JDJ Article on Java Jobs

[Mark Herschberg]

Here's some more gasoline for the fire, a Java Developer's Journal article:
http://www.sys-con.com/java/articlenewscombine4.cfm?id=1552
--Mark

[Dan Chisholm]

Mark,
I didn't have any luck with the link. Are you
sure it is correct?

[John Dale]

The link is working.

[Rufus BugleWeed]

Mark's recent post -
But overall the market isn't that bad.
IEEE statement -
U.S. engineering unemployment has increased dramatically in the past two years, reaching an all-time high for electrical engineers and computer scientists in the quarter just ended.
Care to revise your statement? At least could you bring us a beer to cry in, bartender.
[ August 11, 2002: Message edited by: Rufus Bugleweed ]

[John Coxey]

Rufus:
- The Java market seems split - which I think accounts for the varying viewpoints with both the group on this board as well as he JDJ discussion.
- For those with 3 or 4 yrs Java experience - and a degree - and willing to relocate - the jobs seem to be out there.
- For those without an IT degree - and/or no experience - the going is quite rough. Especially if unwilling to relocate.
- Seems like certain areas of the country are utterly dead - yet others are showing signs of life. I can tell you that Denver is totally dead.
- I am not saying it's easy - but not totally dead either (for the experienced folks). Seems more like the mid 1990's that anything - right before the IT market really got hot.
---------
Let me validate my opinion:
1. Last year (May 2001) - I wrapped up a 6 week job search with 3 definite Java offers - and 1 C/C++ job offer (from Denver office of Raytheon).
2. Just made the phone rounds this evening with guys at Hewlett-Packard which had layoffs - which were due more to the fumble of their HPAS product line than anything. HPAS = HP Application Server
- One 5 yr IT professional starts new J2EE (Servlets/JSP) gig in Wash-DC (means move from PA).
- One 2.5 yr solid Servlet/JSP with BS-CS, starts new gig next month in Pittsburgh - means move across state from Philly.
- HP-Philly has been doing some outsourcing lately and scored a few gigs. Not enough to keep everyone employed - but did get some work. Seems like new work for everyone is in the Sevlet/JSP arena as opposed to EJBs. Go figure...
3. Friend with 10yrs C/C++ experience in Atlanta (not an HP employee) scored new gig in Florida (dunno town) - and is moving this week. New job involves Java/JMX of all things - will be his first Java job. Has BS-CS and BS-Applied Math. I went to school with him back in late 80's.
Again another relocation.
---------------

Johnny
([e-mail])
[ August 11, 2002: Message edited by: John Coxey ]

[Mark Herschberg]

Originally posted by Rufus Bugleweed:

Care to revise your statement? At least could you bring us a beer to cry in, bartender.

Revise my statement? Not a chance. As for the beer, if you're in NYC or Boston...
I agree completely with John, and if you look at some of my rpevious statements, you'll find that is exactly the point I am expressing.
I also think their numbers are, to quote Mark Twain "damn lies." Gee unemployment is up in the last two years--duh. If you want to get me to believe that the market is bad, you need to show me meaningful data. I've never said the market isn't bad compared to two years ago. Compared to the late 90's, it sucks. But comapred to other times, I don't think it's so bad. What are the unemployment rates in our industry, as compared with other periods. Oh, and when looking at those numbers, don't forget to normalize for the fact that plenty of people entered in the field in the last few years who have no business being in it. (I'm not saying everyone, just many.) I'm thinking those numbers aren't so bad.
--Mark

[John Coxey]

Mark/Rufus:
- What bothers me (personally) about the current job market situation is that while I have the education - I lack the Java experience. Only have about 1 1/2 years under my belt - and alot of that was pre-J2E stuff - when Java was just hitting the market.
Will be an interesting job search.
- Also - don't forget that the "hiring dead zone" season is around the corner. That's basically mid-Nov to mid-Jan when hiring in the IT industry comes to a standstill - even in great times. Mostly due to new budgets - vactions - end of year and start of year.
- Well - I gotta beer - my last one. Gotta run.
Johnny

[John Fontana]

This whole phenomena is evidence of something I have long believed: Java technology is unnecessarily complex for 90% of the work that businesses need.
Shops that develop with .NET, or Cold Fusion, for example, do not need programmers with 10 years of experience/PHD's to get work done. It is the smoke-and-mirrors of Java's mystique that cost "e-businesses" immensely, when they could have used more appropriately simple solutions. Don't even get me started on EJB vs. JSP/Servlets. Each app vendor's standards are so skewed that it is necessary to have experience with specific products, and use such user-unfriendly tools like ANT.
Java is finding its niche with financial companies, because they can justify it, and afford it. I do not think that Sun should be proud of the fact that it takes a CS degree to qualify for a job building shopping carts with their technology. The tools must catch up with the ease of use of other technologies, or it will remain prohibitively expensive for most companies to adopt.
Another thought: I recently worked at a gig alongside a "real" (not wannabee) programmer. He got so caught up in high-level concepts that the simplest programming tasks took weeks instead of hours. Inevitably our manager would hand the projects over to me because he knew I would stick to the deadline without overcomplicating the process.

