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Requesting Advice: Entry to the I.T market

 
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Hello People,
I am currently a postgraduate student studying MSc Software Engineering in the UK, I am 21 years of age. I previously completed a Computer Science degree. The reason I continued to do postgraduate studies was because i was unable to find a job after applying to around 100 jobs including graduate schemes immediately after finishing.
Is there anything i can do to improve my chances more!
I am a memebr of the BCS already!, and both my courses are accredited by them if it makes any difference?
P.S I am interested in the systems side!
Regards
Marc
 
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Originally posted by Marcus Raphael:
Hello People,
I am currently a postgraduate student studying MSc Software Engineering in the UK, I am 21 years of age. I previously completed a Computer Science degree. The reason I continued to do postgraduate studies was because i was unable to find a job after applying to around 100 jobs including graduate schemes immediately after finishing.
Is there anything i can do to improve my chances more!
I am a memebr of the BCS already!, and both my courses are accredited by them if it makes any difference?
P.S I am interested in the systems side!
Regards
Marc


My advice would have been to do a MBA, a MSc doesn't mean any more than a good degree.
 
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Yes, Marcus, I have some advice. Find "real" work to add to your resume. Volunteer. Develop a web site for free. Write some Java GUI applications that a grammar school can use, and donate to your local school. Put your name on all the work.
There are loads of good, deserving organizations that could use software products that you can develop in a couple of days. The more you develop, the more experience you can claim . . . AND, think of all those networking contacts you'll be developing!
 
Marcus Raphael
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-This should not be the case. My educational background i would consider to be very good. In this MSc i am learning all the cutting edge stuff, which im sure alot of people in industry would not have a clue about.
Things will continue to get worse in the UK, thats for sure.
Thank god University fees are going up! I know its bitter, but the governments got to do something!
God Help Me - God Help Outsourcing! God help the people taking the skill out of programming with kick arse IDE's! allowing any idiot to produce J2EE, .NET, and Web Services, cos thats whats happening!
 
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No it isn't. I spent five years getting my OU degree while working full-time as well. Even then I had to wait a couple of years to find my first development job. That's the way it is in the UK.
 
Marcus Raphael
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May be you see it that way!
Time is money.............. There is always some other way!
I dont want to look at a closed door.
Any one with a possitive suggestion, please feel free to suggest.
Regards
Mark
 
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Originally posted by Marcus Raphael:
-This should not be the case. My educational background i would consider to be very good. In this MSc i am learning all the cutting edge stuff, which im sure alot of people in industry would not have a clue about.


Speaking as one of the clueless ones, Marcus, I would simply not presume to give one of your advanced understanding any advice whatsoever. How could anything I might write possibly be of any help to the author of the passage above?
[ December 12, 2003: Message edited by: Alfred Neumann ]
 
Marcus Raphael
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I did not mean to sound so arrigent, but leaving university -�10 000 debt, and seeing that our knowledge is being replaced by Software engineering tools, and from my experience, the job prospects do not look that great. That is why i seek professional advice from those who are in the industy.
No offece was deliberatelty intended. Sorry if you took a hit.
Regards
Marcus
 
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get some certifications on some tools and platforms
 
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Originally posted by Marcus Raphael:
This should not be the case. My educational background i would consider to be very good. In this MSc i am learning all the cutting edge stuff, which im sure alot of people in industry would not have a clue about.



Originally posted by Marcus Raphael:
and seeing that our knowledge is being replaced by Software engineering tools



This is your problem. You're not offering anything of value to employers (I'm being blunt and harsh, but I want to make sure you get the point).
First, I doubt you're stuff is cutting edge. People working in the field are doing "cutting edge" stuff. You might have exposure to advanced research ideas, but companies won't even hear about those for a few years, let alone implement them. You can expect someone to value something they neither know nor understand yet.
As your point out, knowledge is being replaced by tools. Don't offer comapnies knowledge, offer them intelligence, creativity and soft skills which software cannot mimic anytime soon. I don't care if you can create EJBs quickly, because tomorrows IDEs can do them better. What those IDEs can't do is understand the business requirements and design the system. [b]Read the book "Peopleware."[b]
--Mark
 
