Peter Pilgrim :: Java Champion :: Enterprise Blog

I have taken a step back in an attempt to put the year 2012 in focus. As always, it started with great hopes and there were highs and it seemed for a moment, that working life was back on track, but lurking in the background was an impending disaster. The problems were not fixed, I can see them now, but that is for another blog post.

In this post, I went with another angle of working life, I pondered for a moment, what on earth would I tell myself as the twenty something university graduate? What advice would I give to another university graduate now?

Tools, Frameworks and Languages

The tools for writing applications are definitely here. At the end of 2012 there are an abundance compared to slow pre-Internet age of 1992. You have lots of opportunities in programming languages such as Java. It runs on a virtual machine and you can forget about dreams of C++ being a guru engineer and purely object oriented development. The landscape is changing. I would say learn something about functional programming languages. You have to learn version control systems such Subversion, Mercurial and Github. Take advantage of the new technologies for learning, videos and on line courses, broadband Internet, and ways to amplify your knowledge. Remember: technology is not the answer, a panacea on its own, it only exists to serve to every human being, to provide efficiency, improvement and greater achievements in progress. Out there is such a breadth of knowledge waiting and so little time to learn it all. Choose your technology and learning wisely.

I would warn myself about the dangers of social networking, and suggest you would do the very same. Privacy is dear. Code and ideas are dear. Keep some part of life in the off-line mode for your own security, if nothing else. Other people have been known to take ideas with out credit and attributions. That drunken binge or that slur against some person could in the future become a living nightmare. Only ever put on the Internet, the stuff you are truly happy to let be public knowledge; find the balance between share-nothing and share-almost-anything for yourself. Be wary of code that you do put out there in the Internet.  In my opinion in the future it could be held or used against. If you are showcasing ‘wares make sure it is the best work that you can do, don’t be shoddy or lazy about programming. Being part of open source framework as a committer is a good thing, it will open doors, and you get to meet electronically people on the other side of the planet. You might even be lucky enough to meet the other committers at conference or visit on holiday; maybe they may come to you. Life is better with the people you know; who know you and therefore have a bond with.

Because they are too many tools, frameworks and programming languages out there, I would advise myself to choose the special interest wisely with a view of what is going to benefit my career in the long term. Nobody can be master of all trades in IT. Now, our profession is too long in the tooth for that. If you want to be good developer, be that, a database girl be that, a security dude, then be that. Practise, rehearse and train in order to “get good”, only then will you become great at whatever it is you choose to do. Choose something you enjoy not the thing that your mother and father tells you that you must do. Listen to your beating heart first, before listening to the opinion of other people. Develop that gut, that the gut-feeling, the little voice in your head, the spirt that comes sometimes you feel exciting or when there is a sudden whisper of foreboding, an ill-wind, whatever, because it is true. It is the one statement of a fact that is not a YAGNI, you are going to need it, your inner voice.

You must live and work with other people. If the code is an experiment and is just for fun, then advertise as that with a definite label. Code is also nothing with people. Unfortunately code is the easy part, it is the dealing with the people, the communication, the handling of information between groups of folk, the social aspects, which are the hard parts.

Elitism

Surprise, surprise: be warned that Elitism is still in effect. Nothing has changed since the early 1990’s in what is legalised prejudice of university graduates. Employers are allowed to specify on job advertisements that they are only interested in certain set of candidates from so-called red brick universities [2] even though this smacks in the face of diversity and fair entrance. There are employers wanting the so-called best software developers out of university or higher education college, if you have less than second-class first level degree (2-1) your application might tossed directly straight in the bin [1]. In my day applications were sent by post, now it is quite easy to discard a very crafted Word or PDF document in to the digital waste receptacle in the sky. Yet, it is common knowledge, or it should be, in the IT profession that a certain Mr Bill Gates, of Microsoft, did not even graduate with a degree.

