engineering and technical understanding never dies. I mean file operation is the same principles in Unix, Windows, "Java", BillGatesMustDie OS (I make it up) - the difference is really whether they call it new File("hello").open() or open("hello", READ_ONLY).
As a new CS grad who knows lots of the latest technology buzzwords, I've been surprised at the number of openings there are for mainframe COBOL programmers. There are enough big mainframe apps out there (and few enough who know how to work with them) that there will probably be a demand for COBOL programmers for quite a while yet.
On the other hand, the same can probably be said about C or FORTRAN. With that many years of experience in the industry, I'm surprised you haven't gotten into management or consulting of some sort.
The requested URL
it is best to get hold of as much knowledge as possible. Don't target anything trendy, but strenghthen yourself with basic computing knowledge such as server administration, network implementation, and computer repair & maintenance. Although it does sound blue-collarish but believe you me, in the IT business, they are a must.
Since you already have good programming-based skills, you should just keep them polished.
And when you actually apply for a job, don't over-pimp your skills, they will then have a reason to categorize you as over-qualified. It's suffice just to exibit your ability to handle situations from hardware to code and vice-versa. This will make you appear more all-rounded and project an image that you will be beneficial in the long run.
Just speaking from experience watching all my Masters degree friends stay home because of lack of work whilst I have a fixed income to look forward to at the end of every month.
Best of luck in your endeavours!
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
Do whatever interests you.
You sound you have plenty of experience under your belt and a good understanding of things.
I've seen people make a living off of just about any computer specialty out there, good economy or bad. Find something that can get you some clients and do what you love.
Just stay involved in the community around a product or technology, and you'll have no problems. I've found that posting intelligently to a newsgroup or mailing list leads to job offers when you are not even looking for work.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Here (UK) it seems you are considered past it at 30! All IBM iSeries(AS400) jobs advertised on the Big Board - www.jobserve.com are for people with specific package experience or foreign language skills. The clients seem to believe technical competence is not important. But at least 12 months using their particular installation is.
Why ? Maybe because when the job fails to get a "suitable" candidate. It's inter-company transfer time (India). It is easy to hoodwink governments with this "skills" shortage crap.
And being cynical, I expect the guy brought in to do the work eventually, will most likely become familiar with the package on the job
like I used to do in my 20s, when I had no family to support.
A lot of people consider it to be a stepping stone position, where you put the new developers so they can get an overall idea of the product. I don't. That is good for me, because companies want people who are serious about the position. They don't teach QA in school, they teach programming. I went with the odds that I wouldn't be fighting for my job every year against a fresh batch of bright-eyed programmers.
Some people aren't suited for QA, others are. I think I am, because I get to problem solve quite a bit, and even write a little code. I am currently working on QA process, and test automation. You get to really be anal-retentive and picky, which I am good at. If you program, you only know X number of languages, but I can test pretty much anything you throw at me. My job is based on methodologies that I can pretty much apply to anything. I admin my own Linux system on my home network, which I find really interesting, but I don't think I want to be an admin. But it helps me when I need to talk to the admins, or other tech people I come across in my job.
No matter what your job is, I think you should always pursue what you really like outside of your job. Maybe they are the same things. Develop YOU, because no matter where you work, you will have to interact with other people.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
As such and admin, let me summarize the market condidtions:
Admins: 4 for a $1
Programmers: $2.49/lb
Seriously, there's not that many people left that *need* admins any more. They are either huge and already well staffed, or they are small and have their programmers do the admin work. Putting people out of work by automating their job is ALWAYS in season; it's computing's promise to the capitalist. This includes automating IT, and as such, IT IMHO is a doomed career choice. Think of all of the "computer operator" positions that used to exist. That has almost disappeared, and very soon, so will the network/system/database administrator positions.
So ignore his advice about being a sysadmin. Let me add my advice; it's not what you know, it's who you know. Trusted human networks are far more profitable than trusted computer networks.
Democrats and Republicans only disagree about how to enslave you
Funny, when I took it as an IBM-run public class it covered in 4 days what took me 6 years to teach myself. A lot more than just making "expert installers" out of us. I really enjoyed that class.
Looking back on it, I didn't really learn all that much that I didn't already know, except for some advanced X Windows administration. Over half the class failed the exam, so it was more of a confirmation for me that I was making the kind of progress that I thought I was.
Intelligent Life on Earth
"Half the people I talked with wanted to know if I knew FORTRAN!"
Now, granted, this may reflect the area where we live (Denver) being very heavy on aerospace
So what happened to her? Well, she never did get a job from anyone she talked to at the job fairs. Fortunately, she was able to get a job at her Dad's company (something she was trying to avoid, not because it's a bad place to work, but because, you know, her boss is her Dad.) Some of her coding she does in Java. But a good half of what she does is in
Me, I develop in PHP and SQL, so what the hell do I know?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Let me second that statement.