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I'm afraid that in the IT field, education takes a distant back seat to experience, and some even claim that getting advanced degrees has hurt them.
More cynically, it's been said that companies only want to hire people who have exactly the same skills and experience as those they just laid off. At a lower wage, of course.
It's ironic about Mark's observation about creating EJBs fast. http://www.mousetech.com/EJBWizard.html - my donation to the EJB-creating world from about 3 years back. The current (unpublished) version not only prototypes EJBs rapidly, it also builds Struts/XDoclet code to work with them. With this toolset I can generate skeleton code in 10 minutes and have it extensively customized for production in 4-8 working hours.
Sorry to be so negative, but while I have every reason to believe that worldwide the IT industry is beginning a major upswing, neither you nor I live in the part of the world that's going to benefit from it most. There are experienced IT people who now make their living delivering yard mulch in this town. If I wasn't so utterly useless in any other profession (and so addicted to this one), I'd probably have bailed out during my 2-year-plus unpaid "vacation". I no longer recommend IT as a good industry to study for in college and won't until I see some hope that it will regain viability in the Western world.
Beyond that, if you still insist on persisting, good luck to you, and I'd recommend looking through past discussions on this forum for some of the suggestions that have been made.
 
Marcus Raphael
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Tim i feel sad when i say i completely agree with you.
But at looking at se tools, i get the impression that modelling is still guna be there in years to come. The coding is going away from the west, but the tools require the design. So what do you think about the role of a business analyst in years to come?? along with other roles. What jobs in the west do you think will go uneffected?
Marcus
 
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While it is possible to generate a lot of the programming work, in order to maintain the code one must understand what was generated and why ? So in the example above, you'd expect an EJB maintainer to know all about EJBs through and through. Then there comes a time when the tool isn't keeping up so they start chipping away at the generated code, replacing it with other proprietary code or custom code.
Generating code becomes an idiot-can-do when all is required is taking someone's design on paper and transferring to the generator, IMHO.
But people are going to have to understand it and tweak it and ideally they should be capable of producing that design themselves. Managers certainly aren't going to. So who in Whoville?

The person who can design and program.
 
Marcus Raphael
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Thomas- with the latest tolls like ArcStyler 4.0, which uses the MDA approach. The design is sychronized with the code. Hence- Maintanace becomes less of an issue. It is available today on the martket!
 
Mark Herschberg
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Originally posted by Tim Holloway:

It's ironic about Mark's observation about creating EJBs fast. http://www.mousetech.com/EJBWizard.html - my donation to the EJB-creating world from about 3 years back.


That's not ironic. Irony is where your actions produce the opposite of the expected outcome, e.g. you work hard to create the program and then find it puts you out of a job. My comment was observant or insightful, but not ironic.
By this I mean, I had no idea that that product or any other like it existed. I also would have placed 100:1 odds (I put $100 to your $1) that such a product would exist within the next few years. It happened with JavaBeans. It happened with database configuration. It happened with installation scripts...
5 years ago people made money hand over fist designing web pages and e-commerce sites. Now both can be built by someone with no skills using off-the-shelf products. If all you could do was soemthing that is no automated, you're in trouble. As HS points out, the people with jobs can do more than that.
Technology will always automate the rote tasks. The good engineers have un-automatable skills, and simply upgrade their working knowledge.
--Mark
 
Marcus Raphael
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Can you give common examples of unautimatable tasks in industry! As i have no experience! What tasks are you refering to when you say this!
 
