Programmers

[Tacitus]

That's probably the best piece of advice right there. I first started working at a company and stayed for about 4 years before I couldn't take it anymore and left. I moved to a company that had an absolute disaster project. I ended up managing it, and well did the best I could given the utterly unrealistic goals. I learned a lot, hated life for a while, but I needed that experience. Now I'm in a place where I'm not looking to leave anytime soon.

It was something I did naturally and I learned how valuable it was later on. Pays dividends forever. Since there's so much legacy stuff out there, learning the intricacies cold makes you a valuable resource. For example, a good AS/400 JDE report writer will make 160k-250k a year... WRITING DATABASE REPORTS. That is a job that will exist forever but as it's not sexy or exciting, no one wants to do it. (It's also why it pays so well.)

It taught me quite a bit about my chosen field and made me extremely good at it. I run into arcane and esoteric stuff daily and it's just easy because I'm familiar with it. My guys referred to me as "walking google" because they'd ask me for guidance or help and I could just tell them what to do. I coach that out of people because if you're in a disaster, many times, you're not going to have access or time to go look it up.

Never turning down a disaster also helps with other areas professionally. I'm looked at as a "mad scientist" in my field and I don't fit the corporate culture very well. I get away with quite a bit. I was given a lot of leniency because in a disaster or on extremely difficult projects, I was the first one in and the last one out. People accept your eccentricities when you're an asset. I worked in an extremely PC corporate environment for years and my office was plastered with fine art and video game stuff. Hell, I wheeled a jukebox in and blasted it during work hours. All because I was viewed at as one of the most valuable assets they had. You earn it. It's never given to you.

It's a big problem with the millenial generation. They expect to be given all of these perks for nothing in return. I've had kids 3 months out of college tell me that they need face time because they're the smartest person at the company (just ask them!) They *demand* salaries and benefits that 10+ year guys barely scrape. The reply is always "Fuck you, I'll go somewhere else then." or some PC variation of that. It's amusing and they either flame out spectacularly or leave. It has become such a problem that I've attended conferences or corporate meeting where they actually have sessions and training on dealing with them. They have very little grasp on practical knowledge and think certs/degree means you're a vaunted expert in the field.

I always tell them the same thing:

"I can shake a tree and 50 of you guys will fall out. There's nothing exceptional about you, so why should I do something exceptional for you?"

 

[Tacitus]

My view on the industry....

Backstory:

This guy that worked with me a long time ago carpet bombed us via various communicatin methods for a recommendation or reference. I received 5 or 6 emails including one with how angry he was that no one (particularly me) responded to his request positively. I was annoyed beyond belief and wrote this for him.

"If you are reading this, you have vetted this person as a candidate for whatever position you're hiring. This person approached me and solicited a recommendation from me. I would love to recommend competent people in this profession. However, the problem that IT suffers from is that to the layperson, someone who dropped out of HS and worked on his mother's computer is on par with someone who dedicated themselves to the profession and has an advanced degree or accreditation. Additionally, with tech schools, colleges and technical institutes flooding the market with marginally or poorly trained people who have unrealistic expecations and a lack of motivation.. the problem becomes clear. I can state subjectively that an alarmingly high percentage (75%+) of the available talent in this field is either woefully inexperienced or would be termed as "extremely deficient" in the areas of talent or motivation. So deficient, in my opinion, that to staff them would be damaging and a detriment to whatever organization chose to bring them on. All of that being said, the person who requested this was unremarkable by whatever metric you would ask me to measure them by. Comparing this against my previously noted percentage, this would actually put this person in the top 1/4 of all technology staff available at the moment. This is far more an indictment of the industry and the layperson decision makers who have fostered this culture of ineptitude and commoditized workers. If you are still considering this person, the sad fact remains that in a skewed talent pool, you could likely do far worse. This person isn't going to blow up your datacenter or reinvent the wheel. They will likely leave you in 2 years after tiring of your organization or being terminated in favor of another likely marginal-at-best staffer who will be slightly less expensive and far less experienced. I would recommend this person against throwing a dart at your massive stack of resumes culled from monster, dice or craigslist."

He never even thanked me for it...

 

[F4U57]

LOL! That is gold. Also an interesting insight into the industry.

I've just hit five years. I would like to think the free 70-680 Windows 7: Configuring cert which was one of the latest in the new MCITP certs at the time, was what helped me get my first job. That job was horrible; I was extremely underpaid and expected to work overtime for no extra. I stuck it out for 18 months and when the company was bought out, I was immediately moved over to their Technical team to do the exact same work for more pay and paid overtime.

Since then I've moved into project management and am happy with where I am currently but it is the most stressful position I've ever been in, professionally.

I still don't know where I want to be in IT. I should probably get that CCNA cert I've been putting off for the past three years... :/

 

[bloodycelt]

Yup, knowing a needed app that nobody wants to know will get you decent pay and respect, though it has to be something expensive to replace, or something your managers refuse to replace. So yes, if you can learn some of the various Enterprise Reporting Tools.
Hell, learn indexing, so many fucking people forget to put on indexes, or put too many on. Its amazing how far jaws drop when you save them hours of time by just adding an index.

Something else I should mention. A friend of mine pulls in around a decent chunk of change as a contractor doing UX/UI design/programming. Its javascript and CSS, but you need to have a good eye for design, and also be very skilled at Javascript (not just knowing how to fetch shit with $() ). A big pro for going front-end is no matter what back end they use and back end technology changes all the time; browsers will always require javascript, html, and css... and because W3C is design by committee, truly good web pages will always be a pain in the ass to build properly to work with all sorts of random-ass devices.

