Time to get serious about job hunting. At this point, i think im going to focus on the local job market, which means no games or AI or anything that cares about advanced schooling. im also going to focus on programming jobs and avoid anything managerial or architecture. If the market is like it was 10 years ago, and so far it looks like it is, the majority of jobs will be either Java or C# and the majority of those will be for Web applications. The sole change in the market appears to be that Javascript is treated as a first class citizen rather than something everyone is simply assumed to know (which is still true for SQL). Now to figure out a specific plan for finding a senior programmer job in industry. The vast majority of my 256 Facebook friends are students so they cant help here. Not sure how many FB friends will know anything here but if you do, chime in. ive divided the search into a couple of groups: Large Companies (since my skillset has always been large-scale systems), Large but Local Consulting Firms (who are more likely to have group projects and be able to absorb new people) and Companies that Advertise on Dice. Not going to look at the local high-tech scene, startup scene or companies doing cool things scene because there isnt one (except maybe Cray). Not sure whether ill contact the National Consulting Companies because im not sure i want to go back to wearing suits. i think ill avoid the Web boutiques because, from what i can tell, their focus appears to be on toy apps. Theres a place in the world for pretty, shiny, Javascript apps but my interests and skill set is geared to creating complex systems and the things behind the shiny that make them work. For Dice i need key words to search on. Looks like ill only need two searches - java and c#. That should cover the vast majority of jobs id be interested in. Unfortunately, java returns 262 postings in the last 4 weeks in Minneapolis (156 for Java developer) and c# returns 136 (.net returns 205 jobs but includes Visual Basic, which i dont want). Unfortunately, most of these jobs sound identical, and i really dont want to apply to 300 positions. Even filtering of location (south, southwest, west of Minneapolis), its a ton of jobs. ill need to figure out something here. i left in industry in 2006 and while C# and Java are still king, several accompanying technologies are now important that didnt exist 10 years ago. i need to figure out which of these is important and what im going to do about it. i really dont want to take myself off the market for the next 2 months while i master all of them. So thems my notes to myself. If anyone currently a senior developer in town reads this, feel free to chime in.
Posted on: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 00:04:40 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015