Harsh maybe, but I really do feel that in today’s competitive global economy we need to start addressing the fact that we’re ill equipping people for the expectations we have of them if we let sub-par performance go unchecked. Now I recognise that for there to be high performers there must be those who are not and indeed there then exists in-between the two poles a raft of average performers. Interestingly a speaker recently suggested to his audience of business professionals that most people in the room were probably good at what they did, but that being good was the new average. Quite simply he said, “you need to be exceptional, you need to stand out and you need to be very, very good”.

In the past ten or twenty years we’ve propagated at every opportunity from kindergarten through to the boardroom, this idea that doing your best is all you can do. Everyone is a winner if you’ve tried your hardest and thereafter you should just be proud of your efforts.

We increase the debilitating effect of accepting average performance with a social phenomenon known as Tall Poppy Syndrome (TPS) whereby people of genuine merit are resented, attacked, cut down, or criticised because their talents or achievements elevate them above or distinguish them from their (more average) peers.

I suggest it’s now time to shake off the need to encourage everyone with false praise and recognise the realities of competitive markets. There are winners and losers; there are people who excel and those that don’t. We certainly need to help people identify their place within this sphere and we also need to help them develop (if they want to), but let’s not call everyone a success unless and until they actually succeed.

This one’s an interesting question because as a six year academic graduate myself, I would strongly advocate the need to pursue and attain formal recognition of your skills and abilities. These skills offer business grounding, they offer a learning framework for the future and they offer evidence of your commitment to see a course of learning through to completion. But those six years were quite a few business cycles past and when I reflect now on whether they currently aid me in my day-to-day job I would have to question at least some of the content I studied.

Today more than ever we live in a world that’s pacing itself for a sprint race and without doubt the drivers in attaining formal qualifications have changed substantially to those of past decades. Consider in the past, the essential requirement to hold a degree before any blue chip employer would consider you having the aptitude to work in their computing/technology department. Similarly business and trade qualifications were of a value that appears to be dropping year on year as employers place more significant value now on whether an individual has successfully demonstrated the skill rather than whether a certificate says they have that skill.

The telling marker in this story is perhaps best indicated by the fact that the learning landscape itself has changed. In the past knowledge was passed quite deliberately and structurally from person to person (think teacher, student) but today with all the available mediums this is no longer as doctrine a process.

Always on, self-serve, immediate access, instant gratification are just a few of the catch-phrases which embody the learning environment we now find ourselves within, and if you don’t believe me then go Google it yourself!

So are we beyond the academic measures of the past? Well we know Universities are struggling to fill places as they wrestle with a youth unconvinced of the value proposition for three of four years of degree level study. Perhaps its cyclical and once the learning Institutions create a new, modern approach to meeting the educational needs of today then demand will increase again. Perhaps indeed.

In the meantime for many today it appears more important to achieve the Foursquare Major of Starbucks than it is to hold a bachelor’s degree.

I’m sure we’ve all seen those job advertisements stating 10+ years relevant experience essential. But what does that really mean?
Learning and development models today no longer follow the same linear model they did twenty or even ten years ago. Classroom led training has been supplemented and sometimes replaced wholly by computer based training (CBT). What this has created is an ability for self-paced learning that can be accelerated, paused or protracted to meet the needs of the learner.

And therein lies the dichotomy with the traditional request for years experience when hiring employees. There is a diminishing correlation between the ability or skills of an individual and their likely performance, when based solely on years’ of experience. Put more simply a twenty-one year old who has a passion for a skill and who spends all his or her time bettering their ability with it, is often more capable than a forty-one year old with 10+ years’ work experience. It’s a notion backed by common sense in a lot of ways yet still somewhat perversely, far from commonplace as a method for employers to filter appropriately skilled candidates from the rest.

So what can you do about it?

Well as a recruiter I advise my team to probe for evidence of ability to perform the tasks to the required skill level, irrespective of how long the applicant has been practicing said skill. And for job seekers I’d recommend a strategic approach to any job search that pits your ability to actually do the job verses the employer’s belief in what they think you need to do the job.

Trust me it isn’t easy to change engrained and long-standing beliefs but the times they are changing and if my six year old can use MS Word now then he’ll be well equipped to tackle an office administration role in say two or three years!

I could start by qualifying these comments as specific to a job interview but in fact they’re not, they can actually be applied to any interview situation you face. You see an interview by definition is or should be a two-way flow of information between parties. The key element being the need for everyone involved to gain information from the process, save the interview (at best) be found lacking or (at worst) becoming a complete waste of time.

And in that first paragraph is the key to overcoming nerves for most candidates. Too many interviewees view the interview as a test which they must pass to be successful else fail under the guise of personal rejection!

