Current IT Scenario in India

Intel to cut 1,000 managerial jobs worldwide…HP to cut 24,600 jobs following EDS takeover..Satyam Computers to axe 4,500 employees…TCS, Wipro recast hiring plans…Wipro Tech puts 3000 staff under scanner…Where is your skills rated??? The long term trends for the first 10 languages (programming) are…….. The other languages in the list of top 50 are….more(aurosblog)

Five realities of Google or any other Workplace you are in

Have you heard about working at Google? They’ve got tricycle conference rooms! They’ve got free, organic, locally sourced food from gourmet chefs. They’ve got dry cleaning, free transportation, backup childcare and more brightly colored plastic things than all of the kindergartens in Silicon Valley together. And every new hire gets a pony.

Fine, I was joking about that last part, but it is hard not to poke fun at the gasping praise/thinly-veiled envy bestowed on Google’s headquarters. From all the braggy bits one hears about the company, it’s logical to conclude that anyone would be crazy to not want to work there.

Yet people do leave their coveted jobs at Google, all the time. Enough have gone to Facebook that some estimate its workforce could be up to 10 percent former-Googlers. Microsoft employee and blogger Dare Obsanjo says that he, too, knows many techies who are picking Microsoft over Google , either by jumping ship or by receiving two offers and picking Redmond.

As tales from these and other departing Googlers emerge, a few themes recur, edifying us to not only the realities of working for the Web’s number one search engine but for any company whose cool quotient is, well, significantly higher than our own.

1. “But everything is so laid back!” The chilled out, fun-loving atmosphere of Google and like minded Valley employers is hard to resist, especially if like most white collar workers, you’ve spent your career toiling in cubes under fluorescent lights. Yet you’ll still be toiling in cubes under fluorescent lights at Google, but somehow it is supposed to be more bearable because it’s Google. Unsurprisingly, this honeymoon phase doesn’t last forever.

“Google values ‘coolness’ tremendously, and the quality of service not as much,” wrote Microsoft development manager Sergey Solyanik about leaving Google upon his return to Redmond.

2. “Just working there is enough.” An ongoing complaint of employees exiting Google and other hot companies is that they were frustrated by a lack of career development, as the sheen of working for such an “awesome” employer settled into a day-to-day routine.

“Startups don’t have a career path for their employees,” writes Obsanjo. “Does anyone at Facebook know what they want to be in five years besides rich? However once riches are no longer guaranteed and the stock isn’t firing on all cylinders (GOOG is under performing both the NASDAQ and DOW Jones industrial average this year) then you need to have a better career plan for your employees that goes beyond ‘free lunches and all the foosball you can handle’.”

3. “Not everyone is making bank.” The majority of Google’s or any startup’s employees are not the bold letter named product guru or famed CEO, but recent graduates piled three and four into apartments working long hours for salaries in the low ends of their brackets. For more established professionals, it can be a harder place to work.

“Google’s hiring system is highly optimized for acquiring fresh college grads straight out of school–bright, idealistic, inexperienced, don’t know what they want to do with their lives, few or no time demands in their home life, and would be thrilled to do anything at a place as cool as the big G,” said Danny Thorpe, another former Google employee that now works at Microsoft. “The Google interview style–valuating the person as a whole on intelligence and creativity, with no particular interest in experience and no particular job title in mind–reflects that.”

4. “They really thought they were going to do something meaningful.” Surprise! Most jobs at Google, like most jobs at any company, are quite unglamorous. Valleywag, a gossip blog, routinely points to openings for what are essentially “professional gofers” whose job responsibilities “will include making restaurant reservations, ordering flowers, recommending places to dine.” Although these are just a few jobs out of more than 10,000 wordwide, it is exactly this dichotomy between high-achievers and mundane work that is the cause for so much burnout.

“[Google] makes a big deal of only hiring these super-high-IQ kiddies and the fact is that most of them truly are smart, but then you put them into this horribly dull and easy drone work on AdWords and AdSense and they’re all bored to tears and totally disappointed because they really really really thought they were going to do something meaningful with their lives,” wrote Fake Steve Jobs.

5. “Eventually, all children want to grow up.” Is working at a company that does your laundry, gives you free food and lets you sit on bouncy-ball chairs kind of like being a kid again? More than one former Googler has argued this as they walked out the door–it was fun for a while, but it got old.