30 years of programming experience. Worked on international standards body (X consortium). Two degrees in CS. Web services experience. Network architectures. Corporate R&D. Business analysis. Long range forecasting.
In my last job as the company shrunk I was moved from a pure R&D/technical analysis job, to an architecture job, to a design job, to a coding job. And then they laid off all the coders and hired a company in India to do the coding work.
I can't even get a job at the local Junior College. They went broke because of the decline of the "tech sector" in this dear town. Best I've been able to find is the occasional testing job that pay about half what I made in the '80s.
The truth is that there are some very good people in India and China who will do the low level coding work work for very little money. And, in this market, no one is hiring people to do the kind of high level work I used to do. That is life, I have adapted to it. And I am.
Stonewolf
Exactly. You just have to fake it enough to get in the door. A good generalist can spend the evening before the interview soaking up enough pertinent details to pass himself off as a specialist--and then it's generally easy enough to pick up the details after you've got the job.
In fact, this is one of the best ways to become a generalist. Having to absorb a lot of information about something you only know a little about, relatively quickly, is the hallmark of a good generalist. The important thing is to be able to adapt.
No relation to Happy Monkey
In today's rapidly changing and down-sizing business environments it is often the MIS and development people who find themselves on the short end of the stick for the simple reason that they generally do not generate enough cash flow to cover their employment expenses. Exceptions might be in smaller software firms where their only business is contract development.
When a company falls on hard times, rather than expanding your skills in whatever your specialty is, try talking to sales people or some of the tech writers or try coming up with some business ideas to present to your higher-ups or generally try to demonstrate your flexibility and "swiss army knife - like" ability to do multiple things well.
Particularly in the software field there are a large number of people who's primary language is not English. It may be politically incorrect of me...but here it goes. English is the language of business. If you have better English skills (reading, writing, communication, bull$hitting) you will have a leg up on your peers. A well written email with some industry buzz words and a few $2 words thrown in for flavor will likely impress people. Use spell check every time!!! There is nothing worse than trying to impress people with your verbal skills and getting a word's, or worse, a colleague's name wrong.
Are you a hard-core engineer? Try writing a white-paper on some piece of technology you have expertise with. Your initiative and competence will likely be noticed by someone, and if it isn't, keep a copy and add it to your resume as another selling point if you ever find yourself looking elsewhere for work.
Communication skills are key for getting, keeping, and excelling in any job. All the technical expertise in the world in useless if you can't express to you your employer exactly what you can, and are willing to do.
--this is for the guy who submitted the questions, it's different in a lot of ways from the techie answers he's getting, but perhaps it's useful to him
--biggest problem I am seeing here is lack of understanding of what to DO with IT skills. companies are in the widget business. They USE "IT" skills to make and sell widgets. The PRIMARY goal is to make and sell widgets, all the IT skills are to be used as TOOLS to make and sell the widgets. Just IT in and of itself is only a market that sells the tools or builds the tools, but it's NOT the primary end market. The thinking should focus first on identifying a niche in the widget market that needs to be filled and isn't adequately yet.
Now the problem is there's a sort of depressed widget market. Along with IT, widget making is being outsourced, mostly to china and some other asian nations.
OK, now this is a double problem, short thinking bean counters and owners/managers only want their loot now, they could care less about eventually losing their customers, as they DON'T CARE that every outsourced job is also an outsourced consumer. They get their loot now, later on their plan is to live on that loot, they are fully prepared to drive by you huddled on the sidewalk begging, just like they do in any other technofuedal 2nd world nation now.
THINK on that aspect of society and the job market right now before you proceed.
Don't expect any of them to be loyal to you, so don't work for them. You'll just keep getting screwed, over and over again. if this wasn't true you'd still be employed, yes?
The only person who will be loyal to you is YOU, and only YOU will keep yourself employed.
Figure out a widget niche, then use your OWN IT technical skills for your OWN business model. You need your own business, and I DON'T mean just consulting for someone else's business.
Here's an analogy, it's rough (crappy really) but it might get this concept across.
Joe is a car/truck mechanic, over the years he's learned how to work on a lot of cars.
Joe worked for years for belchfire motors, but they gradually switched to using foreign parts and foreigners in general, eventually moving their factories and finally even outsourcing any repairs. His job got to be less and less hours until finally one day he got his last check, then was unemployed, despite being this great mechanic.
He then went around applying for mechanic jobs, but all over it was the same scene, mechanics not needed unless you today have this exact single thing we need and once that's finished good bye, see ya later.
He picks up a day here, a week, there, but it's rank and not really steady.
He's still a good mechanic.
He thinks, "hmm, what was I working on again?" "oh ya, I was a mechanic to make cars and trucks work"
He thinks again, "what do people use cars and trucks for to make a living with, something besides generic transportation?"
