Posted: 8/28/2007 4:11:30 PM EDT
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A close friend of mine who has worked IT for several years quit his job to take courses in: Visual Basic, Microsoft .net framework 2.0 application development foundation, Microsoft .net framework 2.0 web based client development, and Designing and developing web apps with Microsoft .net framework. He's going to be getting his MCTS and MCPD from these courses. (Forgive me if I fucked any of that up, I have no idea what any of it means except it involves learning the Visual Basic language to build web pages.) Now although he has worked IT, he has no programming experience whatsoever. He is of the belief that he can use this certification to get a high-paying job immediately---like $80K a year; and I, not knowing shit about the subject, was wondering if you guys know if he will be able to do this or if most companies would require experience before paying him that much. He's bought completely into the line the school has told him about how easy it will be to get a job with this certification, and I want to make sure he's not being conned. Thanks in advance for any info you can give. |
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Experience > all the acronyms you can list I doubt he will get near that kind of money to begin with. Due to the influx of cheap contractors from India etc programmers are mostly a commodity now. I get calls from staffing companies that now try to offer $60/hr including expenses whereas a few years ago it was easily over $100 + expenses. Of course they are still charging the end company $210/hr but they dont give a rats arse. I was a programmer origianally and the market is now flooded with them so I switched several years ago to being a PeopleSoft developer instead. |
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He may get that much because his prior experience is in a related field, if not the actual field. He'll find himself working 80 hours a week or finding a new job in short order though if he takes such a position; companies paying that kind of money expect results, however you get them. They'll expect him to be a very fast learner and able to come up with stuff on the job. He'd best write some things in his spare time that don't come from a textbook or course. If he can't write something "simple" like say, a clone of the windows built-in calculator, he should be very careful what job he decides to take. If he's already in IT, and a smart cookie, tell him to start prepping for the CCIE (whatever it's called now) and take that instead. Instant mega-bump to the salary for the field he's already in. It does (or did) have overan 80% failure rate however. |
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He may be able to get an ENTRY LEVEL job without much problem, but not for anywhere near $80K. You need years of experience to make that much, even in an expensive area like where I live and work. (I've been a sysadmin and systems integrator without interruption for about 13 years now, and I don't make quite that much now. I did at my last gig.) |
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If he has a couple years of experiance with .NET and knows how to program in C# then yes he could get an $80k a year job before he blinked. A certificate with no exeriance will not get him anywhere he wants to go. He might find a company foolish enough to hire based on degrees but still he will start as an entry level programmer, $40k to $50k, since he has no exerpiance. I he has no experiance then he is screwed. It will be very unlikely that he will pass the exams required for the certificates. I recently took an exam and without extensive experiance there would have been no way I would have passed. If he wants to go down this path then he MUST focus on C#. That is where the money is and that is where the jobs are. VB.Net programmers still make good money but pretty much every programmer is a VB.Net programmer. We are highering where I work. If he has any experiance programming he can skip the certs and start with us. He wouldn't be making more than $55k though. |
I do both for a living (configure ciscos, write applications). They aren't the same, but they're more related than say burger flipper is to either one. All programmers, especially network application programmers, should be sysadmins for a few years first, so they know just what badly written programs can do to networks and server farms. |
| Read what the OP said. His friend has NO programming experience and quit his job to take courses in it. So, when he is done with courses, he has ZERO experience as far as a recruiter is concerned. He will get an entry level job working shit hours for shit money. |
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I would say that without a strong math background his chances are slim. You don't become a 80K a year programmer by taking a few classes. There is a reason why computer science classes are so math intensive. I'm a 80,000 a year IT guy managing unix/linux labs for a .gov contractor (working on that ccie mentioned), so maybe he should keep in mind that it's a pretty good career track. |
And forget contracting as most of them will go over your resume with a fine tooth comb as they can pick from a huge selection of candidates that have lots of experience, hence the downward pressure on rates. |
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First you gotta find out who uses Visual Basic. I've been in the Engineering/Scientific are of Software developement for 18 years and I've never seen/heard of that language as a requirment. Even when I spent a little time in the 'business' software commnuity I don't recall Basic being used. Basic is a good language to start learning with, to get some of the concepts down. But for development? In fields where they are going to pay you big bucks? Sorry no way. |