[John Coxey]

John:
Six years ago - when I started playing with Java and OOAD - I thought the language would be more geared towards replacing legacy COBOL code.
This was before the J2EE technology came into being.
Figured that Java (core Java) was easy to learn, the AWT (pre-Swing) was decent enough for our uses. Definitely felt it would replace mainframe COBOL.
-------
Here it is 5 or 6 yrs later - and COBOL is still king of the mainframe banking world. EDS/GMAC is still using legacy COBOL - and the resulting spaghetti code.
One person to write the program and a dozen more to maintain it.
-----------
John Coxey
([e-mail])

[Thomas Paul]

I think EJBs are highly overused. Half the applications written using EJBs could have been written with servlets/JSPs (think Struts) for less than half the cost. And they say that Microsoft is the king of marketing!

[John Fontana]

I wonder how many IT managers choose technologies such as EJB for their own job security.
When I see ads that demand a CS degree to do e-commerce programming, something is wrong. For a bank on a sprawling legacy system, fine, they dug their graves long ago. But for start-ups to implement these technologies is rarely justified.
What many of the so-called "real" programmers lack is the restraint and humility to take advantage of simple solutions to business problems.
An example of genius: Javaranch's old dependable out-of-the-box Perl message board! It probably cost $50 and it's brilliant.
The sad part is, that genius will have little incentive to add that to his/her resume, although in my eyes they would be more productive than a gang of SCJP's debating the benefits of polymorphism.

[Mark Herschberg]

Originally posted by John Fontana:
ava technology is unnecessarily complex for 90% of the work that businesses need.
It is the smoke-and-mirrors of Java's mystique that cost "e-businesses" immensely, when they could have used more appropriately simple solutions. Don't even get me started on EJB vs. JSP/Servlets. Each app vendor's standards are so skewed that it is necessary to have experience with specific products, and use such user-unfriendly tools like ANT.

You remind me a Sloan prof who complained that the Internet isn't "ready yet" because it's still faster to order a pizza by phone then online. I reponsded that the problem was not with the Internet, but rather with the user who simply misapplied the tool. If companies want to misuse the tool (Java), that's their problem.
Remember that when computers first came out, you needed a PhD just to use them (circa 1950s). In time, computers were accessible to the geeks, but still required training (circa 1970s). Today they are usable by just about anyone.
Programming is the same way. Whereas it used to quite advanced training, VB allows people with no concept of "coding" to build programs. In 1997, there weren't such great tools for ecommerce web sites. People started adopted Java for it, and Sun responded by making Java easier for the needs of its users.

Originally posted by John Fontana:

I do not think that Sun should be proud of the fact that it takes a CS degree to qualify for a job building shopping carts with their technology. The tools must catch up with the ease of use of other technologies, or it will remain prohibitively expensive for most companies to adopt.

Funny, I know people without CS degress who can build shopping carts today. I'm disappointed in Sun for that reason. Sun produces a programming language, not a tool set. It's up to other vendors to make the tools, using Java, to allow people to quickly and easily meet business needs.

--Mark

[John Fontana]

Mark -
Look at my post that preceded yours...I think it clarifies my view on this.
My criticism is of the high-end "real" programmers who implement unnecessarily complex technologies. It may be because they lack common sense, are blinded by the complexity of their own knowledge, just curious, or want to boost their resumes.
Example: At my last contract gig, I developed a web app to upload images to a database. It took a few hours to do in C#.NET. (BTW, in Cold Fusion it is one tag that takes seconds). My manager wanted me to make it a web service. I asked, "Do we plan on using this in other applications? If so, there are requirements here that are very specific to this application. Let me understand how a web service would be beneficial." The response: "The boss knows that .NET is good for writing web services".
The boss, incidentally, has a CS degree. And used to work for Sun.
Now, Mark, help me understand, how can anyone fault a technology for being simpler to use, i.e., less expensive/more productive?

