Your Degrees
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Hello, fellow Projecteers. I've been lurking on here some time now and I think this is the best place to ask my question. I graduated last June and started working a couple of months later. I'm working 4-5 months now as a Dynamics NAV (a.k.a. Navision) developer. Got hired to work out a .NET project, but two weeks into the job my boss says to drop it because it's too expensive for me to work out. He gives me several NAV assignments and wants me to specialize in NAV. Personally, I hate NAV. It's old, it's clunky, it won't work without a dozen hacks, the development language (C/AL) is limited and frustrating (I'm used to C# from school and personal projects). Now I'm looking for another job, but every interesting job I encounter asks for a masters degree or experience as a programmer. My question to you: What is your degree? What do you do / did you do as a programmer? How did you get to this point in your career? Do you think it's worth to obtain a masters degree?
I have bachelors in telecommunications, with major in wireless transmission and almost no experience in programming beside mandatory for university (we don't choose all our fields as in USA) so I never had an option of humanities or history since it has no bearings of technical minded university. If you started working, withing two years you'll bypass anything you might learn obtaining masters. I got here by starting in small company then after couple of years getting up and finding another for simple reason they would always consider me newbie and remember my initial beginners mistakes. Now I'm in fairly big company with small IT stuff and diverse projects (including support for some older stuff(GUPTA, VB6 and such). But if they suddenly left me with only support job only for old stuff, I'd be out before they'd finished the sentence. Little long winded, sorry.
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DavidCrow wrote:
What this would say to me as an employer is that when things get rough or don't go your way, you leave.
That's a little unfair. If an employer changed the terms and conditions of my employment in such a way, I'd feel perfectly justified in looking elsewhere for a job that meets the original terms and conditions.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
And that's certainly your prerogative. When I started this job nine years ago, I was to be doing new/maintenance work using MFC. For the past three years I've been doing Java development. I would not think of looking elsewhere, as I really enjoy the new challenges.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"Man who follows car will be exhausted." - Confucius
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And that's certainly your prerogative. When I started this job nine years ago, I was to be doing new/maintenance work using MFC. For the past three years I've been doing Java development. I would not think of looking elsewhere, as I really enjoy the new challenges.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"Man who follows car will be exhausted." - Confucius
DavidCrow wrote:
I really enjoy the new challenges
Good for you, you like coding in C++ and Java. I'm stuck in C/AL code. It has an IF, REPEAT and SWITCH statement, nothing else. I think it's boring and it's not teaching me anything new. You could say it's a lesson in humility, but basicly I'm just writing code that gets records, adds or multiplies something and then writes the result into another table.
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And that's certainly your prerogative. When I started this job nine years ago, I was to be doing new/maintenance work using MFC. For the past three years I've been doing Java development. I would not think of looking elsewhere, as I really enjoy the new challenges.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"Man who follows car will be exhausted." - Confucius
DavidCrow wrote:
When I started this job nine years ago, I was to be doing new/maintenance work using MFC. For the past three years I've been doing Java development.
That's fine if you're happy with the job/enviromnent/colleagues, but I can easily see it as being the straw that breaks the camel's back, and I certainly wouldn't condemn someone for taking such action as looking for another position. One of the major tenets of good management is that you should do everything you can to help your people expand in areas they're comfortable with. Forcing them to move into areas they're not comfortable with, no matter how much you would prefer not to, conflicts with that tenet, so you have to be aware that it could cause you to lose people.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Hello, fellow Projecteers. I've been lurking on here some time now and I think this is the best place to ask my question. I graduated last June and started working a couple of months later. I'm working 4-5 months now as a Dynamics NAV (a.k.a. Navision) developer. Got hired to work out a .NET project, but two weeks into the job my boss says to drop it because it's too expensive for me to work out. He gives me several NAV assignments and wants me to specialize in NAV. Personally, I hate NAV. It's old, it's clunky, it won't work without a dozen hacks, the development language (C/AL) is limited and frustrating (I'm used to C# from school and personal projects). Now I'm looking for another job, but every interesting job I encounter asks for a masters degree or experience as a programmer. My question to you: What is your degree? What do you do / did you do as a programmer? How did you get to this point in your career? Do you think it's worth to obtain a masters degree?
