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  • My Last "Catch-Up" Post for 2010 Content

    - by KKline
    I did a lot of writing in 2010. Unfortunately, I didn't do a good job of keeping all of that writing equally distributed throughout all of the channels where I'm active. So here are a few more posts from my blog, put on-line during the months of November and December 2010, that I didn't get posted here on SQLBlog.com: 1. It's Time to Upgrade! So many of my customers and many of you, dear readers, are still on SQL Server 2005. Join Kevin Kline , SQL Server MVP and SQL Server Technology Strategist...(read more)

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  • Precondition to get from a freelancer to his own soft-dev-company

    - by Kovu
    Hey guys, I am a software developer since 8 years. I do around 20 projects, some smaller, some bigger. I know to help myself trough magic google, msdn, youttube, tutorials, howTows etc. I play around with the idea to get a friend of mine (who is soft-dev since 5 years) and begin my own software-developer-company. What do you think are the preconditions to get from a freelancer to his own little company with 2-3 employees?

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  • Having MSc or Experience worth in industrial environments?

    - by Abimaran
    I'm a fresh graduate in Electronic & Telecommunication field, and in our University, we can have major and minor fields in the relevant subjects. So, I majored in telecommunication and minored in Software Engineering. As I learned programing long before, Now I'm passionate in SE and programming. And, I want drive into the SE field. And, It came to know that, in industries, most of them expecting the candidates to have the experience, or having a MSc in the related field. [I'm referring my surrounding environment, not all the industries]. My Question, How do they consider those MSc and experience guys in the industries? Thanks!

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  • Linkedin recommendations, useful? [closed]

    - by scottyab
    Linkedin has been around a few years now and while not everyone is keen on it. Chatting to a few people they viewed Linkedin recommendations as mutual back starching where poor candidates can recommend each other and and provide little value. I take a honest approach when recommending colleagues, trying to note specifics that person has performed well at and don't recommend colleagues on linkedin who wouldn't recommend in real life. What regard do people hold the Linkedin recommendations? would it effect your hiring decision?

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  • Advancing my Embedded knowledge.....with a CS degree.

    - by Mercfh
    So I graduated last December with a B.S. in Computer Science, in a pretty good well known engineering college. However towards the end I realized that I actually like Assembly/Lower level C programming more than I actually enjoy higher level abstracted OO stuff. (Like I Programmed my own Device Drivers for USB stuff in Linux, stuff like that) But.....I mean we really didn't concentrate much on that in college, perhaps an EE/CE degree would've been better, but I knew the classes......and things weren't THAT much different. I've messed around with Atmel AVR's/Arduino stuff (Mostly robotics) and Linux Kernals/Device Drivers. but I really want to enhance my skills and maybe one day get a job doing embedded stuff. (I have a job now, it's An entry level software dev/tester job, it's a good job but not exactly what my passion lies in) (Im pretty good with C and certain ASM's for specific microcontrollers) Is this even possible with a CS degree? or am I screwed? (since technically my degree usually doesn't involve much embedded stuff) If Im NOT screwed then what should I be studying/learning? How would I even go about it........ I guess I could eventually say "Experienced with XXXX Microcontrollers/ASM/etc...." but still, it wouldn't be the same as having a CE/EE degree. Also....going back to college isn't an option. just fyi. edit: Any book recommendations for "getting used to this stuff" I have ARM System-on-Chip Architecture (2nd edition) it's good.....for ARM stuff lol

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  • Graduate expectations versus reality