My advice is to the same now as it was then, Keeping On Moving [10], there are always alternatives to elitist organisations, which may well go out of business sooner rather than later. I learnt very quickly there is always one choice, colloquially, known as The Law of Two Feet [9]. All you have to do build on the network that you started whilst in university. The teacher or lecturer you did the best project for, the mate that you had the best times with at the pub, even the gym is a place to find and discuss opportunity. If you have impressed a friend or colleague and if they are really your friend, know you personally, then you are more likely to get opportunities of work that are more suited to your skills.

Job Shock

During the early 1990’s the world was recovering from previous financial crisis, albeit it was a smaller compared to the massive crunching meltdown that we have had running now for five years, since 2007. For the record, I am also grating my teeth too, in frustration with you too.  I feel. I am a human being too. The shocking stories of the job search of recent university graduate have left me cold.

There was a time before the monetary union of Europe and the Euro, when each country in the European union had it’s own currency like the Deutschemark, the Franc, the Peseta and Lira; and therefore their own national bank of control, of monetary policy, then there was the possibility and the economic reality of at least Germany still being the powerhouse of Europe and the World when Britain was in the doldrums. Indeed, Germany was able to survive the recession of the early 1990’s, I know because I was living there for a time.

Since the turn of the century, the sudden explosion of the Internet, the reliance on better communication links, the rise of common markets, radical improvements of technology, better efficiencies in trading have meant we have a global economy.  The door has closed forever on hoping over the English Channel to find lucrative work, even if the language barriers were not there at all. A recession in Germany most certainly means a downturn in Britain and Ireland.

For university graduates, this means that getting a job search is much harder than 15 and 20 years ago. The competition is fierce; the depression is deep. Some graduates wondered why they have invested their formative years in to getting a university paper only to find themselves flipping hamburgers at McDonald or desperately applying to become a retail shop assistant at the local Debenhams or Next fashion store [3][4].

The Job-Shock of 2012 is clearly worse than 1992.

I have just passed my 1 year anniversary from my master’s degree. There’s nothing to celebrate because it’s also the same time I started looking for jobs and 1 year on, I have had no success. I have been to nearly a dozen interviews to progress on my career to be an engineer and have had no success.

I completely understand what you guys mean. It is so hard to keep motivated when you keep getting told, “Sorry, you haven’t got enough experience” and then you say “but that’s why I want a job!!”

With the two years from finishing my degree to starting my graduate job I gained experience and continued to apply. Getting experience isn’t easy though because quite often you need some experience to get experience. My advice is to plan what skills you want to show experience in then make a plan from their, starting with smaller experience and aiming for the bigger stuff when you have something in hand.

We are losing young and gifted people across a wide-cross section of disciplines [5]. Some are giving up on their dreams of having a career. Sadly, some people who thought about a career in information technology, software development, programming or designing applications, may already be saying to themselves: too long and hard to achieve the result I dreamed of; do not think to apply because it never happens to people just like me.

Continuous Reinvention

I am here to tell you that if you want to get a programming job in information technology then it is possible. Don’t give on IT just yet. The roles are there, if you keep looking for them. It is quite similar to dating. Two people will never meet each other, if they stop searching of the other lover. If either one of them gives up then the cause of true love is lost. But then, how do I find a job? A better question is, how do I find a job that I really will enjoy? The best and ideal way to do this is, I think, is to find that company and group of employers that is enthusiastic, altruistic and cultured. In other words, the company must have a distinct lack of dysfunction, but you as a graduate candidate have already found that to be true, yours suspicions, which you most likely experienced on the job hunt are quite correct, I am afraid.  You absolutely correct to note that every company that advertises, “We hire only the best candidates”, is logically not “the best”.  Learn to read those job specifications and as some would say read between the lines. Ask some searching questions: what happened to last year’s recruitment? As an addendum to the infamous and standard question: How did this job become vacant?

