I just started in the community. I was motivated to participate on this community by a desire for growth and mainly, help me to plan and develop my career. I'm graduated since 2006, and I work as an outsourced Java Developer at a bank in Brazil. For some months ago I have spending lots of time thinking and trying to plan my career, but I didn't have success to accomplish this intend.
I'm not hoping somebody give me a career plan or something like this, I just wanna discuss about that difficulty, have some advises and know about difficult that you find or found out to plan yours careers.
Sorry for my simple (possibly wrong) english.

About me I had job interview few days ago , he asked me what your career plan for the next 5 years
I really did not have any I started to read about how to plan the career but shouldn't I have job first then think of this ?

the right answer to that kind of question:

in 5 years I see myself in same type of position, but with greater responsibility and much more knowledge.

This is the right answer, if that's your plan.
But I wanna something more. My will isn't to stay in the same position in 5, 10 year.. I know that I wanna to working with technological solutions, software development, but I don't want to work as a programmer…
My company doesn’t have a career plan defined. If it had could help me.
So I think we need to have personal objectives, in this way we can decide about our next steps and realize our main objective.
What will you do to get more knowledge? What kind of knowledge do you want?
What will you do to have more responsibility? What is more responsibility?
This is so much generic and abstract isn’t a concrete thing. May this hinder your plans.

no, that is the right response if you want the job. truth has nothing to do with the HR side of job interviews, those are about you, showing the company that you want to do the job you are applying for.

if you say that in 5 years time you want to be a manager, they will feel threatened.

I don’t think so. If I had a company, I would like people with objectives, attitudes. If a person wants to be more than he is actually, he will be more productive, he will work hard to realize his objectives. I won’t feel threatened. This person will add value to my company and could help it to grow. If he grow I will grow too.

The truth is 5 years down the line IT industry will shrink to half of it's current size , but you can still say I would like be an engineering manager / technical staff ,etc .

that is true, if the employee wants to grow professionally, but if the employee is telling you that he wants the job as a foot in the door, in order to try to jump over to a different position, you will not be happy with him

Ok. If the employee said that he will still searching for another job, and my offering isn't the exactly what he wants.. I agree with you! I won't be happy and he neither.
But if he tells me that he have a plan, even if it's to being in another position (like a project manager or engineer for example) and the position that I'm offering could be a great opportunity to him or is part of it's plan.. I would like this employee work with me.. I don't know but.. to me is important to have objectives.. I still thinking about my career plan.

This can help

http://careerplanning.about.com/

[]'s