Hi
I'm Udara Just finished my 4 years Degree in Information Technology. i did a internship at company called Virtusa for a about 9 months. . Involved with the technologies like C# SQL server 2005. During the internship time i struggle in coding stuff i took more time to solve the issues. My team lead blame me some time telling that I'm not good with the fundamentals and coding practice.
I still like to work as software engineer. And like to go that track for 5 years and then like to move in IT lecturing and research and Developments.But due the issues with my internship Im bit confused to go that track coz my teach lead told me that im not good with programming.
I applied for jobs like QA and Software Support Engineer and SE. If i start as a Support Engineer will it be possible for me to go for long career. And if i want to do project management what are the areas i need to improve. Is support engineering is good start for that sort of career.Please help me Thank you.
sainath's Advice on Saturday, January 02, 2010 :
Please consider this as feedback - nobody starts off as an expert, all of us learn along the way. And you have just started off - it would be wrong on your part to base your career decisions on the basis of just 1 feedback. Having said that, please ensure that you really work on your coding skills - particularly on OOAD (Object Oriented Analysis & Design). A good book to gain subject knowledge is OOAD by Grady Booch. You can also visit the sites/blogs of industry experts like Bruce Eckel, Martin Fowler. Try your hand at the MS sample Duwamish application to understand how production class applications are built: (see link below)
msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa288561%28VS.71%29.aspxAll this will give you sufficient knowledge, skills and the much needed self-confidence to start off correctly. Given a choice, I would suggest that you commence your career in development, working in support is also required but this can happen at a later stage. Also, it is too early to think about project management, etc - for this you should atleast be in a Team Lead position where you will finally be able to evaluate where you would like your career to head.
"Every experience, successful and unsuccessful,offers a valuable opportunity to learn a good lesson."
- Al Siebert
Regards,
Sainath Sherigar,
www.ugain.info
Udararaj said on Friday, January 08, 2010
Thank you very much for your advices.Can please explain bit about role of a support Engineer and the career of a support engineer.
sainath's Advice on Monday, January 11, 2010 :
Hi,
A support engineer's role can be quite challenging, but this mainly depends on the kind of project you end up supporting. If it's a big project and is operationally critical for the organization, you will end up doing the following activities:
- You will learn crisis management - a lot of time you will be required to provide workarounds quickly and resolve the actual problem later when you have time. This will require quick thinking, good understanding of the system you are supporting, taking decisions under pressure, taking calculated risks,etc
- You will also be called to work on change and module enhancement work requests
- If the project has an associated DR-BCP (Disaster Recovery - Backup Continuity Plan) you will be required to plan and implement the annual DR drill which is quite interesting
- Database performance tuning - although this is traditionally a DBAs job, it is the support engineer who first detects this problem. - if you are keen to learn you should not hesitate to go ahead and understand performance and query tuning in detail ( a subject in itself)
The career path progress is as below:
Software Engineer --> Senior Software Engineer --> Team / Project Lead --> Technical Manager / Operations Manager ( known by different names, in this role basically you will be allocated a portfolio of projects and you need to handle the entire portfolio using the services of the team reporting to you)
Contrary to belief, the support role is challenging and can be quite difficult. Moreover,support team is responsible for the image of IT in front of the end business users and cannot afford to slacken.
Regards,
Sainath Sherigar,
www.ugain.info