Category: Archive

I’ll be on sys-con.tv talking live on programmer’s career on Sep 2 at noon.

These are the topics I plan to discuss:

Out of college with a CS degree: welcome to the catch-22 situation

Does the first employer matter.

Can I trust job agents?

Can I trust online job ads?

Looking for a job: a three step process

What do real-estate and IT job agents have in common?

Work as an employee or a consultant?

Comparing apples to apples: hourly rates vs. salary

Am I being underpaid?

Should I be scared of outsourcing?

…

I usually make this talk specific to Java developers with a demo tech interview, but this will be a generic one.

You should be able to ask questions online.

Yakov Fain

http://www.weekendwithexperts.com

I’ve got a call from a Java programmer I know. He said, “I’ve got
a problem. I was fired “. Here’s his story.

Joe was working for a mid-size financial company for several
years. He knew Java and his application pretty well and felt safe there. On the other hand, since the Java job market is
good, he started interviewing with some other companies, and was considering two offers. One day last week he did not have a floppy
disk and sent a piece of his code to his own personal Yahoo email account. He did not received this email.

Next day an HR person and his boss met with Joe and asked why he sent the
email. Joe answered that he was planning
to work from home, but never received this email. The boss said, “Please open
your Yahoo email account now and delete this email if it’s there “. When he opened his
email, they saw all his correspondence regarding new job offers and such… He
was immediately suspended and next day received a letter stating that he was
fired for an attempt to steal the proprietary software and the company may exercise
their right to sue him in the future for breaching the non-disclosure agreement
that Joe signed several years ago.

Most of us can work from
home, and some of us have our employer’s software installed on our laptops and
home PCs. In my opinion, Joe is just plain
stupid: he should not be sending this code using his employer’s email. Every single
e-mail in financial companies is being read by people from the information
security department. It’s not a secret, and has to be taken seriously. I doubt
that Joe’s former employer will take any further actions, but Joe may have
issues with his new employer. It all depends on how they check employment
history. Joe may start working for a new
company, and a month later get fired again if they find out about this story…

It’s a sad story, but each of us should learn from it. My
advise: do not use your employer’s email for sending anything that is not
job related. Stop sending jokes or funny
pictures to your colleagues. Some people do it every day just to let everyone know
that they came early today… This also may
get you in trouble unless you work for a mom-and-pop company.

Yakov Fain

http://www.weekendwithexperts.com

Here’s a new approach to Java training: your company
can invite a seminar “Weekend With Experts” (http://www.weekendwithexperts.com) featuring top-notch speakers, and host it at your
organization.

It’s a cost-effective and efficient alternative to a traditional Java training.

At this point this seminar travels only within the USA, but Europe and Brazil are next…

It looks like the majority of articles on PowerBuilder are titled either “Future of PB ” or “Is PB Dead? “. Here’s a fresh one: http://pbdj.sys-con.com/read/105375.htm. The very fact that this topic keeps popping up here and there tells me that there’s somthing wrong in this community.

I’ve been doing PB from ’93 to ’98 and loved it. After that, I swithced to Java and never regreted it. My wife is still doing PB, so I
have an idea what’s going on there. In my opinion, PB is not dead but in a deep coma.

Datawindow is really a great component, but
the client-server technology does not seem to be the right way to go. During the last several years, PB is undergoing a facelift surgery to introduce Web components and ability to work with J2EE, but I still need a really good reason to use PB for my front end development. You
can take an old car and slowly replace its parts with the better
ones, but it’s still an old car…

From the career point of view,
PB may not be a bad choice if you are not willing to learn new
technologies all the time. There are plenty of PB applications in
production, and someone will have to support them for many years to
come.

You should be able to make a decent living with PB for quite a long time.

Yakov

http://www.weekendwithexperts.com

The French translation of my e-book “Java Programming for Kids, Parents and Granparents ” is ready.

Two Java experts from France Vincent Lataye and Maxime Daniel did a great job. Thank you guys!

A sample chapter in French (and some other languages) is available at http://www.smartdataprocessing.com/java4kids.htm and the full version is coming really soon.

I’ve authored other Java books as well, but this is my favorite one because AFAIK there are no other books (at least in English and French) that teach kids Java.

