Gaining Experience with Different Kinds of Work

[Fred Victa]

I have been a Java developer for over eleven years and I work for a consulting firm that sends its employees to work for different clients. The length of time that an employee is contracted with a client varies considerably. My contract with one client ended and I'm looking for a new client. If I cannot find work as a developer, what do you think about getting a business analyst role or a position in QA? I wouldn't mind working in those roles if I could not find a developer position. What would clients think of those who switch to a business analyst or QA role from a development role and then back again to a development role?

[Giovanni Montano]

Fred Victa wrote:I have been a Java developer for over eleven years and I work for a consulting firm that sends its employees to work for different clients. The length of time that an employee is contracted with a client varies considerably. My contract with one client ended and I'm looking for a new client. If I cannot find work as a developer, what do you think about getting a business analyst role or a position in QA? I wouldn't mind working in those roles if I could not find a developer position. What would clients think of those who switch to a business analyst or QA role from a development role and then back again to a development role?

I would like to ask three questions
1) Do you know scala and kotlin? Do you work always with the same frameworks? Do you like coding or you are bored because you do not learn new things?
2) A java developer with 11 years of experience can find a job, expecially with your CV, can I ask you where do you live and what is the reason you are afraid to not find another job?
3)If you like analysis become a Machine Learning Engineer, you can cover a lot of new topics, did you think about, or do you want something different than coding?

[Jim Venolia]

QA is a lot like development.  You read the requirements, write tests to ensure the code meets the requirements.  Then the fun starts.  You try to break the other guy's code, err, I mean look for bugs.  I found it pretty enjoyable.

You'll also know the system better than most developers.  Each developer will focus on their little section.  You will focus on all sections.  Integration testing (where you combine code from other developers) is especially fun.

The one caveat is you need to automate the tests as much as possible.  Running manual tests quickly becomes drudgework.  At least until you can get a worker bee or two to do the drudgework for you.

CSB.  I first looked at Java in '96.  I had an 8 person team with the responsibility of testing a brand new cell-phone gateway.   I quickly realized my test suite would be a couple hundred individual tests, one or two per requirement.  Java was brand spanking new so I gave it a shot.  It took 20-30 seconds just to start up and print hello world.  Once it got going the speed was fine, but that startup delay was a killer.  Ended up using Perl and C++ (hadn't heard of Python yet), each of my hundreds of tests took maybe 2-3 seconds to run.  Not using Java at that time was a wise decision.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Fred,
Lots of people switch from development -> QA. And if it is just one job, you can always say you prefer development when switching back.  If you haven't been coding for a year, I think people might be worried you aren't good at coding or forgot everything.

Note that some QA jobs are manual testing. For those (or the BA job), make sure your dev skills don't atrophy!

[Fred Victa]

Giovanni Montano wrote:

Fred Victa wrote:I have been a Java developer for over eleven years and I work for a consulting firm that sends its employees to work for different clients. The length of time that an employee is contracted with a client varies considerably. My contract with one client ended and I'm looking for a new client. If I cannot find work as a developer, what do you think about getting a business analyst role or a position in QA? I wouldn't mind working in those roles if I could not find a developer position. What would clients think of those who switch to a business analyst or QA role from a development role and then back again to a development role?

I would like to ask three questions
1) Do you know scala and kotlin? Do you work always with the same frameworks? Do you like coding or you are bored because you do not learn new things?
2) A java developer with 11 years of experience can find a job, expecially with your CV, can I ask you where do you live and what is the reason you are afraid to not find another job?
3)If you like analysis become a Machine Learning Engineer, you can cover a lot of new topics, did you think about, or do you want something different than coding?

I'm still employed with my company, but I need to find another client to work with. My company gets contracts with different clients.

I have heard of scala and kotlin, but I have not learned them. I have used different frameworks and I like coding.

I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. I was thinking of what to do just in case I don't find another developer position.

I'm open to trying something else besides coding.

[Jim Venolia]

Ahhh, you work for a body shop that hires you out and takes a 30% cut.  Got it.

Did that in the 90s.  What I did was work for 3 body shops.  I let them all know when my current contract was ending and first one to find me another acceptable job got my 30%.  Did get a couple jobs on my own where I got to keep that 30%, but I suck at networking and really have no desire to get better at it.  I'd rather cross a roomfull of legos barefoot in the dark at 3 AM to pee.

I started to learn Kotlin last spring/summer and was quite liking it, then life happened and I didn't program for nearly a year.  I cringe when I re-read my posts here from May-July 2018.

[Philkotse Philippines]

How do you think about internship? A undergraduate might be confused about which path to follow because the knowledge they have gained at university is somewhat general and they do feel it's hard to apply such knowledge and skills into a specific job. So early internship is very important.

[Campbell Ritchie]

PP, welcome to the Ranch