    - by Bobby Tables
    When choosing what we want to study, and do with our careers and lives, we all have some expectations of what it is going to be like. Now that I've been in the industry for almost a decade, I've been reflecting a bit on what I thought (back when I was studying Computer Science) programming working life was going to be like, and how it's actually turning out to be. My two biggest shocks (or should I say, broken expectations) by far are the sheer amount of maintenance work involved in software, and the overall lack of professionalism: Maintenance: At uni, we were all told that the majority of software work is maintenance of existing systems. So I knew to expect this in the abstract. But I never imagined exactly how overwhelming this would turn out to be. Perhaps it's something I mentally glazed over, and hoped I'd be building cool new stuff from scratch a lot more. But it really is the case that most jobs are overwhelmingly maintenance, bug fixing, and support oriented. Lack of professionalism: At uni, I always had the impression that commercial software work is very process-oriented and stringently engineered. I had images of ISO processes, reams of technical documentation, every feature and bug being strictly documented, and a generally professional environment. It came as a huge shock to realise that most software companies operate no differently to a team of students working on a large semester-long project. And I've worked in both the small agile hack shop, and the medium sized corporate enterprise. While I wouldn't say that it's always been outright "unprofessional", it definitely feels like the software industry (on the whole) is far from the strong engineering discipline that I expected it to be. Has anyone else had similar experiences to this? What are the ways in which your expectations of what our profession would be like were different to the reality?

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  • What kind of an IT or programming job can a college student get part time?

    - by Alex Foster
    I'm a college student with a full load of classes and i need some extra money to cover some of my expenses. I love anything and everything to do with computers. I don't know how to program but have build computers before and know how windows works. I would call myself a power user. My question is, what kind of a job can someone like me get with effort? If there are some more skills that i can pick up that would benefit in getting the foot in the door i would love to hear about them. The only limitation i have is that i can't work very late in the evening most days due to classes. But usually in the morning my time is available for work. I will appreciate all answers i receive. Thank you for your help.

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  • Independent projects as a student to show off abilities

    - by tufcat
    I'm an inexperienced student (having learned up to data structures and algorithms through various online resources) of computer science, and I'm hoping to get a job as a developer some time after I've gotten a few independent projects done. My question is, how should I choose which projects to work on? I've been looking around stackoverflow-- people usually say to pick whatever you're interested in, but I don't have enough experience to even know what specifically I'm interested in, and possibly more importantly, I don't know what some common beginner project types are. Essentially, I'm at the gap between course work (and the projects entailed in those classes) and real programming, and I don't quite know how to start. If any of you have any ideas, I'd really appreciate it.

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  • Is these company terms good for a programmer or should I move?

    - by o_O
    Here are some of the terms and conditions set forward by my employer. Does these make sense for a job like programming? No freelancing in any way even in your free time outside company work hours (may be okay. May be they wanted their employees to be fully concentrating on their full time job. Also they don't want their employees to do similar work for a competing client. Completely rational in that sense). - So sort of agreed. Any thing you develop like ideas, design, code etc while I'm employed there, makes them the owner of that. Seriously? Don't you think that its bad (for me)? If I'm to develop something in my free time (by cutting down sleep and hard working), outside the company time and resource, is that claim rational? I heard that Steve Wozniak had such a contract while he was working at HP. But that sort of hardware design and also those companies pay well, when compared to the peanuts I get. No other kind of works allowed. Means no open source stuffs. Fully dedicated to being a puppet for the employer, though the working environment is sort of okay. According to my assessment this place would score a 10/12 in Joel's test. So are these terms okay especially considering the fact that I'm underpaid with peanuts?

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  • Transitioning from a mechanical engineer to software developer. What path to take?

    - by Patrick
    Hi all, I am 24 years old and have a BS in mechanical engineering from Mizzou. I have been working as a mechanical engineer in a big corporation for about 2 years since graduation. In this time, I have decided that I'm just not that interested in mechanical engineering topics, and I'm much more excited about web technology, website design, etc. I do a very small amount of freelance web design just to get experience, but I have no formal training yet. Ultimately I could see myself being very excited about working for a small startup in web technology, or creating and selling my own programs in more of an entrepreneurial role. What path do you recommend for transitioning into this field? Go back to school and get a BS in CS? MS in CS? Tech school for classes? Self study? I'm feeling overwhelmed by the options available, but the one thing I know for sure is that I'm excited to make a change. Thanks!

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  • Is the Internet Making us Smarter or Not?

