How to Keep Your Job

An anonymous reader submits: "Dave Thomas of "Pragmmatic Programer" fame presents the first in a series of slides based on presentations about how programmers can maintain job security in this time of increased competition, cost cutting, outsourcing, etc. He makes several excellent points about things many programmer may not think about such as the dangers of over-reliance on one company or sector, the importance of diversity of knowledge, the fact that foreign programmers CAN produce quality code, and the fact that time does NOT necesserily equal value (the Everquest Syndrome) when it comes to software engineering. There is a lecture that goes along with the slides, but a great deal can be learned from the slides alone. Worth the read..."

Comments

How to keep your job

[Kalak]

Stop hanging out on /. all day! FP != a job.

CMM?

[sporty]

CMM is a tool for identifying process ability, not code quality. i.e.

Someone at CMM 1 would be totally chaotic. Think waterfall on crack, skipping about back and forth randomly, developers coding on the whim of people.

At CMM5, there's be a strict set of policies (1 or 2, maybe more) that are repeatable, managed and are being optimized.

To say that developers across seas bring about CMM 3 or 4 is saying nothing. CMM isn't about one type of people, much less any people. It's about process a group uses to deliver. If they mean consultant companies across seas have higher CMM, maybe, but I'd think the language barrier would slow things down.

Must we RTFPPS?

[Strange Ranger]

I think


William Shatner...

Invented,


Power

Point

Slides 41+42

[dmorin]

Pretty much sum up a huge portion of the slashdot audience, I think. I consider myself a good programmer who loves a challenge and wants to stay technical. Therefore I should look for technologies that will not be outsourced, teach myself those technologies via open source, and write articles / speak/ otherwise become recognized expert in that area.

In general I think the first half of the presentation just says why things are bad and why stuff like "rely on government to fix the h1 problem" won't work, so it's only really the second half that has the advice.

I think it's a little ambiguous that in the beginning it says the half life for typical technology is 7-2.5 years, but in the end suggests planning for the future 5-10 years out. That's pretty hard.

Or that specific skills, like "I'm a java programmer", are bad. Sure, all programmers *want* to use the line "A good programmer can pick up any language easily" but in THIS job market? Are ya kidding? Sure, 3 years ago we were desperate enough that we took C++ or Smalltalk people when we wanted Java. But in today's market do I really expect that people who want C# are going to take me the Java geek and say "Oh, sure, he can pick up C# no sweat?" When there are 500 other guys applying for the same job that already have C# and couldn't hack Java to save their lives?

I'd like to recommend the "write articles" approach, by the way. Quite a fun way to learn a new technology when you don't have a boss who is making you learn it but still need the motivation. The two problems are that a) there are so many people doing this that many magazines don't pay $$ anymore, just "recognition", and b) I've had recruiters chop the "Publications" section out of my resume because they claim that it's never the thing that gets you the interview (although you can certainly talk about it once you do get the interview).

Lastly, sometimes bad things happen to companies and a whole geographic region goes away. Don't blame yourself. My boss once told me that I was part of his baseline for the team and I was leaving that meant the team was gone. Well, the team is being dissolved, therefore I'm gone. But I can't have any hard feelings or say "Damnit I wish I'd learned technology X." I can only look forward toward my next job, whatever it may be.