A thread on the jobs board about coding inspired this post. Are there any software developers, computer engineers, or electrical engineers on here that would be willing to answer a few career-related questions? I realize they are not the same thing and that the answers will probably be different for each, but generally I'm looking to answer the following:

1. What is a day at work like for you? For example, how much paper pushing/time tracking/admin type stuff do you have to do, how many hours do you work each week, how flexible is your schedule, how fun/boring is your work, etc.
2. What would you estimate is the average compensation for a new graduate entering your profession?
3. What different jobs are available to a computer science, computer engineering, or electrical engineering graduate that someone might not think about at first (if any)?
4. What is the promotion and raise structure like where you work? Do you basically have to change jobs to get any meaningful bump in salary?
5. How transferable are the skills you learn at each job (i.e. is it easy to move from one company to another, or are the skills/niches very specific)?
6. Do you feel that an MBA is a requirement to move up in your field or is it more experience-based?
7. Do you think your job will be outsourced/offshored in the near future (mostly talking to software developers here)? If so, how do you think this will impact your career and how will you respond?
8. Bottom line: If you had the opportunity to go back to school and start over, would you major in your respective field again? If not, to what would you change your major? Put another way and more simply, do you find your job satisfying?

I know I can search Google for some of this stuff, but I'd prefer to get first hand and recent accounts, if possible. TIA for any responses.

I am class of '07, EET and work as a hardware engineer at IBM. Though most of my experience is from a hardware development role, I can give some insight.

1) Enough admin to keep my managers off my back. Enough paper pushing to keep me honest of the work I've done, the requirements to other projects, and staying on task.
2) payscale.com is fairly consistent with the different job titles
3) From a software perspective in a hardware world -> Firmware engineer, Test Automation Engineer, Infrastructure Engineer, Test developer, pattern stimulus developer, and I regularly am writting perl/python to script and make my life easier.
4) This is a company specific question. At IBM, someone either has to retire or die before someone gets promoted in the same management chain.
5) My skills are fairly transferable. Most companies are looking for candidates that know how to do everything that is required, and as long as you can prove it in an interview you'll do ok.
6) MBA if you want to be upper level management/business focused. You can definitely make vertical moves and stay purely technical focused.
7) LOL, all jobs can be outsourced. What is funny is that if the job requires QUALITY, then it'll get shipped back to the US. We had an entire design unit ship their testing to India, and after working with the team day/night on just enabling their lab, we canned the project and finished it here.
8) I would have done my same major again, but focused purely from a design perspective. Would have given me LOTS of more options to move around.

I am class of 2001 Computer Science major. Best part of my job is that I work from home so it's a great work/life balance.

Bottom line, i would NOT do it again. I did it because math was easy to me and programming was too but I have zero passion for it. It's the typical job I do to pay the bills, nothing more.

So my advice is follow your heart. Do something you care about.

theterk, are you at IBM Austin?

I will preface my answers by saying I work for a small software company of 22 people, so a lot of us wear many hats. Me especially. I do everything except programming, although I do when needed and for special projects.

1) day in the life - not that exciting...currently working on a customer project, some infoSec stuff for our company, some AWS configuration for our product suite. The only 'admin' I do is timsheet and invoice management for our billable projects. I use all online/SaaS apps.

2) Just a guess, but new grad coming to work here, depending on skillset is 65-75K. Just a complete guess. Upside to high performance would get that higher quickly.

3) unsure

4) we are so small...whenever you feel you need to discuss your salary, you go discuss it. There is nothing formal in place, no 'peer-reviews' or '360 feedback' type BS. If you think you deserve a raise go justify your reasons.

5) the skills are transferable. If you are going to get intimate wit ha specific application or infrastructure, then they might not. You would hopefully however be able to convince someone that learning something new is not an insurmountable task given your experience.

6) all experience based. MBAs don't mean that much in a small product company unless you want to just be management type. MBAs might get you in the door on some open positions that have that as a limiting factor. But as far as software development - too many skilled individuals that some MBA is going to trump.

7) not a chance. I have outsourced some work from India when desperate and I hate doing it. Quality of work is terrible. It's cheap, so it is hard to ignore. I used outsourced staff from india for some rudimentary testing I needed done. It was effective enough to bill the customer our usual rate, pay the cheap outsourced rate, and clear 75% on the work.

