How is it out there???

[Chiran Mathur]

With som many people laid off how is it out there in java/j2ee job market even for experienced people. Any inputs???

[Valentin Crettaz]

Not quite the right forum for that kind of questions.
I'm moving this to the Jobs Discussion forum

[Tony Jackson]

I think it depends on where you live. I'm in the SF Bay area, and a good friend of mine was laid off back in the spring and she spent about 4 months looking for a job. She is a mid to senior-level java developer, good experience and good refs, so that really sobered me up a bit about the job market. I am not aware that things have picked up at all.
Tony

[Rajesh Hegde]

Hey man,
There is no change in job scene at all for java ppl here in silicon valley. What ppl need now is specific skills ( like specific DB, specific Application server ) with years of experience in a particular domain. There is no demand at all for general web technologies- if u are a web developer like me , only luck and may be some strong contacts can get u a job or a project!

[Sameer Jamal]

Originally posted by Rajesh Hegde:
Hey man,
There is no change in job scene at all for java ppl here in silicon valley. What ppl need now is specific skills ( like specific DB, specific Application server ) with years of experience in a particular domain. There is no demand at all for general web technologies- if u are a web developer like me , only luck and may be some strong contacts can get u a job or a project!

AND WHAT IF THOSE SPECIFIC SKILLS WILL BECOME OBSOLETE SO YEARS OF EXPEREINCE IN A PARTICULAR DOMAIN WILL BECOME REDUNDANT

[Tony Jackson]

Hey, if you're gonna work in high tech, you gotta be prepared to stay current. Right now that may mean J2EE, but who knows what that will mean 3 or 5 years from now. If you want a job where the rules don't change and you don't have to keep learning something new, you're in the wrong profession.
Tony

[Mark Herschberg]

Wow, my friends and I are having the opposite experience! First, we do not see a shortage of IT jobs at the avdanced level. If you're 4+ years of solid IT work, there are plenty of job openings. If you've done web design, mostly JSP, or primarily set up e-commerce sites, you may be out of luck. Same is true for kids recently out of school, even good ones, and people who worked in body shops, doing e-commerce stuff.
Second, you need to be competent. Simply being around and having a pulse isn't what it used to be :-) Specific skills are nothing more then a plus. Sure, a company using websphere likes to hire a guy with websphere experience to minimize rampup time; but any company worth its salt (and many dot coms didn't fall into this category) knows that any good programmer can learn websphere, or weblogic, or any other specific server if need be. When I was in charge of hiring I had no problem hiring C/C++ people, even though we were an all Java shop. Why? Because any fool can learn the symantecs of Java. But good developer skills, which include good programmer skills like OOA/OOD, documentation, but also include understanding the software development process, are transferable to any technology. And the companies who were smart enough that they are still hiring today are the ones who know to look for ability, not a particular skill set.
Whoa, I'm getting acrophobia from standing on such a high soap box. I'll get down now. :-)

--Mark

[Subbu Ramarao]

It is tough right now but companies are selectively hiring. With good networking you have a bright change of getting an interview call b'cus of the number of ppl in the market...
I have been looking around for several weeks now without much success...

[John M Brown]

I've been out of work now for about 6 weeks and consider myself at least lucky so far. I don't have a position yet, but I have had a few long person-to-person interviews and a lot of phone ones. I also had put my resume everywhere I can find online (every job site, and my own homepage). OF course I get a lot of spam and offers from many recruiters who don't have anything yet, but think that my skills are marketable by my resume. So I have to weed through a lot of stuff. Most of the offers I've gotten are contract, also, which is a tough market right now compared to before.
I'm hoping that one of the 2 positions I'm in line for right now will work out, and I'm waiting to hear after a few more interviews, but they really drill you now to make sure you know what you say you know on your resume. The last two interviews went for more than 2 hours. The last one I had 4-6 technical people and a few managers drilling me with VERY specific technical questions. Some even trickier than required on the J2SE cert test. I would sometimes even just mention something like the XP methodology in a sentence and they would start quizzing me on that.
I lost one position to someone else at FedEx because they wanted someone with specific clustering experience, and I worked with systems that were clustered, but because I never setup a cluster for a Weblogic 6.1 server (where 6.1 has been out for , what 6 months?) I lost out. It was probably for the better, because it sounded like they wanted and admin and troubleshooter more than an experienced developer.
My biggest issue is trying to convince employers that I have enough real development experience, since I worked in a department that was responsible for evaluating, rolling out, and training developers in a corporation on the new technology. I was never say assigned to a particular project to get something specific done, but I technically supported 6 development projects in all lifecycles of design. I sort of agree with Mark that unless a company recognizes my overall development experience in general and not just my particular expertise in one narrow skill, then I'm probably better off not working for them because they are not very strategic empolyers.
Ok Mark, I will help you down from that soap=box now that I'm up here too.