“Google hires programmers straight out of college and tempts them with all the benefits of college life. Indeed, as the hiring brochures stress, the place was explicitly modeled upon college… But as the gleam wears off the Google, I can see why it’s no place anyone would want to hang around for that long,” said blogger Aaron Swartz.

cheers Working!!!

What causes a great performer to go sour?

A lot – maybe most – of my work for companies has to do with “remedial” coaching. In HR-speak, this translates to something like, ” He/she was really good for a while; but now they just aren’t performing at the level we need. If they can’t get back in the game, we probably won’t be able to keep them. We want you to help them to get re-engaged.”

Occasionally, I am also asked to work with stellar performers to help them move up the ladder more quickly. But those situations are few and far between. I think this simple fact says a lot about most organizations and their management styles. And what it says is important…..

See if this next sound bite sounds familiar – you may have had it said to you; or you may have said it to a member of your own team:

” (Insert name here), you’re doing a great job! We’re very impressed with the way you get things done; and to show you that we think you’ve got real potential, we’re going to let you take over a bigger responsibility. You’ve shown us you have the skill, talent and dedication to move forward in this organization and we like that. So, here you go – more people working under you (or more job scope, or more dollars in a bigger budget, or more whatever). We’re going to keep an eye on you (insert name again) and if you perform like we think you’re gonna; we’ll keep giving you more responsibility. Everyone will see that you are a key player.”

In most cases, the person who was given this new extra responsibility is very happy with the verbal pat on the head and moves into her or his new role with great enthusiasm.

Often, they continue to excel and the boss sees this. And then to show appreciation, the boss gives the high performing person another level of responsibility or a promotion. And both sides feel good again. But this is where things may get a little sour.

Some people refer to what happens next as The Peter Principle in action. If you’re not familiar with the term it’s from Dr. Laurence Peter, who said back in 1968 that “..every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” Peter intended it to explain the upward, downward, and lateral movement of personnel within a hierarchically organized system of ranks. You have probably seen this occur – may have had it in your own career. This is when the HR department calls on a success coach to help “fix” the situation.

I don’t think Peter’s concept was exactly sound however because it contends that the team player was responsible for the poor outcome. I believe that the manager is the one responsible for the situation when the team member started to fail.

Many managers do this when they should do precisely the opposite. They take their great players and burden them, little by little, until they finally go sour. They use the great ones to offset the weaknesses of other team members, picking up more work while the slackers or incompetents get away with doing less. Often what occurs is that the great ones end up working 10 or 12-hour days and the weak links in the chain get to work 8 or 9 hours because they have less to do.

Inadvertently, the stars get penalized for being stars!

What to do?

1. Re-think your use of talent. When you’ve got a great one under you; use them to help you run a better group.
2. Rather than job enlargement – go for job enrichment. Give them juicy-but-challenging special projects that will help develop new skills.
3. Or let them have the luxury of time to help you by studying and examining processes or tasks to determine how they can be improved.
4. Let them see that you value them by treating them special. They’ll perform with continually renewed enthusiasm which helps make you shine at the same time.
5. And when they need some help that you or others can’t provide, bring in others from the organization or even outsiders to mentor and coach them to help them grow even more quickly.

Your organization will gain a reputation as a place where people want to work. You will attract and retain the best available.

fetched from blog4aurobindo(blogspot)

The ten hottest certs for 2008

The list is based on job growth, sales of certification training material, and “a little guess work.”

1. MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional)

2. CCNA (Cisco Certified Network Associate)

Trapp reasons that most network administrator jobs right now are IP related and they are in more demand at a higher professional level as compared to Microsoft Certifications.

3. MCPD (Microsoft Certified Professional Developer)

Demand for these developers is up over 80% compared to last year. Trapp says there are only a little over 3,000 currently with the certification.

4. SCJP (SUN Certified Java Programmer)

Trapp says that a Java credential is one of the most valuable credentials that a programmer or developer can have, since about 70% of business entities’ development projects are done through J2EE.

5. CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Professional)

With CISSPs earning $94,070 a year on average, it’s easy to see why Trapp puts this one on the list. (Note that the exam costs $500, lasts up to six hours, and includes 250 multiple choice questions.

6. Comptia A+

By far the most popular entry level certification.