Yakov

http://www.weekendwithexperts.com

I’m kindly asking for your help in automating my small business using Java. Many of you are busy working for large companies where money is not an object. Well, my software budget is $1000. Period. How far can a thousand dollars go with Java? Read more

Yakov

http://www.weekendwithexperts.com

Last week I ‘ve been to Russia on vacation. Moscow and St. Petersburg are beautiful cities with lots of things to see. Besides the usual sightseeing, I went to several large book stores to browse computer books.

Here “s what I ‘ve noticed:

In programming languages section the leaders are: C++, Visual Basic and hellip; Delphi.Large book stores have a couple of dozens Java books on the shelves. These are usually translations of western books published a couple of years ago.I was surprised by the large number of books on hacking and data protection. Half of these books are written by the Russian authors.Computer books are expensive there (relative to salaries of programmers): an average price is $10 USD. They use cheap paper (similar to our pocket books). Can you imagine the luxury Deitel ‘s book on Java printed in black and white on a cheap paper? I ‘ve seen it hellip;Prentice Hall and Sams are the leading publishers there.

In general, all book stores have great selections of fiction/travel/culinary/children “s and other books. They “ve made a great progress during the last 15 years.

People often ask me, “How are the rates? Are they as good as
5-6 years ago? “. They do not
necessarily want to work as contractors, but are looking for a
confirmation that the IT market is good in general.

The logic is simple: if companies are willing to pay good
money to contractors, this means that the
new well budgeted projects are being created, which is good for everyone.

A medical patient is willing to pay to a famous doctor $500 for a five-minute
consultation.

Yes, he could have gotten an intern’s opinion for 50 bucks.

While there are free public lawyers, their famous colleagues
charge about $1000 an hour, and as we’ve seen on multiple occasions,
they keep their clients out of jail.

This applies to the software development as well. Employers could have hired a dozen
of consultants overseas instead of hiring such contractor… So are they wasting money? I do not think so. On a slow day such contractor may be just browsing the Internet, while ten Java developers in Bangalore are typing if-else statements at the speed of 20 words per minute. But
guess what, once in a while he can
suggest a solution that will save this employer tons of money by creating a
scalable and highly available system. And experienced project managers know this.

IMHO, high paid IT contractors will never extinct regardless
of flourishing outsourcing or
recessions. Their rates may go down 25-30% but eventually they come back as
long as you maintain your skills at the high and up to date level. Just read, write, code, attend professional
seminars, learn the hot technologies and … never stop. The rates are probably
10% lower today than 5 years ago, which is not bad at all.

You can say that you know a very experienced guru Joe Shmo, and he’s out of job for a year. There are only three
reasons for this to happen:

Joe Shmo’s rate is to high for this geographical area at the moment and he’s
not willing to relocate.The requested
rate does not match Joe Shmo’e resume, but he’s not willing to accept this
and lower the rate.

3. Joe Shmo’s skills became outdated while he’s out of work.

I’d love to hear some other valid reasons… Anyone?

Yakov Fain

http://www.weekendwithexperts.com

I’m constantly getting calls regarding all kinds of senior Java jobs that are being opened daily in New York/New Jersey area. My skills fit most of these job requirements, but I’m not looking for a job at the moment. These are some examples (full time positions):

1. J2EE, EJB, WebLogic, Tibco, Design Patterns, excellent communication skills.

2. J2EE, Websphere, architecture, messaging

3. Java and Sybase for financial applications

Recruiters are telling me that there are lots of people who can talk about Java architecture and strategies, but it’s hard to find hard core Java developers who can actually write code.

I’m wondering if someone out there might be interested? Please keep in mind that I’m not a recruiter, and won’t be providing any additional info regarding any particular position. If you ar e a senior J2EE developer living in this area, I can get you in touch with the right people.

Yakov Fain

http://www.smartdataprocessing.com

My new client is located right on Wall Street in New York
and each morning I walk along this street. Last time I used to work in this area was back in 1996. This is
not the same street anymore. You can
see dozens of police officers just standing by NY Stock Exchange! Some of them
are with explosive sniffing dogs. Heavy roadblocks prevent cars from getting
there. But since you can’t just close
all surrounding streets, in some places they put mini traffic lights and long and wide metal panels sticking
out of the ground (they work similar to
draw bridges). Regular cars just do not
go there, but each delivery truck is being checked by police officers with a
dog. All this does not seem to bother
thousands of tourists , which
keep coming here from all around the world.

Back in 96 you could not see a single police officer on the street. Yes, after 9/11 you feel safer with their presence, police officers
are polite and friendly, but let me
tell you, this stinks!

Yakov Fain

http://www.smartdataprocessing.com