I've been in similar situations, and it is never pleasant, but it can make a career. Here is how I see it, based on how I've handled such things in the past (I've been a developer, architect, IT manager, industrial engineer, etc. for 30+ years) and the limited understanding I get from your post. It may be that you are doing these or similar things. First, you have a degree. That and $1 gets you a cup of coffee. Your usefulness to a company largely depends on what you can do and what you know, and with a new degree, that isn't much. College is more about indoctrination than education, and in technology, what the academics think is important often isn't in the real world. If you understand that, you can understand why you get the less desirable work. Learn to understand your role in the company and how you can add value to that company. See the "big picture" of what you and the company, as a team, are trying to do. They didn't hire you to write code - they hired you to help achieve the company's mission, and programming is part of how you would achieve that. Second, you need to know more than just how to program. You need to understand the business of the company. If it is accountancy, or whatever, understand what it is they do, and how the customer benefits from it. Understand how the company's products are sold, and what it is that makes them appealing, and what could make them better. Third, take some initiative. On your own time, rewrite part, most, or all of your company's application in whatever language you are comfortable with. It will take a while, but during that time, you are learning more about the company and what makes it work, and you are becoming more valuable. At some point, you can show your boss a prototype and how much better it is, how it is more reliable, new features you thought of, the decrease in time from requirements to delivery, etc. You may also find out why the boss is so stuck on NAV. There are often very sound business reasons for not moving from one old language to another that is newer. As for degrees, I am getting my BSIT now. I am in my last year, and every class I've taken so far is stuff I already know. That sure makes for a high GPA. :) For 30 years, my experience has always been sufficient, since most business folks want results, not what looks good on paper. I can't tell you how many times I've come across degreed developers who do something or believe something because that is how they learned it in college. I try to get them to look past the pr
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Hello, fellow Projecteers. I've been lurking on here some time now and I think this is the best place to ask my question. I graduated last June and started working a couple of months later. I'm working 4-5 months now as a Dynamics NAV (a.k.a. Navision) developer. Got hired to work out a .NET project, but two weeks into the job my boss says to drop it because it's too expensive for me to work out. He gives me several NAV assignments and wants me to specialize in NAV. Personally, I hate NAV. It's old, it's clunky, it won't work without a dozen hacks, the development language (C/AL) is limited and frustrating (I'm used to C# from school and personal projects). Now I'm looking for another job, but every interesting job I encounter asks for a masters degree or experience as a programmer. My question to you: What is your degree? What do you do / did you do as a programmer? How did you get to this point in your career? Do you think it's worth to obtain a masters degree?
Degree: BA in Economics Minor in Business Administration What I do: Senior Engineer Design and develop software using C++, C#, Powerbuilder X| , etc. Masters worth it? Not unless you plan to write software for the Space Shuttle.
"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." - Albert Einstein
Jason Henderson
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Hello, fellow Projecteers. I've been lurking on here some time now and I think this is the best place to ask my question. I graduated last June and started working a couple of months later. I'm working 4-5 months now as a Dynamics NAV (a.k.a. Navision) developer. Got hired to work out a .NET project, but two weeks into the job my boss says to drop it because it's too expensive for me to work out. He gives me several NAV assignments and wants me to specialize in NAV. Personally, I hate NAV. It's old, it's clunky, it won't work without a dozen hacks, the development language (C/AL) is limited and frustrating (I'm used to C# from school and personal projects). Now I'm looking for another job, but every interesting job I encounter asks for a masters degree or experience as a programmer. My question to you: What is your degree? What do you do / did you do as a programmer? How did you get to this point in your career? Do you think it's worth to obtain a masters degree?
I got to this point in my career (just starting to move up the federal government ladder) by paying an awful lot of dues. I put in ten years of hard time in the video game industry, for example. You never know when that crap maintenance work will pay off. I got some good pay in the 90's because my early OJT was FORTRAN-77 and mainframe operating systems. There are still such positions to be had if you're in the right place, etc. I'm starting a Masters (System Engineering) now because it's very big in the government. In this economy, I'd make some lemonade if I were you.