7. Comptia Network +

A good cert to have since the network systems and data communications analyst is ranked Number 2 on the most in demand jobs list.

8. MCTS SQL Server 2005 (The Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist)

Trapp thinks SQL Server 2005 is going to be hot next year since many companies are switching to SQL Server 2005.

9. RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer)

RHCE is called the “crown jewel of Linux certifications.” According to a survey by Saugatuck Technology and BusinessWeek Researce Services, about 25% of enterprises will be running mission-critical business applications on the Linux open source operating system by 2009.

10. Comptia Security+

Growth in Security+, which covers topics like communication security, infrastructure security, cryptography, access control and authentication, shows no signs of slowing down. According to Trapp, “Comptia’s Security+ Credential is must have in today’s world.”

fetched from blog4aurobindo(blogspot)

Write a resume that will land you a programming job..PART 3

Watch your formatting

While technical pros’ resumes do not need to be pretty, formatting can make a huge difference in a resume’s readability. If you cannot put three pages of text in front of me in a readable form, do I really want you touching the UI or writing code that someone else might have to maintain?

I recommend that you stick to a larger font size (e.g., 10 – 12 pt.) in a font that reads well onscreen and in print (e.g., Verdana, Arial, Tahoma, Calibri, Helvetica). If you want a slightly fancier font, use it only for section headers. Also, do not mix Serif and Sans Serif fonts — that is just ugly. Do not use “Comic Sans” anywhere, especially in hot pink or baby blue (and yes, unfortunately, this needs to be stated). Keep your margins and space between paragraphs large enough to provide the reader some “breathing room.”

Employment history

I give applicants some slack on employment history. For instance, five year stints are fairly rare in IT, and I give anyone a lot of leeway if their history includes anything that occurred during the dot com boom/bust.

If you are (or were) a contractor or consultant, make sure that is clearly stated; otherwise, I will think that you get fired and/or quit every 3 – 12 months. If you were not a contractor or a consultant, and it looks like you have a hard time staying at a job, I am going to be very cautious. If I see an increasing progression of job titles, “mercenary” pops into my head. Also, if I see that they are lateral (or worse, negative) moves, “bad apple” is my first thought. Of course, sometimes you get hit with a string of employers that go under or get acquired — it happens to the best of us. If that is the case, find a way to convey that information so I don’t think you are unemployable.

Spelling and grammar

It is critical that the spelling and grammar in your resume is flawless. I have seen applicants misspell the name of their state and the name of their school. If grammar and spelling are not your forte, ask someone to look over your resume for you. While I understand that many IT pros are not native English language speakers (or are English language speakers who paid little attention to those subjects in school), you should still ask someone for help. In fact, knowing when to ask for help is a hallmark of the best developers. If I interview you and realize from your speech that you had the sense and humility to ask someone for help on your resume, I am going to be truly impressed. (For examples of what not to do, check out this list of real-life resume blunders.)

Stay out of EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) territory

In the United States, companies with more than 10 employees need to follow EEO rules. These rules state that an employer cannot discriminate against or show preference for an employee based on certain group membership items or personal lifestyle issues, such as gender, age, ethnicity, nation of origin, religion, sexual orientation, and so on. So, do me a favor and try to not expose any EEO-related information to me on the resume. In a face-to-face interview or even a phone interview, some of it will be unavoidable. But I will never solicit that information. Not only do I want to keep my employer and myself out of trouble, but I personally feel that EEO is important. I can understand that many names (or even college attended) are strongly correlated with ethnicity, religion, or nation (or at least general geographic region) of origin, and college graduation or attendance dates give some age clues. Minimize this as much as possible. Please do not tell me about your church, your family situation, your home life, your parents, and so on. It is not that I am not interested — I would probably love to learn these things about you if we hire you — but I do not need or want to know them before that you come on board.

Outside interests, hobbies, achievements, and activities

I like to see these, but only if they are relevant. I really do not need to know about how big of a fan you are of the New York Knicks; but if you wrote a piece of software that can do something nifty with the team’s statistics for fun, I would love to know about it. People who contribute to open source projects get a huge gold star in my book, but only if I feel like they would be comfortable working on proprietary software with proprietary tools, and not bringing anything GPL’ed into my codebase. That is a small caveat there. “Contributed to project XYZ in the areas of ABC and DEF” is enough to whet my appetite. Show me some outside learning too — don’t let me think that you get home at 6;00 and shut off your brain. If this work is not interesting enough for you to read about or experiment with on your own time, why would I think that you will be engaged or even interested in the job we would hire you for?

