In a nutshell, Iâll tell you how things are in the market, weâll talk about skills that are in demand, about learning opportunities, weâll discuss how to write a resume and what to say in interviews. We will separately discuss the expectations of employers. I will also talk about some of the tricks of building a career in IT.
So let's go!
Market situation
Now in the market there is a total shortage of personnel, there are really not enough specialists, so you can go anywhere if you wish. The IT market is growing rapidly, now even at first glance non-development companies are positioning themselves as IT companies. For example, five years ago it was hard to believe that pizzerias and hardware stores would take an active position in the IT field. DoDo pizza and Leroy Merlin hello!
If you decide to devote your life to work in technology companies, I recommend that you first of all pay attention to large players in the market - these are large companies. They, as a rule, have well-organized processes, but they have a lot of legacy. Legacy, in my opinion, is not always bad. Working with the old code, you can figure out how the system is arranged internally and communicate with more experienced colleagues.
It also makes sense to look towards startups. Yes, sometimes there are no built processes at all, but you can do a lot of things from scratch, work on such tasks as developing the architecture of the system core or write an implementation of your first singleton. Yes, and they pay in startups a little more, because the risks are greater.
I do not recommend starting your work with outsourcing, as IT companies are now not only about development, but also about teamwork. Outsourcing projects make it harder to learn competent communication due to natural limitations. I think it makes sense to work for several years in the office, form as a developer, and after that go outsource if the office is completely unbearable. Buy a ticket and go to Bali!
I note that large companies are not homogeneous, the same Mail.ru differs from project to project. At the same time, it is much easier to enter large projects at the initial stages of a career, went as an intern - made a career there. It is difficult to get there as a technical director or CIO due to the fact that you will most likely be the bearer of a different corporate culture, and you will almost certainly develop the habit of working and making decisions independently, without looking at someone from above.
Let's talk a little about choosing a programming language. The choice of languages ââis now very large, you can find something to your liking. In my opinion, we certainly will not be able to do without a server side, no matter what project we are engaged in. Backend developers will always be in demand.
Naturally, mobile development is developing by leaps and bounds, there are more and more mobile devices and with it more and more mobile applications. As you know, the number of users of desktop applications is decreasing, while mobile applications are growing.
What is still fashionable now? Of course, this Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Data Science - is very popular and in demand. The Internet of things gives us a whole new industry with many unresolved and urgent problems, for example, problems with the security of the Internet of things devices are very relevant and require resources to solve them.
Be sure to pay attention to Java, this programming language does not lose its leading position.
Where is the industry as a whole developing in terms of development? I believe that the world is moving towards international and distributed teams. Cool outsourcers will work remotely for foreign offices for a salary in dollars. Yes, of course, you need to be able to prepare remote teams, and there you canât do without some difficulties, but the future lies in this direction.
In addition, those who can quickly retrain will always be in demand. The most coveted shots in the same startups are multi-skill employees. I do not drown for full stack, it is enough to have more than one specialization. This will increase your market demand.
Required Skills
We turn to the skills that are now most in demand.
My item number zero is English. I recommend now to do the leveling of your English level. This is a direct masthead! Sooner or later you will reach the level of career development when the lack of English will slow you down. After all, English is the de facto standard in the IT industry.
While learning, start to work slowly. But I urge you not to forget that a job chosen as a part-time job can become a life-long affair. For example, I have three best friends - everyone is doing what they started to do at the institute for part-time work. Try to gain experience in a real project. Probably, you can learn to do the right thing yourself, but in a team it will be easier. Man is a social being.
Think about your pet projects - this is a great opportunity to show yourself. Do something for yourself, try to implement something, put the results in open source so that the future employer can evaluate your level and progress. The implementation of the pet project will show you from the most profitable side, because it shows that you yourself were able to determine the user's pain, choose a solution and bring it to the production. This is a valuable quality for the developer.
If the fantasy does not work very well, then you can connect to any open source project, they always need help, they always need fresh blood, and the backlog has a million tasks.
Get yourself an account on github - this is a direct must have, almost all employers look there when looking for employees. And there you can write not only code, but also some project ideas, for example. This will allow you to regularly contribute to certain projects. At interviews, they are now surely asking where and when was the last time they smuggled in?
For example, when working on extensions for Mozilla Firefox, I managed to do another project together with Ken Sanders, a designer from the USA, when we together created a version of the Firefox skin for visually impaired users, or to get to know a whole crowd of translators, starting from German and ending with which - for example, in the Iranian language. It was a great experience!
Be sure to constantly learn something new in your specialty. Do not forget to constantly learn, this applies not only to programming, follow the development of technologies with which you work. To do this, there are blogs, chatrooms, the entire Internet is now to help! Be sure to keep your finger on the pulse, âtouch the pensâ with new programming languages. You can write your whole life in one language, but the world does not stand still. After all, if you look at how we programmed 10 years ago and what tools we used, it will become clear that IT is developing very rapidly!