8) knowing what I know now...college is too much fun to rush through. I would have liked to have stayed and partied some more, but at the time I graduated, anyone with a BANA degree (that's what it used to be called) was getting 4-5 job offers at good pay so it was hard to resist. I have a good situation here, with great flexibility and a very casual environment. That being said I wouldn't mind changing things up a bit and dong something else right now.

HTH

Class of 1980 - Computer Science, EE Minor

So I have seen more than a few changes in this business. I work as a general manager of a small division of a larger software company. I am not a developer, though I was quite a while ago. I wrote assembler language for mainframe systems software. I am probably best viewed as a business manager today, with line of business responsibility and a fair amount of individual contributor work related to marketing.

I enjoy my job more now than I have the 5-10 previous years simply because of a change in employer. Too long to explain here but this is still a business that is satisfying in multiple ways. It isn't as fun as brewing beer, but that won't pay any bills.

MBA? I don't have one and do not think I have been harmed by not having one. I did take some executive education at Wharton to strengthen my finance knowledge. Some companies are no doubt fascinated by graduate degrees. Others don't give a damn.

My #1 piece of advice in this area is to work for a company that wants to make a profit in the area you work in. I started work at Shell Oil in 1981. Very fine company then. Relied a lot on information technology for its success. But it was still obvious that the "oil guys" were the stars at the company. Eventually worked for a growing software company - which was a revelation. Related to this is the adage that "if you are a software guy don't work for a hardware company." The lines aren't always clear, but I know dozens of software guys that tried to have a career at Dell. Dell sucks anyway, but a company that looks at their product as a commodity will never appreciate software.

My #2 piece of advice is to get into something that isn't a commodity (like Java). Those are the skills most easily satisfied by a college grad or offshore body. Get good at databases. Kernel development. Security might be a great area to be an expert in.

My #3 piece of advice is get good at whatever you are assigned to do. You may hate it - but get good at it. Then find a better job. With all due respect to the above person working for IBM - don't work for IBM unless you are just starting. Then leave. Or you will wake up one morning ten years later wondering "what have I done?"

yes, IBM Austin

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My #3 piece of advice is get good at whatever you are assigned to do. You may hate it - but get good at it. Then find a better job. With all due respect to the above person working for IBM - don't work for IBM unless you are just starting. Then leave. Or you will wake up one morning ten years later wondering "what have I done?"

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I couldn't agree more.

agree with the IBM statement. Working for such a small company now, whenever I have to deal with a large enterprise IT organization for one of our projects I am very thankful I don't have to be in that kind of environment all the time.

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1. What is a day at work like for you? For example, how much paper pushing/time tracking/admin type stuff do you have to do, how many hours do you work each week, how flexible is your schedule, how fun/boring is your work, etc.

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I work for a commodities trading company. I am on a dev team of 5 and we are writing enterprise software that will eventually be used by all divisions in the company. It's a pretty low stress job and we have a really good team. I do absolutely no paperwork. A lot of similar interests among the group, so we talk sports for a good chunk of the day.

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2. What would you estimate is the average compensation for a new graduate entering your profession?

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Average I guess would be about $50k- $60k. Right out of college in '05 I made $43k, but that was at a different company.

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3. What different jobs are available to a computer science, computer engineering, or electrical engineering graduate that someone might not think about at first (if any)?

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It really depends. A comp sci grad will lean to developing, But my first job was at a small construction company and I ran the show on all technology, and did software development when I got the chance. It's always going to be related to technology (with rare exceptions), but I knew people that got jobs all over the US in varying industries. I would say if you don't like programming, stay away from comp sci as a major even though there are jobs out there that don't require programming.

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4. What is the promotion and raise structure like where you work? Do you basically have to change jobs to get any meaningful bump in salary?

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I was pretty well taken care of at my last job, but new I was worth more and a change was needed to get a real raise. I was at my last job for 5 years and I went from $43k to and when I left I was making about $67k. I left for over a $20k raise. Now I'm just under $100k. There are no real promotions at my current job as we don't really have titles. If all the other developers left today, I would be considered the lead, but that's about as high as it goes.

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5. How transferable are the skills you learn at each job (i.e. is it easy to move from one company to another, or are the skills/niches very specific)?

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If I wanted another job right now, I would probably have an offer within a couple of weeks. I'm not a special developer by any means, but I have desirable skills and experience, especially in the job market right now.

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6. Do you feel that an MBA is a requirement to move up in your field or is it more experience-based?

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No way would I go that route.

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7. Do you think your job will be outsourced/offshored in the near future (mostly talking to software developers here)? If so, how do you think this will impact your career and how will you respond?

