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Taken from http://stores.lulu.com/java-success

A mechanical engineer, who changed his career to Java/J2EE based software development in 1999. In the last 5 years of contracting, he has worked for 5 different organizations both medium and large. For each contract he held, on average attended 6-8 interviews with different organizations and always multiple job offers were made.



I read this as your qualification is that you've had between 30 and 40 interviews. Have you had experience on the other side of the table?

--Mark
 
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I was a mechanical engineer for 5 years. Luckily I worked in computer integrated manufacturing side from the beginning like Robotics, CNC programming, Managing ERP projects etc. A friend of mine who was a Java/J2EE architect encouraged me to take up Java. It took me 6months - 1 year to self-study Java while I was working as a manufacturing engineer and then moved on to take up a Java entry level position (Luckily market was good then). I never looked back since then because I enjoyed software development so much...

I guess my training in mechanical engineering helped me a lot in terms of non-technical skills.
 
Mark Herschberg
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Thanks for responding, I'm asking how many people how you hired and for what roles?

--Mark
 
arulk pillai
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I have done initial screening of the resumes, phone screening and conducted technical interviews (say 25 or more) and have hired about 5-6. I am really surprised to see that many are not upto the mark. This is mainly because many of them are good coders and can get the job done but when it comes to looking at the big picture and explaing the concepts many fail to impress.

What do you think from your experience?
 
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Originally posted by arulk pillai:
This is mainly because many of them are good coders and can get the job done but when it comes to looking at the big picture and explaing the concepts many fail to impress.


Interesting. I've seen a mix: people who are coders and have no big picture, people who have the big picture but don't know how to code, people who memorized answers for an interview and of course people who are perfectly qualified!
 
arulk pillai
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Do believe that if you understand the concepts well enough (not memorize) then one would be able to drill down to the level of details with the help of google. If you are a good coder but lack high level concepts then it is more difficult to be an effective problem solver..
[ February 26, 2008: Message edited by: arulk pillai ]
 
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I am have seen jobs that need the coder to know not much and just do the same monotonous job everyday. I believe that in such scenarios an average coder would be preferred as that person would stick to the job but the person with the "big picture" would soon get bored of the same-work-everyday and would soon quit.
 
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