 

[SpamYouToDeath]

truly good web pages will always be a pain in the ass to build properly to work with all sorts of random-ass devices.

"Truly good" web pages consist of strict HTML 2.0 / RFC1866 with no images or stylesheets.

 

[ebinsugewa]

Having said that is it better to stick with 3 as its newer? I thought about jumping into java again since I have familiarity with it but I actually enjoy the idea of learning python even though I'm sure it won't help my career any.

Honestly Python is the more helpful language to someone in the IT/tech sphere. Java is mainly used for mobile and enterprise stuff. Python can be used to automate IT/server shit (for a super high level example check out Ansible) as well as just simple scripting. Since it's available on essentially every Linux distro it's basically a much more convenient bash. (However most distros only have 2.x as a default, which ties into the version issues ) It's a very capable backend language for web stuff as well if you're into that. Start with 3 - 2 is EOL and has a few peculiarities that have been cleaned up in 3. The differences aren't massive but can have unexpected behavior. If you end up using certain libraries you might get stuck with 2 no matter what.

 

[bloodycelt]

Honestly Python is the more helpful language to someone in the IT/tech sphere. Java is mainly used for mobile and enterprise stuff. Python can be used to automate IT/server shit (for a super high level example check out Ansible) as well as just simple scripting. Since it's available on essentially every Linux distro it's basically a much more convenient bash. (However most distros only have 2.x as a default, which ties into the version issues ) It's a very capable backend language for web stuff as well if you're into that. Start with 3 - 2 is EOL and has a few peculiarities that have been cleaned up in 3. The differences aren't massive but can have unexpected behavior. If you end up using certain libraries you might get stuck with 2 no matter what.

Don't forget Perl. Its the ductape of the internet, and EVERY UNIX install has it installed. Perl knowledge is disapearing, but the language is found everywhere, its still useful for filtering/text transformation. AND not many people want to deal with perl programming anymore, its often used to keep disaster projects and legacy sites running well past their expiration. Remember what VT said about disasters, learn perl because there are so many disaster projects that are on life support due to a perl cron script buried in the server somewhere.

 

[SudoShinji]

Awesome I feel pretty good about driving into python then.

 

[bloodycelt]

"Truly good" web pages consist of strict HTML 2.0 / RFC1866 with no images or stylesheets.

I'm surprised hipsters haven't brought the Geocities look back to the web yet.

Something completely different: Some of you may find this book to be fun: https://pragprog.com/book/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-weeks

And this: https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/

SICP is free, though the MIT Bookstore sells a nice HC, even though you want to learn Python, SCIP is still useful, Python is a functional programming language, so going through SICP might help you with the basics of functional programming.

 

[SudoShinji]

I'm surprised hipsters haven't brought the Geocities look back to the web yet.

Something completely different: Some of you may find this book to be fun: https://pragprog.com/book/btlang/seven-languages-in-seven-weeks

And this: https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/

SICP is free, though the MIT Bookstore sells a nice HC, even though you want to learn Python, SCIP is still useful, Python is a functional programming language, so going through SICP might help you with the basics of functional programming.

You think SICP would be a good precursor to python then?

 

[Xavier]

I don't work in IT but since we are talking about Java I'd like to take this opportunity to say:
It sucks.
I'm very proud to say I don't have it installed on any of my computers at this second and don't need it.
1. It's extremely weak defense wise and very virus prone.
2. It's a unstable true memory hog/black hole, the worst ever made in the history. Sometimes it just starts eating up your ram and never quits.
3. Most of all wait for it wait for it ....it never works. Never does what it's supposed to or a damned thing at all except crash your computer. They always come out with a new version every few weeks and that version doesn't work with the software you need to run like it's supposed to.

I still had to use it to print up postage until a few months ago. It had like 20 windows that always popped up even though you'd already gone through it and told it not to do it again. Crashed dozens of times and made me lose my $ and have to void it out.

Anybody listening please don't use Java.
betcha it was the cool new thing back in the late 90's, let it die please.

 

[ebinsugewa]

You think SICP would be a good precursor to python then?

No, for two reasons. I don't recommend learning 'functional' paradigms at all unless you plan to work in really specific subfields or want to get a masters or something. I guess it all comes down to what you want to get out of learning languages, but from what I've gleaned from your posts functional ain't it. Secondly it's not even the typical use case for Python, even if it does have some standard library support.

Here are some resources considered well-regarded, though I have never used them so they are provided without comment:
http://www.diveintopython3.net/
http://www.greenteapress.com/thinkpython2/index.html
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Non-Programmer's_Tutorial_for_Python_3

 

[p3lagic]

MIT use to teach SICP in their introductory course, now they use Python. The new course looks great and you can access all the content online here: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electric...r-science-and-programming-fall-2008/readings/

 

[Tripredacus]

Java was on track to die a slow painful death until Minecraft came along.

 

[SpamYouToDeath]

Java was on track to die a slow painful death until Minecraft came along.

A "slow painful death" on hundreds of millions of cell phones?

 

[Undefined]

Make Python great again:

https://github.com/samshadwell/TrumpScript

 

[Tripredacus]

A "slow painful death" on hundreds of millions of cell phones?

There's a difference between what currently exists and what the younger generations are wanting to learn. In fact, give them credit for not going full millenial and wanting to learn something at all.