Abdulelah Dandachi

Remember, your website, in many respects, is your resume

Very true. When done properly, it's an amazingly powerful tool that, if you manage to drive enough traffic to, can enhance the impression you make. It's cheap to setup and mantain. But like another poster said, it requires that you keep it updated with something useful.

Myself, I have a personal website at www.orontescreations.com . All it has right now is a web service which I use in conjunction with TIBCO Businessworks for demos. Right now it looks cute. If I leave it like that for a month, it'll start to look stale. After two months, I might as well take it down, if I havent added any new content.
[ December 20, 2006: Message edited by: Abdulelah Dandachi ]

Something I always tell anyone looking for a job; make contacts. At this stage more than 50% of your efforts should be focused on networking with people. The best advice I was ever given, was when someone told me that the quality of my career would be determined by the quality of my contacts.

Sorry, I cant send you the documentation. For starters I dont have them in PDF format, and I dont think it would be appropriate, considering that TIBCO doesnt make them publicaly available; you need to get them by downloading the products or through the Power website.

May I ask, if your company doesnt use TIBCO, why are you interested in the products?

http://www.tibco.com/company/contact_us.jsp

If your company is using TIBCO, then you should have a user name and password that will allow you to access the TIBCO Power website:

power.tibco.com

This site has product documentation,FAQs and the knowledge base.

Apart from the TIBCO training courses, the only other way to learn the products is from the manuals.

Go to the TIBCO website www.tibco.com and contact them. Right now you should get started learning BW and EMS, which will also teach you Designer, Administrator and some Hawk.

If you're just getting started using TIBCO, I'd suggest you divide your time between Businessworks and EMS; 75% on the former, and 25% on the latter. By learning BW you'll also learn to use Designer and Administrator.

You'll also need to know web services and SOA concepts.

I dont think the SCJP should be too hard, but firing someone for not getting it within a month is prepostereous. A person can be much more productive working on projects during that time. If it's important enough to get fired over, then it sure as heck is important enough that the company should provide some training and classes on passing the exam.

As to getting another job, I'd offer the same advice I was given at the start of my career; make contacts. It's the single best thing you can do right now at this stage. The quality of your contacts should be at the top of your priorities.

Best of luck.
[ November 28, 2006: Message edited by: Abdulelah Dandachi ]

Ah! Propogating the myth that us older workers are only capable of doing the jobs that we started out doing decades ago.

Exactly the point I was making...NOT. Gotta love that Borat (disclaimer: this does not imply any dislike towards Kazakhstan), and I'm not quite sure how you reached that conclusion (disclaimer:this is not to imply that "old-workers" dont know their way around a discussion).

Length of service does not always automaticaly translate into better abilities. The moment a professional, in ANY field, stops learning and improving, his usefulness has a limited shelf life, starting from the day after the next version release (disclaimer:this does not imply that patches and bug-fix releases are any less important).

THAT is why I agree with Mr Meyers (disclaimer: this does not imply that my agreements are limited soley to the posts made by the forementioned Mr Meyers. I agree with posts made by old people too). There are IT workers claiming 6+ years experience on their resumes, but without the efficiency of a person with half those years of experience. It's not that they lie on their resumes; its just that at year 3 or 4, they took the decision that they'd rather avoid the initial discomfort that inevitably MUST come with any form of self improvement. It happens to most people at some stage, some sooner rather than later (disclaimer: I really like old people. They decide my salary and project deadlines).

If someone with 5 years experience decided at year 3 that he'd rather avoid the effort that comes with learning new and better ways of doing things (ie the shock of going from ye olde VB to VB.NET...oh, by the way, disclaimer: this is not to imply that Java or C# or Pascal or Cobol workers havent been as shocked at transitions in their time), then I wish him (disclaimer: or her) the best of luck...on someone else's team.

Maybe in some professions, workers can get by just by remaining at the level of mediocrity they feel most comfortable with. As we've seen over the years, IT isnt one of those professions. It would be like writing a novel using the same style as Hemingway. He was a master in his time, but your publishers would send such a book right back.
[ November 28, 2006: Message edited by: Abdulelah Dandachi ]

Now come on ! A developer with 6 years experience in java can do better !!

Hahaha! Yes, a text book example of someone who picked up a bad habit early in their career, and for the next six years, didnt bother to exert the small amount of effort it would have taken to discover the PROPER way to do things. It's not real experience when someone spends years 4,5 and 6 doing exactly the same things as in year 3, in exactly the same way.

It's not what you know, its who you know, how much you're liked by those powers that be that make the decisions regarding your next pay cheque. If you're really liked, then you could code the Hubble right into the Tycho crater on the moon and it'll be laughed off. It's not cynical, it's just the way the world works.

And it's not strange to find some individuals with over five years experience still cranking out some terrible stuff. It's just that they stopped learning and growing inbetween years 2 and 3, and felt most comfortable doing the same old work the same old way. What use am I if I have 40+ years experience using punch cards? Alot less than a freshman taking his first OOP course.

TIBCO is another big player in EAI. IBM's MQ Websphere is very big with financial institutions.

What kind of material do you need? You can get started by downloading the demo software on the TIBCO website.

Why no create some shareware, especially casual games? A smaller, independent outfit has more room for innovation than the rubbish being recylced by the big name publishing companies these days (if I see one more real-time-resource-gathering-strategy-Red-Alert clone I'll....)

There is a huge SOA project here in Saudi Arabia that alot of major companies are in the running for; IBM, HP, BEA, TIBCO. It will integrate numerous government agencies and the public government portals. Very ambitious timelines. The RFP was one of the most detailed and best written I've ever seen.

I have known several people who ended up with better jobs because they impressed a manager and then the manager left for another company and brought that person on to work for them

Yep, thats usually how it happens. Your biggest salary hikes wont come from your current employer, but from a client or partner who steals you away.

By the way, did you try www.bayt.com? Has a Middle Eastern focus, but it's worth a try.

Remember that people, being people, make judgements emotionaly, and then justify them logicaly. If you're liked, a million other shortcommings will be overlooked.

Here in the ME networking is actually much easier. Every cousin or second cousin is a contact. Just being the same nationality as a key manager is a plus (and being the national of a country he has it in for a major minus).

And I cant begin to count the number of people I know who got promoted beyound their abilities, because their wives made a great impression on the wives of managers and CEOs. Honestly, it got me seriously contemplating taking the full qouta of four wives, each one a strategicaly chosen nationality (kidding).

Some of the most effective techniques I've seen at networking werent really thought out in advance, but were people just trying to be helpful to others. A guy set up a website to sell used cars in Riyadh, and it got him in contact with all sorts of people, one of whom had a relative working for a major consultancy company. Another just struck up a conversation with a guy trying to buy a mobile phone, and helped him make sense of the bewildering number of options and models. I used to write tech articles, and thought that would help. Nope, didnt. The best contact I made was while attending a celebration for a colleague, whos wife had given birth to twin daughters.

The best advice I was told was, when getting to know people, give a little something first. Help them out with an IT problem, or teach classes. Advise them on their next laptop purchase. Help them with that damn Windows blue screen they keep getting. Simple things really. Let THEM see the benefit in having you as an acquantance, and dont force every certification youve ever gotten down their throats. Someone once said, be liked, and you'll never want.