HS Thomas
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Thomas- with the latest tolls like ArcStyler 4.0, which uses the MDA approach. The design is sychronized with the code. Hence- Maintanace becomes less of an issue. It is available today on the martket!
Useful for certain designs , yes. I think Eclipse was developed with MDA.
I remember someone comparing code generators to a wood cutter using templates or some sort of guide to cut out the wood. Those are not used in the whole of the design - just parts of it.
If you are interested in design, visit the OO forum. Scott Ambler one of the leading lights in XP was there a few hours ago. Ask a few questions about MDA or search and you'd get some enlightening answers.
Play around with tools certainly , generate code for repetitive tasks, write some code, read the business papers and play around with designing parts of what interests you,get involved in some open-source projects, use some of that cutting-edge stuff you mentioned. Just feel comfortable with your environment. Also just be prepared it won't all happen overnight.
Generating code on it's own smacks of Rapid Application Development, and that idea's gone the way of the dodo... (Sorry, Tim, but that's what I read). You can't just put a lid on creativity but must learn to harness.
Business process re-engineers, designers are/will be really in demand. They just need to prove they know their stuff.
[ December 12, 2003: Message edited by: HS Thomas ]
 
HS Thomas
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jig was the word I was looking for wrt wood cutting , not guide.
 
Billy Tsai
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There is not too much real practical use of the knowledges I have from all the certification I obtained right now for my current job, I still have learn a brand new Ecommerce platform/tool and it takes a lot of effort
 
HS Thomas
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Originally posted by Billy Tsai:
There is not too much real practical use of the knowledges I have from all the certification I obtained right now for my current job, I still have learn a brand new Ecommerce platform/tool and it takes a lot of effort


Billy, I think it will hit you much later when you get a breathing space just how much knowledge you have picked up from the certifictions.. Experience is another dimension because then you will be doing it FOR REAL.
 
Tony Collins
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Originally posted by Mark Herschberg:

That's not ironic. Irony is where your actions produce the opposite of the expected outcome, e.g. you work hard to create the program and then find it puts you out of a job. My comment was observant or insightful, but not ironic.
--Mark


An American explaining irony, how ironic.

Tony
PS that's sarcasm.
 
Mark Herschberg
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Originally posted by Marcus Raphael:
Can you give common examples of unautimatable tasks in industry! As i have no experience! What tasks are you refering to when you say this!


Nearly anything involving decision making. Some specific examples include requirements gathering, market analysis, domain modeling, resolving requirement issues, getting customer feedback...
--Mark
 
Tim Holloway
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Originally posted by Mark Herschberg:

That's not ironic. Irony is where your actions produce the opposite of the expected outcome, e.g. you work hard to create the program and then find it puts you out of a job. My comment was observant or insightful, but not ironic.
By this I mean, I had no idea that that product or any other like it existed. I also would have placed 100:1 odds (I put $100 to your $1) that such a product would exist within the next few years. It happened with JavaBeans. It happened with database configuration. It happened with installation scripts...
5 years ago people made money hand over fist designing web pages and e-commerce sites. Now both can be built by someone with no skills using off-the-shelf products. If all you could do was soemthing that is no automated, you're in trouble. As HS points out, the people with jobs can do more than that.
Technology will always automate the rote tasks. The good engineers have un-automatable skills, and simply upgrade their working knowledge.
--Mark


Courtesy of Bartleby.com: (Stand back! I've got a web browser and I'm not afraid to use it!)


The words ironic, irony, and ironically are sometimes used of events and circumstances that might better be described as simply �coincidental� or �improbable,� in that they suggest no particular lessons about human vanity or folly.


Most automation tools provide rapid creation of complex systems while hiding their complexity. Until the system fails and someone has to go into its innards to repair it. A company that attempts to survive purely on monkeys running power tools has a lot in common with the Titanic.
It's always poignant to see people thinking that they can somehow come up with a skill set that won't leak across global boundaries. This is the Internet Age. Ideas circle the globe at the speed of light, and there's neither anything lacking with the intellectual capacities of people on any other continent nor any specialized hardware required to effect such tasks that is beyond their ability to acquire (even if it may cost a bit more in local income terms).
[ December 16, 2003: Message edited by: Tim Holloway ]
 
Mark Herschberg
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Originally posted by Tim Holloway:

Most automation tools provide rapid creation of complex systems while hiding their complexity. Until the system fails and someone has to go into its innards to repair it.


So tell me Tim, what's it like writing your own file system? :-p
--Mark
 
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