Programming as a career

tomsie100

Hello all
I have a cert in computing from castlebar.
I attempted a diploma in computing in sligo and failed one test and the project.
I am thinking of going back and finishing by diploma in either sligo or castlebar.
It will be called a degree then.

But when i came out of college 3 years ago the computer industry was in resesion and it was a bad career to go in.

I know a diploma will always look good on my cv and im enemployed anyway.
But have things changed is the computer industry a good carrear to go into.
I think there are less computer students now.
advice welcomed.

tomsie100

By the way i also did a year in a localisation company in sligo for a year.
So i have some experience.

Basq

Am in Sligo right now finishing up the Diploma In Computing.

Well, have finished all my exams and am just getting ready for the project presentation in a fortnight. And then by work experience. Think i failed an exam though i will repeat it in August.

I think the general consensus now is that it's a Diploma or nothing. You ever think of attempting to get the Cisco Cert? Great to have!

Best of luck with everything!

My advice: try to get an Award from Cisco (a bit pricey but worth it!) or try to get your Diploma.

tomsie100

Great to hear from you
Will be travelling up to sligo next week to talk about going back.
The exam i failed was the internet Html class, Was amazed i failed that she set an impossible test and maked it awful hard. I feel hard done by there because i was at nearly every class had a good CA and was doing well. So she not my favourite person.

The other thing i messed up was my project picked something too hard and could never get started. And im a bit scared of it when i go to repeat it.

Tell me more about the Cisco cert. I thought that was more for people who wanted to fix computers.

How's the course going for you and how many people in the class i kinda wondering has there been i big drop off in the last few years.

Basq

Yeah.. we have an Internet Applications class which is basically ASP / HTML / E-commerce etc. I think the lecturer you're talking about left last year.

I picked an Air Hockey game in C# for my project. It's going pretty well.. not amazing either! But i'm hoping to emphasize that i used RawInput messages in developing it. So two people can play on the same PC with two mice connected (i.e - i can get two people to play on the laptop.. one using touchpad and other a USB mouse).

The course is going grand. The Diploma is an extremely difficult year.. very short and very extreme!

Not much has changed except no more C++ anymore.. this year was the second year C# was taught instead.

The class has had a big drop-off the last couple of years. There's about 35 - 40 this year in the class. And i've a feeling it may be in single figures in September with people leaving the course to go travelling / people staying on work experience etc.

The Cisco Cert is great. It's all about networking basically. As far as i know, Sligo IT and Cork IT are the only IT's offering lectures in it for free. All you pay is the fee for the actual exam. That's about €140 i think. Couldn't do it this year. Too much on but am hoping to do it next year!

Apparently, it guarantees you at least an extra 3 - 4K in your job. There's some good sides to it and also some bad.

Good: You can download a cheat sheet from the Cisco website for €40 which will have 200 questions on it, But 60 of those questions will be on the Cisco exam when you take it.
Bad: You need to get 85% (last time i checked) to obtain the Cert.

Will be in the college next week at some point. Writing out all the documentation for my project so might see you round at some point.

Best of luck with everything. Hope it all works out for you.

jesus_thats_gre

The majority entering the work place now have a degreee. The existing people have qualifications and experience.. Try to get to degree level or even higher.

redsupper

Like BIS OR MSISS in UCC/Tcd ????

Hobbes

Or certainly experience. If you project allows try to get an internship with a company to get the experience. A lot of companies do this.

kenmc

redsupper wrote:

Like BIS OR MSISS in UCC/Tcd ????

Or BAI (comp/elec)/BEng/BSc (comp sci).
Our place won't even look at you if you don't have a degree and/or 5 years experience these days - so many ppl looking for work, so little work going around, we can afford to be picky.
Linux experience is a definite plus these days - and I mean driver development, not just user-level experience.
Oh and here's a hot tip for all wanna-be employees. TAKE DOWN YOUR BLOG TILL YOU GET A JOB!!!! first thing we do is google the name of the candidate - you'd be surprised at how much information is out there on the WWW!

