Re: Looking for urgent career/freelance advice - Work Issues Discussion Boards

Matt Maynard wrote:
Bonuses should be based on an objective measurement

This of course means that you must in fact be able to measure something.
And it means that you must be able to demonstrate that those are relevant to actual productivity.

It also means that you must normalize it some how.

Matt Maynard wrote:
I don't want to base it on the number of bugs fixed, because that means the bonus will decline as the products (two websites) improve,

The ratio of bugs to lines of code.

More code means more bugs. More care means less bugs but maybe less code.

In terms of QA you could also include ratio of customer reported bugs versus in house discovered bugs.

Matt Maynard wrote:
and it will also decline if bugs go undiscovered (and therefore, unfixed).

Err..undiscovered bugs are not really bugs. If it doesn't impact the customers then it doesn't matter.

Senior developers say that, Communication skills is as important as Programming skills to complete a project.

For example:
If we don't take requirements properly, we can't develop a software properly or we need to do rework again.

Communication skills have nothing to do with programming. It is about how you give information to otheres and how you receive information from them. Training in communication skills is a fairly specific subject and you should research courses available in your local area.

Very poor communication skils also puts you in difficult situation. But it is not true always. One must be good at both communication as well s technical skills.

Yes, especially as you are into requirements gathering then you must have to understand their business perspective. Especially when you speak with foreign clients, you must able to understand their accent and also business terms.

Try to read more articles on requirement gathering or else read about requirements of specific product what you are dealing now. This is atleast give you a rough idea of what needs to be done and also helps you to get a quick idea if clients speaks any of the words that you read.

And don't worry much about it. Its just a part of work life Smile | :)

Regards,
Ganesh

Yes both things are required. If you will face problem for communicating other then you will not able to understand the requirements and work related issues which will hamper your work. Most priority is your technology if you strong in this fields then you can manage in communication.
Take spoken English course and keep practice with friends then you can improve yourself

Sankarsan Parida

I suggest along with spoken English course, start watching English movies (First with subtitles).
Join a chat room or something. Frequent chatting in English (and only in English) will make you think in the same language.
Think in English, the language in which you think also molds your communication skills

I'm in a very unfortunate situation, and I'm hoping to hear some concrete advice to help me choose a direction for my programming career. Here's a summary of where I am in life: I just finished a Computer Science degree at a small college in my small hometown. My parents were very unsuccessful in life, and can't offer me real-world advice besides "Get any job you can!" I managed to graduate without retaining much information, and I completely failed to prepare for my life ahead. Now that I'm out of school, I can clearly see how unprepared I am for working with people in a corporate environment. I'm also very reluctant to move somewhere else to find work because 1) I basically already own my own small dream home in a decent neighborhood, and 2) my mother is getting old and won't be able to support herself much longer. She doesn't have any retirement savings, and I'm the only one left in her life to support her.

So, now I'm trying to grow up real fast and make some responsible decisions. I feel like my only hope is to find a way to make money remotely online. I would love to do freelance work, but I can't afford to travel to meet with clients, and I'm afraid I won't understand the projects I'm lucky enough to get.

Alternatively, I'm considering developing my own software/apps and marketing them myself. I'm creative enough to design novel and useful software, and I'm not afraid to handle the marketing and business aspects, but I don't know what "running a business" really involves.

I want to make it clear that I'm not looking for an easy way out. And I don't need to make loads of money to maintain my lifestyle. We've been supporting ourselves on minimum wage income for years. I'm just looking for a feasible plan to support a modest life without risking poverty.

I would welcome any realistic ideas/perspectives about my situation, or a better website to post my questions.

Thank you for anything you can offer.

Hi Conway,

after reading your story, I understood that you need a job near by your home town or else you want to do a freelancing job.

Well, let me explain you one thing here as you said, you are just a graduate passed out. Freelancing on your own is a little difficult. Freelancing is the thing that people will do who has got a good experience.

I am not going to discourage you in this point. I am telling what a freelancing is. Even if you said to some one that you want to do freelancing, the first question that comes from them is "How many years of IT experience do you have?"

So trying for a own freelancing is really a tough at this point of time. rather I suggest you can go work under some one who does freelancing.

I wanted to know - Where do you stay? Why can't you go for a job search as you are fresher - No one is going to ask you to write a program on how a nuclear reactor works?

My real suggestion is go and search a good job - once you got a good job you can bring your mom to your living place.

Yes, I would agree you have own a good home. But people who works need to travel from one place to another place.

The scenario works for an experienced freelancer as they will have a lot of projects in hand and they can work from home (in their own decent home).

But as you are a fresher and I think you opinion on living in your village and asking that you wanted to do or wanted to achieve seems to be not a right track that your are in actually.

There are many freelancing sites available in internet. Just do a simple google search - freelancing websites list. That's it you will find a hundred's of pages giving a list of freelancing web sites.

Here are the some of the top most list

1. Elance
2. oDesk
3. Freelancer.com
4. Guru.com
5. PeoplePerHour.com
6. freelancermap.com
7. Fiverv

many many are there... only thing we must have enough knowledge on how to bid on projects and how to mange the projects once it is assigned. Might be delivering the projects in right time or some other key factors.

If you need any more help, feel free to ask us.

Regards,
Ganesh

I'm a recruiter for a global translation company and have some tough positions to fill. Recent applicants have been under-qualified. I'm proactively looking for people and sourcing resumes. Besides the traditional craigslist, indeed, monster, dice, etc - what other sites are popular for the tech community to look on when looking for a new job? I like strong tech community sites like stackoverflow, for example, because the people who frequent those sites are usually constant learners vs posting on craigslist and having a less passionate candidate apply.

