My Job Went to India: 52 Ways to Save Your Job (Pragmatic Programmers)

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52 Ways to Save Your Job (Pragmatic Programmers)

Tags: the world is flat refactoring skills analysis competitiveness outsourcing arbitrage pragmatic programmer programming professional employment

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        My Job Went to India: 52 Ways to Save Your Job (Pragmatic Programmers)You’ve already lost your job. You may still be drawing a paycheck, but the job you were hired to do no longer exists. Your company has changed, the technology has changed, the economy has changed, and the ways you can add value have changed. Have you adapted to these changes? Or are you at risk?

Architect your career

Economic downturn. Job cuts. Outsourcing. The ever-changing tech landscape. The threats abound. Chad Fowler is here to offer 52 ways to keep your job, despite the vagaries of the market.

  • It’s all about making the right choices. Choosing which technologies to focus on and which business domains to master have at least as much impact on your success as your technical knowledge–don’t let those choices be accidental. Chad shows you all aspects of the decision-making process so you can ensure that you’re investing your time and energy in the right areas.
  • It’s all about skills. You’ll develop a structured plan for keeping your skills up-to-date so that you can compete with both the growing stable of developers in so-called low-cost countries as well as your higher-priced local peers. You’ll learn how to shift your skillset up the value chain, from an offshore-ready commodity to one in high demand.
  • It’s all about marketing. As with any product or service, if nobody knows what you’re selling, nobody will buy. Chad shows you how to create a plan for marketing yourself both inside your company and to the industry in general.

Like it or not, the IT career landscape has changed. This handbook will teach you what you need to do to avoid being left behind.

About the author Chad Fowler has been a software developer and manager for some of the world’s largest corporations. He recently lived and worked in India, setting up and leading an offshore software development center for a large multinational company.

  • amazon.com Sales Rank: #47055 in Book
  • ABIS_BOOK

A fresh look on things by Dejan Fajfar
This book has changed the way I look at my business. There is not much to say about this book. It is short enough to read it in one weekend a I would strongly advise you to do so.

Funny name, Serious Book by smcheril
“Pragmatic Bookshelf” has a solid reputation for publishing great books and this book is no exception. This one ranks right up there with books like “The Pragmatic Programmer” and “Code Complete”. With small bite sized chapters with specific and pointed advice, you won’t go wrong buying this book.

In the era of globalization — specifically with regard to software development, the book offers a complete list of techniques and approaches to not just survive but excel in the programming world. Having lived in India for a short while, he has some really astute observations about India including some great tips related to recruiting good programmers. There are a couple of chapters available for free off the publishers website. Read them and also take a look at the table of contents. Just the table of contents is probably worth the price of the book.

It is unfortunate that the title “My job went to India …” was chosen. Apparently, the author’s propensity for cuteness overcame his wisdom. Looking at the cover makes it seem like some kind of a trashy joke book and it’s possible that a lot of folks might have given it the go-by judging the book by its cover. The publishers might be doing the general public a great service by releasing a new edition with some updates and renaming it while not wearing their funny hats — maybe something like “The Relevant Programmer”.

Highly relevant practical advice by Damodar Chetty
Wonderful, easy to read, and well written to boot.

I was impressed with how well he walked the line regarding outsourcing - neither demonizing/denigrating the offshore programmer nor doing a Chicken Little impression of the “sky is falling”. This is by far one of the most balanced treatises on offshoring that I’ve read.

His assessment of the state of the industry, as well as the strengths/weaknesses of the offshore competition for an IT job is generally spot on.

E.g., he notes that an offshore “specialist” is simply someone who has never worked on anything else (say 5 years doing nothing but Java), and does not indicate how well that individual knows the subject matter; and that paradoxically offshoring actually ends up creating a lot more jobs onshore - esp. for a “higher bracket of developers”. He also notes the inability of most offshore developers to say “no” - the dreaded “just one more day” syndrome. Then there’s the small matter of time lost due to communication issues between geographically distributed teams. And, I’ve been asked to sit in as an “English-to-English” translator on numerous occasions.

In short, the phenomena he notes are all ones that I’ve observed in the past few years.

Not that I agree completely with his cultural understanding of India though. Its difficult to see a culture that’s literally thousands of years old and get a grasp of its underlying complexity in 18 months spent working primarily with IT workers. The professionals he works with are a product of a complex culture and its difficult to generalize based on such a specialized sample.

For instance, in the chapter on Mentoring he states that in the West “Everything is competition”. However, in his Introduction he talks about having to hire 25 people out of 30,000 applicants in India. Yes, you read that last number right. I’m not sure how he reconciles these two facts in his own mind - but let me assure you that there’s nothing quite like competing academically/professionally in India. (I’m constantly dismayed by the focus in our public schools here, on fostering a “everybody’s a winner” attitude in schools).

However, to his credit his missteps are rare.

Read as a workbook on how American developers should optimize their interactions with offshore teams, this book deserves 5 stars.

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This book’s other objective - on keeping your toolset sharp and ready does not fare quite so well.

My biggest issue is that there is not much by way of new advice. And unless you’re asleep at your career’s wheel, you’re already doing much of what he suggests. Don’t get me wrong - its not bad advice per se - though I did not agree with all the recommendations.

For e.g., he derides people from calling themselves specialists because they don’t understand how to make a JVM say uncle. But then he recommends that you don’t specialize in a technology stack such as J2EE, because it is not platform neutral. Specifically vis a vis J2EE and .NET, he says “master one and get good at the other”. Spoken like a true “manager”.

If you sit and think about the variety of software that comprises the J2EE pantheon in all its glory - I’d argue that you would find it difficult to be a specialist in every one of its areas, never mind also being “good at” the Microsoft stack. Not if you want to go home at the end of the day and have a life, that is.

I think I am pretty passionate about my career - but it does not define me, and it would be a great loss to me, if it did.

There are a few gems in here - like the Mind Reader chapter which talks about picking up ‘water cooler conversational cues’ from your coworkers about potential improvements and then making them happen in your down time, to seem like a miracle worker.

For the most part, the ideas end up being pretty much recycled from the grand old classic that is the “Pragmatic Programmer” by Andrew Hunt and David Thomas. That book is a must read - even though it is a bit dated in places today. In other words, this book is largely a retelling of that earlier work in a newer context.

This part of the book rated 3 stars.

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The reason I highly recommend it, is that love it, hate it, or /dis/agree with it, you’ll come away the richer for forming your own opinions. These are a practitioner’s thoughts rather than a theoretical dissertation - and that is worth its weight in gold.

Solid Book by Maureen Brennan
As a North American software developer, I definitely got a lot out of this book. I don’t really fear my job being outsourced to India but I wanted to understand what the issues were with outsourcing and can IT shops in India deliver the same value at North American ones.
Outsourcing to India is just a part of this book and the general theme is how to stay more relevant to your organization when technology is constantly changing. There is a lot of useful advice about how to make yourself more valuable to your organization (and deliver more value to your organization).
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Unimpressive, general career advice. by bongo
This book has a bunch of generic advice along the lines of keep up with things and don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Not exactly a revelation here.
If you read the relevant blogs, web sites and talk to people in the industry you don’t need this book.

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