MickFarr

kenmc wrote:

Or BAI (comp/elec)/BEng/BSc (comp sci).
Our place won't even look at you if you don't have a degree and/or 5 years experience these days - so many ppl looking for work, so little work going around, we can afford to be picky.
Linux experience is a definite plus these days - and I mean driver development, not just user-level experience.
Oh and here's a hot tip for all wanna-be employees. TAKE DOWN YOUR BLOG TILL YOU GET A JOB!!!! first thing we do is google the name of the candidate - you'd be surprised at how much information is out there on the WWW!

How would you hire a computer programmer with a diploma and 5 years work experience or a computer programmer with a degree and 2 years work experience?

I would go for the computer programmer with 5 years work experience. Makes for a much better CV

kenmc

I meant to say relevent experience as well.... but yeah generally degree/diploma will only be important for the first job or maybe 2nd if you move early.... experience proves you can learn your stuff and do it well....

damnyanks

Also I'm not too sure about this but I doubt a Ciso cert would help getting a programming job as they are different areas of IT. (Networking, Development)

galwaydude18

damnyanks wrote:

Also I'm not too sure about this but I doubt a Ciso cert would help getting a programming job as they are different areas of IT. (Networking, Development)

I personally would never ever consider a career in programming myself! I'm doing java for the second year im my electronics and computer engineering cert in Athlone IT! I am useless at it! First year was very tought and second year is no different for me even thought I like java in second year! Were doing object orientated programing! Sorry if I spelt orientated wrong!

Basq

galwaydude18 wrote:

I personally would never ever consider a career in programming myself! I'm doing java for the second year im my electronics and computer engineering cert in Athlone IT! I am useless at it! First year was very tought and second year is no different for me even thought I like java in second year! Were doing object orientated programing! Sorry if I spelt orientated wrong!

Never really liked Java myself.

Did Java for 2 years, Visual Basic for 2 years and C# for a year.

Found Java the toughest. Visual Basic is easy but very limited in it's capabilities. C# is great.. think of a language with the power of Java and with syntax as easy as Visual Basic - that's pretty close to C#

tomsie100

if you are not thinking of going in the computer industry
Would having a Diploma now called a degree in computing
look good on your Cv for other employers.

kenmc

tomsie100 wrote:

if you are not thinking of going in the computer industry
Would having a Diploma now called a degree in computing
look good on your Cv for other employers.

not fully understanding here....
A diploma is not a degree, hence if you did a diploma course you would have a diploma in computing. If you did a degree course then you would have a degree in computing. Thats like asking could I do a computer degree and get a degree in Law???

Why would you do a degree/diploma in Computing if you know from the outset that you don't wanna be in computing??? Why not do something thats relevent for the job you wanna do??? Or a "general" one eg Arts if you don't know what you wanna do????
Switching positions, I know that if someone who *didn't* have a degree in computers came looking for a job with me having studied real estate management or whatever, I'd be very quick about dumping the CV...

Pinhead

tomsie100 wrote:

Was amazed i failed that she set an impossible test and maked it awful hard. I feel hard done by there because i was at nearly every class had a good CA and was doing well. So she not my favourite person.

I have a feeling I know who you're talkin' about I'm taking Web Development in Sligo myself. Also studying the CCNA cert as part of it. Go back and get at least the Diploma. If you don't find it too bad, you could always stay on for another year and get your honours degree.

Jim Kernsey

kenmc wrote:

not fully understanding here....
A diploma is not a degree, hence if you did a diploma course you would have a diploma in computing. If you did a degree course then you would have a degree in computing. Thats like asking could I do a computer degree and get a degree in Law???

AFAIK they changed the naming system last year, a diploma is now called an ordinary degree, which has become degree for short, and the old degrees are now known as higher degrees. I think this is so stupid!

