Editor's Daily Blog: Why Don't You Get a Job?

If you thought specialization in your career meant picking J2EE, SE, or ME, get ready for a rough ride. More and more analysts are saying that it's not enough to be "just" a programmer anymore. According to the IDN article Survey: CIOs Want Devs with More Business Skills, featured in the Also in Java Today section, a survey of 90 top CIO/CTO executives say that tech leadership will put a premium on business-savvy IT professionals. "The SIM survey found that programmer-only skills were falling in demand, when compared to IT staff with a business and project management background."

Just being aware of project management isn't enough. It's increasingly important to pick a field and understand it. According to survey co-ordinator Kate Kaiser:

"While technical skills may still be in use at these companies, they won't necessarily be in house [hires]. These days, the trend in critical in-house skills are the client-facing skills" such as project management and knowledge of the business your employer is involved with." [emphasis added]

That's a big change that professional developers need to be aware of. In the future, you may be not just a J2EE developer, or even a J2EE web app developer, but instead a J2EE financial web app developer, or a J2EE medical web app developer, or a J2EE media web app developer, etc.

On one hand, there are a lot of people who will appreciate the value of focusing on one field and building their value in that field. That's also more useful to companies that are hiring too, since they'd prefer to hire someone who understands their business and won't make the mistakes that come from not understanding or not caring about the purpose or details of a development project.

On the other hand, what if you're all about the code? There are surely developers who really just want to code Java, and don't particularly care whether it's for finance, travel, government, etc. Is that wrong? Maybe the right place for that kind of talent is in developing products for other developers, but is there enough work to be had there?

One other factor to consider. I became more aware of this when I read a story a few months ago -- I'm sorry, I've searched and absolutely cannot find it -- about how college counselors are now applying this kind of thinking to college computer science students, guiding them to start focusing on an industry early, and to take some non-CS courses to start understanding the field they might like to program for. This may be a good way to produce more well-rounded, less-replaceable CS students. CS could use the help, since enrollments are still going down. And let me share one more alarming statistic. Tonight, O'Reilly's ONJava site will release the results of its annual reader survey. I've seen the results, and of 988 people who responded, none said they were age 18 or younger. Is there even going to be a next generation of Java programmers?

On a potentially employment-related point in today's Forums, jwenting has serious doubts Re: Certifications: "Many certifications can be passed by just cramming for the exam for a few days or weeks. That's the way to get a piece of paper without learning anything, as the knowledge doesn't get stored in your long-term memory and isn't backed by any real world experience."

alanb has a timely update Re: FS extended attributes and FS notifications in Java: "This is a good (or maybe bad) timing. I've just taken over JSR-203 and will be spinning it up very shortly. One of its goals is to define a new file system interface. As you have identified the current API (essentially java.io.File) only provides very limited access to file attributes. This means that applications currently have to resort to native code to do anything with EAs. File change notification is also very important and a number of file systems now provide some sort of notification mechanism. The goal for JSR-203 is to be ready in good time for Dolphin (Java SE 7.0). This might be too late for what you want to do but worth keeping in mind - maybe you can structure things so that it won't be to difficult to migrate in the future."

In Also in Java Today: "The case for AJAX has been made by many people recently. The advantages of AJAX have also been proven in practice. The downside of custom AJAX is its complexity and incompatibility. Large amounts of client-side JavaScript mean developers are likely to run into browser implementation differences. In addition, JavaScript is an unpleasant language for complex applications." Avoiding custom widget development and selecting a client-side AJAX library is a fix to this problem, and in the dev2dev feature, A Backbase AJAX Front-End for J2EE Applications, Mark Schiefelbein shows how to use the Backbase AJAX tools to create an AJAX-based version of the classic Java Pet Store.

Bernt Johnsen wonders about Easy String Concatenation Considered Harmful in today's Weblogs: "Could it be that it is too easy to concatenate strings in Java? And that easy string concatenation encourages programmers to write inefficient code? At least in some contexts?"

In And another new NetBeans plug-in, Tim Boudreau writes: "A few people have mentioned that they would like better support or organizing import statements in NetBeans. So I wrote a module that does that..."

Tom Ball jokes that he Can't Tell the Forest for the Trees, namely that "the new javac abstract syntax tree API is now available on java.net"

In Projects and Communities, the GlassFish project, the open-source project for Sun's Java System Application Server PE 9.0, has announced that nightly builds are now available. These builds have undergone a small amount of testing, as described in the announcement. GlassFish builds for Mac OS X are also now available.