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No, but mostly because our CIO believes in keeping everything in-house.

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8. Bottom line: If you had the opportunity to go back to school and start over, would you major in your respective field again? If not, to what would you change your major? Put another way and more simply, do you find your job satisfying?

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I probably wouldn't change my major because I enjoy it, although having some experience in the field I would say that a college education isn't remotely required to do what I do. I really enjoy my job, but I know that I'm somewhat fortunate in my current situation.

Dont want to derail the thread...

But theterk do you have an email I can contact you at?

I graduated with the same degree and am also a hardware engineer at IBM. Would love any resources /advice regarding scripting. There are definitely many areas of the job that could be automated.

I am not an engineer. I am not a developer. I obtained my EE '04, but I am nowhere close to an engineer. I help pitch the current BS to customers and 'architect' solutions. Pays well. However, I am neither an architect nor an engineer. I respect those that actually create something for a living. Degrees mean nothing.

I have dealt with the following techs... EMC, Netapp, VMWare, Cisco (SAN/UCS).. I'm interested in the current Openstack scam and distributed cluster systems (Nutanix, ScaleIO)

1) Sales or Techincal Sales - I started out in the infrastructure business with EMC on the customer facing side. Working for EMC sucks. Salaries can get to 150kish for blue chips. Take advice above, get good especially from a technical standpoint. Sales guys can make a fortune but man. they are a dime a dozen. Top sales folks can range drastically. 250k+.. I know some dip****s who make 7 figures flipping Cisco gear to very large service providers. I do not recommend equating this success to all sales reps. A solid technical, sales engineer is valuable. You can make even more money on the channel (reseller side), though the money isn't like the 90s... ahh I wish I was around in the 90s.

2) Engineering - Developing something is satisfying, it is something I wish i did more of but alas such is life. Lots of engineers do get into the customer facing side because they feel stuck. Engineering can be one of those careers where you end up spending your life doing other people's ambitions. IF you want to take a shot, develop something or support a startup (especially if you are young and cheap).

I've been in the business for 10 years and I'm getting tired of technology. Prehaps I'm an idiot or prehaps I'm tired of the same old pitches on a different day. Eventually, margins go thin and services are harder to sell. I'm torn with the quality aspect; customers want great work but demand everything as cheap as possible. Groundbreaking products with zero competition print money... eventually everything ends up at 10% margin or less(hardware wise).

Sorry for the randomness, I have a few cocktails and am looking forward to another **** week with customers.

If you find the subjects easy in school but do not like to actually tinker with the technology then don't consider doing the tinkering for a living, you will hate it.

username at gmail dot com.

I'm a '97 BANA major and I'm currently a Senior Architect specializing in the Microsoft stack.
1. Meetings, coding (prototype, bug fix, ect), product/technology research, designing (whiteboard, documentation)

2. I think you can get this from http://careercenter.tamu.edu/guides/reports/

3. I was a BANA major so I can speak to more business related roles. I started off working for consulting firms. There is a broad range of things you can do there. Pure developer, Business Analyst, QA Analyst, User Experience, Package Implementation (SAP, Oracle, ect). Eventually with some experience and depending on your career path, you can get into Project Management, Team Management. You can even transition out of the technical side into the Product Management aspect.

4. The consulting firms I worked for had really well defined career ladders with annual or semi-annual promotions and salary bands. But that works to their best interest to promote you , so they can pimp you out for more money. With bigger companies there is some of that, but not as clearly defined. With smaller companies, it's usually non-existent. Usually, if you want to make a big jump in salary, you'll have to leave.

5. I'm going to disagree with some of the other advice to specialize. You should start out being a generalist. Get a broad range of experience, both in technologies, but also projects in your first 3-5 year. After that focus and specialize. Otherwise you will be locked in to a career when you don't have enough experience to know if that's the right long term choice. In summary, if you stay technical and not too specialized, your skills with transfer easily.

6. If you want to stay technical, then an MBA isn't necessary. Experience and being really good at what you do will help you move up your field. if you want to move into management or senior leadership then MBA might be appropriate.

7. If you are really good then you will always have a job. If you are mediocre and punch the clock then be worried.

8. I loved technology, computers, and programming. I found business problems more interesting than math problems. So BANA/MIS really worked for me. I still find my job satisifying, but you have to continue to evolve and grow. If I was doing the same thing I was 15 years ago, then I would probably be burned out.

Being a generalist early in your career is not a bad thing at all. For one thing it gives you an exposure to different things - which will help you understand the opportunities and learn what interests you.

