Experience w/o depth

[Afroz Khan]

Hi,

I am working on java in a CMM Level5 company from past 5 years. This is the 4th largest software company of India. I have total of 6.5 years of experience, but for the last 3 years I was assigned to maintenance and production support projects. So my knowledge with regard to latest technologies are very less. I could not upgrade myself to EJB, Struts, etc. I am now still in one of the production support project as a tech lead and right in US.
I am looking for a change but have no idea as to how will I approach with the lack of knowledge of latest technologies. Are there any options for me with lack of the latest technologies? Are there companies who provide training in case if I need to shift from Java to some other tech or have training on Java tech itself ??

Lots of confusion.

Rgds,
Afroz

[John Ranaudo]

join the crowd.

[kayal cox]

Or stand out.

You can start by learning new things and trying some pet projects in your free time.

[Ravi Kesari]

On reading your script, for a minute.. i felt.. I could just find and replace your name with that of mine...
One thing is for sure, if you crib.. you will keep cribbing throughout. Just checkout if you can get onto another project. Or else change company. You will spend more time thinking about this than doing something fruitful.

[Afroz Khan]

Thanks guys,

I think I really need to change company as changing project is bit difficult.

[Vinit Patil]

Originally posted by Afroz Khan:
Thanks guys,

I think I really need to change company as changing project is bit difficult.

Make sure that, in new company, you will not get maintenance and production support projects. Around 80% of project are maintenance and production support projects in our industry.


-Vinit

[Mark Wuest]

Originally posted by Afroz Khan:
Hi,

I am working on java in a CMM Level5 company from past 5 years. This is the 4th largest software company of India. I have total of 6.5 years of experience, but for the last 3 years I was assigned to maintenance and production support projects. So my knowledge with regard to latest technologies are very less. I could not upgrade myself to EJB, Struts, etc. I am now still in one of the production support project as a tech lead and right in US.
I am looking for a change but have no idea as to how will I approach with the lack of knowledge of latest technologies. Are there any options for me with lack of the latest technologies? Are there companies who provide training in case if I need to shift from Java to some other tech or have training on Java tech itself ??

Lots of confusion.

Rgds,
Afroz

Do you have a home computer?

I spent many years as a C++/Unix developer and wanted to do Java, well, I wanted to stay technical but wanted to do something really different than writing unix daemons in C++.

I run Fedora Core 3 at home and have played with several Java technologies on it for free, starting with Sun's reference implementation (just cookbooking through EJB's a couple of years ago), to a tomcat container that I deployed a couple of servlets on, getting a better handle on deployment descriptors (no more deploytool!) and really getting a good grasp on xml and xsl at the same time. I also recall how playing with Netbeans' swing gui builder really helped me solidify a lot of the variables in swing.

I'll stop there, but I've learned a lot of new stuff that way. In interviews, I just play it straight with what I have Real World experience in vs what I've done at home. Putting something together and putting it up on sourceforge can give folks access to what you did at home, but nobody's taken me up on that one yet.

Of course, I have a very understanding wife who encourages me to mess with new stuff on my computer and even acts like she thinks my new creations that I show off to her are cool.

Mark