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I've been in similar situations, and it is never pleasant, but it can make a career. Here is how I see it, based on how I've handled such things in the past (I've been a developer, architect, IT manager, industrial engineer, etc. for 30+ years) and the limited understanding I get from your post. It may be that you are doing these or similar things. First, you have a degree. That and $1 gets you a cup of coffee. Your usefulness to a company largely depends on what you can do and what you know, and with a new degree, that isn't much. College is more about indoctrination than education, and in technology, what the academics think is important often isn't in the real world. If you understand that, you can understand why you get the less desirable work. Learn to understand your role in the company and how you can add value to that company. See the "big picture" of what you and the company, as a team, are trying to do. They didn't hire you to write code - they hired you to help achieve the company's mission, and programming is part of how you would achieve that. Second, you need to know more than just how to program. You need to understand the business of the company. If it is accountancy, or whatever, understand what it is they do, and how the customer benefits from it. Understand how the company's products are sold, and what it is that makes them appealing, and what could make them better. Third, take some initiative. On your own time, rewrite part, most, or all of your company's application in whatever language you are comfortable with. It will take a while, but during that time, you are learning more about the company and what makes it work, and you are becoming more valuable. At some point, you can show your boss a prototype and how much better it is, how it is more reliable, new features you thought of, the decrease in time from requirements to delivery, etc. You may also find out why the boss is so stuck on NAV. There are often very sound business reasons for not moving from one old language to another that is newer. As for degrees, I am getting my BSIT now. I am in my last year, and every class I've taken so far is stuff I already know. That sure makes for a high GPA. :) For 30 years, my experience has always been sufficient, since most business folks want results, not what looks good on paper. I can't tell you how many times I've come across degreed developers who do something or believe something because that is how they learned it in college. I try to get them to look past the pr
MSBassSinger wrote:
First, you have a degree. That and $1 gets you a cup of coffee.
This degree thought me more than to look pretty. I learned how to solve problems analytically. A lot of my friends would be baffeled if they were introduced to the terms "recurring" or "redundant", let alone the complex connections within a database or how to solve some of the basic programming problems. (This probably says more about my friends, but lets not get into that, shall we.)
MSBassSinger wrote:
Second, you need to know more than just how to program.
I agree with you there. Programming is only half the job, the other half is understanding the needs and desires of your customer and satisfying them.
MSBassSinger wrote:
Understand how the company's products are sold
I want to focus on the technical aspect of my job (thus the question of wheter or not to continue my education), why would I want to look into the 'social' aspect (why does this software / service attract customers)? To be fair, I didn't specify that in my original post.
MSBassSinger wrote:
On your own time, rewrite part, most, or all of your company's application in whatever language you are comfortable with.
Problem is that all the applications are pretty up to date, they're written in C# by my collegue. As far as recreating them, he uses the Infragistics framework and the LightSpeed ORM Tool for quick database access. The combined value of those tools is €1500 (about $2000). Not an environment I can just recreate at home. Whatever I do in my spare time with limited tools and resources cannot compete with a guy with a company backed environment (the tools, servers, etc) and almost 5 years worth of experience with our customers and what they want. And while I have social obligations after work (friends, I sport a bit) that will reduce the time I can invest into these projects, whereas he has 8 hour a day (maybe a little less, with other work interfering) to maintain and update these programs.
MSBassSinger wrote:
The bottom line is that it is not the degrees you have, but the knowledge, skills, abilities, experience, drive, loyalty, character, and insight you have - none of which you g
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MSBassSinger wrote:
First, you have a degree. That and $1 gets you a cup of coffee.
This degree thought me more than to look pretty. I learned how to solve problems analytically. A lot of my friends would be baffeled if they were introduced to the terms "recurring" or "redundant", let alone the complex connections within a database or how to solve some of the basic programming problems. (This probably says more about my friends, but lets not get into that, shall we.)
MSBassSinger wrote:
Second, you need to know more than just how to program.
I agree with you there. Programming is only half the job, the other half is understanding the needs and desires of your customer and satisfying them.
MSBassSinger wrote:
Understand how the company's products are sold
I want to focus on the technical aspect of my job (thus the question of wheter or not to continue my education), why would I want to look into the 'social' aspect (why does this software / service attract customers)? To be fair, I didn't specify that in my original post.
MSBassSinger wrote:
On your own time, rewrite part, most, or all of your company's application in whatever language you are comfortable with.
Problem is that all the applications are pretty up to date, they're written in C# by my collegue. As far as recreating them, he uses the Infragistics framework and the LightSpeed ORM Tool for quick database access. The combined value of those tools is €1500 (about $2000). Not an environment I can just recreate at home. Whatever I do in my spare time with limited tools and resources cannot compete with a guy with a company backed environment (the tools, servers, etc) and almost 5 years worth of experience with our customers and what they want. And while I have social obligations after work (friends, I sport a bit) that will reduce the time I can invest into these projects, whereas he has 8 hour a day (maybe a little less, with other work interfering) to maintain and update these programs.