    - by BuckWoody
    I’ve been reading recently about an exchange among some very bright folks, some who posit that the Internet with its instant-on, sometimes-right, big-statement-wins mentality is making people think in a more shallow way, teaching us to rely on others as experts and diluting our logical thought process. Others state that it broadens our perspective and extends our mental reach. Whenever I see this kind of exchange on two ends of a spectrum, I begin to wonder if both sides might be correct.   I can certainly say that I have changed my way of learning, reading, and social interactions because of the Internet. And my tolerance for reading long missives has indeed gone down. I tend to (mentally and literally) “bookmark” things I never seem to have time to get back to. But I also agree that I’ve been exposed to thoughts, ideas and people I never would have encountered any other way. So how to deal with this dichotomy?   Well, I’m going to go off and think about it. No, I’m really going to go off for a full week to a cabin I’ve rented in a National Forest in the Midwest. It has no indoor plumbing, phones, Internet connections or anything else – only a bed to sleep in and a place to cook a little. I’m taking one book, some paper, and a guitar with me and that’s it. I plan to spend my days walking, reading a little, playing a little on the guitar, but mostly just thinking. Those of you who know me might find this unusual. I’m an always-on, hyper-caffeinated, overly-busy, connected person. I haven’t taken a vacation in five years, at least for more than two or three days at a time. Even then, I keep us on the move constantly – our vacations aren’t cruises or anything like that. I check e-mail, post and all that. When I’m not on vacation, I live with and leverage lots of technology, and work with those that do the same. This, however, is a really “unplugged” event, and I’m hoping that it will let me unpack the things I’ve been stuffing in my head. I plan to spend a lot of time on a single subject, writing notes, thinking, and writing more notes.   So after I post tomorrow's “quote of the day” I’ll be “going dark” for a week. No twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, e-mail, chat, none of my five blogs will get updated, and I’ll have to turn in my two articles for InformIT.com early. I won’t have access to my college class portal, so my students will be without me for a week. I will really be offline. I’ll see you in a week – hopefully a little more educated. See you then.   Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • Is the Internet Making us Smarter or Not?

    - by BuckWoody
    I’ve been reading recently about an exchange among some very bright folks, some who posit that the Internet with its instant-on, sometimes-right, big-statement-wins mentality is making people think in a more shallow way, teaching us to rely on others as experts and diluting our logical thought process. Others state that it broadens our perspective and extends our mental reach. Whenever I see this kind of exchange on two ends of a spectrum, I begin to wonder if both sides might be correct.   I can certainly say that I have changed my way of learning, reading, and social interactions because of the Internet. And my tolerance for reading long missives has indeed gone down. I tend to (mentally and literally) “bookmark” things I never seem to have time to get back to. But I also agree that I’ve been exposed to thoughts, ideas and people I never would have encountered any other way. So how to deal with this dichotomy?   Well, I’m going to go off and think about it. No, I’m really going to go off for a full week to a cabin I’ve rented in a National Forest in the Midwest. It has no indoor plumbing, phones, Internet connections or anything else – only a bed to sleep in and a place to cook a little. I’m taking one book, some paper, and a guitar with me and that’s it. I plan to spend my days walking, reading a little, playing a little on the guitar, but mostly just thinking. Those of you who know me might find this unusual. I’m an always-on, hyper-caffeinated, overly-busy, connected person. I haven’t taken a vacation in five years, at least for more than two or three days at a time. Even then, I keep us on the move constantly – our vacations aren’t cruises or anything like that. I check e-mail, post and all that. When I’m not on vacation, I live with and leverage lots of technology, and work with those that do the same. This, however, is a really “unplugged” event, and I’m hoping that it will let me unpack the things I’ve been stuffing in my head. I plan to spend a lot of time on a single subject, writing notes, thinking, and writing more notes.   So after I post tomorrow's “quote of the day” I’ll be “going dark” for a week. No twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, e-mail, chat, none of my five blogs will get updated, and I’ll have to turn in my two articles for InformIT.com early. I won’t have access to my college class portal, so my students will be without me for a week. I will really be offline. I’ll see you in a week – hopefully a little more educated. See you then.   Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • CS subjects that an undergraduate must know.