Gracefully show your inner geek

Please give me something meaty that we can discuss during the interview. So, where it is relevant, try to show me how much of a nerd you are.

For instance, try to mention the hovercraft you made from an inner tube and a lawn mower engine. Make note of the iterative, evolutionary game theory system you coded in Lisp that proves that Nash’s equilibrium is dead wrong. Tell me something about your three chess championship victories. I do not want to know that you memorized UHF or that you have a pocket protectors collection that have logos of now defunct minicomputer vendors.

I know most of this falls under the previous section, but it is relevant. I love to work with programmers who love technology and logic and using their brains. People like that are simply better programmers. Why would I want to hire someone who is intellectually lazy for an intellectually challenging job?

Obscure or nonmainstream technologies

I am not hiring Lisp, Prolog, Erlang, APL, Scheme, Clipper, PowerBuilder, Delphi, Pascal, Perl, Ruby, Python (forgive me for including those four in this list), Fortran, Ada, Algol, PL/1, OCaml, F#, Spec#, Smalltalk, Logo, StarLogo, Haskell, ML, D, Cobra, B, or even COBOL (which is fairly mainstream) developers. If you show these on your resume, I will want to interview you just for the sake of slipping in a few questions about these items. I am serious. As part of my secret geekiness, I am really into obscure and almost obscure languages and technologies. I know that a lot of those items take better-than-industry-average intellect and experience to do; they also provide a set of experiences that gives their practitioners a great angle on problems. While you will never directly use those skills in my shop, you will be using those ways of thinking, and it will give us something to talk about on your first day.

(Aside: A coworker was shocked to learn that I played Half Life. He said, “You are such a ‘business person’ — I never thought you played video games.” I guess I’m camouflaging my secret geekiness too well!)

Good luck

I’ve given away crown jewels here. In my perspective, these tips will help any programmer write a perfect resume and get them an interview.

What do you think gets applicants an interview? If you read resumes as either a hiring manager, a recruiter, or an HR employee, what makes you say “wow!” or “ugh!” when you see it on paper?

source @TechRepublic

fetched from blog4aurobindo(blogspot)

Write a resume that will land you a programming job..PART 2

Show me that you are different

Even if my project is a run-of-the-mill Web-based, data driven application (which it is not), I still want to see that you are more than someone with 10 years of experience writing run-of-the-mill Web-based, data driven applications. For example, compare these two items:

BORING!
East Coast Power – Programmer 1999 – 2005

* Wrote VB applications to control machinery. The hardware interface was handled in a COM library that was written by another team. Application was robust and reliable.
* Wrote Web-based tool to track system faults.
* Created Web service to allow partners to consume portions of the database.

WOW!
East Coast Power – Programmer 1999 – 2005

* Wrote VB applications to control nuclear reactor. Real-time control and monitoring of systems handling 10,000 unique data inputs per second.
* Wrote advanced algorithms in C# to detect imminent system failure, which were used within a Web-based application.
* Created Web service in C# to allow partners to access data in a secure, reliable, and responsive manner; typical data set was 1,000,000 rows and concurrency challenges needed to be overcome at the database and application layers.

See the difference? Control machinery does not help me much – you could have been working on the elevator system for all I know. Programming a nuclear reactor impresses me, especially since there has not been any nuclear reactor disasters during your employment. Writing advanced algorithms in C# touches my engineer’s heart; whereas writing a mere Web-based tool is ho hum. And, while writing a Web service is fairly simple, particularly in ASP.Net, it’s not so easy to write one that is “secure, reliable, and responsive” with that size of a data set. It’s also not easy to deal with concurrency issues at two different levels.

I am not saying that it needs to be wordy or full of minute details, but if you are doing work beyond what a summer intern could do, I need to know about it. Every developer has written a Web-based, data driven application. Show me more.

Make sure that your experience highlights your skills

I don’t expect your employment history to include a list of all your skills. But if you are looking for work as a .Net developer, show me that you have done some .Net work. If you do not list that experience, I am going to assume that you have little or no experience with it — even if it is on your skill list. If you have large amounts of experience outside of the workforce, find a way to show that on your resume.