My main point though is that at some point you will find that many technical areas are commodity skills. I'll pick on Java again - if you like Java just recognize that so do lots more. And it is more difficult to stand out.

One more thing (related to being a generalist) - try to avoid becoming religious about technology. I've been around long enough to have seen people argue about different flavors of UNIX. It's all BS. The people who thought Sun would rule the world 15 years ago aren't doing so well now. When I first started hiring people for non-mainframe work 20 years ago I had candidates try to tell me Booch was better than Rumbaugh (or vice versa). That is just stupid. It is dumb or career limiting (unless you work for one side) to open your mouth and take a stand for or against Microsoft, Linux, etc.

I'm just going to answer #3. I was a software engineer for 5 years but have been out of that game for 5 years now, so others can probably answer the other questions better.

I wasn't super passionate about software, but it provided a great stepping stone for me to get to where I am now (animation industry) in a job I love. Also, since the animation industry is kind of fickle, I am confident that I can always move back to software if I need to, which is nice.

My point is, having a computer science background can certainly open doors that you may not have considered.

Class of 1996 - B.S. Computer Engineering (was originally called Computer Science and Electrical Engineering when I started)

I was a pretty good programmer back in the day. During college, I did co-ops at Compaq (HP now) programming firmware on the hardware side and at Borland in California on the software side. When it came time to graduate, I wasn't in love with either career direction, so I went the consulting route and took a job with Accenture. I spent 6 years at Accenture as one of their most technical people in Houston. I learned most of the skills that I feel an MBA would have taught me there. After leaving, I started my own consulting company and eventually accepted a role with a medium sized software company in the secondary distribution (oil/gas trucking / logistics software) as their Director of Product Management. We designed an enterprise system from the ground up for companies like COP, 7-11, Wal-Mart, etc. After leaving that company, I moved over to a similar product management role in primary distribution at a much larger oil and gas software company in Houston with specialties in the refinery and engineering sectors. Honestly, I was much happier at the smaller software company and I am actively looking for a new role after 6 years here.

I have to say that I absolutely love the business side of software development. I love being the business expert, meeting with customers, and then designing a generic solution that meets industry needs, but still satisfies [most] of the customer needs.

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1. What is a day at work like for you? For example, how much paper pushing/time tracking/admin type stuff do you have to do, how many hours do you work each week, how flexible is your schedule, how fun/boring is your work, etc.

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Absolutely zero time tracking for me... but tons of paper pushing or PowerPoint development. When you are a software company with many products that release on a coordinated release schedule, this is an unfortunate part of the job. PowerPoint is our primary tool for conveying plans to management, customers, and developers (prior to design specifications).

Some people are workaholics (that was me early in my career), but I found that work is just a means to an end. I might put in some extra hours on some weeks (around 50 hours), but usually work about 40. Schedule is very flexible. Sometimes I have to travel to customers. I have been all over the world (UK, France, Germany, Thailand, China, Indonesia, Korea, Italy, Brazil, all over the US). Only my second trip this year is coming up at the end of the month (Findley, Ohio - Marathon).

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2. What would you estimate is the average compensation for a new graduate entering your profession?

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Back when I started, it was $36k. I now make about 5 times that.

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3. What different jobs are available to a computer science, computer engineering, or electrical engineering graduate that someone might not think about at first (if any)?

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Product Management is my first answer. A lot of people ask me what is Product Management. Product Management is a fancy term for someone at a software company who owns a software product or suite of products. Usually, a Product Manager is a jack of all trades, someone who is capable of designing a solution, specifying via functional design documents to a development team what solution should be built, interfacing with Quality Assurance (testing), Customer Support, and Product Marketing. However, a great Product Manager is also sent to customers in pre-sales roles able to discuss the value the solution is offering and as a business architect able to deliver a To-Be solution utilizing the software package. In addition, maintaining strong customer relationships is a must because those customers are the ones that you go back to in order to vet new ideas, industry solutions, etc. Product Management is something that I love and am good at. You need to be able to envision a solution that is generic for all customers in the industry, but solves the business needs of the immediate customers to whom you are selling. In my experience, a lot of people struggle with that ability.

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4. What is the promotion and raise structure like where you work? Do you basically have to change jobs to get any meaningful bump in salary?