Start networking when your career is in infancy. Keep your ear to the ground and listening and learn the behaviours of others. It is sad, but true, in the IT career too, you have to watch your back as well. Resist the temptation to be closed and unapproachable, instead be that person, open to change, a mind like parachute. Remember who put the faith in you and got you to this great position that you are in now. You have a university degree or better, not many people in the world get that, and those who try to put you down, are jealous, because when they had their chance in life, they bloody blew it. Just because they took a mis-step then that does not mean you are going to. If you really want to be black and proud and be bad meaning good, then for heaven’s sake, buy the CD or download the MP3 of Public Enemy: Fight The Power, Rebel without a Pause and Bring The Noise [8]. Rock on out in your bedroom when you feel the world is against you. For all other people find some inspiration and music to gets you going, motivates and inspires positivity in yourself, whatever it is, whether music, theatre, classics, walking the dog, or a landscape that you remember as a child, then keep on at it and make it your central core, your sword and shield in the battle, the battle of survival.

When you leave university and get on the job market for the first time, it is a great time to learn and identify the different types of institutions. For instance, you may have thought that big company ACME was the best for you to a get a job in, perhaps you were tempted by the glossy brochure, or the suited and booted personel at the job fair, maybe they had the best gizmos in the handout bag at a conference; and then you later find out that the much smaller FROZFIZZ is better. You will be probably be surprised at youreself suddenly turning to the FROZFIZZ, and finding this smaller enterprise attractive. Maybe it was because they have a better training scheme, perhaps they send there employees to get  proper IT certifications, and perhaps they offer a real chance to use the next interesting new technology or framework there. More often or not, the FROZFIZZ employees seem really happy ,warm and generous. It is not fake, because you can confirm from a friend who recently got a job there. That is good-cultured. You know it when you find it. Some people spent their life trying to find the good culture. Okay, FROZFIZZ has a much lower starting salary than ACME and they cannot afford to pay an contributory pension plan or some other additional benefits compared to ACME. This is the time after university to learn how to measure up and down different employers when, most likely, you have not yet got the husband or the wife or long term spouse to bloody annoy you and you can concentrate on what is best for you and your career. Twenty years down the line, you will not regret choosing happiness in organisations like FROZFIZZ rather the gravy train of ACME. In fact, it is better to have worked at series of FROZFIZZ like companies than stick to the pressure and unloved atmosphere of ACME for ten years, even if you start climbing the promotional ladder in to senior management. The one thing that I want to hit you home with, that is almost universal truth, “The People are the Company”.

In software industry, which is a global economy, being comfortable where you work and when you work is the most important reason for having a career. Yes it can be learning Java or Scala or Groovy some other programming language, but if the company is dysfunctional then the world can feel like a horrid place. In this day and age, we are rapidly seeing the decline of a job-for-life. If you cannot change the organisation, then change the organisation.

Some people, do leave the country just to find that the one opportunity to start an IT career. If you want my advice, and you are seriously considering it, then do it. If nothing else, you will learn a new language, if English is not the native language of country that you will work in, and you will have a different culture and outlook of life to tune it in. It will demonstrate to the world, on your curriculum vitate that you are one of the few who is remarkable, courageous and brave. Although leaving the country is tough and deliberate decision for many people, you can always come back after a few years. Even fewer souls, permanently leave Great Britain for the USA or beyond and never return, their lives changed because they made the decision. It is all about finding alternatives.

Remember you always a choice. Just ask Carol Vorderman [7]. Stay the course, and achieve your dreams of becoming a professional software developer; I guarantee you will not regret it.

[1] http://www.standard.co.uk/news/work/sign-of-the-times-graduates-take-to-streets-in-search-of-job-8226282.html

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_brick_university

[3] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/redbrick-universities-are-more-elitist-than-oxbridge-634051.html

[4] http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/jul/04/graduate-recruiters-look-for-21-degree?intcmp=239

[5] http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/jul/31/lower-second-degree-employment-prospects

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organizational_culture

[7] http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/shortcuts/2012/jul/04/dont-judge-job-applicant-by-degree

[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_the_Power

[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-space_technology

[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_On_Movin’_(Soul_II_Soul_song)

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This is a warning to the reader; your might feel at the end of this entry that it is all Dickens’s Christmas Carol and “Bah! Humbug!”. You would be rightfully semi-accurate in your analysis, of course.