"Well, taxicabs, delivery, construction specialised truck-tools, etc".
So he gets a brainstorm, he goes into the commercial application vehicle business, he notices locally there's an unfilled niche, there's no light duty delivery service. He gets a fleet of small trucks, hires drivers, and uses his previous mechanical skills to keep the trucks running so he stays profitable. He starts with one truck, builds from there. he knocks on doors, gets contracts. he fixes his own truck at night if it needs it, and does deliveries during the day, always stopping at some new place to pitch his business. He's relentless.
He's not getting paid as a mechanic per se anymore, but he's still using his mechanic skills to "make money", but this time he's the boss and can make better decisions, like, he knows such and such a truck has a better track record for not breaking as often. Done, that's what gets decided. Other companies have the bean counters decide on the cheapest truck, so they suffer breakdowns later on but blame anyone but themselves. He knows that aftermarket part A is better than OEM part B, so he uses that part if needed. He knows that preventative maintenance is a good idea, so instead of running his vehicles x-thousand miles from tune ups and oil changes like his competition, he runs them in sooner-yes, higher short term cost, better long term average cost, it's cheaper in the long run to do it intelligently.
and etc.
Hope this helps, think one step higher in "business" mode rather than concentrating on "tech" mode, as being self employed is what's going to count in the future, not the overly niched skill set. use your skills to do business for yourself, don't make the money for other people. If they can afford to pay you x thousand, they are making x + thousand, might as well get the whole amount.
The handwriting is on the wall as to the two class global society coming, best you can do is to stave off the timing, get as self employed as possible, in at least two different areas, and for sure (this one is my really only serious detailed recommendation), make sure you move rural and own property outright that has it's own water, garden area and woodlot. Commute if you have to now or tellecommute, but DON'T stay major urban bound in a piped in reality apartment or house.
Look around, the %^&t is getting bad out there.
All the tech in the world won't eliminate the basics of being a carbon based lifeform. In times of economic or social crisis or depression, having the ability on site to feed, water and heat yourself and family will be more valuable than any number of high tech gizmos. Don't think in terms of just representative wealth in the form of money, think of what the basics are you use that "money" for, and get ahold of them now while still possible and affordable.
I listened to the stories from my grandmothers and great aunts about the great depression, it was no joke, there's no guarantee it won't happen again. People in the city who lost their jobs lost a LOT, those in the rural areas might have been poor but at least they had food and water and a place to sleep. Cover your basic human needs, proceed from there. It's real insurance, a great adjunct to that piece of paper in the file cabinet.
And anyone who don't think it can happenm, here's some clues.
Large corporations get a tax break to relocate outside the US. They are doing so. This is a bad idea and is part of the great economic snakeoil salesmen's spiel. Check the daily headlines, you aren't seeing "xyz corp anounces a new plant and hiring thousands" you are seeing "xyz corp announces layoffs". this is across the board, every sector you can point at practically. This is single major clue # 1.
The government cooks the books on unemployment to avoid panic, we are over double digits now, it's not the 5-6% they spout on teevee, it's double that. It's 10 to 12%, they DON'T count people who have exhausted unemployment benefits or who have been out of work past a few months.
Look at the major US banks derivatives exposure.(scary)
Look at the fortune 500 (and government) pension exposure(ditto, scary)
Look at where the major insurance carriers have their eggs piled now(nothing that's making any money beyond theoretical poker chip bond money. bonds can only be paid if people are working. bonds can default same as anything, and government printing press money won't help if the work itself defaults.)
Look at projected energy demands and what is related to what and where it comes from(we have a certain amount of cheap to extract by the BTU energy, hint, we don't own much of it anymore)
Look at which nations are going to be needing how much energy and when, timewise (china, 1.5 to 2 billion people, ramping up manufacturing and all those people demanding jobs and to become sort of kinda middle class, at least to have some bones thrown to them, projected crisis level roughly 2010)
Do that, you'll get reality religion and get self employed and move rural most likely. Most guys won't, the concept of "not having" and "$%^&* this is bad" hasn't been hammered in yet so it's "not possible". Latest release of quake and who won the ball game is still tops. Don't go there.
good luck and better skill
I'm an academic purist, so normally I'd tell you that if you want to know about something new: get off your ass and learn it yourself. However in the case of networking I'd have to agree with you.
Let's face it: TCP/IP and UDP/IP are the only protocols worth a damn. Networking courses are filled with archaic ideas like ATM which clearly has no future (QoS will be implemented on top of TCP/IP). You could argue that learning about the good old days will teach students general design principles, however so would learning about the exotic ideas that might not be here for the long haul.
So rather than spend a bunch (it's okay to spend a little) of time on history or cut back the low-level portion of networking courses, I'd rather see students learning about things like IPv6, IPSec, and Mobile IP.