I also recommend that you turn your attention to related technologies: if you are a backend developer - be a little aware of the front, if you are cutting interfaces - it would be nice to understand a little in design, it would be nice to orient yourself in project management and so on.
Develop communication skills: learn to communicate with people not only with IT employees, but also with related departments. Small talks are our everything, although not very accepted in Russia. Complete rhetoric courses - speak clearly and convince is a good skill. Read a few books on negotiation, one day they will pay off many times. For example, âNo. The Best Negotiation Strategy âby Jim Camp orâ You Can Agree on Everything âby Gavin Kennedy.
It may sound wild for an IT employee, but it makes sense to do a personal brand, you need to do it slowly and systematically. Start with a blog - write about work and about yourself. A blog should answer two questions: firstly, it should show that you are a professional in your field, and secondly, that you are an adequate person. Therefore, I recommend writing something personal both about work and about yourself. To create accounts in various social networks is a good idea. In order to make it easier to keep them, for each social network, you can determine the topic, for example, I write on LinkedIn only about work, on Facebook - about myself and about work, on Instagram - only about myself, on Twitter I write about books I read.
Engage in upgrading your dating network even when you are working and it seems like you donât need to develop the network. As practice shows, a network is needed when it begins to storm, and at this point it should already be developed and operational.
In order to write well, you need to write more, a media plan will help. It will allow you to determine the topic of the blog and fix the frequency of publications. Start writing according to plan - writing will become easier.
And a few words about personal effectiveness: read one or two books on time management, learn how to plan your day. Classic - âGetting Things Doneâ by David Allen. This will allow to maintain the so-called livetime balance, because its failure to comply sooner or later will lead to burnout.
Learning opportunities
Iâve been in IT for almost 20 years, but every day I still find something new for myself, some new growth points, and it's cool! In general, working in IT you need to learn to constantly learn, without this in any way. Naturally, you need to start with self-learning - this is very important, this will allow you to develop and improve existing skills, and acquire new skills.
Chatrooms are a storehouse of knowledge, and IT guys are not always open guys, but in any chat room there is always someone who can help. Who helped once - help again, remember this. Habra is also a very valuable source of information, it makes sense to subscribe to the blogs of the main players in the market - Yandex, Mail.ru, Badu, Avito, Sberbank, Raffeisen Bank, Alfabank and others. And books provide food for the mind. Develop a habit of reading constantly. But if you read a lot, then confusion will begin in your head, so try to make some notes on what you read, either in the diary format or in the blog format. To your taste, in general. This will allow you to find the right book after a few years. Without records, all information will eventually turn into a mess, or even be erased from memory.
Read foreign sources, as almost everything new with us is what they had new several years ago. Sad, but true. Plus, it will help to train the English language, which I spoke about earlier. And it makes sense to read literature on related fields at least on a trial basis. Marketing, sales, design, storytelling, networking, etc. The more baggage of unused knowledge, the wider the view on problems - it will always be useful.
If possible, then try to find a mentor at work, as a rule, good specialists do not mind sharing knowledge or suggesting something. In general, listen to the advice of more experienced colleagues, since almost all the problems that you will encounter have already been solved by someone. And I note that it can be useful for developers to sit on the first line of support - to chat with users. An invaluable experience, and after that you start looking at the system from a completely different perspective.
I recommend attending conferences once or twice a year: firstly, it is networking, secondly, you will be aware of new trends, thirdly, it is an opportunity to spy on who and how to solve pressing problems. But the most important thing is the opportunity to personally meet and chat with speakers. A sufficiently large selection of topics at the conferences of Oleg Bunin. Prices, however, bite. DevConf, HighLoad, Mobius Mobile is held a couple of times a year.
Ticket prices are inadequate right now, so the easiest way to get into the konf is to become a speaker yourself! Laihak! Not only will admission be free, there will also be the opportunity to talk behind the scenes with recognized experts and hang out in informal settings.
As a rule, the organizers always have a shortage of speakers, so applications can be submitted in a bundle, this is normal practice. Some topic sooner or later will be accepted, maybe not the first time, but they will definitely be accepted. Submit your applications as early as possible - this will allow more time for coordination with the program committee. The program committee members are mostly good people and they will not advise bad things. Pay attention to your softskills when speaking, you will âtalkâ normally - they will call all the conferences, no longer wondering what topic you have chosen.
Visit mitaps, they are free, they are waiting for young people there with open arms. This is an opportunity to hang out, learn something new, look into the office of the company you are interested in. Avito arranges very good meetings, and Raffeisen Bank holds both technical meetings and project management meetings - it makes sense to visit for general development.
