I need some career advice from senior IT guys here.

ysun062

I have about 3 years experience in IT field as an anlyast programmer.
I did one year uni-basic programming and two years java programming (hibernate, Junit, maven, java swing,  jini services, and a little bit on Spring DI and spring MVC)

I also have self-learned some Struts 2, Axis 2 web service stuff.

Here is the problem, currently I have just started my 3rd job, its a consultant role, but its very non-technical, or it will not build my technical skills (in terms of java/j2ee/web app technical stuff).

I really want to move into Enterprise level web app (based in java technologies), what should I do ? this current consultant role will not give me those experience, although it does improve my soft skills, i.e. communication, people skills, make something up with nothing, bullshiting etc.

Do you guys think I can try applying for some intermediate level J2EE roles ? or I need more experience before I can get in ? I expect a salary range between (65 to 75k)

since

我不比你经验多， 3年半而已。 我的看法呢， 在career的前几年，不要太focus在一点上， 你现在有点偏consultant， 可能几年后看并不是坏事。 我有一些比较senior的，做得很成功朋友， 我看他们career的前几年往往做得都很杂， 他们也不知道做得这些东西里头那个就是他们当时一定想做的。 "you just need to connect the dots". 有一天你无意获得的skill往往会给你带来意想不到的好处。 我比较focus 在j2ee之一块。 我感觉我对整个架构的big picture 比较掌握了。 现在我的问题是， 能不能用最不technical的语言准确表达我的意思呢？ 做得都是in-house software dev, resource和思考的机会多一些， 但是面向客户的机会就少了。 也不一定就是个好事。 我的计划跟你一样，走技术路线， 作architechare. 但我绝对不会介意在career的前几年多尝试一些东西。 才工作3年，有的是机会在更正你career path上的小小detour.

ihouse.co.nz

First of all I'm not a Java guy. I'm a Microsoft developer so I'm not sure about the salary range for an intermediate Java role.

If it's 3 years of commercial experience that you have then yes of course you can apply for an intermediate role.

As "since" have mentioned, it's not all bad to have the opportunities to learn people skills. When you work for few more years and try to move up to the next level, you will find people skill is very important especially when you are facing the clients.

Perhaps you can talk to your manager than you want to do some technical works as well, so you can spend 50% of your time doing consultant works and 50% on programming.

ybbest

Go to see some good agent and have a chat with them.You might receive some pretty good advice.

ysun062

原帖由 since 于 2009-9-18 17:30 发表
我不比你经验多， 3年半而已。 我的看法呢， 在career的前几年，不要太focus在一点上， 你现在有点偏consultant， 可能几年后看并不是坏事。 我有一些比较senior的，做得很成功朋友， 我看他们career的前几年往往做得 ...

thanks for the feedback, i think its really a trade-off between technical oriented and business oriented, not many people can focus on both.

I do think for me, technical area in the early career is critical, in the end, not many chinese people make it to the higher management level in NZ, we do not have advantage in business oriented role like project manager, program management etc.

I will see how it goes, i've only started this consultant role for 3 month, and i do find it very difficult to adapt to a business oriented role, because there is alot of "grey" areas when it comes to non-technical IT consultancy project, perhaps i was too comfortable to work as a  developer in the past.

By the way, how did you get started in J2EE ?did you learn most of the J2EE skills from work ?  you've mentioned that you are getting a full picture of the J2EE technology, what are the skills set required ? like do you start from learning front end skills like JSP, MVC framework like Struts, then move to backend stuff like EJB, EJB container like websphere, weblogic.

newmike

My suggestion is to make sure your goal is most important for career dev or anything else.
If you are sure you want to go with tech path, esp, as java developer, your current job is not good. As the interviews I joined, I was been asked how many years of your java experience, how much percentage of your work is development, and java dev,  how much percentage of your dev work by using this framework, such as Spring or whatever framework they expect. So think about how you can answer these questions will help you to refine your career planning.