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Depends on the company really. This job pays nice corporate bonuses but the salary increases are the lowest I have seen across my career. Jumping jobs can definitely help move you up. For instance, I just turned down an offer with another company (long story) that would have raised my base salary $20k. I think you have to be careful because if you get too high or too expensive, finding a new job kind of sucks unless you are willing to move all over the state / country (I am limited to Houston).

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5. How transferable are the skills you learn at each job (i.e. is it easy to move from one company to another, or are the skills/niches very specific)?

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I find the skills can be niche / specific. If the right person interviews you, they will see past the narrow skill set you describe in your resume. Whenever I was actively hiring people, I always followed a behavioral interview process and asking probing questions that got to what I was looking for. I wanted Type A personalities that would work hard.

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6. Do you feel that an MBA is a requirement to move up in your field or is it more experience-based?

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Absolutely not at software companies... maybe at the executive levels. It would certainly help if I were to transition into an industry job (big oil company).

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7. Do you think your job will be outsourced/offshored in the near future (mostly talking to software developers here)? If so, how do you think this will impact your career and how will you respond?

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I have worked with offshore teams in India and China. Takes double the amount of time to deliver and quality is often lacking. If you can afford it, a company should pay for good software developers domestically. The great thing about product management jobs is that they aren't outsourced. Someone knowledgeable that communicates well has to talk to the customers.

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8. Bottom line: If you had the opportunity to go back to school and start over, would you major in your respective field again? If not, to what would you change your major? Put another way and more simply, do you find your job satisfying?

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I don't think so. Like I said above, I absolutely love designing software. I do not like the company I am working for and that is an entirely different matter. I will say that I have thought about career changes at times, but it is for something radically different - seminary. I haven't ever felt sure of that call though and so I am content where I am.

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My #2 piece of advice is to get into something that isn't a commodity (like Java). Those are the skills most easily satisfied by a college grad or offshore body. Get good at databases. Kernel development. Security might be a great area to be an expert in.

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Absolutely 100% agree. Spicewood is totally on point. Become a great DBA and you will have a good paying job for a long time. Find a niche that isn't generic and you will be ok.


Good luck to you.

Hey Spicewood,

If you're up for it, I wouldn't mind comparing notes with you sometime or maybe even getting together for lunch. I'm always keen on discussing potential opportunities and I'd like to find out who you work for.

Shoot me an email if you don't mind.

danger96ag
a.t
outlook.
com

Thanks.

Agree with database stuff. Oracle developers write their own checks (if you're good).

The new stuff which is all the hype now is unstructured data analyitcs. Hadoop fs with intelligent queries. Starting to see non traditional dbs like mango come around.

Cloud is neat but it's still a race to the bottom imho. Too many people offering teir 1. You could probably make a business just doing veeam backups for vmware environments.

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keen on discussing potential opportunities

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we sound very similar...always looking for a good opportunity too...

I think a mistake some techies on the software side make is that they get enamored with a technology stack. I mean people who think LAMP (an example) is the end all of software. Instead think about what the software does. The business purpose of the software (whether commercial, consumer, financial, etc.) drives the decisions - not the other way around.

Data is much more important than programming languages or stacks. If you want to look forward - look at "big data." When the magnitude of data explodes, it creates problems, which creates opportunities (such as data analytics). Cloud is huge factor on where computing is done and where data is stored. But I'm not convinced it changes the careers of software developers much unless you work for Amazon, VMware, or Microsoft. It will change system administration jobs.

Data is why Oracle is still a giant and not floundering like IBM.

Security seems likely to be a perpetual challenge.

I agree with Spice, what you do with data is the end all be all of software and hardware. After all, think of yourself as a consumer; do you really care if getting your fantasy stats was done through Python or Java? Or if a database stored the stats? Would you even care if the fantasy stats were queried in SQL or analysed from pure HTML text via something new through Hadoop/MangoDB?

There are lots of open source communities popping up regarding these new technologies. Openstack is focusing on cloud offerings and literally touches every layer of an infrastructure stack. For example, Cinder for block storage or Swift for object based storage. Open Daylight is focusing on a software defined network, etc.

I think the main goal of any cloud or automation based service is to eventually distribute applications and infrastructure together. Looking at something like Docker, you even see the Operating system itself becoming less of a concern. Applications doing something to the data and obtaining the necessary resources to do such work is the goal. In the end, organizations want that to be more streamlined and more predictable.

If you're a student starting out, I would also recommend getting into the open source community and start collaborating on projects. It's inexpensive to get involved.

There is definitely lots of noise right now. People are going to be making some money in the next 5 years.