I respectfully submit I have more experience than you in this field, both in years on the job and diversity of companies worked for. That's a total guess, but I think it's a correct one, considering how wrong you are. :) My second programming job, after just two years experience and no degrees or certifications, was in 1997. I was making over $100,000/yr at that job. Experience trumps MOST, not all. If the guy is extremely adaptable and intelligent, and able to think on his feet, he can get the kind of salary he's after. He'll have to hunker down and really learn on the job, but it's far from impossible. |
Not correct. I was on a project a few years ago for the Fairfax Co. VA dept. of environmental protection where the RFP mandated the primary user interface application be written in VB. It's more prevalent than you may think, as much as you (and even I) detest the language. |
I agree. Visual Basic was/is a standard programming language used everywhere. Guess what every website you visit that has pages that end in .asp, use Visual Basic. VB.Net is just as common. Since many people know VB there are some similarities between VB and VB.NET, although it is usually best to forget them. C# is the new language that Microsoft stole/created for the .NET platform and that is where the high demand is. All .NET languages are actually very similar, learning the framework and how to use it is more important than the language. But if the OP's friend is taking the classes he needs to jump right into C# and start there. |
One case for a local government does not make an industry. Go throught the pages of CE Weekly and see how many listings there are for 'Visual Basic' programmers. Darn few - nothing I'd try to base a career off of. I've been on the hiring end of things - we never had requirments for anyone with 'Visual Basic' skills. Not saying such requirements don't exist - but they are not common. |
Let's see. I started programming back in the 80's, I now earn over $200k a year as a developer and I have hired and fired many programming resources over the last few years. Most are not worth a damn straight out of school, they hinder a project rather than help it. The Indian Mafia (from the continent of India) like to staff projects with several experienced people and then pad it with no good, lazy ass, no skill, fillers that they get to charge out at the full rate and the few skilled ones pick up the slack. I have seen this many, many times in the last few years. You can get a contractor programmer by advertising on Dice and get them for as little as $35/hr. I have much more I can write on this subject but it's a waste of time. I work this business, and know what goes on in the contracting as well as full-time salaried position environments: it's my job to know this business or I wouldn't make any money. So, i respectfully submit that I am not wrong and a guy with no experience will be a speck in the multitude of programmers available in the market. ETA; 1997 is by no means equal to 2007 in terms of the job market, candidate pool, etc for programming positions so your analogy to what happened to you a decade ago is invalid. |
Most will require a verifiable experience.... In our company, we have developed a program to weed out the "degree only" applicants, we simply require them to write a program like an IPv4/IPv6 routing software that is equal, if not better than a commercial product, among other things. Your bud needs to do some opensource stuff (Unix, etc.) besides the MS stuff. Good luck. 
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sheese.. i need to send you may resume... i been programmin since the 80s myself, and have done lots and lots of cool things... and i make a good salary, and the company supplies me with lots of goodies and i can work outta the house.... and have done everthing except manage (dont wanna) coding in a bunch of languages, performance tuning sytems and dbs, capacity planning, build systems, on and on.. but 200,000k? in GA? and to the guy.. depending on where he's at, expect 40 to 50k to start unless he is super good and sellin himself .. |
My software group of 42 degreed developers with a very successful revenue and profitability growth record and 82% return client track record says you are incorrect. |
| I live in GA, travel to where the projects are. I work for myself and I refuse to be undercut by the Indian Mafia so I charge what I believe I am worth. When I worked at PeopleSoft as a senior CRM developer they billed me out to their clients at over $200/hr. I dont see why I'm worth any less because I work for myself. I may have to go periods without work as they can go get 5 people from India for the same price...you know what though? They usually end up calling me to fix the problems caused by these hacks due to the activities noted in my post. |
Eh I dont agree with that. You cant really say that everyone graduating with their CS are going to make good programmers. I've seen all sorts of asshats that have their bachelors or masters. Hell I've seen someone with their masters in computer science ask me how to open a sql file. I've seen people with MBA's hunt n peck, ugh it goes on and on. Anyway back to the OP, those microsoft certs arent worth the paper they're printed on. Completely worthless. Have him go to a regular school and get a co op job somewhere making 15 or so an hour and work his way through college or just build himself up with work experience. |