Track and take part in hackathons. This is a great opportunity to work on interesting tasks in the shortest possible time. A concentrate of IT business movement is networking, new knowledge, and teamwork. For example, the hackathon Hack.moscow was recently held in Moscow.
Be sure to pay attention to the training programs of Yandex, Mail.ru, GeekBrains and other companies. Successful completion of training if it does not guarantee entry into a large company, but it definitely gives a serious advantage. For example, Yandex Academy or the MADE Academy of Big Data Mail.ru, hh.ru has a free school of programmers who prepares full-stack developers.
Take good practice to complete one or two courses a year, and choose courses so that they develop and deepen your skills.
How to create a resume
Now let's talk a little bit about compiling a resume. It makes sense to start by defining your killer features. To get started, take the A4 page, fold it in half: write on one side what you can, on the other - what you want. And cross out everything except one or two points, starting with the least significant. Ideally, both points will remain the same points - this is your killer features, you will be bought for them in the market. This is where you are the ultimate professional.
Everything around the killer feature should be built - a resume, a story about yourself, all questions asked at the interview should be reduced to these features. Everything else is secondary. When reading a resume, HR must understand exactly what you want to become and what to do.
If you have diverse experience and several possible development paths, then it makes sense to write several resumes for different types of vacancies.
What exactly is not worth doing? For example:
- Do not write down your hobbies in detail in the resume, âStress-resistant, multitasking, etc.â also makes sense to remove from the resume, this is of no interest to anyone.
- Long-term freelance resumes will most likely cause an employer negative reaction if a person is sought into the office for a full day.
- Similarly with parallel work in several companies. This is usually perceived in such a way that a person works diligently for one employer, and for the other - after the sleeves. Perhaps this is not so, but the opinion is likely to be just that.
- Non-core experience is best removed from the resume, as he has nothing to do with killer features.
- Do not write everything in a row, with which you had to work, in a resume, at the beginning of your career it is a great temptation to do this. Remember your killer features.
- Putting links to obtained certificates in your resume is a good idea, but do not abuse it. If you have one or two âtagsâ confirming the most key skills, thatâs good. If you have the whole wall in certificates, then the question arises, "but does this guy do anything else besides studying?"
And a few general "captain" tips
- The summary should not exceed two pages. "TL; DR "is not welcome here.
- Write wisely, read the resume, show it to several friends. With prolonged work on the text, my eyes become blurred, you can skip obvious errors
- A good photo in the resume is required.
So, you have prepared and "combed" the resume, then you need to place it.
Now I see two main channels for posting resumes. First, you can create a profile on hh.ru, LinkedIn, and other job search sites. Some believe that hh.ru is not the same, but the rumors about his death are too exaggerated. And LinkedIn feels great despite being blocked.
And Facebook is now actively used to search for frames. The only moment: you should not turn the profile into a detailed resume, just indicate the place of work and position.
In addition, as an option, you can send a resume to all key players, for example, Yandex, Mail, Avito, Raiffeisen, Tinkoff, Alfa Bank. It makes sense to just go for an interview in such companies - this is a good experience.
Job interviews
So, a resume has been posted, which means that sooner or later they will start inviting you for interviews. I recommend attending all interviews in a row at the beginning, even if the company is not very pleasant. The fact is that in order to get an interview in a dream company, you need to be able to get interviews, and this requires practice. Experience will allow you not to be nervous, a dozen or two interviews will help you understand what questions are being asked, learn not to get lost and speak the answers to frequently asked questions.
Remember that a good impromptu is a rehearsed impromptu, so be sure to rehearse a story about yourself and answers to questions that you may ask at the interview.
In a self-presentation, tell us about your achievements, what you did, what you achieved, with whom you worked. âI-I-Iâ at this stage, no âweâ. Your pet projects are very useful here. Completed term papers and dissertations that fall on the topic of your future employment - too. Do not be shy, now is the time to fight the "impostor syndrome".
Be sure to remember the questions you are asked. This will allow them to systematize, prepare and rehearse the answers to these questions. Their list will be replenished as you go through interviews.
Feel free to request feedback. This applies to both the technical and the general part of the interview. If you didnât answer any of the questions asked, then in the end do not hesitate to find out which answer was correct. Good guys will always explain, tell, tell you - providing feedback very well characterizes the company. Ask HR for advice on how to improve both in the resume and in terms of self-presentation.
And what do they say? âRepetition is the mother of learning!â Feel free to go to the same company several times after a while. What did not work out the first time does not mean that it does not work out the second time. Time will pass, you will grow up as a specialist, and repeated interest in the company will only emphasize your real interest in this work.