MSBassSinger wrote:
The bottom line is that it is not the degrees you have, but the knowledge, skills, abilities, experience, drive, loyalty, character, and insight you have - none of which you g
doesn't a degree say that you have studied in a certain field, thus giving you knowledge, some skills and abilities in this particular field. Not so much. A college degree is the toolbox, but it is largely empty until you put your own tools in it. Anyone with a decent brain and good drive can study on their own and get what you got in college, at least academically. It is what you learn after college that makes you worth more to employers. In terms of real value in the IT field, college degrees are vastly overrated. isn't it the job of the employer to keep me interested No. It is the job of the employer to make a profit such that they can keep people employed and add value for the shareholders. It is your job to keep yourself interested and fit into your employer's plans towards those goals.
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John C wrote:
Consider that it takes at least a decade to get halfway useful at anything. This rule applies to any human endeavor as equally as it does to becoming a useful programmer.
What are you talking about? .NET is hardly a decade old. You're saying there's not one halfway decent .NET programmer out there?
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Mycroft Holmes wrote:
wait another year and you will get a different reaction
Then he'll have me trained in 2 or 3 different NAV courses, all with the jolly sounding names of "Financials Beginner" (800ish pages on how to do accountancy) and "NAV Setup" (400 pages on what booking post go where in NAV). So no programming stuff whatsoever, only more accountancy and financial stuff. The problem is that my boss is not looking for any new .NET programming stuff, but for more and more NAV work. The .NET projects are enough to keep one man occupied, not two.
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A programmer is a programmer, it doesn't matter what language or run time they are using.
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
John C wrote:
A programmer is a programmer, it doesn't matter what language or run time they are using.
Right... it just seems to me that a decade is an awfully long time to get halfway decent at whatever one does... programming, or not. That's all. :)
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DavidCrow wrote:
What this would say to me as an employer is that when things get rough or don't go your way, you leave.
There is a different way to look at it. He signed on to do .net work. If his employer wishes to change development process/environment, the OP should be free to leave and I would never hold it against him. Of course if the OP will leave or suck it up is up to him, it's an issue of how soon he can find another .net job vs being unemployed vs staying at a job that he is not happy at. How many of you would start looking for a new job if your were suddenly made to support old VB and classic ASP projects?
Each of us is solely responsible for the career path we follow. That includes being aware of skills in demand within our industry. Even a beginner has the right to decline to invest time in something like NAV (whatever that is) and pursue a marketable path like .Net or whatever. It's also fair to decline to learn a software package or technology because its not interesting. Just choose wisely...
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Hello, fellow Projecteers. I've been lurking on here some time now and I think this is the best place to ask my question. I graduated last June and started working a couple of months later. I'm working 4-5 months now as a Dynamics NAV (a.k.a. Navision) developer. Got hired to work out a .NET project, but two weeks into the job my boss says to drop it because it's too expensive for me to work out. He gives me several NAV assignments and wants me to specialize in NAV. Personally, I hate NAV. It's old, it's clunky, it won't work without a dozen hacks, the development language (C/AL) is limited and frustrating (I'm used to C# from school and personal projects). Now I'm looking for another job, but every interesting job I encounter asks for a masters degree or experience as a programmer. My question to you: What is your degree? What do you do / did you do as a programmer? How did you get to this point in your career? Do you think it's worth to obtain a masters degree?
KenBonny wrote:
What is your degree? What do you do / did you do as a programmer? How did you get to this point in your career? Do you think it's worth to obtain a masters degree?
