Adam Russell <[email protected]> writes: > I am trying to help a friend find gainful employment. > To that end I have been helping him sift through job > listings. > I have noticed is that my understanding of "job levels" > is somewhat off. For example, I see job listings for a > "senior" developer with 5-7 years experience. > "Architects" and "Principles" listings asking for > 8+ years experience. > Is this usual? > I honestly don't know of anybody with only 8 years > experience I would want in an architect position!
So now title inflation uses the term architect too? Great. That explains the message a recruiter left on my phone yesterday thinking I might be ready to become an architect. Funny thing is, he seemed most interested in my early consulting work, which was all on trivial projects, than on my recent non-consulting work which is on a larger system (but only at one company -- don't know where he'd gotten the idea I'd have the perspective to become an architect). Can you tell by the descriptions whether these are normal development positions with some element of local design, or if they really mean to throw a person with 8 years experience into architecting a whole system? I liked what this author had to say about how architects are developed and would ideally be used (the paragraph starting "Another trend is for companies to promote their best programmers to designer or system architect."). It mentions typical career paths for experienced developers too, but sounds awfully pessimistic: http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2009/5/24646-api-design-matters/fulltext Btw, is your friend a member of the ACM and has he or she tried using their career resources? I'm curious if they're helpful. Also, I was just out in Seattle with a friend and in our enthusiasm over the city she was looking at job ads for me. It looks like Amazon is looking to start a development center out there. The ads said they would pay relocation too. Would your friend move? At the risk of offending people loyal to our area, Seattle seems like a nicer city than Boston, at least in the summer. -- Mike Small [email protected] _______________________________________________ Boston-pm mailing list [email protected] http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/boston-pm