Quite simply, I hate when I go to an interview that is either face-to-face with a potential employer, or a client, and then I have to fight tooth and nail to get those statements of fact that many ordinary souls could consider to feedback from the interviewers or clients. I am amazed, more often than not, in today’s climate when I get unexpected feedback; most of the time I have specifically ask for it.

In my long career of some twenty years or so, I have attended many competency based styles of interviews, and I have learnt in all that time, you cannot effectively improve your skills without a third-party honest ethical reference telling you exactly what you were strong on and what specifically you were weak on.

When I use skills here, I am deliberately being very wide in the definition of term; it can be communication skills, behavourial skills, technical skills or even sitting-still-in-chair-with-your-hands-motionless whilst you talking skills. I will also include puzzle solving, listening to the interviewer, technical analysis and getting off my bum to do a bit of white-boarding, and rapport building, submitting a sample test programming project and panel interviews as part of this scheme.

There is a nothing worse than when you have done all that you can do to perform by giving your valuable time and effort to a round of interviews, and then hearing the cacophony sound of silence; and seeing nothing wafting in the email inbox for a few days. If you have ever attended an interview and waited more 24-48 hours for an answer, and seen and heard nothing, then you probably know placing your on heart that this is an instant fail. If you have ever attended an  interview and got the answer of “no” and the client and the recruiter had no feedback in their response then that I too would classify the end as a similar fail. If you have ever received an “no” and then asked for feedback, and then also received a blank response, then, in fact, that is plainly rude. If you have never received any feedback from the interviews whatsoever then that series of flawed communication from a so-called officer of a reputable business, from beginning to end, actually, is very revealing about the target organisation; and says that perhaps enduring the entire process was a close miss, from your point of view.

Sometimes, after receiving a “no” from an interview, then I have, to be absolutely fair, received some great feedback and pointers on things that I missed and definitely things I could improve on. I have gone over those weaknesses, then revised, educated myself and rehearsed. I improved myself. Sometimes the mostly painful feedback is the stuff you don’t want listen to. I certainly had to train to listen and not just hear.  When I have won a contract and got the job I have learned what the interviewer and recruiter also thought about my appearance, skills, white-boarding and communications; basically the whole lot. So this gripe is not for those who are good at giving prompt, fair and concise feedback whether it is in a good or bad light. They do not have to worry.

In the earlier part of my career, long before the Facebook and Twitter, it was customary to receive the rejection letters through the post. Nowadays, it is the rejection email. For university graduate developers, in these Twenty Tens, it is now even worse, if they they do not receive a response then they may as well consider themselves rejected. Is this the state of business communication in the early twentieth first century? Really. And we thought that we were a classless society; elitism had been knocked cleanly on the head. Surprise. It never actually vanished into the thin air. When we have laden the front-door to new software engineers in our industry with a flaming glass ceiling of unemotional dependency injection. This action is a contempt for an industry and the people working inside it. This, very sadly, is a disgrace.

Dependency injection may work for building the infrastructure of application software and abstracting two components from explicit referring to each other, but does it work not at all for human beings, especially the newest talent? Feelings are hurt; belief and hope with ambitions are trampled; dreams are thrown asunder. No wonder it has hard to attract new people; whether they are youngest and brightest undergraduates, or they are mature folk and utterly serious about retraining in to computer science, if this final result of lack of feedback is a spit on the face, which they have, ultimately, to look forward to.

It is just not enough to say “no”. It does not help the recruitment consultant and the prospective candidate. How can the recruiter help to get better people for the organisation? How can the candidate ever know what went wrong? We are reaping bad karma and more misery on those people who are trying to keep fighting the good fight.

The stock answer from the client that is unforgivable and long-term patched in the synaptic memory is “Sorry. I am so busy that I really cannot afford to do it. You want me to give feedback on all of the candidates who interview here. I got more important things to do in the meantime. Unfortunately, I don’t have time for that.” If you read that and do happen to agree with that sentiment, then shame on you. Here it is the crux; effective candidates require feedback. Senior developers and technical leads always want to improve. The most talented inexperienced engineer who only has a couple of A-level’s wants to improve. If you do not care to give feedback, I guarantee you this fact; they will remember you and your company. Candidates who interview with or without a recruitment agent deserve feedback. You, as a technical leader, have a duty to provide it. It is your job description, so just do it.

