Looking for Jobs in Difficult Times

It is difficult and painful to look for job in SoftwareEngineering in this time of turmoil. However there are couple of things you can do.

1.0 Join Education Extension Services ( Most Universities have this )to do meta learning- This means you have to find out what is important that you must be willing to learn.

2.0 Learn to discipline yourself- In this economic times measurable , reproducible and desirable skills are necessary.

For instance you need skills at ground level and University will provide knowledge at 50,000 feet level. Learn to differentiate between knowledge and skills. Do put special emphasis on the skills part of it.

3.0 Learn to understand the unstated rule of the game- in most countries people will not hire Govt. sector employees in private sector. In this economy SMB market is poised for rebound faster tahn others and you should be looking for assignment there. This also means the SMB market will be looking for hard skills. If you have worked in soft skills area. this will be definitely difficult. In this economic climate a large number of people will be redundant with soft skills. What is your employment strategy.

4.0 You may have to embrace GTD-getting things done. You may have to network during day and study during night. I recently came across a cultural mind-set in Europe. If you have no jobs for 2 years , your are not employable.

5.0 The criteria for interview in SMB market Place are the following- (a) Smart and Get things Done --- The book.

(b) Humble, Hungry and Smart.

5.0 In SMB market, you have to be aligned with market dynamics. If for any reason you give the impression that you are reluctant to learn- You can not be called for interview.

6.0 For new graduates- The onus on you to educate yourself for the application of your knowledge. The days of training someone for 3 years in the hope that you might produce something is gone. Take a look into dice.com of the reality of the Job market. If the masters program at CS/EE did not prepare you for SystemC/.NET Programming-- too bad. you have to prepare yourself.

7.0 Time for extreme competition is on us and we can embrace it or watch TV and drink beer- the choice is yours.

Ref:

1.0 Smart and Gets things Done ISBN-10: 1590598385

2.0 Execution- ISBN-10: 0609610570

3.0 Humble, Hungry, Smart

These are some of my personal views.

Software Engineering Jobs

I see many people are putting software jobs in the group discussion. I have created a separate blog for this and you ware most welcome to put the job ads there. Use the Jobs forum

The Url is www.ias-research.com/blog

In another note I need people to contribute to this blog and its maintenance. I need your ideas.

Acceptance of SOA, WCF, WPF in Enterprise Development

I am working on SOA acceptance with WCF and WPF in Enterprise development.

Please post your thoughts in this subject matter.

Economic Crisis and Software Industry

The impact of Global Economic Meltdown will have couple of very significant effect on the It and software Industry:

1.0 More Telecommuting and VPN will be embraced.

2.0 Managed Services will be wide spread

3.0 More Software Development will be outsourced.

4.0 More Technical Jobs will move to India/China.

5.0 Web 2.0 will be embraced aggressively

I think the middle management in Post industrial economy will be brutally reduced.

These are my personal opinion.

Open Source .NET Framework Integration in your Development

How are you using open source .NET Development frameworks in your current and near future projects.

Please post your comments

Reference

CodePlex

Scalability of Web Application

Scalability for Web applications is crucial and perhaps more important than desktop applications. In desktop applications you have control of the number of users using the application, while in web application the number can jump drastically without any hint. This is however a good thing because we need more traffic . A majority of the developers however do not have formal background in application instrumentation and analysis. Load balancing is another area that needs to be investigated in such areas.

The following Google presentation based on ruby on rails and dtrace explores the idea. I like the web cast and it is simply brilliant.

Google Scalability Video

The two books and conferences that you may find useful are the following:

1.0 Usenix Conference

Usenix Site

2.0 Cal Handserson Book

Cal Handerson Book

3. Theo Book

Theo Book

I would love to hear your reaction to this video. I am personally slightly amused.

Flight of the Creative Class

Flight of the Creative class- dated but still relevant.

Post your comment.

1.0 http://creativeclass.com/

2.0 http://creativeclass.com/richard_florida/video/index.php?video=KUOW_Seattle

SEO Resources and Books

I found the following book very useful.

Particularly the resources list.

Check the link and digg for the details.
http://buildingfindablewebsites.com/resources.php

Leadership in Software Development- Must See

http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=ypEMdjslEOI

Application Frameworks-

I am doing research on windows application frameworks.

All pointers will be appreciated.

1.0Theoretical papers

2.0 Tutorials

3.0 Web Videos

4.0 Integration methods

5.0 Testing Methods.

Important Books that Have Changed my Thinking ...