The JavaDesktop Community notes that the Columba Java email client has reached version 1.0. Columba features a user-friendly GUI, I18N support, and a Java Web Start launcher. The developers also discussed Columba and Java Desktop development in a ClientJava.com interview.

In today's java.net News Headlines :

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Comments are listed in date ascending order (oldest first) | Post Comment

It shouldn't be at all surprising that enrollments continue to decrease. The choice of subject is driven by many factors, but one is certainly what is popular in the news. I.T. was news until 2000, and students will have seen lots of bad news about I.T. since, thus we should expect enrollments to drop. Every article about EBay or Google succeeding is very clear to point out these are the few winners amongst a host of losers.

I would expect enrollments to start flattening now, and not pick up again until something makes I.T. hot enough to be in the news in a positive way again.

Posted by: jacksjpt on September 21, 2005 at 04:17 PM

In the first half you mention specializations such as a "2EE financial web app developer". Then towards the end you mention college counselors and being more "well rounded". Which one are you recommending? (the first one is a terrible idea)

And by the way, why are the statistics alarming? I've pointed this out before but I do not see people getting hired out of college as software developers. We should not be alarmed, rather, we should be encouraged to see that the next generation is intuitive enough to see what is going on and adjust accordingly.

Taylor

Posted by: tcowan on September 21, 2005 at 05:17 PM

tcowan: In the first half you mention specializations such as a "2EE financial web app developer". Then towards the end you mention college counselors and being more "well rounded". Which one are you recommending? (the first one is a terrible idea)
I meant "well-rounded" in terms of having knowledge, skill, or expertise in an area other than programming, which is what the survey quoted in the article is calling for.

Posted by: invalidname on September 21, 2005 at 05:28 PM

This reminds me of 'Jack of all trades, master of none'. You are either an expert programmer or financial field expert, but you can't be both. This is just a vision in some manager's head - hey why don't we hire a guy who can do everything, so it is cheaper. This is part of the same trend as outsourcing, savings at any cost.

Posted by: tvaananen on September 21, 2005 at 07:50 PM

tvaananen -- there is no need to build up a conspiracy theory over here.

I accept that finding a person who is terrific at both Java and some domain is going to be difficult but that is because this is just the beginning. You have one of two options: Either you keep complaining and render yourself outdated in some time or you accept the trend and do something about it. Outsourcing, Globalization, Multiple Skills, Learning and Unlearning is here to stay. We can take it as a warning/opportunity and prepare ourselves best or we can keep complaining and lose our jobs.

And by the way, if you have done any outsourcing work or participated in the effort, you will realise that it is not about money.

Posted by: rominkirani on September 21, 2005 at 08:50 PM

Agreed. I'm 28 and a Java programmer in Detroit. I know one Java programmer younger than me, he is 27. Where is the generation of programmers after me? Why is there none? I'm afraid they may have all been...outsourced! Either that or they don't like Detroit :)

Posted by: phlogistic on September 21, 2005 at 10:13 PM

More Fascist propaganda - I'm 31 have a BSCS and 4 years of experience and I can't make a living writing software while I can make it driving a truck or working a clerk at the post office.

The Real World:

1. Money does matter.

2. A Java or other Software Developer in the U.S. is usually doing integration, support, or other bs (I.E. not software dev).

3. Most Software development is not in the U.S. and will not be until the exchange rates trade rules are balanced

4. The U.S. is going down the tubes fast due to government and elistist greed (mainly high taxes, regulation, and false exchange rates).

5. The U.S. is due for a revolution.

6. The Engineer, Mathmatician, and Scientist will own the future.
7. Socialism is a failure.

8. Fascism is a failure.
9. Competitive advantage is the only path to freedom.
Note: Competitive Advantage is just a fancy term for trade without unequal government intervention.
10. All the people in the world without the ability to build their own robot by 2030 will be dead or a slave.

11. I embrace the future and shred the tyrants.

Posted by: tberthel on September 22, 2005 at 08:59 AM

well i guess all this happening b'coz of the competetion in the market , as i'm being a CS student , everystudent want to deliver something more than the other can.

to give their best devp/student need acquire something distinct+added capabilites to meet the requirements.

Posted by: yatinkumbhare on October 08, 2005 at 07:36 AM

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