It will be a terrible day when one of those candidates that you interviewed and failed to provide feedback for remembers you and your company when they do just give up; and instead grow to become to the next successful generation of rock star developers: a public relations disaster of your own making.

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PS: Managers and technical leaders need to be give regular feedback direct to their team members. If they do not then they are not being effective in any organisation. If they want all people to perform then they need to coach and mentor others too in order to become better.Tweet

On Monday evening, 3rd December, 2012, I went along to the British Computer Society London in the Strand for a lecture from non other than Professor Sir Tony Hoare. It is not everyday you get meet a personality who has been so well deserved lauded in the computer science, in its history and its modernity and  brief time of existence. Tony Hoare was the inventor of the famous Quicksort computer algorithm in 1960 (at the age of 26). I remember a first encounter with the QuickSort algorithm in Herbert C. Schildt’s Programming in C book.

Professor Hoare was in town to give a Peter Landin lecture on Laws of Concurrent Design. The talk was essentially about mathematical calculus of computer programs; how they could be expressed in terms of mathematical functions, and set of basic axioms with rules, then could be composed together to proof notations about concurrency and sequential operations.

Professor Sir Tony Hoare at BCS London, December 2012

Oh gosh, it has been awful long time, since I personally looked at additional mathematics course book. Yet I understood this level of discourse in the talk. I found that I could understand the Exchange Axiom to my surprise. Although, I think Professor Hoare had simplified the actual formulas for the benefit of his talk and the level of the audience.

For the ordinary punter, dealing with this abstract mathematical terms is clearly out of the level of usefulness, however these are the theories that allows computer scientists to build programs such as compilers, static analysers and the tools that language writers use to build new programming languages in order to give us the world of devices and applications that we all use today. Without these pioneers in the computer programming arena, we would be, I think, far far behind. Indeed, we are standing, everyday, on the shoulders of giants and reaching for the stars.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Professor Hoare talk, and the fact that this guy is older than me and still working (at Microsoft Research in Cambridge, England) is inspiration enough to say to hell with silo management and bad attempts to be hip with the agile practices. Say hello to diversity in corporation, the future is for real. Here is a real star: a living legend.

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PS: I also got meet up with some fellow ACCU members who also turned up for the lecture.Tweet

I remember the year 2010 for the FIFA World Cup Final in South Africa watching the amazing tournament matches on BBC TV. Sadly, 2010 marked end of the JAVAWUG, I stopped leading the Java User Group, because attendance to the monthly talks nosedived in the summer mouths. I had had enough of running a user group, even though creating the entity was one of the best decisions I ever took.  So I personally invested money in my own training, Scala Object Functional Programming with Martin Odersky in London.

The misery of Lloyds Banking Group with Halifax Bank of Scotland really reached it’s pinnacle in 2010. LBG had wasted an opportunity to innovate in the 2008 and 2009, whilst UBS had written off 40 billion Swiss Francs in the credit crunch, it had survived market dislocation of 2007 to 2008, and subsequently wrote off  less than a billion pounds. The government and the chief executive on 2009 forced through a unsatisfactory merger with HBOS, claiming that they were going create “one bank”, and then I knew the truth. Now everyone in the world knows the truth. They decided, in 2010, to invest in Microsoft Silverlight and deprecate / divest in any Java enterprise involvement. It was a punch in the face for me personally. I desperately tried to get out of the bank into another bank before the inevitable happened.  It would have been much better to be one punching out first than be the one who felt punched … Too late was the cry, then when I heard the news shortly after arriving back to work after JavaOne 2010. I left Lloyds, I laughed out loud, then not long afterwards, I read a blog Microsoft had then deprecated Silverlight itself, such is life, some say.

I really have bittersweet memories of 2011, like Adele, my relationship with software development, my career was over. I thought I would hold out for a Scala position inside investment banks in London. I only ever met one person in a bank who was actively developing with new Scala technology. To my own mind, all I found was lies, damned lies and recruitment marketing *noise*.