    - by Karl
    In college, I was never interested in theory. I never read it. No matter how much I tried, I was unable to read stuff and not know what was actually happening practically. Like for example, in my course on automata theory, my professor told me everything possibly related to the mathematical aspect of it, but not even once did he mention where it would be used practically. This is just an example. I managed to pass my college and interned with a company also, where I did a project and thankfully they didn't bother about my grades, as they were above average. Now, I am interested in knowing what subjects should a CS student must absolutely and positively be aware of? Subjects that can have relevance in the industry. This is because I have some free time on my hands and it would help me better to have a good understanding of them. What are your suggestions? Like for one, algorithms is one subject.

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  • The next step for a graduate?

    - by Michael Hobbs
    I will complete my degree in Computer Science in July of 2013 however I will have two years of military service left. I would like to get some hands on C#/C++ programming experience in the mean time. I have been looking around the web at all the open source project that are out there. There are literally 10's of thousands. How would you go about picking one that is: A) good for a graduate level programmer B) will probably go somewhere, and C) are willing to take a novice under their wing. I would even be happy to work for a company for free, remotely as a debugger, tester, or what have you. As a side note would prefer to stick in the C# realm but understand I need to branch out at the same time.

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  • Effectiveness and Efficiency

    - by Daniel Moth
    In the professional environment, i.e. at work, I am always seeking personal growth and to be challenged. The result is that my assignments, my work list, my tasks, my goals, my commitments, my [insert whatever word resonates with you] keep growing (in scope and desired impact). Which in turn means I have to keep finding new ways to deliver more value, while not falling into the trap of working more hours. To do that I continuously evaluate both my effectiveness and my efficiency. EFFECTIVENESS The first thing I check is my effectiveness: Am I doing the right things? Am I focusing too much on unimportant things? Am I spending more time doing stuff that is important to my team/org/division/business/company, or am I spending it on stuff that is important to me and that I enjoy doing? Am I valuing activities that maybe I have outgrown and should be delegated to others who are at a stage I have surpassed (in Microsoft speak: is the work I am doing level appropriate or am I still operating at the previous level)? Notice how the answers to those questions change over time and due to certain events, so I have to remind myself to revisit them frequently. Events that force me to re-examine them are: change of role, change of team/org/etc, change of direction of team/org/etc, re-org, new hires on the team that take on some of the work I did, personal promotion, change of manager... and if none of those events has occurred since the last annual review, I ask myself those at each annual review anyway. If you think you are not being effective at work, make a list of the stuff that you do and start tracking where your time goes. In parallel, have a discussion with your manager about where they think your time should go. Ultimately your time is finite and hence it is your most precious investment, don't waste it. If your management doesn't value as highly what you spend your time on, then either convince your management, or stop spending your time on it, or find different management: Lead, Follow, or get out of the way! That's my view on effectiveness. You have to fix that before moving to being efficient, or you may end up being very efficient at stuff that nobody wants you to be doing in the first place. For example, you may be spending your time writing blog posts and becoming better and faster at it all the time. If your manager thinks that is not even part of your job description, you are wasting your time to satisfy your inner desires. Nobody can help you with your effectiveness other than your management chain and your management peers - they are the judges of it. EFFICIENCY The second thing I check is my efficiency: Am I doing things right? For me, doing things right means that I deliver the same quality of work faster [than what I used to, and than my peers, and than expected of me]. The result is that I can achieve more [than what I used to, and than my peers, and than expected of me]. Notice how the efficiency goal is a more portable one. If, by whatever criteria, you think you are the best at [insert your own skill here], this can change at two events: because you have new colleagues (who are potentially better than your older ones), and it can change with a change of manager (who has potentially higher expectations). That's about it. Once you are efficient at something, you carry that with you... All you need to really be doing here is, when taking on new kinds of work that you haven't done before, try a few approaches and devise a system so that you can become efficient at this new activity too... Just keep "collecting" stuff that you are efficient at. If you think you are not being efficient at something, break it down: What are the steps you take to complete that task? How long do you spend on each step? Talk to others about what steps they take, to see if you can optimize some steps away or trade them for better steps, or just learn how to complete a step faster. Have a system for every task you take so that you can have repeatable success. That's my view on efficiency. You have to fix it so that you can free up time to do more. When you plan a route from A to B - all else being equal - you try to get there as fast as possible so why would you not want to do that with your everyday work? For example, imagine you are inefficient at processing email: You spend more time than necessary dealing with email, and you still end up with dropped email threads and with slower response times than others. How can you improve? Talk to someone that you think is good at this, understand their system (e.g. here is my email processing system) and come up with one that works for you. Parting Thoughts Are you considered, by your colleagues and manager, an effective and efficient person at your workplace? If you are, what would you change if you were asked by your management to do the job of two people? Seriously, think about that! Your immediate reaction may be "that is not possible", but it actually is. You just have to re-assess what things that were previously important will now stop being important, by discussing them with your management and reaching agreement on relative priorities. For example, stuff that was previously on your plate may now have to be delegated or dropped. Where you thought you were efficient, maybe now you have to find an even faster path to completion, perhaps keeping in mind that Perfect is the Enemy of “Good Enough”. My personal experience (from both observing others and from my own reflection) is that when folks are struggling to keep up at work it is because of two reasons: They are investing energy in stuff that they enjoy doing which the business regards as having a lower priority than a lot of other things on their plate. They are completing tasks to a level of higher quality than what is required (due to personal pride) missing the big picture which almost always mandates completing three tasks at good enough quality than knocking only one of them out of the park while the other two come in late or not at all. There is a lot of content on the web, so I strongly encourage you to use your favorite search engine to read other views on effectiveness and efficiency (Bing, Google). Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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  • Starting this week: Dublin, Maidenhead, and London