Keep your resume between two to four pages long

I have struggled through seven-page resumes filled with jargon and boring details that made me want to cry. An overly long resume doesn’t necessarily make me rule out a candidate, but why make it hard on me?

On the other hand, a resume that tries to stick to the one page rule is not going to cut it for a technical person unless they are new to the field. In my experience, two to four pages is just right. Also, please use some whitespace, so I do not feel like I am drowning.
continued…

fetched from blog4aurobindo(blogspot)

Write a resume that will land you a programming job..PART 1

I usually read 5 – 20 resumes each week. Both my boss and I are extremely busy, so it’s important that a programmer’s resume grab our attention quickly by providing the right mix of necessary information with something that makes that person stand out from the pack.

I’ve been involved with our hiring process for more than six months, so I feel fairly confident that I can distill what it takes for a programming resume to get me to say, “Let’s arrange an interview.” Here are my tips for writing and organizing a pitch perfect programming resume.

Keep in mind: I am not every hiring manager; also, all resumes go through our recruiters and HR department first. Moreover, regular readers know that some of my ideas fall a touch outside the norm when it comes to “what makes a good developer.”

Put your skills front and center

Reading the in-depth details of how you used mainstream skill XYZ to accomplish typical task ABC is not at the top of my agenda. I want to see your skills up front, so I don’t need to go trolling through your resume to see if you meet my minimum needs.

Skip the summary and maybe even the objective

Those summaries are a waste of my time. It is going to say something like “seasoned IT pro with great communication skills” or “proven veteran with 10 years of programming experience.” How do I know this? Because they all say this. Skip it, please.

The objective is a slightly different story; it is useful only if it informs the interviewer about something that the skills and experience does not. The objective’s relevance to me is largely a function of whether you wish to keep doing what you have been doing. If I see you have been programming — particularly at the data access layer and the business object layer — and there is no objective, I am going to assume that you are looking for more of the same with a different employer or location. If you want to do more of that work and put an objective, you are wasting space. If you are looking for a change of pace — like getting more into the presentation layer or heading towards a management track — it’s important to state that in your resume. Otherwise, we may discover during the interview that you are not interested in what we have to offer.

List your education last

Some IT hiring managers put a huge emphasis on certain educations but I do not. I always want you to list your school and your major, but I will only ask you about your education if there is something unusual or intriguing.

For instance, a candidate with a Computer Science degree from MIT or with a PhD in Organic Chemistry will draw my eye because these degrees show a level of high intelligence. On the flipside, an AA in basket weaving or a lack of a degree will not count against you.

In most cases, I am not even curious about your education until I have already made up my mind. This includes certifications — MCSEs and CCNAs do not impress me that much at this point. They matter to some folks, and they do not hurt you in my opinion, but I will only take that certification into account if all else is equal.

continued…

fetched from blog4aurobindo(blogspot)

Geeks and communication skills

It is a commonly held belief that geeks do not need to be able to communicate outside of Nerdland. In fact, it is an outright expectation. Programmers who gets nervous around pretty girls, systems administrators who cannot give a presentation to more than two people at a time, and DBAs that stutter unless they are discussing Dungeons and Dragons are what many people envision when they think of IT professionals. These are all common stereotypes of IT professionals. Sad to say, many IT professionals buy into this idea, and sometimes even actively encourage it!

I am not going to pretend to be surprised by this. Up until the age of sixteen or so, reaching Level 4 as a bard seemed more important than reaching first base with a woman. Weird Al Yankovich was “romantic” in my mind and a “nice wardrobe” meant a closet full of shirts from hardware and software vendors, preferable ones with multiple years’ worth of pizza stains on them to prove my “authenticity”. I thought that if people did not understand me, it was because they were stupid, not that I was unable to communicate with them.

Thankfully, I changed. Mostly. I still think Weird Al is funny on occasion, and the ratty shirts are still there (though they now tend to be Metallica and Mr. Bungle shirts from my post-ubergeek years). The biggest change was that my communication skills improved significantly. I took classes in high school such as AFJROTC and Mock Trial that taught me how to speak to an audience, with or without notes. My classes in college (I will merely admit that I double majored in “cannot-get-a-job-ology” which is code for “the liberal arts”) involved few tests, but endless amounts of paper writing. What few tests there were tended to be essay questions. In other words, I was learning a lot about communication skills.

