Michael Swaine is among the world's leading experts on programming and the software industry. He helped launch the first personal computer newsweekly, InfoWorld. He co-authored Fire in the Valley, the seminal tech history book on which the movie Pirates of Silicon Valley was based. He was editor-in-chief of Dr. Dobb’s Journal and has written for and edited several other magazines. He has more recently created Prag Pub for The Pragmatic Programmers (http://theprosegarden.com/). We asked him to discuss the state of programming as a profession.
Career Upshift: Are programmers feeling the pain of the economic downturn, or are they somewhat protected thanks to their skills which remain in more demand than lots of other services? Are resumes for programmers a necessity?
Swaine: Programming skills remain in demand, especially in tough times when businesses try to save money by automating processes. This to some extent makes the profession recession-proof. But all the big companies have been laying people off, and some of the layoffs have hit programmers. Programmers who work for companies have lost jobs and had to find other jobs, others have turned to independent contractor status, and programmers who were already independent contractors have seen a lot of churn in their client lists. There's work out there, but there's also a lot of uncertainty.
Career Upshift: Is there a shortage of programmers?
Swaine: There is a shortage of GOOD programmers.
Career Upshift: Would you advise a college student to study computer science and aspire for a career in the field? Or, has that day passed and now computing should just be a hobby?
Swaine: Yes, computer science is probably about as safe a career choice as you could make. But career is the operative word. I can't predict the future, but I would expect even more programmers in the future to be working as independent contractors. So you may not have a job in the traditional sense, and so it would be a good idea to pick up supplementary skills in time management and simple accounting.
Career Upshift: Name a few exciting trends and/or new occurrences in the software development field? What makes each exciting?
Swaine: One is multicore processors. Writing parallel software can be like starting over from scratch as a programmer. It requires a major mind shift, and there are many important techniques and algorithms yet to be discovered.
Also, no dominant programming language. There are preferred languages for specific tasks, like Ruby on Rails for Web app development, but we don't have a single dominant language today as we did when C or Java was the must-know language. This means that you can take time to learn a new language like Clojure or Erlang and not feel like it's frivolous.
Career Upshift: What skills make for a good programmer?
Swaine: The mandatory skill or attribute for a programmer is focus. If you have spent many long sessions at a game console, you have what it takes to be a programmer. Really: you don't have to be good at math, you just have to be anal -- er, let's say focused. To be a GOOD programmer you have to have a willingness, even an eagerness, to learn.
Being a successful programmer means always learning. And to be an in-demand programmer, you need to be very disciplined, because there's a very good chance you'll spend a good part of your career as an independent contractor, which is to say a small business owner with only yourself as an employee. And that requires being able to manage your time extremely well.
Career Upshift: A programmer loses his/her job after many years in a company. What suggestions do you have for getting ready to find a new position?
Swaine: Realize that you already have a new job: selling yourself. Either to a potential employer or to potential clients. Approach finding a job as a job, and don't cringe at the idea of selling yourself, because it's not that bad.
You don't want a job that isn't a good fit, so your job is just to communicate clearly something that you really believe and understand: why you and this job are a really good fit. Oh, you also need to think about the product and the packaging. You are the product. Are you satisfied with your set of skills? Do your strengths match what you want to do? Maybe it's time to brush up on some skills, take a course, throw yourself into learning that new language. Make sure you're the you that you want to be. And then communicate your virtues, clearly but succinctly. As for the packaging, think about the first impression you make in an interview: it may be the lasting impression you leave.