tomhudson's Journal: Improving job market for coders?

Today one of the other programmers in the bullpen gave his notice - he's going to work at another company as of Monday. The rest of the week is going to be spent familiarizing myself with his code.

So what do I find in my email when I get home? A headhunter says she has "an urgent opportunity" that "I thought might interest you." And I wasn't even looking ...

Has anyone else noticed a higher-than-normal turnover as employers raid each others' talent?

Wow, maybe I should look at a coding job again

[nizo]

Except that coding jobs suck the everlivin' life out of me :-P I really should dust off my PHP and put together a few sites before I completely forget how to code.

Any hopes

[RM6f9]

for a beginner? Apparently, testing jobs nowadays are insisting on some coding knowledge (at least, most of the ones I've seen), and as for self-employment fixing windows stuff... well, the boss is okay, but the worker bee doesn't know anything about effective marketing.

Re:

[tomhudson]

Knowing how to code is a skill that will always look good to any prospective employer. Right now, the hot languages are java (for application development) and javascript+php+sql (for web 2.0 development) . Neither c# nor .net have the staying power - c# was supposed to be a java-killer, and .net was supposed to be a lock-in strategy for microsoft, but it hasn't worked out that way.

The skill set we're looking for is pretty restrictive: able to modify the servers and server modules in C/C++ (we implemen

Re:

[RM6f9]

Thank you for the pointers.

I wish they were...

[Doctor O]

Acually, if I could I'd leave the very next second. The problem is that I have the unfortunate combination of quite a broad set of skills (which is why I am the CTO of the media services company I work at) and no certifications whatsoever. So everywhere I apply, I'm rejected either because I'm overqualified or because I don't have any certificates. Sucks big deal.

BTW, why didn't you make it over to Multiply yet? I miss you there. :) Plus, I believe many people over there don't check their /. accounts regula

Re:

[tomhudson]

Certifications??? Shhh - not a single one.

Because of the departure, I'm back to updating the server and loadable modules (c/c++/mysql) with new features and business logic, in addition to working on my assigned project (a web 2.0 / 3.0 thingee). This evening the boss and I discussed how to "qualify" people ... my response was that if I say "CowboyNeal" and get a blank stare, thats 50 points off their score. If they only have Windows coding experience, that's the other 50 points gone. Seriously.

As f