What does this have to do with the IT industry? Plenty. If you want to know why your manager seems to be a “grinning idiot” with no clue what your job is instead of someone with technical skills, take a look at what that manager brings to the table. That manager is very likely to have an MBA or maybe an MIS degree. Their external learning is probably in “risk management” or Six Sigma, not the Cisco or Red Hat certification you just earned. The manager’s job is to interface between “the suits” and the IT people. The manager does not actually need to know how to do your job if you communicate your needs to him properly. What manager does need to know is how your job relates to the business.

It has been my experience since I started blogging about IT issues on TechRepublic, that the majority of the time when I receive heavy criticism, it is because I failed to write clearly and properly communicate my message. Sure, there have been instances where someone climbed all over me for using one bad example or analogy in a 3,000 word post, or where someone was obviously unable to comprehend the topic at hand. But by and large, when I receive negative feedback, it is my own fault for not writing clearly.

At my current position, my manager does not understand much programming (he knows some VBA), systems administration, database administration, networking, computer repair, or any of the other tasks I do. He knows how to run the company, deal with customers, and so on. He really does not need to know the gritty details of what the project is hung up on; he just needs to know how long the delay will be. He does not care what brand of motherboard I buy or what CPU I select; he needs to know the price and business justification for the expenditure.

Many of the IT people that I have worked with simply do not understand this. They fill a proposal with technical details, and expect the person reading it to understand the benefit of the proposal from the technical information. In other cases, they write an email that is littered with typos and spelling mistakes. These types of mistakes do not help the recipient to understand why they should approve your request or give your project more resources, or otherwise help you with whatever goal it is that you are trying to accomplish. Tailor your message for the audience. If the recipient is a technical person, make it technical. If they are a non-technical person, use language that a non-technical person can understand. As I often do for programs that I have written, I pass it through the “Mom test.” In other words, I ask my mother to review it. She is about as non-technical as it gets. If my mother can understand what I have written to the point where she can make an educated business decision, then it is a good communication.

Many of the IT people out there seem to think that this is degrading. These are the same types of IT people who make web sites that only display in one particular web browser, or require you to go find some funky external library, or insist that you recompile the application yourself without providing any documentation. These are the IT people that may be excellent at their jobs, but are hated by everyone that their job touches. You do not need to go this route. No one will criticize you or complain if you learn to effectively communicate with non-technical people. In fact, they will appreciate you even more. My experience has been that improved communications skills leads to better opportunities in life and in my career. If a manager is evaluating two candidates for a promotion, they are more likely to pick someone with less technical skills who communicates well than a more technical person who does not communicate well. Why? Because the person with good communication skills is able to show that they know what they are talking about, while the person without those skills simply cannot be understood.

If you feel that your communication skills may be lacking, there are things that you can do to help them improve. One suggestion is to read more books and magazines. If you already ready books and magazines, escalate the difficulty level of your readings or try reading about topics that you are not familiar with. I have found that crossword puzzles are great tools to expand your vocabulary. Try your hand at writing something, whether it be short fiction, how-to articles, or poetry. If you can, try to go to new places or talk to different people; sometimes we find ourselves in cliques with a shared mindset that makes it difficult to learn how to communicate outside of that group. There are lots of different ways to improve communications skills, but at the end of the day, they all amount to “increase the frequency of your communications, the diversity of the mediums, and the people that you communicate with.”

courtesy @Techrepublic

fetched from blog4aurobindo(blogspot)

10 signs that you aren’t cut out to be a developer

Programmers make big bucks. Software developers dress casual every day of the week. Anyone can teach themselves to be a programmer. These are just a few of the reasons why people say they want to become a developer. Unfortunately, the job market is littered with people who may have had the raw intelligence or maybe even the knowledge, but not the right attitude or personality to become a good programmer. Here are a few things to consider when deciding whether you should become a software developer.