I myself am just finishing higher degree. I did a six month work placement with that, this gave me a great reference from senior management, the project cost €111m, i'll deffo be telling prospective employers about it. Although I think I'll go do a Masters next year, not quite ready for the real world

I did all that Cisco CCNA stuff aswell, nice to have but won't help get a job in programming.

kenmc wrote:

Why would you do a degree/diploma in Computing if you know from the outset that you don't wanna be in computing??? Why not do something thats relevent for the job you wanna do???

here here, can't agree more!

cregser

From what I know, the degree name changes were to bring Irish education awards in-line with world or EU standards.

kenmc wrote:

Our place won't even look at you if you don't have a degree and/or 5 years experience these days - so many ppl looking for work, so little work going around, we can afford to be picky.
Linux experience is a definite plus these days - and I mean driver development, not just user-level experience.

Your company's attitude is a little surprising (unless they're fairly big). Apparently SME businesses are struggling to find IT personel (and existing IT staff are required to be a jack of all trades). With falling student numbers (especially in IT) I doubt if anybody can aford to be overly picky for much longer. The IT industry can only recover and grow in the future meaning more jobs.

The large companies may even pack up and leave for a better trained workforce - although no one seems too worried about that yet.

As for linux experience, I'm in the final year of a BEng course and have only started looking at Linux system administration. I haven't heard of any courses doing anything intensive in Linux. Thanks for sharing the tip though.

And the blog tip too! I've read a few stories of people getting sacked because of the content of their weblogs, so I at least know to be careful.

madramor

cregser wrote:

Your company's attitude is a little surprising (unless they're fairly big).

this could be the reason why http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=237721

cregser wrote:

Apparently SME businesses are struggling to find IT personel (and existing IT staff are required to be a jack of all trades). With falling student numbers (especially in IT) I doubt if anybody can aford to be overly picky for much longer.

tell that to all the IT degree grads working in call centers.

this thread was about programming careers,
what ever about IT jobs(admin,support,network,db) programming jobs
are very thin on the ground.

we had 2 junior programming jobs where i work and we got over
200+ cvs with very little advertising.
the applicants ranged from 0 - 4 years experience.
and money was not great.
the company cannot afford to pay the people with 5years programming
experience, so it was a tough several interview + programming test
(to weed out the cut&paste coders, which are very easy to spot)
and ensure the applicants were worth the time and money to train them
to be useful to the company.

cregser wrote:

The large companies may even pack up and leave for a better trained workforce - although no one seems too worried about that yet.

thats government hype, their trying to encourge more people to do IT
to keep the large flow of grads comming and keep Multi Nat. costs down

cregser wrote:

The IT industry can only recover and grow in the future meaning more jobs.

look at oracle peoplesoft, oracle now has the customers of both companies,
but it now only needs to provide one new product, so it only needs 1 set
of programmers.
read the business pages big M&A activity in IT companies, this only reduces
the number of programming jobs available.

RicardoSmith

From my experience I don't think theres a lot of programming work out there. Yes theres bits and pieces of contract work but its nothing like it was 3-4yrs ago. Money is well down too. If you look at the recuritment pages theres not much full time jobs. But there lots of short contracts.

Definately the requirements are much tougher. Which is a mixed bag. Sure it means you don't have to train people, and you can weed out weaker people. But Since over qualified people will get bored and will move on sooner, you have to make a judgement call how long the person will stay in the role.

That said most of the programmers I know seem to have picked up work eventually. I have heard of some who have struggled to find something. Personally I have my share of rubbish contracts and jobs before I found a position I was happy with.

gowldoleer

I think Im unusual in that I weathered the software industry crash by working in a very small company with a friend of mine (there was only 3 of us). Smaller companies will always have a better chance of surviving this kind of thing.

Personally I think there is still a good future in programming as a career, you just have to keep an open mind about what kind of direction you might end up going in... and teach yourself a new technology every now and again, just to stay flexible.

The software industry can only grow in the long term - look around you and see how much stuff is getting automated more and more each day. It's not going to stop for a long time... but there will always be times like a few years ago where you have an overinflated sector and then a lull after it as a consequence