1.0 Rules for Revolutionaries- GUY Kawasaki
2.0 Principals of Operating Systems- Sacha Krakowiak
3.0 Object Oriented Software Engineering- Ivar Jacobsen
4.0 Extreme Prrogramming Explained- Kent Beck
5.0 Beyond Software Architecture- Luke Hohman
6.0 Object Oriented Software Development- Anton Eliens

Ajax in Action-

I am reading this book Ajax in Action.

It is good read but I think there are better one for AjaX ISBN-1-932394-61-3

The following Article for Code project is also useful.

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/ajax/IntroAjaxASPNET.aspx

Open Source Diva- Please take a few minutes to Watch this Video

This is about Sun's Open Source Initiative

http://www.linux.com/feature/132699

http://workatjelly.com/

Collaboration at New level and this I think is My Pick as a winner.

BTW workatjelly is a collaborative website for working together.

Attaching SQL Database in MDF Format

Quite Often I have to attach sql server database in mdf format to my development platform . However primary file location can not be recreated due to various reasons.

I am looking for a methods to attach such mdf files to sql server express 2005.

All Pointers will be appreciated.

OASIS Launches New Group to Optimize SOA for Telecommunications

The OASIS open standards consortium today announced a new initiative aimed at bringing the full advantages of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) to the telecommunications industry. The OASIS Telecommunications Services Member Section (OASIS Telecom) will work to pave the way for a new business model that will make telecommunications services more intelligent, deployable, and easy to consume.

Read More

Not all databases are created equal...

In today's IT environment, many think of the database as just the persistence layer of objects, or as a commodity. If your database isn't performing well enough, then just throw more hardware at it. While this belief is pervasive, it isn't true.

I recently had one example that shows that each database vendor had a different solution to the same problem.

I have a customer who had overloaded a table's purpose. The table stored different types of comment lines associated to an object. So the layout looked like:
id - the id of the object that it was describing.
type - the type of comment.
sequence - used if there are more than one entry of a given type for this comment
comment_text - the actual text we want to store in the database.

Now the problem arose due to a requirement that we only allow a single entry per id of a comment who has the type = 'c'.
All other types would allow multiple entries.

I looked for a solution in IDS, DB2 and Oracle.

In Oracle, because their indexes allowed nulls, you could create a functional index where the function was inline and returned either the unique id, or null if the id was already in the database.

In IDS, you had two solutions. First was a functional index that you'd either error out if there was an entry of type = 'c' for the given id, or you would return a combination of the id, type, and sequence.
The second solution... use their VII to create an index that mimics Oracle and you can use their solution.

In DB2, you'd have to create a trigger.

While I support all three of the databases at various clients, I have to admit that I loved the simplicity of Oracle's solution.

I also like the fact that IDS's solution as it would also work in Oracle, and that IDS has the ability to extend itself and mimic other features in other databases that are not native to itself.

I was less impressed with the DB2 solution, however I was told that it was extremely efficient.

The point is, while each of the two database vendors (Oracle, and IBM)[IBM owns DB2 and IDS], has the ability to solve the problem, they do so in slightly different methods. Each method has a slightly different cost and will effect performance.

An alternative would have been to separate the table in to multiple tables, the use of an Index had the least amount of development impact.

So the next time you look at choosing a database platform, don't buy in to the idea that they are all the same thing aka a commodity.

E commerce Framework with PHP/ASP.NET

I am exploring what are availability of Commercial Grade E-commerce Frameworks available. The framworks should integrate with Dreamweaver/ASP.net Development in VS 2005/Vs2008.

I need to explore both PHP based and ASP.NET solutions.

As I explore the situation , I will post the Results

Please post your usability experience, if you have any

Consulting and Delivering Values

I have found this material to be quite good.
I always watch out for people who can talk and can not deliver. Consultants without implementation experience is useless.

http://www.summitconsulting.com/articles/index.html

Also look into marketing your skills

http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4622195&affil=wftv

Universal Data Models

I have to design database schema quite a number of time and I simply consider designing from scratch a waste of time.

I have the two particular reference very use ful.

1.o The Database Source book Vol-1- Len Silverston- ISBN 0-471-35348-5

2.0 The Database source Book Vol 2- Len Silverston- ISBN 0-471-38023-7

These books are very good , however each CDROM has asking price of 500 dollars. I do not recommend purchasing the CDROM Auth code.

The material in the Book is very much time saver.