Some Professional Confusion

[soapyillusion]

Hello everyone,

I've been out of college for a little over a year now with my degree in web development (or so it says at least on my degree) My school wasn't the best at training me and i've spent the better half of this year trying to teach myself everything they didnt. As of right now i am lucky enough to say I have a well paid internship as an analyst in a data-warehouse group of a cable company. However I know this isnt were i'll be forever. I wanna stay in web development. However i notice a great disparity of the job market. Some want .net(c#,vbscript,jscript.net) developers some want basic script developers (javascript,php,and jQuery). All i can do in this mean time is keep on training myself. But I can't decide on what I want to concentrate on. I can only spread myself so thin. Whats the greater trend of jobs in .net or php ? Where am I best at spending most of my time getting better at??

[gjmilne]

if you chase a technology stack you are doomed to always feel as if you are catching up. it is far better to concentrate on honing your skills on what you do today and develop more powerful analytical skills by tackling bigger problems.

many recruiters use buzzword bingo to decide if a candidate is worthy of being put forward to their client. and some of those recruiters have a very low bar on that criterion. employers prefer to hire people who can think. I know, I have hired, and helped hire, several people in the last few years.

we always pick the ones that can articulate their thinking process and have some mastery of a language. we reject the ones that cannot explain what they are attempting to do. for us, it doesn't matter if the interviewee goes down a blind alley never to return, it matter how they repsond to being told they are going the wrong way.

if someone is able to think and articulate their thinking then we tend to want to hire them. we assume that they will pick up whatever technical skills they need form the job with on the job training. we have yet to be proven wrong on this.

btw, if your goal is to get the best paid job going, you are probably better off looking for the juiciest set of buzzwords out there today and immersing yourself in them for the next 3-4 months so you can fake it through an interview. that would not work here because we are quite staid technologically but very few people sail through our 15 line c++ test. even skilled developers screw up. of course, that may say more about C++ than the interviewees. I even give extra points for those that have the presence of mind to identify poor language features.

it all depends what you are passionate about? creating great software or getting the best looking job? these need not be mutually exclusive but nurturing your passion will outlast the superficial trappinsg of apparent success.

a word of advice. try to avoid being overly negative about the educational institution that you attended. it will over over as carping and no one likes a whiner. far better to say "I wish we spend more time of X since I can see how useful that would be".

[soapyillusion]

Getting a good pay is always a plus but im not a stickler for it, I'm still a entry level programer with much to learn. And I know that so expecting a job with a Ferarri worthy salary is more then just slightly unrealistic. It's hard to say what I am more passionate about. I love programming and developing in general. I feel more comfortable working with and know a bit more about scripting languages like PHP. However I'm no stranger to languages like C++, C# and Java. If I got offered a job in any one of these discplines with the promise of good training and ossible promotion I'd jump on the bandwagon no matter what the starting pay. And about the college bashing. I will take that to heart and stop XD.