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do you really care if getting your fantasy stats was done through Python or Java? Or if a database stored the stats? Would you even care if the fantasy stats were queried in SQL or analysed from pure HTML text via something new through Hadoop/MangoDB?

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I think this is key, and have been saying a lot of the same lately. We have one of our products still written in classic ASP and would be a huge re-write to move it to say ASP.NET. Developers keep claiming - if it were built in .NET, people are more likely to purchase. I believe they are targeting the wrong audience with that statement. Developers would love it, but decision makers - who don't necessarily case what stack it is built aren't going to pay for an upgrade when there is no added business benefit (unless some other IT bean counter starts mandating product upgrades for whatever reasons).

Now, what are the inherent advantages that an ASP.NET web app bring to the table versus a classic ASP web app? I could list a ton, and this is where you need someone that can translate all the technical advantages of a move like this into a business benefit/ROI that convinces management it's a good idea to spend the money.

another real quick example...we are going to be moving our SaaS products from using MS SQL Server to Postgres. That is mostly a technical venture, but there is some added business benefits to our customer why we are doing it.

I think the market need for senior DBA experience is shrinking. With the splintering of RDMS systems and moving data/infrastructure to the cloud, having a full-time DBA won't be needed as much except for those companies that have *a lot* of data or can't move their protected data (ie Healthcare) to the cloud for legal reasons. Writing SQL, optimizing/performance tuning are all skills that good developers should have.

For years, the momemtum of the market has been shifting to BI and "Big Data". In my opinion, Data Scientist's is where things are heading in the data world. DBA, ETL, and data warehousing skills are becoming more commodity as BI has continued to mature.

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Cloud is huge factor on where computing is done and where data is stored. But I'm not convinced it changes the careers of software developers much unless you work for Amazon, VMware, or Microsoft. It will change system administration jobs.

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I think the cloud will definitely change the careers of software developers. Now that you pay for data up/down and storage, you'll have to be a lot smarter about optimizing your application and designing for this. This will require better developers. Crappy developers will cost the company even more. Also, as it becomes easier to deploy sites and services up to the cloud, the the tools to monitor those applications mature, you'll see even less of a need for Infrastructure folks. You'll see more the hybrid developer/system admin doing DevOps.

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I think this is key, and have been saying a lot of the same lately. We have one of our products still written in classic ASP and would be a huge re-write to move it to say ASP.NET. Developers keep claiming - if it were built in .NET, people are more likely to purchase. I believe they are targeting the wrong audience with that statement. Developers would love it, but decision makers - who don't necessarily case what stack it is built aren't going to pay for an upgrade when there is no added business benefit (unless some other IT bean counter starts mandating product upgrades for whatever reasons).
Now, what are the inherent advantages that an ASP.NET web app bring to the table versus a classic ASP web app? I could list a ton, and this is where you need someone that can translate all the technical advantages of a move like this into a business benefit/ROI that convinces management it's a good idea to spend the money.

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This is technical debt. If they keep putting it off, at some point the bill will come due. Developer resources will become harder to find. New features will become increasingly more expensive to add. User Experience could suffer. It's always hard to justify a re-write, but they should definitely consider chopping that application up into sub modules and slowing migrating them as you make changes to existing functionality. Hire a good architect (like me!) and he'll help build the business case that is tailored to your application about which benefits are most appropriate.

Any of you folks in Dallas? Would love some face-to-face time some peers and hear more thoughts on technology careers.

The shift to cloud will change the jobs of SOME software developers. You're right that the impact of the network might change programming a bit to recognize the impact of distant computing, but it won't change it in a way that creates or eliminates a bunch of jobs.

I think the poor security of data and networks may impact developers even more.

I work with mainframes now. Do you guys know how much COBOL is still in use? Unbelievable amounts. If you have a Marriott Rewards number you use a modern web based application to access your account. But the data lives in DB2 running on z/OS.

I am in the Dallas area (Addison area). Feel free to send me a shoot

jhaynes
a|t
flogitech
dot
com

Spicewood hasn't drank the IBM-Big-Data marketing scheme yet?! Come on man!

In my defense, IBM hardware is pretty shnazzy (too bad no one wants to pay for it)

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Spicewood hasn't drank the IBM-Big-Data marketing scheme yet?! Come on man!

In my defense, IBM hardware is pretty shnazzy (too bad no one wants to pay for it)

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I think big data is a big deal, though not quiteas big as some say right now. As for IBM, they are looking for some energy somewhere in their product line. I talk to high end IBM customers every week and it amazes me that quite a few have IBM colored glasses on. But then again there are many others that despise the fact that the mainframes they trust and rely on have no competition.

