Tech conferences are incredibly expensive, and not just in dollars. Even free conferences like BarCamps incur the expense of the attendee’s time. Taking time off from work or family is a hassle at the very least, and it’s time that isn’t billable. The draw of the conference boils down to those 45 minute sessions, and [...]
career
Which Platform is Next? All of Them…
by Shawn Wildermuth | Comments
The last few years seem rife with disruptive technologies: iPhone, Android, iPad, HTML5, and more. Lots more. For some organizations – not to mention the developers and testers who work in them – these disruptive technologies can be scary. You’ve spent months or years working with a particular platform and getting good at it. Now [...]
That Job Sucked, But You’ll Never Tell
by Esther Schindler | Comments
Carrie used to work for a small team in a large company. For the first year or so, it was her dream job. The people she worked with were smart and creative; she was given the freedom to work on projects that mattered to her; even the company benefits were great. She felt that she [...]
3 Things Software Developers Can Learn From Prince Fielder and the Home Run Derby
by Esther Schindler | Comments
This year, Major League Baseball tried out a new — and in my view flawed — way to select which eight players would appear in the annual Home Run Derby (part of the All Star festivities). Instead of the players being chosen somewhere offstage, out of the public glare, this year the MLB folks decided [...]
Don’t Be Perfect
by Cameron Laird | Comments
You’re a good quality assurance employee: You’re careful, conscientious, practiced in thinking like an end-user, and imaginative in breaking software. But now, a few of the same qualities that made you successful to this point are holding you back in your career. Most severe is that you aim for perfection. When given an application to [...]
Top 5 Developer Skills That Will Get You Hired or Promoted
You’ve spent hours honing your programming skills. You would pit your wits against another developer any day of the week. Hooah! Well, except for the fact that some pretty sharp developers on other shores will work for cheaper pay. And that’s true for developers outside of the U.S. too. A developer in India is likely [...]
I Like My IT Budget Tight and My Developers Stupid
Yes, you do. Don’t deny it. You like them stupid. You don’t have the budget, and even if you did, you prefer to have them stupid, because if they weren’t stupid, if they went and got a certification or got trained up on, say, the latest SharePoint skills, they’d go get another job. Which (as [...]
Soft Skills in Writing Can Boost Any Software Developer’s Career Profile
Even the best coders in C#, Java, or Ruby on Rails must know how to bang out a readable sentence, if only to document their work. Beyond in-line and module-level commentary, developers can translate writing skills into improved business opportunities and higher pay as they produce specifications, test plans, design documents, and other materials. In [...]
Building Blocks for Girls in Computer Science
by Sharon Fisher | Comments
In the year 2000, the movie Pay It Forward, espoused the concept of repaying a good turn by providing services to others. While the concept wasn’t new – it dates back to Benjamin Franklin, and perhaps as far back as the Greek play Dyskolos in 316 BC – the movie’s depiction of the term captured [...]
