Horizontal vs vertical

[Jitendra Lulla]

Hi,

Sime of the service based companies have their projects/engineers divided into horizontals and verticals. What i have understood till now is that the engineers in horizontal are equipped/experienced with tools knowledge e.g. languages/databases and these engineers work for projects falling in various verticals. SO an engineer working in a horizontal can work in a project that may fall in any domain/vertical (e.g. telecom/banking..)
I want to know if what I have just now mentioned is corret and if it is, how is the career growth impacted because of this categorization [vertical/horizontal)?
I feel that if you remain in a horizontal, you will work on various projects [telecom/banking] and you will never go deep in any domain and hence it is not suggested to be in a horizontal.. Am I correct?
[ December 17, 2006: Message edited by: Jitendra Lulla ]

[Deepak Bala]

Never heard of this one before. I am not horizontal or vertical. I just program and design solutions

[Srikanth Raghavan]

Yes,

You are right... Even I was suggested the same thing by my managers that I should stick to a domain and that will help more in the longer run than sticking to a language. And I think that is correct to some degree... So, Vertical experience is better than Horizontal experience (for the kind of applications that we develop, not the geek stuffs like building an IDE).

See, anyone can start programming in a language and the chances of becoming a good programmer are higher than becoming a good domain expert + programming experience in many languages (or the so called horizontal).

Vertical is about knowing what to do, and horizontal is about how to do. And I think this is the reason why I was told not to be just a programmer even though I love to be a Java guru than, say, a banking domain expert. But if I have to earn more and survive in the longer run (considering the current Indian market trend), I have to build my expertise in a particular domain.

These are my understandings of this whole Vertical/Horizontal trend...

------
Srikanth

[Srikanth Raghavan]

Originally posted by John Meyers:
Never heard of this one before. I am not horizontal or vertical. I just program and design solutions

That's great mate... I would like to have a job like yours... I guess you don't work here in India, do you?

[Deepak Bala]

That's great mate... I would like to have a job like yours... I guess you don't work here in India, do you?

I do. Its just that I have not heard the terms "horizontal" and "vertical" being used. Bah ! I hate some terms that are coined anyway. Whoever came up with KT ? (Barf !).

I agree that in the longer run sticking to a domain and learning more about it can be great. That would be experience which is hard to buy. For example there could be many programmers that know java and have 5 years of experience but there would be few that specialize in the finance domain or Insurance or banking etc etc.

I think that line would be suitable for managers and business analysts. It also helps if you choose to follow the technical path but its significance would not be too great. It might help when you try to set up huge systems like a warehouse or a data mart and previous experience with the business can come into play.

[Srikanth Raghavan]

Originally posted by John Meyers:


I do. Its just that I have not heard the terms "horizontal" and "vertical" being used. Bah ! I hate some terms that are coined anyway. Whoever came up with KT ? (Barf !).

Then I guess you have not visited enough companies web-sites... Their's CSS must all be one and same Cause they all have a panel on top that reads... Vertical, Horizontal, Careers, blah blah blah...

I started my career not long ago, I work for a small company so I never came across a lot of these jargons and one of the very first questions my friend who works for a bigger company asked me was, "Which Vertical man?" I was like What do you mean by that? I just code (just like your answer) he then replied me "You are working for an Indian Software Company and you don't know Vertical and Horizontal?"

Again, I was puzzled and I asked him, what the heck is this Horizontal? He just sighed and , yes banged himself to the wall...

[Srikanth Raghavan]

Whoever came up with KT ? (Barf !)

KT??? Sorry man, I didn't understand...

[Deepak Bala]

KT??? Sorry man, I didn't understand...

Whoops. I forgot to add. KT ( Knowledge transfer ). God I hate it when people say " I was in a KT session ". I raise an eye brow when people say that. A so called "KT session" usually involves some one explaining an application they take care of so that the person receiving "KT" can take over. And whats up with "sessions" !? AArrghh ! Sorry... things like that probably belong in a separate thread on its own.

Yes, perhaps I have not looked at many job offers on the net. I dont ever recall reading things like that on the papers. At least i learnt something new today. Cool

[Jitendra Lulla]

Thanks friends...