    - by KKline
    This might be most most overcommitted four-week period of time ever in my life. I’m tired just thinking about it! Not only am I traveling internationally and speaking over the next few weeks, I’m also helping on two book projects, learning some new applications from Quest Software, and helping on a small Transact-SQL refactoring project. Swag on hand? I’ve got a special printing of 500 video training DVDs for this trip: SQL Server Training on DMVs Performance Monitor and Wait Events Plus, I’ll have...(read more)

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  • Why do employers care so much about GPA?

    - by Recursion
    I went to a pretty good engineering school and did CS. I graduated with a 2.86 gpa and really tried my best. I even took a few graduate classes in place of undergrad courses to challenge myself. I really liked those a lot. But the second question I am always asked is "What was your gpa?", this of course always comes after "How are you today?". Once I tell them either 2.86 or a rounded 2.9 they immediately shut off. I have even had them stop the interview saying the 3.0 is the cut off. Does a tenth of a point really mean that much?

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  • Best sources to find your go-to programmer

    - by user66851
    After exhausting many resources, time, interviews etc, I cannot seem to find the correct programming talent for our company. Any other resources you suggest besides Dice, Linkedin, Craigslist, University Job Boards, Poaching techniques....its been months now! Specifically, we designed proprietary data-manipulation and data-gathering technology, and are looking for skilled programmers requiring skills of PHP5/MySQL, Javascript/HTML/CSS , cross-browser compatibility/optimization, web interface development, familiarity with source control (SVN or GIT), any L/AMP stack, and/or related application protocols, GCC-supported languages, Zend Framework and/or jQuery.

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  • I want to be a programmer, work in corporate environment, earn well, learn fast and eventually become a great programmer [on hold]

    - by Shin San
    I'll try to keep this simple: I'm 29, been dabbling with computers for the past 10 years, had entry level jobs in tech support for different apps, been fixing computers for a while and now want to specialize in something. I'm not 100% stranger to programming but haven't gone past if/then/else with anything. A bit of JavaScript, PHP, Python and currently checking out the "SELECT" statement in SQL :)) I'm curious about programming, I enjoy it and I'm thinking of making a living out of it. So, while I'm at it, why not earn a bit more than the average Joe? So, that's why I'm checking what the best solution, the best learning path and the most useful languages are considering: a) how easy/fast can you find a job by knowing it b) how much would I be able to earn c) how fast can I learn it By reading 10-20 articles online I've come up with an example, but I'm here for some expert advice. Example: * ratings from a) and b) point of view #1 sql ; #2 java ; #3 html (please don't start the markup language debate) ; #4 javascript From this ratings, I'd say a good way to go is learn html/css/(javascript or php) for the web part of apps, some SQL/MySQL/whateverSQL for holding data and loads of Java for the program itself. Please let me know if this is a good idea and if so, what should be the order for learning all of the above. Else, please let me know a better way and why it would be better. Many thanks for taking the time to read my question. Best wishes to you guys Edit: if I think Java + SQL + HTML&JavaScript is the way to go, does the order I'm learning them in matter? Or can I try to learn them all at once?