#1: You’d rather be trained than self-teach

In most development shops, there is rarely any training, even if the company has a training program in place for other employees. At best, the company might reimburse you for a book you buy. Programmers are expected to arrive on their first day with all (or at least most ) of the skills they need. Even worse, the assumption is that programmers are really smart people who are good at problem solving. That assumption leads upper management to believe that good programmers do not need training. Finally, training for developers is extremely expensive. The result? When you change positions, you will need to figure out what is going on yourself, and you will probably need to teach yourself.

#2: You like regular working hours

Software development projects are notorious for being late. Even the projects that are delivered on time always seem to run behind schedule at some point. If you don’t like (or can’t handle) irregular or fluctuating demands on your time by your employer, development is not for you. When crunch time comes, your employer is more concerned with getting the product in the hands of a million-dollar client than with your child’s soccer game or the new TV program you wanted to watch.

#3: You prefer regular raises to job-hopping

The world of development is one of continual erosion of skill value. Unless you are working at a shop that deals with slow-to-change technologies, chances are, your skill set is less valuable every day. The state of the art is changing rapidly, and the skills that are hot today will be ho-hum tomorrow. As a result, it is difficult to sit at the same desk doing the same work every day and expect a raise that exceeds a cost of living increase. You need to keep your skills up to date just to maintain your current value. In addition, if you want to boost your paycheck, you need to expand your skill set significantly and either earn an internal promotion or go to another company.

#4: You do not get along well with others

It’s one thing to be an introverted person or to prefer to work by yourself. It’s another thing to be unable to get along with others, and it can sink you as a developer. Not only that, your manager may well be a nontechnical person (or a technical person who has not worked hands-on in some time), so you need to be able to express yourself to nontechnical people.

#5: You are easily frustrated

Software development is often quite frustrating. Documentation is outdated or wrong, the previous programmer wrote unreadable code, the boss has rules to follow that make no sense… the list is endless. At the end of the day, no one wants to be working next to someone who is always cursing under his or her breath or screaming at the monitor. If you are the kind of person who goes insane spending eight hours to do what appears to be 10 minutes’ worth of work, this is not a career for you.

#6: You are close-minded to others’ ideas

In programming, there are often problems that have only more than one “right” answer. [Update: Corrected by author] If you do not handle criticism well, or do not care to hear the suggestions of others, you might miss something important. For example, a few weeks ago, one of our junior-level people made a suggestion to me. After considering it for a bit, I decided to try it. It turned out that he was right and I was wrong, and his suggestion brought the time to execute a piece of code from multiple days to a few hours. Ignoring this person due to the difference in our experience levels would have been foolish.

#7: You are not a “details person”

Programming is all about the details. If you get lost in a movie more complex than Conan the Barbarian or have a hard time filling out a rebate voucher, you probably won’t do very well in the development world. Sometimes, something as simple as a missing period can mean the difference between random failure and perfect success. If you are the type of person who might not figure out where the missing period is, your career will be limited in range, at best.

#8: You do not take personal pride in your work

Sure, it’s possible to program by the book and do a passable job. The problem is, the book keeps getting rewritten. Software development is not a factory job where you tighten the same bolt all day long, where a touch too much or too little torque makes no difference. It requires independent thought, which in turn requires the people doing the work to take pride in it. Furthermore, it’s easy to do something the wrong way and have it work just well enough to end up in production. That “little error” you turn a blind eye to since it doesn’t seem to cause any problems will cause problems. Programmers who do not treat each project as something to be proud of turn out poor quality work, which in turn makes their careers short-lived.

#9: You prefer to shoot first and ask questions later

Software developers, at least the good ones, spend a lot more time planning what they’re going to type than actually typing. Usually, when coders just open up their code editor and start banging away at the keyboard, most of what they write gets ripped out later. Programmers who ponder, think, consider, and plan write better code in less time with fewer problems. There’s a reason so many programmers barely know how to type properly: The hard part of the job is knowing what to type. People who do not invest the time up front in their zeal to get started with the “real work” are actually skimping on the “real work.” If you are a doer and not a thinker, software development is probably not a good career choice for you.

#10: You do not like the geek type of person

For a bunch of reasons (some legitimate), a lot of people just do not enjoy being around the engineer or techie personality. If you have a hard time with the Dilbert or Weird Al personality type, do not even consider going into programming. Are all developers like that? Of course not. But they comprise a large enough portion of the workforce that you would be miserable in the industry.

courtesy @ TechRepublic

fetched from blog4aurobindo(blogspot)