Degree: BS in CS, but back when higher degrees weren't important to get a decent job. These days, I'd probably have spent the extra 10 years and gone for a full PhD so I could get the kinds of jobs I enjoy doing. Do/Did: I've done anything and everything at one time or another. I've always been willing to take on pretty much anything that was needed, no matter how uninteresting it seemed at the time. I've always tried to do every job to the best of my abilities. The dull druggy ones I've usually managed to document and tidy up to make passing them off to the next fool.. er co-worker easy, and I've succeeded in passing them all off to someone else. This may be partly why I've never been pigeon holed into any of those dull druggy tasks permanently. Got here: I think I may now know more about all sorts of unrelated, useful and esoteric bits of our product than any single other person. I'm now sort of a defacto architect, although we've recently had a management changeover and I'm not being uitilized that way anymore. Masters degree: In this hiring climate, I think its a minimum requirement to land an interesting job right out of college. Companies are not bothering to hire mere Bachelors grads when there are Masters grads out there that will work for the same money and have proven themselves "capable" in the academic world. Whatever you do, be careful about getting pigeon holed into a speciality. Specialization will make you more recession proof as long as your speciality continues to be critical to the business, but less recession proof when it is no longer critical. The change can be abrupt and if you're not one of the people helping to put your speciality out of existence, it can (and probably will) blindside you. Specializing in an older, less interesting technology is a smaller pool of job competition than trying to specialize in whatever the hot technology is. Large companies look for and require more tightly specialized workers than smaller companies. Real small companies are just the opposite, needing more broad talents, more the jack-of-all-master-of-none types -- they need the master types, but can't afford to hire that many people to have every worker be the master of their area. Smart small companies recogonize this, dumb ones survive by acc
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Each of us is solely responsible for the career path we follow. That includes being aware of skills in demand within our industry. Even a beginner has the right to decline to invest time in something like NAV (whatever that is) and pursue a marketable path like .Net or whatever. It's also fair to decline to learn a software package or technology because its not interesting. Just choose wisely...
Old Ed wrote:
Just choose wisely...
I'm aware of that part and the choices that I make now, will last me a long time. That's why I want to make a balanced decision.
Old Ed wrote:
NAV (whatever that is)
Microsofts ERP packet: Dynamics NAV
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Hello, fellow Projecteers. I've been lurking on here some time now and I think this is the best place to ask my question. I graduated last June and started working a couple of months later. I'm working 4-5 months now as a Dynamics NAV (a.k.a. Navision) developer. Got hired to work out a .NET project, but two weeks into the job my boss says to drop it because it's too expensive for me to work out. He gives me several NAV assignments and wants me to specialize in NAV. Personally, I hate NAV. It's old, it's clunky, it won't work without a dozen hacks, the development language (C/AL) is limited and frustrating (I'm used to C# from school and personal projects). Now I'm looking for another job, but every interesting job I encounter asks for a masters degree or experience as a programmer. My question to you: What is your degree? What do you do / did you do as a programmer? How did you get to this point in your career? Do you think it's worth to obtain a masters degree?
KenBonny wrote:
What is your degree?
BS Math, MS Computer Science BS Computer Sciencse wasn't available when I got my BS
What do you do / did you do as a programmer? How did you get to this point in your career?
Anything they ask me to do. So far, test development, sensor correlation for multiple platforms, radio control systems for airborne surveillance systems, simulations and analysis for Space Shuttle flight design, commercial medical systems hardware interfaces and user interfaces, PDA/Phone software, simulations for battle command systems (game systems), and lots of other fun things. The reality is that prior work experience doesn't always get you the job. The ability to make a language work for you, interest in the project, and some knowledge of the domain are the important parts. I've gotten a couple of jobs because I could say that I had experience with a language/domain, but it was from personal projects I had worked on, not from a job. Another important piece is keeping up with technology from reading and just trying new things (have you played with F# yet?)
Do you think it's worth to obtain a masters degree?
That depends. I think it helped me immensely with some of the work I have done. For some people/work it would have no value at all. A lot of developers do very well with no formal education either because what they do doesn't require much complexity, or because they are able to teach themselves everything they need. I have learned an awful lot since my last classes and most people can learn outside the classroom, but my education opened up things to me that I may never have discovered otherwise. Who would have known that NASA could determine crop yields and optimal time to harvest from satellite imagery (colors and temperatures of the ground images), or who would have guessed that analysis of prostates from ultrasound output could detect cancer with about 95% accuracy. Remember, as we discover great things in this world, it is usually because we have been standing on the shoulders of giants who came before us.
