Career Investigation

[schilbster]

Hello my name is Chris and I'm writing a computer engineering technologist career investigation report. Part of the report is interviewing some professionals in the industry. If anyone has some spare time I would greatly appreciate it if you could answer a couple questions for me. Thank you for your time.


What is a typical workday like?

What do you like or dislike about the job?

What skills/abilities are needed/beneficial?

Are there opportunities for promotion?

What are the working conditions?

Where are jobs most likely to be located?

What are the normal hours of work?

Is the job typically full-time, part-time, seasonal or contract?

What is the future outlook for this career?

How stable is employment in this occupation?

[jbking]

I work as a Web Developer which may be a form of computer engineering in some ways and may be above a technologist in some cases just to put a disclaimer on my thoughts about your questions.

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What is a typical workday like?

Varies though usually consisting of work being one of a few types of things:
1) Meetings - This can be planning meetings, demostrations of work completed, weekly team meetings or daily stand ups.
2) Troubleshooting production issues - Sometimes trouble tickets come in where some user is having a problem with a web site or web application and I get to go digging into what is wrong, fix it and suggest ways to prevent it from happening in the future.
3) New development - This can range from gathering requirements, analysis & design, implementation or testing for project work generally.

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What do you like or dislike about the job?

Like
1) That I can come to work and get things done in a manner that is satisfying to me.
2) That being a detail-oriented, analytical person that likes to solve puzzles works as an advantage here.
3) That I have a great deal of freedom within my position. I pick what tasks I do and with whom I pair to some extent. I choose my working hours to some extent and this has been a theme in some of my jobs that I don't always want to work 8-5 but may need some time off here and there for appointments that can't be scheduled outside of that time, darn health system in this province.
4) I work with some great people. Great in the sense that we all get along, there aren't any egos, we all seem to share the values of just getting things done as best as we can and accept that. No one will drop the ball intentionally or be passive-aggressive here.

Dislike
1) Politics. This is just part of the territory but it can still be something that messes with one's head. By politics, I mean that there may be personality clashes to handle or some groups not trusting other groups, etc. In some cases where a new system is being put in, the customization options can be quite varied and not necessarily something that everyone will be happy with the decision.
2) Lack of a career path. Granted this is being worked on but it can be a potential issue to wonder where do I go from here if I want to climb the corporate ladder into bigger positions.

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What skills/abilities are needed/beneficial?

1) Problem solving. There aren't always going to be 12 steps to figure out the problem so one may have to improvise at times.
2) Analytical. How can you break down a few different ways to solve a problem to determine which is best under different scenarios?
3) Abstract thinking. Can you picture abstract data types and how they connect with each other and how systems connect to do various functions within an organization?
4) Logical thinking. Can you trace through what a series of lines of code does without having to spend hours to get there?
5) Knowledge of heuristics for algorithm generation. For example, how to set up a simple application to CRUD some data from a database. Or how to put up a feedback form on a web site easily.

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Are there opportunities for promotion?

Yes, in a few ways. One could go up in management and so my boss used to be a developer and has transitioned that way. Another former developer is now an architect which I see as something that I want to have more information as the title is open to interpretation at most places. One could also transition into being a business analyst or quality analyst for other possible job titles, all with there ups and downs.

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What are the working conditions?

Well, physically it is like what you see in Office Space in terms of there being a bunch of cubicles where we work. At the same time, developing using scrum and agile does add its own twist here as we have our card wall and stories for structuring work that is different than other places I've worked. There are e-mails if I have trouble tickets to investigate and am left to self-manage a lot of the time. I have a pair of machines here as when I started I got a P4 box but now have a Core 2 Duo that is pretty good along with quite a bit of RAM. For tools, we have Visual Studio, Subversion, and Resharper for the main elements as something else to note.

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Where are jobs most likely to be located?

In most major cities where there is a lot of people or where there is a known high-technology congregation. Examples of the latter would be Silcon Valley in the US and Kitchener-Waterloo in Ontario. However, Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Calgary all have some IT development shops to them.

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What are the normal hours of work?

8 am to 5 pm is typical as there is an hour of unpaid time for lunch in that. Some come earlier and some leave later, as well as depending on project deadlines.

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Is the job typically full-time, part-time, seasonal or contract?

Full-time and contract are possible here. I believe most people here go contract at higher levels as they can make more money by being incorporated versus being a full-time employee.

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What is the future outlook for this career?

Quite excellent, IMO. While some work can be outsourced and offshored to other countries, there can be some work where those doing the work shouldn't be that far removed from the end-users, e.g. if one is doing customizations of enterprise software packages like a CRM or ERP then some of the work has to be done locally in terms of knowing what to do and getting that started. I'll grant that this isn't the job that works for everybody but for some it is an awesome job for some of us.

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How stable is employment in this occupation?

I'd say it has average stability. Some companies may go broke or some companies may downsize how many developers are on the books, but this can happen in most other fields where one is employed at a company. Now there can be some firings from oil and gas or banks as they have to scale things down due to the economic climate. There are a number of recruiting firms that can be of help if you want to transition from one job to another while if you are a recent graduate then your school's career services department may help provide contacts to get that first job. I was using a little over a handful of agencies last time I was job hunting.