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  • Advice for how to handle company pride

    - by user17971
    We have this "amazing" little product using the latest development methodologies, components with all the bells and whistles. I took over this product maybe 6 months ago and struggled with it from day one. Even though it is supposedly is state of the art because of all its amazing structure, using dependency injections, inversion of control from the unity framework, hibernation and is domain driven in a .net mvvm xaml application to make it streamlined and modular. I knew from the moment I saw the monolith that it was going to be an uphill struggle for me. A lot of little code-bits scattered all around in neatly organized paradigms. Debugging is difficult, tracing the code is difficult, making new code is difficult, although some modifications is surprisinly easy but it doesn't out weight the problems I have with the code by a long shot. When I took over the project I was told that the new management console was ready for delivery and all I had to do was compile it and drop it. This was the beginning of a uphill struggle, our customer didn't agree at all that this was the functionality they had asked for so I had to do modifications to the program to their specifications. Since the project pretty much has been overdue since I took over it it has always been important that we didn't add or change much to the original system. I could modify the existing bits. fast forward until today where I finally completed all their comments and issues with the program but now I think that the users has opened their eyes (even though they saw this program many times) that they will be going backwards with this new system, that it will be much worse than the tool they got today (for a long time due to the fact that I'm the only resource on the project, project manager, tester, developer, integration specialist etc) My problem is that I lost faith in this system quite early due to the nature of the program. Although I made many changes and improvements to the system I wholeheartedly sympathize with the poor users who are going to start using this system. Its not nearly doing all the things it should do. I had this conversation internally with my boss where I told him what I thought about it, that if I were the customer I wouldn't have spent money developing it. So what do I do now? The system in ready, on a staging system and nobody likes it, its too slow and boring and does maybe do 50% of what they need it to do. Despite how much energy and working around the clock I've done to this project: I won't mind scrapping the system but we've spent much money (well my salaries) developing it and my company wants us to be proud of everything we do and advocate it. How will I tackle the contractor when he asks for advice? Surely I can tell him, this is what we agreed upon based on your use case scenarios, and be done with it? How will I inform my boss about this progress? He knows what I feel about it but I always get the feeling he let my criticism pass him by as just hot air, gone tomorrow,.

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  • What would you do if you were asked to recommend on someone you are not professionally satisfied with?

    - by Hila
    Where I live, everyone in the IT business knows just about everyone else. This is why it is quite common here to get a phone call from a recruiter asking for your professional opinion regarding people you've been working with in the past, or to be asked by a friend for a recommendation. This is all nice and well until you are asked to recommend on someone you weren't quite satisfied with professionally. There are several problems I can think about: Recommending on unskilled people is generally inadvisable. It is unprofessional and hurts your reputation. Giving this person a bad recommendation will probably hurt his chances of getting the job, and refusing to recommend on someone is just as bad as giving a bad recommendation. It may be that the new employer will be happy with this person's skills, is it fair to deny this guy of the chance to start a new page and prove himself in a new place? Many times you really like this person and are very uncomfortable with the idea of giving him a bad recommendation or refusing his request to recommend on him. What would you do in each of this cases: If this person asked you to recommend on him personally If you got a phone call from a recruiter asking for your opinion on him Thanks!

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  • Having MSc or Bsc with Experience, whats worth in industrial environments?