To get an idea of our needs, example of positions are "localization engineering manager", "OneLink Website Engineer", "IT Server Engineer", ".NET Developer", "Application Developer", "Junior Software Developer"

Any thoughts and input are appreciated! Thanks!

Victoria F

modified 19-Jun-14 16:35pm.

Most of the community here is one of .Net developer, Application developer or Junior software developer.

For those roles you really need to have a good grasp of what technologies your client is using before writing a job spec and contacting prospective candidates.

In the UK I personally only really use jobserve.com or efinancialcareers.com. Most ads on stakoverflow or craigslist are not serious opportunities and the salaries reflect that.

-Nick

Thanks for the advice. Really appreciate it. Haven't heard of jobserve before (probably bc I am in the US), but I'll pass it on to our London team, thanks!

Victoria F

I deleted my LinkedIn, haven't looked at monster in years - not even when looking for jobs. Most recruiters are poorer at matching keywords than Google's search engine.

Please, explain me the difference between the ".NET Developer" and the "Application Developer". And how much engineering/managing do you reckon is needed to localize an application?

Victoria Feng wrote:
having a less passionate candidate apply.

I can become extremely religious when talking about development; but that's not the passion that's meant here, is it?

A tip; less marketing, less fluff, less positive political correct SH*T, and more facts. Where is the job? What's the pay? And what's your score on the Joel-test?

Bastard Programmer from Hell Suspicious | :suss:

If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]

How about linkedin @Feng?

I have used many sites for search in job, right now point I forgot those. Once I got remember it I will post it back again.

I think linkedin is good source for many developers.

And I am a .Net developer actively looking for a change.

If you have a position for me, feel free to send JD to my official mail id - ganeshcse@live.com

Regards,
Ganesh

What would your advise be on perusing a form of agile certification at this point? My main points of concern are whether the knowledge base and methodology has matured enough for the courses to provide value, whether the market has developed an appreciation for certified agile professionals (ROI)?

Naturally if you motivate for certification it would also be nice to know which body you can vouch for.

The only reason to go for certification in any subject is to help you progress in your career. The first thing you need to research is how many businesses are asking for this qualification in their job requirements.

So you have a certificate as an "Agile ..." - how much work experience do you then have with this or that technique / role in an Agile Team?
Depends on the employer: some might prefer certificates over experience, others might do it the other way round (and I'd prefer the latter style!).
Some certificates may provide a different kind of value: they make sure that people of different teams use the same "language", i.e. they certifiy that you understand a set of technical terms in a defined way. That's important when some work is sourced out to different companies.

I personally wouldn't bother. Look in to gaining a Lean certification if such a thing exists.

After working 10+ years at one company, I'm considering changing jobs. Mainly due to the endless re-orgs at my present company. After working at one company for so long, I'm not totally sure what to expect from an employer.

I've been applying mostly to Fortune 500 companies. The one that's come off as the most professional so far had one downside. They don't give local admin rights to the developers. I won't mention the name, but this is a financial services company. Other than that, everything sounds good so far. Good pay, advancement potential, 40 hour work week, bright co-workers, profitable business model ( for the division I'll be working at least) etc.

What is your experience? Have you worked for a company that doesn't give admin rights to developers? I do have that now & I work for another Fortune 500 company, but like I said, the unstable environment is wearing me out. Have you encountered any other major bureaucratic hassles that you tolerated? Or left because of?

FYI, I've definitely considered that I'd be happier at a smaller company, but I'd like to try one more large company a shot before I do that.

If you really need local admin rights as a developer or not, depends on the software you have to develop. With COM controls or Windows Services, that would be a PITA, but with .Net / Java desktop applications, I do not see a problem.
How "bureaucratic" is their software development process? How many papers have to be signed off before you can check-in a bug fix - none or many? The daily bureaucracy is far more important than local admin rights. But bureaucracy can be found in companies of any size, and also big companies can have modern development processes.
By the way, I know a company which insists on encrypted hard disks, causing the start of the computer to be terribly slow, and of course all later hard disk accesses...

Bernhard Hiller wrote:
but with .Net / Java desktop applications, I do not see a problem

How do you test the installation of a windows service then?

testthis99 wrote:
Have you worked for a company that doesn't give admin rights to developers?

I have worked for several financial corporations and they only gave admin rights to developers.

testthis99 wrote:
Have you encountered any other major bureaucratic hassles that you tolerated?

Requiring business casual every day.
Requiring that the 'group' justify themselves every 3 months in front of a review board. Failure could mean layoffs.

I can tell how I treat the first one now, I raise my salary requirements. If they want to pay me more money to show up in other clothes then I will do it.

There can be advantages to some companies. For example at one the company policy was that developers only worked 37.5 hours a week (5 x 8 hour work days with .5 allocated for lunch.) I worked more but there wasn't any discrimination for working that and no pressure to work vast number of hours and you will see that in smaller companies almost universally.

It depends on your confidence level.
Without local admin, every time you hit a blocker due to security restrictions you'll have to wait x days before you can continue that work stream. So long as the company pays you for that time, what do you care?

I am currently working for Winbooks, a Belgium company in Vietnam. The company has its own Framework base on .NET Framework. We make Web application. The idea about the Framework is that HTTP Response to client will be converted and render by Adobe Flash but not a logical ASP page.
This is the first time I work with this kind of Framework.

At the first glance, i see it's very convenience because I do not have to worry about the CSS , HTML , AJAX , JQUERY , MVC, Postback or everything like that in a traditional web application. So, I have no chance to put myself into these programming technique fields.

I am kind of a 1 year experience programmer and I always keep my head for improving my skills. Should I continue to work or back to traditional company where I have chance to work with what I used to?

Why have you reposted this question, we have already expalined that it is impossible to tell you which is the best route to follow.

Hi there! It was just because of invalid type of question. So I did not see what were your suggestion. Sorry if this could be an inconvenience.