Sacha Chua wrote:
>
> Perfect time for me to ask a question that's been bugging me for a while. =)
>
My, our resident genius being bugged by a question? Just kiddin' Sacha.
> See, we'll be graduating fairly soon. I was thinking of going into the whole
>academe/research thing, but since I also really love to program, the industry is
>pretty tempting.
>
> Option A - Freelancing looks interesting, but:
>
> - I'd like to get to work with other cool programmers I could learn from. (And teach
>the next batch, too!)
>
There you go! Two birds, one stone.
> - I want to get to play with as many technologies as possible. I want to be doing
>challenging and exciting work, not just the same old database-backed sites.. ;)
>
Hard to find anything other than that these days. I was searching for
hardware stuff to program. Couldn't find any.
> - I have a somewhat strange tool set. I've tried C++ programming in Windows (didn't
>like MFC). I don't even want to touch ASP, as (a) components tend to be expensive,
>(b) it doesn't offer enough advantages over PHP, (c) I don't have Windows on my
>laptop, and (d) if I'm going to go for PerlScript, I may as well use Perl. =)
>However, I think I can pick up new tools fairly quickly (inhaling the docs, trying it
>out), and most of my recent work has been in either PHP or Java. More people look for
>ASP than for PHP, I suspect.. <wry grin> Anyway, I'm way biased towards
>free-speech/beer stuff because that's what I can get my hands on and play with.
>
Don't we all?
> - I don't know how to cost my work. I'm used to doing things for free, and since all
>the tools I use are free anyway, no one needs to pay for fancy development IDEs.
>
> In fact, I'd rather not worry about money at all, or finding contracts or whatever.
>So there's option B - work for some company that'll take care of all of these things.
>=)
>
Now there's a rare hacker. Love's play so much that work does not seem
worth it. But hey, join the club! We're all just playing everyday aren't
we? Imagine, we're being paid to do something we would gladly do for
free, if only to learn something new! /*Ooops, my better half's gonna
kill me for that line...*/
> And I have to admit, Microsoft does take very good care of its developers, although
>the culture/ideology's a little... <laugh>
>
They do? Frankly, I don't look forward to the idea of Bill Jr. dangling
a gold Rolex in my face after 40 years of programming.
> But with a company, most of the stuff I'll get to work on will probably only be used
>by a (relative) handful of people. <pout> (That's the problem with closed source and
>expensive software).
>
Take your time. Find a company that's doing a wide-user base project AND
implementing it in free-speech/beer stuff. They're rare, but well worth
it when at the end of the project, you know that your code is being used
by many people everyday.
> So anyway, I could use a little career guidance here. =)
>
I'm sure the veterans here have other, better things to say.
Just my 1.06 PHP.
--
Paolo
Infoweb Telecom (Global) Limited
POT: (852) 2388-1168/1053/1476 or 2625-1688 loc 127 FAX: (852) 2625-1501
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