I almost quit software engineering with Java, because of stupidity, and personal distress, around the time of early Summer 2011, I wanted to just stop right then. I could have chosen a completely different path, but I was saved by fate. Ironically the riots in England happened two months later (August 2011), which meant it showed also that some of our young English people were just as upset, frustrated with their lot, circumstances and life and worries about the future. The economy was shot, we all knew it. I was young in the 1990s and suffered and rose through the downturn. Boom and bust then and it is still going on.

Companies were laying off more and more people in 2011. Listening to the news or watching the TV, we were constantly reminded of the pain, suffering of society. All of this, the very real lack of confidence, the downgrade of social expectations, reached a peak with a dwindling pool of disposable incomes, the worry of getting into ever increasing debt, a lack of vision from the main political parties, and missing solutions. I wonder just what it was going to take to get through. I had just become a JavaOne 2012 paper reviewer, which was a massive positive. I was going to JavaOne 2012, another positive, my talk was accepted. I received invitations to talk at the Silicon Valley code camp and JavaFX User Group, which more positives.  These were balanced by the negatives. I noticed empty buildings in the city and the interviews had dried up. I also observed the pained expressions of people really going through an economic downtown in London, as I was out and about, and then it took just one unsightly social event in Tottenham (ironically Adele’s hometown), to tip the balance.

Chasing Pavements for me meant also searching for a full time job and/or hunting down a lucrative IT contract. Adele’s song transposed itself in to juxtaposition of contemporary thoughts, about the compromises that anyone may make in their lives, and I found my asking the same questions over and over. Am I worth it? I hated this job-search-contract-win-thing, this constant thought at the back of my head, of introspective and retrospection. I hated it so much that almost stopped about thinking about what is so important. What is it about Java and Software development that I really like? Who am I? What am I about? What do I want to next? If that is the plan, how can I get there? So how will I live, survive and support a family?

At the beginning of the year, I thought it would be fantastic chance to get into Scala development role, whilst I still added my long hard worn experience in Java EE, Spring Framework, enterprise middle office development. I actually thought Scala professional development would have been some catalyst, an injection into the phase. With being out of work, I was free of the constraint of silos now could I get a role that uses Scala in some great project, probably in a financial role. What I found in the job market of 2011, was fire fighting roles mostly, just business-as-usual, keeping the engine fire going, and no chance to add a new technology or change. In other words, I found inflexibility, doubts and boredom. The amount of contract and job interviews that I attended where the interviewer wanted me to program Java like if the language was C/C++ was shocking. I learnt pretty fast to ask up front before going there. If I noticed multi-thread in the specification, I thought this is serious, I had better ask. In the end, I had to quickly blow out my Scala dreams in London and re-market myself [again] as a credible Java enterprise engineer again. It did not help at this time, that Scala was getting the wrong type of news on the Internet wires, people started to complain about Scala’s complexity, and there was suddenly a slug contest starting for the next language beyond that of Java. The final nail in the innovation coffin, at least for banking IT ,were the consistent questions. Do you know Java performance tuning or how to tune a JVM? Suddenly squeezing the last ounce out of Java was the name of the game, as well as, trying to tell them first, Java EE should take care of threads and two that they still not put business logic inside stored procedures in PL/SQL and a database. Ah well, I said. I did try.

There were even so laughable attempts to pair-program or show off just how supremely agile certain teams were operating inside of bank’s in my experience. I had a bad feeling practising agile or wounded version of SCRUM. I know because I attended many interviews where they wanted me to pair program as part of the recruitment process. In my view, investment banks, are the most dysfunctional areas in where to introduce XP programming or SCRUM. I wish you sincerely very good luck finding and retaining the very best and greatest of developers. This is because the idea of self-managed teams goes against the traditional financial IT project management grain of wood and the inflexible silo environment that the Agile manifesto sets out to improve. Luckily, there are better approaches at being agile, which could work inside a bank.

