Post on 29-Jan-2018
About Me• 1998 - 2000 Undergraduate @ Ford Motor Company
• 2001 Graduated (Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence)
• 2001 - 2002 Web Engineer @ Common Purpose
• 2002 - 2004 Analyst Developer @ Ford Motor Company
• 2004 - 2005 Java / Web Developer @ Touch Clarity
• 2005 Business Engineer @ Credit card company
• 2006 - 2008 Principal Consultant @ Evolution / Detica
• 2008 Java Developer @ well known media firm
• 2009 - 2012 Java Developer @ LMAX Financial Exchange
• 2011 Principal Consultant @ ThoughtWorks
• 2012 - 2014 Java Developer / Evangelist @ MongoDB Inc
• 2015… Developer Advocate @ JetBrains
Manage Your Career
• Requirements: What do you want?
• Implementation: How do you get it?
• Iterate: What’s next?
• Insert Picture/Table/Chart Here (but if picture doesn’t have a background, be sure to remove gray background, border, and shadow!)
Developer Seeks Next Step
5 years Java experience
JSP, Servlets, HTML, JavaScript
Usability & User Experience
Some exposure to “Agile”
Some team leading
Manufacturing, Education, Ad Serving
Internal Visibility
• High visibility project
• In house extra-curricular activities
• Brown bags/internal user groups
• Update the wiki
• Introduce/manage a process/tech
• The Pub
External Visibility
• Work for a well known company
• Publicly visible projects
• StackOverflow
• Github / open source
• Blogging
• User Groups
• Conferences
• Write a book
Senior Developer Needs to Grow
7 years Java
Front- and Back-end
Most recently Financial Markets
Some team lead experience
Experienced Consultant & Blogger Given a Shove
10 years Java experience
Consultant & Developer
Range of domains
Tech blogger
Leader in a London User Group
Staying ahead of the curve
• Conferences
• StackOverflow
• Google Reader. Oh, wait...
• Mailing lists
• Join a User Group. Or more than one.
• Hack days
• Books
• http://bit.ly/2qaIjTk (Staying Ahead of the Curve)
• http://bit.ly/buzz-pc (Becoming Fully Buzz Word Compliant)
Important Skills
• Research Skills
• Scientific Method
• Asking Questions
• Listening and Learning
• Interpersonal Skills
• English
Finding your perfect match
• Job websites
• Recruitment agents
• Friends
• User groups
• Conferences
• Stalk your heroes
• Sometimes, they find you.
Your CV / résumé
• The reader is very busy
• Stand out
• Get a native to check the language
• You are more than a list of technologies
• http://bit.ly/cvAdvice
Interviews
• Do your homework
• Interview them
• Be yourself
• http://bit.ly/hireEdu
Ex-Consultant Needs a Job
8 years Java experience
Mostly back-end
Financial Markets consultant
...during the credit crunch
Apprentice Seeks Mastery
3 years Java experience
JSP / Servlets, HTML, JavaScript
XML / XSLT
Mentor to experienced developers cross-training into Java
Some exposure to Good Practice
What happened at the end of the story?
• 5 years experience wanting the Next New
Thing?• Changed job in 3 months
• Consultant who needed a job?• Changed job in 3 months
• Java developer with 10 years experience?• Now “famous” Java Champion