By the way, do not be afraid to return to previous jobs. Sometimes it happens. The returned employee is usually very valuable, as familiar with the system and subject area. His entry into the workflow can be said to be lightning fast!
And at the end of the topic of interviews, a remark about punctuality: come to meetings on time, although it sounds somewhat captainly, they still pay attention to it. But remember that worse than those who are late for meetings, only those who arrive in advance.
Employer Expectations
Letâs talk about what the employer expects of us.
First, of course, this is an active approach to tasks. Cheer for the task you are fulfilling: done, not only change its status in the task setting system, but also ping your neighbors, for example, the project manager, that the bullet has flown out of you, or the tester, that itâs time for him to take on his part. It is very important. Any employer wants to see a team member - active, outgoing, proactive, not very greyhound, preferably for market value.
And secondly, the employer expects us to focus on the result, that is, understanding that the result is most important. Therefore, now learn to finish the job. By the way, a diploma about the tower is a good sign that you know about it.
And by the way, it makes sense to get a diploma of higher education from the reasons that a diploma will help in obtaining a work visa if you have ideas about relokate, but cool mathematics is not needed everywhere.
Always work for the result, not the process. As they like to say âwe donât pay fatigueâ, if the task did not reach the battle, then for the company this is only an expense. Although, in fairness, I note that without a good process there will not be a good result. I recommend first to show that you can complete tasks precisely and on time, this is especially important on a trial period, and only then you can express your opinion more actively.
What else to tell? Understanding Scrum and Edge is requested in four out of five interviews. It makes sense to start with The Scrum Guide, it is very short - it describes what needs to be done. And then read âScrum. The revolutionary project management method âby Jeff Sutherland, he will talk about why you need to do this.
Find and maintain a balance between âI'll figure it out myself / ask a colleagueâ. It is clear that constantly distracting colleagues is bad, but there is another extreme, when a beginner spends several days trying to figure out what could be solved in 15 minutes by talking with a colleague. It is very important to find a âmiddle groundâ in this matter.
An adequate response to criticism and the ability to provide high-quality feedback to colleagues is always welcomed, because everyone knows that you first need to note what you liked, then to identify possible growth points. Otherwise, it does not work.
Although they say that the new programmer is bad, who in the first six months will not offer to rewrite the whole system, you should not try to teach the new team how to work correctly in your opinion. Just keep in mind that without you, they somehow worked and managed here before, because here, too, fools do not work. Just admit this thought, it is helpful.
Career
And in conclusion, I want to outline a few career development hints.
It is always necessary to think about the future, as a good hockey player thinks not about where the puck is now, but about where it will be in a couple of moments. The bottom line is that you donât hesitate to fantasize about new technologies and approaches, fit into all sorts of new experimental things. Do not be afraid to spend time on this. After all, this is not done in order to check "Well, now I know this Flutter", but in order to at least a little bit imagine where your specialization will be in a couple of years and be ready for it.
If you ask yourself a thought and think about what tools and tools we used 5-10 years ago and compare with the current ones, it becomes obvious how rapidly and rapidly the IT world is developing, and you need to keep up with it.
Stay informed and do not miss the opportunity: HR is your faithful friend, comrade and brother, be friends with them. Do not miss the opportunity of career growth - communicate with HRs even if you are not looking for work now. Today you are not looking - tomorrow the opposite. And itâs always useful to keep abreast of the situation on the market, this can be done by subscribing to channels with vacancies - it is useful to keep a finger on the pulse of the market.
Change work on time - do not sit for long in one place, but also do not jump from place to place. Go away at the peak of success. Do not wait when it becomes bad at your current place of work - did interesting things, achieved your goals - move on. Sitting in one place for a long enough time you can get paid more than the market, but this will inhibit the ability to change jobs, which in turn will slow down your development. Remember that âthe world is smallâ - keep the old contacts of your colleagues, you will intersect with them regularly.
And a few words about the role of team leader. Do not give up this role at the beginning of a career. Having programmed for five years, a career will surely take you to this milestone. Timlids are softskills, which means it makes sense to deal with them now.
Attend conferences and meetings, see how pros behave - and simply mirror their behavior. You canât mirror what youâve never seen, right?
If you become a team leader, you must definitely pump up your public activity, because this allows you to create not only your personal image, but also the image of the company. Now it is very in demand, modesty is not an honor.
In the words of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, âLearn, study and study againâ! Be sure to pump up management skills, self-management and communication skills.
Develop a business orientation, project thinking, for example, I highly recommend the book by Maxim Kotkin âAnd nerds do businessâ - it will give an approximate idea of ââhow medium business works in Russia. Read more, read more about technology, about business, about working with people, all this will come in handy anyway.
In fact, money is a renewable resource, but time is not. You are at the very beginning of your career, and you have time - this is the main trump card! Dare, and everything will turn out!