[John Fontana]

Originally posted by Mark Herschberg:

Sun produces a programming language, not a tool set. It's up to other vendors to make the tools, using Java, to allow people to quickly and easily meet business needs.

--Mark

Sun makes Forte for Java, now called Sun One Studio. It is a very popular IDE and integrates with many app servers.
The problem with the complexity of distributed programming is not even the programming itself. It is the deployment. Sun allowed many vendors to participate in the deployment standards of EJB's which is where all hell broke loose. (See Ed Roman's "Mastering Enterprise JavaBeans", Wiley).
That's why it doesn't matter to employers if you've been writing/deploying EJB's for Weblogic for four years, if they are using Websphere. That is a major blunder on Sun's part.

[Mark Herschberg]

Originally posted by John Fontana:
My criticism is of the high-end "real" programmers who implement unnecessarily complex technologies. It may be because they lack common sense, are blinded by the complexity of their own knowledge, just curious, or want to boost their resumes.

Oh my god, a bad programmer! That's gotta be a first. :-) OK, yeah, sounds like this guy did the wrong thing, but that's a user issue, not a tool issues. It sounds alot like something right out of "Tool Time."

Originally posted by John Fontana:
The response: "The boss knows that .NET is good for writing web services".

Oh my god, a boss right out of Dilbert, imagine that. :-)

Originally posted by John Fontana:

Now, Mark, help me understand, how can anyone fault a technology for being simpler to use, i.e., less expensive/more productive?

I don't fault the hammer, I fault the man who used it to put a screw into the wall.

Originally posted by John Fontana:

Sun makes Forte for Java, now called Sun One Studio. It is a very popular IDE and integrates with many app servers.

Yeah? So? Sun makes a tool; that does not mean Sun is a tool company. Sun is a server company. They happened to produce a language to help their server sales(although in that end it failed). Now they sometimes make tools to help promote a language. They are not a tool company.

Originally posted by John Fontana:

<Complaints about EJBs>
That is a major blunder on Sun's part.

Again, I disagree. That's a major blunder on the part of the vendors who participated in the JSR. Perhaps you can fault Sun for how it set up the JSR, and giving so much control to other companies (I don't). But I don't hold Sun responsbile for much with Java, aside from starting it and helping to grow it in their early years.

--Mark

[Thomas Paul]

Originally posted by Mark Herschberg:
Oh my god, a bad programmer! That's gotta be a first. :-) OK, yeah, sounds like this guy did the wrong thing, but that's a user issue, not a tool issues. It sounds alot like something right out of "Tool Time."

There is a "Tool Time" mentality in our profession. A Gartner survey from last year said that companies overspent about $1 billion on application servers. Gartner claimed that application vendors are pushing unnecessary technology on businesses and IT departments are going along for the ride.

[Jon McDonald]

I remember when I was first reading about EJB and looking at examples that were being given on how to employ them. For most of the examples, I kept asking why bother with EJBs, when Servlets/JSPs and a database would do the job just as well. I thought I was missing something
Jon

[John Fontana]

Thomas and John -
Hooray! This is the point I was trying to make - if companies stick to the simple dynamic websites they need, they could fill these positions more easily, and more programmers would have jobs.

[Bill william]

because we as programmer need survive-
see bjarnes' interview
http://www.coderanch.com/t/37364/md/Bjarne-Stroustrup-interview-uncut-version

[Jim Baker]

The strength of EJB is on transaction,
session, and security managements. If you
do not need them, why bother EJB?

[Morgan Roth]

[The problem with the complexity of distributed programming is not even the programming itself. It is the deployment. Sun allowed many vendors to participate in the deployment standards of EJB's which is where all hell broke loose. (See Ed Roman's "Mastering Enterprise JavaBeans", Wiley).]
You are so correct. I don't think EJB's are difficult, but configuring them is so convoluted (not difficult, just involved). And people who come from a MS background stare in disbelief when they see what you must go through.
[ October 31, 2002: Message edited by: Morgan Roth ]

[Jim Baiter]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
There is a "Tool Time" mentality in our profession. A Gartner survey from last year said that companies overspent about $1 billion on application servers. Gartner claimed that application vendors are pushing unnecessary technology on businesses and IT departments are going along for the ride.

Gartner has a limited level of credibility in my mind. Once I was on a conference call with on of their analysts since my employer is a subscriber and he was lambasting web services. I left the conference room, went back to my office and saw a financial news release stating something to the effect that Gartner sees web services as being the greatest thing since sliced bread. What's the deal here?