    - by Abimaran
    I'm a fresh graduate in Electronic & Telecommunication field, and in our University, we can have major and minor fields in the relevant subjects. So, I majored in telecommunication and minored in Software Engineering. As I learned programing long before, Now I'm passionate in SE and programming. And, I want drive into the SE field. And, It came to know that, in industries, most of them expecting the candidates to have the Bsc + experience of two+ years, or having a MSc in the related field. [I'm referring my surrounding environment, not all the industries]. My Question, How do they consider those MSc and BSc + experience guys in the industries? IMO, having MSc is great assert with comparing to have experience. Because, in the industry, you can drive in a particular technology (Java, .Net or some thing else), not all, and with MSc, we can get the domain knowledge, not a particular technology! Thanks!

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  • Remote Working & Relocation

    - by James Burgess
    Sorry if this question is a duplicate, I did some extensive searching and found nothing on quite the same topic (though a couple on partially-overlapping topics). Recently, whilst on holiday in Munich, Germany, I was taken aback by the sheer number of programming-related posts available in the city that I easily qualify for (both in terms of knowledge, and experience). The advertised working environments seemed good and the pay seemed to be at least as good as what I'd expect here in the UK. Probably 80% of the advertisements I saw on the underground were for IT-related jobs, and a good 60% of those I was easily qualified for. At the moment, I work as a freelancer mostly on web and small software projects, but seeing the vast availability of jobs in Munich versus my local area has me thinking about remote working. I'm unable to relocate for a job for the next 3 years (my wife has a contract to continue being a doctor at her current hospital for that time) but would almost certainly be open to it after that (after all, my wife and I both love Munich). In the meanwhile, I would be very interested in remote-working. So, my question is thus do companies ever take on remote workers (even with semi-frequent trips to the office) from abroad, with a view to later relocation? And, if so, how do you go about broaching the topic with a recruiter when getting in contact about a job posting? Language isn't a barrier for me, here, as 90% of the jobs I've looked up in Munich don't require German speakers (seems they have a big recruiting market abroad). I'm also under no illusions about the disadvantages of remote working, but I'm more interested in the viability of the scenario rather than the intricacies (at least at this point). I'd really appreciate any contributions, especially from those who have experience with working in such a scenario!

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  • Data Movement and the Decision Matrix

    - by BuckWoody
    Maybe it’s my military background, or maybe I’ve always had this predilection, but I like to use two devices when I need to make a complex decision: A checklist and a decision matrix. I like to use a checklist because it ensures that I remember the big bits of what I need to do, and brings up questions or areas that I didn’t think about when evaluating options for the decision. And the decision matrix – that’s the thing I use to actually lay out those options. It’s simply a spreadsheet-like grid (I use Excel, but paper and pencil works as well) that lays out the requirements or advantages for the decision across the top, and the options I have on the left-hand side. Then in the “cells” I put whether or not that option on the left will meet the requirement in that column. I then simply “weight” each cell to organize the choices by best-fit. The right answer (or answers) will float right to the top. I was asked yesterday about options for moving data in SQL Server to another system. There are just dozens of ways to do this, from bcp to Replication, each with certain advantages and costs. But asking the questions for the top row first helped me show the person that it isn’t a particular technology that is important, it’s laying out those requirements and thinking about which elements are more important than the other. For instance, is it more important to have the data moved all the time, or is it OK if that happens once in a while? Does the data have to move in two directions or just one? All of these will help that answer jump right out. Try it sometime – it’s a great learning exercise, since it will force you to focus on filling out the matrix. The answer is out there, Neo. Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • What approaches can I take to lower the odds of introducing new bugs in a complex legacy app?

    - by m.edmondson
    Where I work I often have to develop (and bug fix) in an old system (.NET 1) whos code is complete spaghetti - with little thought given to variable names, program structure nor comments. Because of this it takes me ages to understand what bits need changed, and I often 'break' the existing software because I've made a modification. I really really want to spend a couple of months (with colleagues) going through it to refactor but existing developers both can't see the need - nor think theres time for this (the system is massive). I dread having to work on its code as it takes days to fix something only to find out I've broken something else. This obviously makes me look incompetent - so how can I deal with this?

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