IBM consciously chooses not to follow Moores law with their enterprise zServers.

Class '92 - EE living/working in Dallas. Double majored in Aerospace Engineering through my junior year until the fall of the Berlin wall seemed to change the dynamics in aerospace funding in the early 90's. Ended up in a career path that leverages neither, but still love both.

Best advice - as others have stated, if you're going the IT route be as technology agnostic as possible and work to understand the business drivers behind technology needs. There is a huge lack of IT and business professionals who can effectively speak to each other as they lack a "lingua franca". Many doors will open if you can effectively navigate those waters and there is potential for more upward mobility. Don't marry a stack, platform, or codebase - marry 'enabling business through technology' if your goal is to get noticed and/or move up the corporate ladder.

Your degree and specialization matters less when you can prove your flexibility and aptitude for embracing change as IT has broadened and evolved fairly dramatically in the last two decades.

I've worked as an independent executive level IT consultant for the past ten years after being an executive myself, dealing mostly with Fortune 100 companies (although I've collaborated on a few startups), and can tell you that everyone can use solid project and product managers. Too many companies confuse "I know Microsoft Project" with good PMs. If you like software or hardware, working on new things frequently, and are detail oriented, a good thinker and can relate to people - you can carve out a great future doing that. Just my opinion.

As a side note, I always snicker a little when I hear 'cloud' being bandied about like something revolutionary or new. I'll agree that while technology and business models surrounding SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, and to some extent MaaS or CaaS have matured in the past five years, the concept of 'cloud' and 'cloud computing' has been around for a very long time. It just has a shiny new catchy name now I guess.

I will agree with Spicewood that security will be a hotbed for years to come - network, data, identity, storage - simply because of the improved accessibility and sheer volume of consumer activity in that space.

As for 'hot new trends' - right now this seems to be NoSQL platforms and Big Data (which also has been around for a while but has a newish moniker as well). If you want to try to follow the buzz there, most NoSQL skills are in fairly high demand and a majority of platforms are open source (except for hardware centric platforms like SAP's HANA). You can even find free courses online.

Personally, I'd rather work for a startup or fledgling business than a Fortune 100 simply because your hard work will gain you more and broader experience, and impact the bottom line more significantly than being buried in a huge corporation with oodles of legacy policies and stodgy politicking. But if you want 'structure' and salary security, bigger might be better although job security isn't anything like it was in the 19XX's.

Looks like I've rambled enough. These are just my opinions. Best of luck!

Class of '10 (graduated '11) Computer Engineering major, Business Admin minor.

The average salary for grads was $60k then. I started out pretty much in line with that.

I'm a manufacturing IT technical lead for a Fortune 100 company. I strictly work with manufacturing software, particularly MES, ERP, and a little MRP. Our MES and time/attendance system is .NET based with an SQL back end, and SAP is our ERP/MRP, so between those two, I think I have a lot of transferable skills but it's also a bit of a niche. Thanks to the fact that manufacturing IT teams tend to be pretty small, I've had the privilege of doing a little of everything: front end web development, database admin and design, message/IDoc integration into SAP, 5 MES implementations, 1 SAP implementation, requirement finding and setting, user training (training guys who build parts how to use software definitely isn't easy), etc. Plus just experience with how a manufacturing company operates, like setting up routers, dealing with quality, as built/as designed generation, etc. I'm the lead for 5 different sites who all build different types of parts and function differently, so I've gained a lot of varying perspectives.

Working for a big company, yes getting the salary increases can be difficult because of internal politics. The problem I have is that to get a job like I have now, most companies look for candidates with 5-10 years experience, not 3. I've been turned away because of that number despite being qualified from a technical knowledge standpoint. Consultants get paid a ton, way more than I'm making now, but travel a lot.

Would I do it again? Yes I think so. My job isn't nearly like the stereotypical programmer job. I don't have to write thousands of lines of code, I have a lot of freedom, I don't have to stay behind the desk, and I'm good at what I do. I'm also still fairly young though, so maybe I go do an MBA at some point and move into mgmt. I don't feel the need now, and it's certainly not holding me back in my current line of work, but I think they're valuable to anyone if you have the time and money to do it and use it.

Also I could never see my job being outsourced. Not for the type of company I work for.

Not a programmer or engineer, but I'll throw in my 2 cents.