Take a step back and re-read the first paragraph. The interview may still be a test but it’s a two-way test not one-way. If the interviewer doesn’t impress me with his job, or company information or even his personality then I may not accept his offer should he decide I’m the employee he wants in his business. On the more traditional view If I don’t represent myself in the best light, summing up skills and experience and demonstrating a personality matching what’s being sought, then I’m unlikely to be offered the position on offer.

Now with a more level appreciation of the process that’s taking place in an interview, I’d invite you to refocus your approach to interviews in the future. Sure you should prepare and invest time in performing your best at an interview but only in return for an expectation that your interviewer does the same. When you view the balance of power as equal you are much more likely to relax and perform naturally to your best ability.

According to an article by Ruti Polachek  the solution to unemployment is to code your way out.  I was left a bit unconvinced that you can code your way out of a GFC, but this article did touch on some points that my colleagues and I have discussed. The premise of his argument is that there are jobs waiting to be filled in the IT sector and that if you trained more people these jobs would be easily filled.

“Technology will be advanced in 10, 20 or 100 years, in ways we cannot even imagine. We are not moving backward, so let’s move forward, faster. We are getting closer to the point where everyone will not only need to know how to use an iPad, but also how to write some of its programs” 

I do agree that there are jobs waiting to be filled.  Software companies/vendors are continuing to invest in their product despite difficult market conditions.  Financial backers are spurred on by the Mark Zuckerberg’s who have proved that getting there first is everything in this sector and investing in a product you believe in has huge rewards.  

However there is already a queue of highly qualified candidates applying for these roles.  Pioneering companies aren’t looking for qualifications but for true technologist who can understand the underlying concepts and principles far beyond someone who is simply trained in a vocation.  The days of a mid-level developer who sits, codes moves on to the next piece of work handed down to him are fast diminishing.   IT roles are becoming more specialised.  Simple processes are now automated and developers need to be able to add more value.

The key to filling these jobs is to identify and nurture top talent, not an IT development for all approach.

What are your thoughts on these arguments?  How do you think employers can differentiate between ‘highly qualified candidates’ and ‘true technologists’?

The application development & support market has remained in a positive position throughout this year with only the upcoming holiday period stalling the slow but steady momentum. We have seen demand in the usual areas predominantly led by .Net & Java but we are seeing most demand and probably the shortest supply in tier one ERP skills (mainly SAP & Oracle), Microsoft SharePoint, Front End Web and Mobile Development. With that in mind the demand for contractors skilled in Agile development methodology continues to rise, as companies move away from large scale in house software development programs in favour of quicker rapid deployment of products and services. When companies do commit to large scale software programs they are looking to utilise a combination of in house resources, contractors, local specialist service providers as well as global outsourcers. This creates greater spread of risk on key deliverables, flexibility with resources but major challenges in vendor management, accountability, communication and ultimately decision making.

Companies are increasingly looking at consolidated ERP systems with Oracle and SAP taking a majority market share but we have also seen a number of companies committing more capital expenditure to JDE, PeopleSoft and Seibel upgrades as in most cases they offer a much more cost effective solution rather than the larger investment needed to implement Oracle or SAP. You will see from our salary review that SAP Basis & Oracle Database Administrators have experienced the largest rate & salary increases due to high demand and increasingly low supply. We have also seen a similar trend in demand for HR/Payroll consulting skills across most of the major ERP products. Due to the shortage of available skills in this area we have seen companies bringing resources from overseas to meet demand on critical projects. As with any technology skills shortage there has been a large push from candidates looking to enter the contracting market in order to take advantage of higher daily rates, this in turn has led to a large number of permanent positions being left open for 6-12 months.

What Next?

For 2012 I expect to see consistent demand for enterprise software developers, mobile/web developers and in particular ERP specialists. Most of the major investment will come from the Banking & Finance, Insurance, Superannuation and Media industries as they look to modernise their service offerings and ability to interact with their increasingly technology demanding customers. I expect the size of internal software development and application support teams to stagnate or potentially diminish as companies continue to take advantage of developments in Cloud Computing (SAAS/PAAS), OpenSource/SOA and the economies of scale on offer from global software services companies especially those with offshore development centres. As with any trend towards outsourcing/offshoring we will see ICT providers moving quickly to snap up any available resources in order to build their resource capability but often to re-deploy these people back into sites where they have valuable IP and customer relationships.

 But don’t take my word for it, check out http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1535314 for the experts opinion.