SS => Qualified in Submarines "We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm". Winston Churchill "Real programmers can write FORTRAN in any language". Unknown
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Hello, fellow Projecteers. I've been lurking on here some time now and I think this is the best place to ask my question. I graduated last June and started working a couple of months later. I'm working 4-5 months now as a Dynamics NAV (a.k.a. Navision) developer. Got hired to work out a .NET project, but two weeks into the job my boss says to drop it because it's too expensive for me to work out. He gives me several NAV assignments and wants me to specialize in NAV. Personally, I hate NAV. It's old, it's clunky, it won't work without a dozen hacks, the development language (C/AL) is limited and frustrating (I'm used to C# from school and personal projects). Now I'm looking for another job, but every interesting job I encounter asks for a masters degree or experience as a programmer. My question to you: What is your degree? What do you do / did you do as a programmer? How did you get to this point in your career? Do you think it's worth to obtain a masters degree?
BSc Mathematics - 1983. Only computing component was 3 days of FORTRAN with punch cards (come back, vi, all is forgiven). Really got into computers 1983/4, while on a disastrous teacher training course. Joined IBM after the course, and didn't look back. I do not understand why people feel it necessary to learn programming on a degree course. Any intelligent and logically minded person can learn programming. In any case, in a profession that is as rapidly changing as ours, it is these personal qualities and a commitment to continual learning and development that really matter, not academic qualifications. I sympathise though. I was pulled off a Java system to return to work on an old COBOL/UNIX system because my employer could not find anyone else to hire to support it. So I am fighting back by pushing an aggressive agenda of modernisation of the app in question! And it is working. And both the users and the IT infrastructure people are delighted! Very few jobs involve doing exactly what it says on the tin. Make the best of where you are at, network, be a geek, learn a lot, and get yourself ready for your next position. And don't be afraid to learn skills you can use, even if they seem a little dated. Not every employer has the resources or need to use the latest technologies.
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John C wrote:
A programmer is a programmer, it doesn't matter what language or run time they are using.
Right... it just seems to me that a decade is an awfully long time to get halfway decent at whatever one does... programming, or not. That's all. :)
It is a long time at the start but seems like nothing after you go through it. :) It's a good rule of thumb though and seems to apply to anything that requires skill. By halfway decent I was using a bit of understatement, what I mean is it takes that long to get good at something, but far short of mastery which of course takes a lifetime. I think you can become a good guitar player with a decade of practice or a good portrait artist with a decade of practice or a good potter with a decade of practice. Any software developer who thinks their some kind of expert with less than a decade of experience is full of shit. :)
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
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It is a long time at the start but seems like nothing after you go through it. :) It's a good rule of thumb though and seems to apply to anything that requires skill. By halfway decent I was using a bit of understatement, what I mean is it takes that long to get good at something, but far short of mastery which of course takes a lifetime. I think you can become a good guitar player with a decade of practice or a good portrait artist with a decade of practice or a good potter with a decade of practice. Any software developer who thinks their some kind of expert with less than a decade of experience is full of shit. :)
Yesterday they said today was tomorrow but today they know better. - Poul Anderson
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Hello, fellow Projecteers. I've been lurking on here some time now and I think this is the best place to ask my question. I graduated last June and started working a couple of months later. I'm working 4-5 months now as a Dynamics NAV (a.k.a. Navision) developer. Got hired to work out a .NET project, but two weeks into the job my boss says to drop it because it's too expensive for me to work out. He gives me several NAV assignments and wants me to specialize in NAV. Personally, I hate NAV. It's old, it's clunky, it won't work without a dozen hacks, the development language (C/AL) is limited and frustrating (I'm used to C# from school and personal projects). Now I'm looking for another job, but every interesting job I encounter asks for a masters degree or experience as a programmer. My question to you: What is your degree? What do you do / did you do as a programmer? How did you get to this point in your career? Do you think it's worth to obtain a masters degree?
That's why its important to start working while you're still in college, you get the experience that way. I'm still one year far from graduating in Computer Engineering (5 year degree) and started working on the middle of my first year. Beeing self-taught on .Net helped to get my first internship. The pay at first was low, but was increasing dramatically as I jumped through my first jobs to get a fair pay considering my knowlege. Now I'm about to start as a project leader and I still havent graduated. I'd say you should try getting lower pay jobs on the area you want to work. Prove your knowledge and build your career up while getting enough experience to get a job worth your degree, knlowledge and experience. Don't try to work on something you don't like. You will not be productive, it won't get you anywhere. The masters degree is always worth it in my point of view. But sometimes not necessary. Extra knowledge is always welcome. But I don't think it should be a reason to get a job.