That is what a well-balanced candidate interview process and background screening process is for. Developers that work in my group are interviewed by a minimum of three developers and two supervisors - often more. If they aren't suitably impressed by the end of that process - no offer will be forthcoming. A good team doesn't throw new developers to the wolves either. Everyone gets a mentor that is different from their supervisor. There are 3 month and 6 month performance reviews (no salary adjustment) to guide their progress, identify development needs and set them on the path to success. Promotion is from within and is made based upon demonstrated merit, accomplishment, team work and professional growth. I motivate the teams with on the spot cash bonuses for special accomplishment and quarterly larger bonuses for exceptional project performance. I give them everything they need to succeed and their boss holds them to a very high level of expected performance. Their is a strong sense of positive professional rivalry between developers. They get free Team lunches every other Friday where two of them give Brown Bag lectures. They are a very happy Team that gets to pick their own co-workers. |
Fair enough, I haven't been in the market as long as you have, unless the 80s thing is going back into hobbiest days; if that's the case, I have been doing it just as long. I stand by my statement that your "doom and gloom" is wrong however. "As little as $35/hr" is over 70k/yr if it's steady work, which is quite a bit more than the guy is making now. What happened in '97 wasn't an isolated incident, and I didn't say everyone could go that same road then or now; I very carefully qualified what type of person it would take, but if the OPs friend is such a person, than he can certainly do something similar in the market today. Despite what everyone is saying about it being a "buyers market" there is no shortage of jobs in the field. For my part, I'm a high school drop out with a GED. I never went to college. I hold zero technical degrees from MS or anyone else. I came straight into the market with no experience at all, no internships, nothing; just a few things I'd written on my own, some recommendations by friends, and a brain. I have no doubt that I could pull the same sort of stunt in the market today because certs, degrees, and even experience all play second fiddle to attitude and adaptability. I may not get hired by your company, but I have worked for enough of them to know this is true. Citibank. Weyerhauser. Northrop Grumman. AT&T. I've worked for all of them and not once did I meet the "minimum requirements" listed for the position. |
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TO answer the OP's original question: First and foremost - experience trumps all degrees, certifications, etc. I would always hire the guy who has been programming for +10 years (who may not have ANY kind of cert or degrees) over the recent college grad...UNLESS the college grad had some hella good internships while he was in school. As for VB - he better not go out into the real world and think that some Microsoft language and certifications will automatically make him a hot commodity.  The best programmers know the best OOP languages - if you don't know Java and C++/C# - I automatically won't hire you. If you know those plus some other languages (i.e. Python, Perl, PHP, SQL, HTML, VB, BASIC , FORTRAN, COBOL) then that is good to me.Also, good programmers can do everything in vi . If you NEED an IDE like Eclipse to program, I won't hire you either.Knowledge of *nix systems or older 'command prompt'/non-GUI operating systems (like DOS  ) is good.Programming is a BITCH though. I will say that right now. If you don't understand logic and if you don't understand how to translate what you're thinking into something the computer can understand...it's a bitch. And that's not even getting into advanced concepts like polymorphism, inheritance, encapsulation, recursion, etc. Really, it's more about problem solving. Even if you know the language - if you can't problem solve then you're SOL. Part of programming is figuring out how to 'use' the language to do what you want to do. If you can't think abstractly...well...  I guess you could make it as a code monkeyBut I will say right now - if he's going to ITT Tech to become a 'software engineer' then he's going to be in a world of hurt when he hits the real world .My advice - learn a programming language - an older established one - something like the original C. Then learn an OOP like Java or C++. And learn how to use *nix while you're at it. THEN, go to school - work towards a CS degree and learn all about data structures, algorithms, interfaces, etc. And take some communications classes Programmers are notorious for their people skillsIt's not difficult work once you understand it...but you MUST understand it - you must know math, you must understand how computers actually....compute - how they 'see' data vs how you see data and how they interface and compile and use memory, etc. And beyond that - you have to know an OOP language and know how to use *nix.
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Most jobs that have MS in the title don't pay worth a shit. Oh sure w/experience there are a few. As a sr linux admin my rates are far higher than the same in the MS arena. MS certs aren't worth the cost, a zillion people have the certs and can't do squat, everyone knows it. 10 years ago, my starting pay for a java programmer w/3 years exp was $55/hr. Microsoft people would send in their CVs clammoring for a job. WTF? Most employers want everything, degree and experience. With both or the latter, you don't have to settle, plenty of employers are willing to pay. With only the former - forget it. Finally the market in which you search has plenty to do with rates. Many of the best employers that are interested in results, will pay better and hire no matter where an employee lives. If you have to show up in the office 5 days a week, it could be a red flag for many reasons, money being one, micro management being another, culture, the list goes on. With just paper you have to take it. Only experience will tell you that. |