Ambition 2012 Application Salary Guide

Do you agree with my comments or want to offer a different perspective to salaries and/or trends in software development? If so please feel free to add your comments here or email me directly at rory.herity@ambition.com.au

Ok, so you have finished VCE and scored a higher enter score than most, your heart skips a beat spending endless hours writing code and you decide you want to be a programmer. What programming language do you wish to learn? Which will be better in terms of job prospects? What language would still be in high demand in 5, 10 or 15 years’ time?

In most cases, a language is chosen by development teams because they know it, feel it’s the most cutting edge technology on the market, or feel it would result in a cost effective method to implement in to their website.

Ideally, development teams should examine the strengths and weaknesses in using both technologies instead of going for whatever is hip in the marketplace.

Hopefully this comparison sheds some light as to what technology is best for you and your future as a programmer.

Current Demand

I did a quick search on seek and found that 1,645 results were found in Australia with the key word, “.NET”, and 4,061 results were found with, “JAVA”. What does this say about what’s happening in .NET? Should these figures be the contributing factor to what technology to use?

By no means should you consider this data as concrete evidence without considering other variables – like how much competition you have with other programmers in your field, how many roles are available in your area, and how many roles are available within your skill level (junior, mid-level or senior). You should conduct your own preliminary searches on different job boards before evaluating what career path you should take.

Pros and Cons

After conducting a survey of candidates, from junior to senior programmers, they have outlined the following positives and negatives of using each technology.

.NET

Pros

• Strong framework for building rich GUI;   
• Easy-to-use tools; 
• Has built-in support for Web services standards.

Cons

• Framework runs only on Windows
• Costly
• .Net has a bad history of security vulnerabilities

JAVA

Pros

• It’s free
• Java is object orientated and easy to use
• -Has an ability to manipulate Java encryptions

Cons

• Security restrictions can be an issue
• Bugs exist in some library implementations
• Java is more memory consuming as opposed to .Net

Future Trends

With this being said, it can be difficult to predict which technology will last the test of time. However, you can definitely determine that large corporations that have been using Java will surely continue their relationship with Java, while companies that use .Net, will definitely look for faster development time to stay ahead of the game and drop .Net altogether.

Also, with Java being a free application and known as an easy programming language, why would you continue with .Net?  In my opinion, it makes sense to stick with Java as studies have shown that Java increases programmer efficiency resulting in quicker results. Programmers also get to enjoy writing better code with fewer bugs than .Net, which in turn reduces development time.

However, whatever you endeavour to do, it’s important to select a programming language that you wish to master and specialise in. If you want to be more marketable to a potential employee, you need to be an expert in your field rather than be a jack of all languages and a master of none.

Working within the application development space you get a front seat into the newest trends within technology. In the past 12 months iPhone and Android development has increased dramatically. Every company, from the one man operation in a shed to the massive corporate, is jumping on the band wagon in a race to get to the finish line first with the best most user friendly applications but which direction should they go, iPhone or Android?

With the new iPhone coming out and Android continuing to deploy better and better hardware; and both operating systems rolling out exciting new features and innovations with each release, which is better? After reading countless blogs and speaking with the frontline users I have come up with a couple of different categories in which both iPhone and Android go head to head and help you decide…

Useability

This one is a big one for me as I want to be able to pick something up and with ease understand what I’m doing.

• iPhone- able to pick it up and with a quick slide you are in the main screen where you can easily navigate and tap the icon needed
• Android- after figuring out how to unlock the device (depending on the device you are operating) you have to navigate your way through a number of screens

Battery Life

With all the applications and things you can do on devices these days with cameras, music and games battery life is a big issue.

• iPhone- after the first few releases iPhone have taken battery life very serious and from all accounts have got it right
• Android- they still have some work to do with all of the applications available you can almost watch the battery drain

Keyboard

This is something I had hesitations about when considering my fingers arn’t the skinniest on the block.

• iPhone - once you get past the fear of fat fingers the iPhone’s fully equipped keyboard that is touch screen takes the cake
• Android – once again, depending on the device but overall rated; harder to use with sometimes needing to change settings just to find hidden keys

Syncing

This is one of the newer and more helpful uses on both iPhone and Android

• iPhone – if you are looking to sync with Outlook, address book or iTunes iPhone is hands down winner
• Android- easily the winner if you are only trying to sync with Google servers but it’s not so keen on syncing with other data sources like Outlook, Address books and iTunes

Ok so I admit it, I do own an iPhone so my opinion is biased but I would like to get your opinion! Do you use both or have you used both and decided to move to one because it’s easier and the functionality meets your need better?

I recently read a blog called Migrating ASP.NET MVC 2 applications to ASP.NET MVC 3 Preview 1 by Elion Lipton. On January 13^th 2011 Microsoft released an update to MVC. Elion speaks about the MVC usage, what it can do and what it can’t do.