I'm an IT Project Manager at a Fortune 100. I work in the Global Program Management Office, but I mainly support the Architecture, Technology, and Engineering group and the Technology Infrastructure group. I have a BS in Business Administration and an MS in Management.

At least in our organization most of the admin work is handled by people like me, Project Managers. If you're in a different organization, one that is not formally projectized, you might have more admin work. In an organization like this I do my best effort to make sure that my engineers and developers have as little admin work to do as possible. It usually just frustrates them and makes them late on other things anyways.

We hire new grads in the $60k - $70k range for engineers, slightly less for developers. The biggest problem we have right now though is that there aren't enough of you to fill all our positions. We hand out H1B visas like candy and we have to pay a premium to import people from overseas to fill them. Not to get too political, but the idea that companies prefer bringing in people from India because they're cheaper simply doesn't hold much water in this industry.

As for worrying about outsourcing. We outsource and offshore anything we can, it's the fiscally responsible thing to do. That being said, there are still and will always be a huge range of things that can't and won't be sent overseas. This is especially true regarding anything related to risk and security. If you want lasting job security, and to never have to lose a night of sleep worrying that your job will get shipped overseas, specialize in information security. There's never enough people for those roles, they make gobs of money, and their jobs will never be moved overseas.

Regarding promotion and raises. The trend in big companies these days is to destratify the organization as much as possible. This means that your direct manager is likely MUCH farther along in their career than you, and it is unlikely that you will ever "promote" into the role directly above yours. This is simply the reality of removing management layers. Instead, you have a system where you "zig-zag" your way through the corporations. The next level up may be in a different department. You jump over there for a couple years, then jump back into your current boss's position. Moving in and out of a company is also seen as a regular practice. We've seen entire teams leave together for another company, only to return 2 or 3 years later, with bigger salaries and better jobs. I know very few people who've been with the company for more than a few years, but I know many people who are on their second or their "stint" with this company. Everybody from top to bottom maintains very close relationships with our counterparts in other companies.

Anyways, probably too much to read above. But I'm long winded.

More good stuff above.

It is interesting that one of you is glad you don't write thousands of lines of code. I understand that completely - but the counterpoint is that there are many who just want to code. Those are the guys that should work for a software company.

quote:

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More good stuff above.

It is interesting that one of you is glad you don't write thousands of lines of code. I understand that completely - but the counterpoint is that there are many who just want to code. Those are the guys that should work for a software company.

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I agree. As a manufacturing company, we decided not to create everything ourselves. We bought an MES that has a lot of prepackaged components/controls and such, not that dissimilar to Visual Studio now but taken to another level. You decide how to combine those controls into interfaces for the users, and while there is still code involved, much of it is behind the scenes. There are times where I have to write quite very lengthy bits of code, but not as much lately. I'm still programming and creating software, just in a different way. We don't get rich or "pretty" interfaces with a lot of cool features, but we also don't need those things to get parts out the door efficiently.

It is not for everyone. As a computer engineer and for my personality, it fits very well. But if you want to write lots of code, you should work for the software companies that we look to buy the suites from as opposed to this job.

There are quite a few jobs in the industry that don't require tons of coding. There are consulting and configuration roles, analysis roles, etc. I've done a few of these in a few different industries, and pretty much all jobs have been different. The day to day at one company, hasn't always been similar to another. I worked at a super small software company doing support right out of school. This was right after the Y2K crap, so there was an overflow of "developers" at the time. I put my time in at a big 3 consulting firm, but hated the travel. There was a lot of time reporting there, and we all felt like cogs in the machine. Went to a start up after that. Learned a tremendous amount there, which I think is the norm for that situation, but it's not without it's perils. Tried a couple of jobs where the software was written in house to support the business. DIdn't like that as much, because since our product wasn't a selling product, it was treated as back burner stuff. The company I worked for was also full of crazy dairy people. Did some telecom before that finally went dry. Not a bad gig, but the writing was on the wall. Currently a principal engineer at a one of the biggest software companies on the planet, not named Microsoft. It's been fantastic. Low hours and stress, good pay and benefits, work from home, etc. I don't push any paper, just sit around and work on UI most days. I know others in the same company on different teams who don't feel this way. I guess the main point is that every job, company and industry is different.

Software QA is not a job for everyone. But it is a great job for some people. Pay can be excellent (>$100K).

General qualifications:

- CS-like knowledge base
- attention to detail
- perfection-ist attitude
- team orientation

Modest programming skills are a plus for development of automation.