WAP – Without A Project – GO B2B (Back to Basics)
Not everybody is a student of Economics, but everybody understands the Demand Supply gap and its effect on the
price of the commodity. As the demand increases the price of the commodity increases. As
prices increase more capacity is installed to produce the commodity. And eventually as the
supply increases demand decreases and the price falls. This can be called as the
simple Demand Supply cycle, but the demand supply situation for IT jobs is very different
and makes interesting reading especially for students wishing to make IT as their career.
The
author, Mr. Sandeep Tapaswi is
Director Fands Infotrainers and can be reached at sandeep@fandsindia.com
The IT industry broadly categories the entry level technical staff in 2 categories – Comp-science
graduates and non-comp – science graduates. The
very fact that fresh professionals and domain experts from other streams are inducted in
the IT industry has resulted in a mad rush for Software courses. Let us now analyse the
job market and have a peep in the future of emerging technologies by clearing some Myths.
MYTH no 1- New Technology means new opportunity
The IT industry will keep spinning new things. Some times I have felt that the IT
industry is the ugly face of capitalism. Take the case of the home PC, a number of households
would have an antique piece of a 386 / 486 computer. For most people the power of those
PCs was enough to do their daily work. But as new operating systems do not support
the configuration the “not so old” PC has met an unnatural death. On one hand the
innovations in technology have brought in a whole range of comforts and convenience
but it has also brought with it COMPULSORY CHANGE AND COMPULSORY UPGRADATION. The
change may be costly for the user industry but as a budding software professional Change in
technology is synonymous to new job opportunities. But here lies the pitfall! Do not just
run after new technologies, because only few emerging trends will really be successful.
Reality No 1 – Try speaking with Experienced IT Professionals to identify emerging technologies.
Currently professionals can focus on .NET, C#, ASP.NET
and VB.NET as areas where there will be a surge in demand for software professionals.
MYTH no 2 - Passport + Software Course = Work permit in US
The US immigration and Nationalisation service clearly states that professionals who have an engineering equivalent
(12+4) and a minimum of 2 years of experience can apply for a work permit in the US. But as the US craze has been tremendous
in the country, people from all walks of life started applying for US openings and
a substantial number of professionals even forged documents (mainly Experience Certificates
as higher experience is a substitute for not confirming to 12+4) to reach to the US.
The recent newspaper reports that all of us have read indicates a sorry state.
9 lakh new software jobs in the US but many Indians continue to return.
Reality No 2 – US Jobs are available but proper experience on International projects is a must.
MYTH no 3 – Java is Dead
In the initial days of the commercial usage of Internet, ASP was a very popular technology in
the US. Later as Web applications became more advanced, companies started shifting applications to
Java. Java is a simple language but the industry uses mostly flavours of Java namely JSP, EJB,
Servlets, RMI and Java Beans. As of today, Java is the only solution for a true cross platform
Internet development language.
Reality No 3 – Java and its flavours are not dead, but as dot.com business is down, web development has taken a temporary beating. More than 50 % of web development is done in Java.
Conclusion
In this world (game) of Reality (Ladders) and Myths (Snakes) how should a budding software
professional plan his career. It is relatively simple. In the mad rush for gaining
knowledge in emerging technologies professionals should not lose sight of programming basics.
So remember B2B stands for Back to Basics. C/ C++ and operating system concepts are
of paramount importance. There may not be huge job opportunities in these languages but
they go a long way in preparing candidates to be flexible towards new developments. Another
area is having clear understanding of the Client server architecture and Database concepts.
These concepts come very handy no matter what software products are in vouge.
Finally I will suggest young students to be more enterprising and explore technology
themselves. A good idea could be helping your neighbor/ uncle by installing Linux on
their old 386 / 486 machine. Linux is a freeware and can run on older PCs also.
One can even browse the internet from such a machine. And who knows if this cult
of experimenting with technology spreads, India may well produce the next Bill Gates.