But who really benefits from the change? What are the pros and cons of installing MVC3 and updating your MVC 2 applications?

Whilst it is new and improved I don’t necessarily believe it is a revolution, here are the notes from Lipton’s blog. What are your thoughts, do you think it is a revolution?

Usage

The only requirement for this tool is that you have .NET Framework 4 on the machine. You do not need to have Visual Studio or ASP.NET MVC installed (unless you want to open your project!). Even though the tool performs an automatic backup of your solution it is recommended that you perform a manual backup of your solution as well.

To convert an ASP.NET MVC 2 project built with Visual Studio 2010 to an ASP.NET MVC 3 project in Visual Studio 2010 perform these steps:

1. Launch the converter
2. Select the solution
3. Click the “Convert” button

To convert an ASP.NET MVC 2 project built with Visual Studio 2008 to an ASP.NET MVC 2 project in Visual Studio 2010:

• Open the project in Visual Studio 2010 to convert the solution and project file formats from VS2008 to VS2010
• Upgrade the .NET Framework target version of each project to .NET Framework 4 because ASP.NET MVC 3 is compatible with only .NET Framework 4
• Launch the converter
• Select the solution
• Click the “Convert” button

What it can do

• Open up ASP.NET MVC 2 projects from Visual Studio 2010 (no other versions of ASP.NET MVC or Visual Studio are supported)
• Create a full backup of your solution’s folder
• For every VB or C# project that has a reference to System.Web.Mvc.dll it will (this includes ASP.NET MVC web application projects as well as ASP.NET MVC test projects)
• Update references to ASP.NET MVC 2

For every VB or C# ASP.NET MVC Web Application it will:

• Change the project type to an ASP.NET MVC 3 project
• Update the root ~/web.config references to ASP.NET MVC 3
• Update the root ~/web.config to have a binding redirect from ASP.NET MVC 2 to ASP.NET MVC 3
• Update the ~/Views/web.config references to ASP.NET MVC 3
• Add or update the JavaScript files (add jQuery, add jQuery.Validate, add Microsoft AJAX, add/update Microsoft MVC AJAX, add Microsoft MVC Validation adapter)
• Unknown project types or project types that have nothing to do with ASP.NET MVC will not be updated

What it can’t do

• It cannot convert projects build with Visual Studio 2008 or with .NET Framework 3.5.
• It can have issues if your solution contains projects that are not located under the solution directory.
• If you are using a source control system it might have problems overwriting files. It is recommended that before converting you check out all files from the source control system.
• It cannot change code in the application that might need to be changed due to breaking changes between ASP.NET MVC 2 and ASP.NET MVC 3.

Notes from Eilon Lipton’s Blog, 28/07/2011

 There are a few critical things you need to consider and understand before you make that move from permanent employment to contract…

Prioritise!

There are four key factors you need to consider before you proceed. Money, Technology, Projects and Location. What is most important to you?  The chances are if you have genuinely set your heart on being a contractor money and technology will be top of the list.

1. Money

Most of the time when you’re doing full time contract work you will have to spend just as much time trying to find that work. If your salary was $80k (roughly $40/hr) you have to think about taxes, driving, phone calls, buying software, IDEs, and lots of other expenses. General rule of thumb is to put a 30% mark up on your regular pay. Of course in this industry, you have to do what you have to do to get some work so don’t be too rigid with your negotiations and remember its easier to find your next assignment when you’re already working –creditability and current project work counts a lot for your marketability.

1. Technology & Projects

Find a technology language you enjoy and have a genuine interest in, then specialise. Get certified and then use that as a competitive advantage. Once you have these certifications and you have that niche desired skill you will more than likely get an opportunity to work on some pretty exciting stuff. Cutting edge, new and definitely challenging. Your employer certainly won’t want you maintaining old systems if you have the skills to take their business forward. 

1. Location



You need to be flexible so if you’re based in Sydney, be prepared to travel anywhere from Parramatta, CBD,  North Ryde to Chatswood. It’s about the work and the reward so balance those against a bit of travel time.   

So flip the tables around, what are employers looking for from a contractor?

After meeting with a senior development manager recently of a top 50 ASX listed organisation, he highlighted to me the importance of his contractors willingness to be flexible on their projects, be prepared to one day be stuck into one project, to then be moved on to something completely different.

He added that they  also look for people who have successfully worked through the full development life cycle with scars and stories to prove it. It’s import you can show how quickly you can solve problems, think fast and deliver on often failing projects and your personal stock will skyrocket!

Personally I wouldn’t advise everyone to jump into the contract market. Yes the money may be attractive but whether it’s right for you is a matter of personal choice.