Work Issues

I find myself in the same situation but maybe a bit further down the road. Like yourself I've been a LAN admin for about 5 years and have been encouraged to learn everything I can about SQL ,VB,HTML,Oracle,Perl,Javascript and C++. A year ago I started to lean everything I could about C++,VB and SQL and I'm now looking for jobs to make the switch to full time programmer. I've had a bit of background with programming (ANSI C) so these things have not been so hard to pick up. I would suggest that you take some of the MSDN courses. I've taken a few and they’ve helped me out allot. It also help's to have a small project that you can use to test your skill out before you dive deep into development. After about a year of programming I've come to the conclusion that, unless I were to do this full time, I will never have the level of knowledge needed to program comfortably. The MSDN cd’s have saved me quite a few times and you should plan on getting them if you’re going to be doing any windows programming. Chris Foote

The world economy is in recession and job opportunities are scarce, particularly for fad skills such as extreme programming. Perhaps you should broaden your search. Good luck.

http://www.teoulmoon.com/mansoft/[^]

go work for the eec... 80k a year, 4 months holiday, what else could you ask for?

:rolleyes: Jason Henderson start page articles "If you are going through hell, keep going." - Sir Winston Churchill

HAve you tried any text to speech programs? They can take an online book or email and verbalize it for you.

Thanks for the answer i had the same doubt too and you removed my fears too.

I've faced this problem a few months ago when I decided to move to Asia. I finally landed in China without knowing one word of Chinese... In general, without the job, no visa, without the visa, no job X| . Thanks to the commonwealth, english people have an edge to get a temporary working visa in many countries. Students can easily go abroad for diploma or trainership. This is certainly the easiest way to put one foot in your future country! It will make a potential employer feel confident to hire you once graduated. Another common way to go abroad is to work a couple of years in an international company with offices both local and in the target country. Just hope that the abroad office won't be closed before you go... Of course, any door even the most unlikely can be opened if you know the right person at the right place ;). In any case, knowing the local language is a MUST for integration! Hope it helps, Eric

Don't feel bad I failed the C# XML Web Services beta and probably the Web applications beta too :-D I didn't prepare for either of them.

I agree. The "study guides" for this exam are useless. They changed the exam but noone has put out a new study guide for it.

The only one's I know of are UK based, but it might be worth getting in touch with them and asking them if they know of anything in Russia: TRY Charity Jobs (www.charityjobs.co.uk[^]), this is for people looking to work for a charity and get paid, but it's all UK based and their IT section is generally tiny. OR Volentary Service Overseas (VS0) (http://www.vso.org.uk[^]) I REALLY want to do this, if you can spare 6 months to 2 years of your life, this would be a fantastic thing to do! Their desperate for IT skilled people too... When I've gotten myself out of student debt, I'll be having another serious look at this! Or you could try your local green group (like greenpeace, friends of the earth or people and planet), these groups general have excellent links with other organisations. Here in the UK you can also get information from libraries, would Russian libraries do the same? Dylan Kenneally London, UK

Nowdays employers want to see that a devloper can hold down a position for a decent (>1 year) amount of time instead of being the fly-by-nighters that predominated a couple of years ago. Searching for and hiring employees is an expensive and time consuming task and employers want to ensure that they do it as infrequently as possible. My personal feeling is that .NET (in terms of Web development) has a HUGE future. If you want to try C# and love web stuff then look for ASP.NET related stuff. Otherwise if you're still in Toronto and want to work for as many CodeProject T-shirts as you can wear then send me an email ;) (I'm guessing you'd rather pay the rent though...) cheers, Chris Maunder

Paul -- I think it really depends on what you mean about "coding work?" What types of apps do you want to develop? What programming tools/languages do you want to use to develop these products? I am co-authoring the Codeproject.com's new Career Column, Career 2.0, which launches July 29. I'm not a developer (yet!) but have a lot of experience recruiting for Compaq, EMC, and Microsoft -- among others. In this market, corporate recruiters usually prefer 4 year degrees -- but so what? It just means you need to bypass companies' recruiting departments, and directly contact hiring managers. Many hiring managers want people who have the skills necessary to successfully do the work/job, but are usually less specific as to where and how you developed those skills. Bill Gates doesn't have a 4 year college degree ;-). Do you have any code that you've written that you could demo to future employers? Can it run as a web app that a hiring manager could easily access from an html email that you would send him/her? If not, start writing now! The first Career 2.0 article is focusing on how to do this -- so please be sure to check it out on the 29th -- Hope this helps -- and please ping me after the article posts if it doesn't answer all of your questions -- Andi

Frank, the comment about experience near the top of the resume is good. One other thing worth mentioning is any projects, either at university or elsewhere (including home) that you have done or been invlolved in. Membership of a team project indicates your ability to work with others. Good luck TrollSlaer (at work) :rose:

www.starbase.com

Nope, sorry. Maybe if enough people complain to Microsoft, they will come out with managed C++.NET tests equivalent to the VB.NET and C#.NET tests. Until then, if you want VC++, stick with the current MSDN. Roger Stewart "I Owe, I Owe, it's off to work I go..."

You can always say that you have no negative traits that you are aware of. Obviously they might express some surpise at this answer but you can qualify it by saying that if you had any negative traits that you knew of, you'd do evertthing possible to correct them. Perhaps then offer them some examples of what negative traits you've had that you "fixed". I find that sort of interview question really annoying to be honest. I mean, what sort of answer do they want? Isn't it really just some question that they ask, not really knowing what sort of answer they want? I think they should show the candidate more respect. They should be concentrating on what the candidate can actually do. because once the candidate is in the interview, he is only really there to verify what he's claimed in his CV, unless the interviewers are just interested in some sort of conveyor belt approach - just wheel 'em past and they'll pick one they like. I like turning questions around to interviewers, asking them things like "how do you think my skill set will benefit your company", "how do you see someone like me progressing within your company". ------------------------ The folly of man is that he dreams of what he can never achieve rather than dream of what he can.