I began to see the word Agile as a severely crippled in 2011 and now cringe-worthy in 2012, and maybe because I listened and had been in the privilege company of one certain Barry Hawkins now. The word Agile by itself is now meaningless. I was so pleased, by the way, to have attended JavaPosse Round Up three times in a row (2009, 2010, and 2011) and yes I say to Barry, we should shoot Agile in the head and reinvent software development processes now.

In 2011, there were happy times and I have to say it was the great people at QCon London, the JavaPosse Round-Up, the ACCU Conference Oxford UK, JavaOne Review Selection Committee, JavaOne and Java-dot-net presentation team, Kirk Pepperdine and Heinz Kabutz, Stephen Chin, Silicon Valley Code Camp, and the entire Devoxx team associates and some cool friends in Menlo Park California who really made the year positive for me.

I am badly affected by the year 2011, I think. It is going to take me a while to get over it, despite the many successes that I happened to achieve. It still feels now, in January 2012, that I am glad to have escaped that one, I felt that I was just treading water in my own mind, and my own confidence has taken a severe low blow. Don’t get me wrong, of course, I know there are lots of people out there who are feeling worse than I do and have much more pressing worries. Hey, nothing feels like it, until it happens to you.

Also when you are searching for work that itself becomes unpaid work too. So bang goes my time investigating or researching interesting topics like Play Framework, Scalate, JavaFX or Scala or something distinctly completely non technology like learning a new language or playing a musical instrument. I hate job search for this sole reason alone, because it consumes all of your valuable quality time. When you are job hunting there is always thought running at the back of your head wondering if you are not doing enough of it, especially when you need to provide income, for your family and loved one, and soon.

The year 2011 has made me more guarded about communicating outside of cliqué of respected people. My desire to self-promote is weakened to point now where I do think hard – do I need to write that tweet? should I upload that photograph? I am more sensitive in 2012 than in 2010 when I was freely enthusiastic about running a Java User Group. Now, I tend to keep mum, clam up for a bit during a heated discussion, I observe the participants instead, actively watch and listen to the others before jumping up with my view. The benefit being that I have more quality control rather than an out pouring of quantity, especially when most of the stuff I see is everyone else’s rubbish. Besides nobody I know or who I am connected with tweets depressing psychological bullshit or downbeat personal vibes, like “I going to kill myself tomorrow morning” or “OMG my man has cheated on me! I found out he has just slept with another woman!”. It is all deeply impersonal, self-gratification mockery and it reeks of indiscipline, when sometimes all you should say is the real personal stuff in the time of need. Therefore, I predict I will continue to be reticent in my out-going communication well into 2012.

This week we heard about 3500 people to go, face the axe at Royal Bank of Scotland, inside the corporate investment banking division. The economic downturn has made fools of all of us. If it has not happened to you (yet) or you don’t happen care (too bad for you then), just pray it never ever does (death may take you first) and also lucky you.

January	February	March	April
Planning Bathroom InstallationInterview w/ Blackrock, HSBC, BarCap, JP MorganPlanning Java Posse RoundUp 2011 and vacation rental	Bathroom installation (1st half of the month)Attended interviews for various investment banks including RBS and Black RockJava Posse Round-Up 2011	QCon Conference 2011 JCP Panel Discussion Won a Kindle Wi-FIOutplacement StartsSkills Matter Functional Exchange, Cuke-Up! Guest VIP pass courtesy of Wendy;-)Created my “Scala Adoption” talk with my JVM language and  knowledge predictions, uploaded it Linked-In.comTerry’s B-Day	Attended ACCU Conference 2011 OxfordPerformed my “Introduction to Scala talk” at the ACCUMy B-Day Interviews dried up for a while. I did not know why, but I started to worry about the prospects.
May	June	July	August
Interview w/ Black Rock Interview w/ CitiGroup, Interview w/ Credit SuisseRumours of Morgan Stanley Scala development interestKohsuke Jenkins SkillsMatterMy outplacement continued Start your own Internet Online  business with Linked-inc.om Catastrophe!	Clojure at CitiGroup (seriously)?! Yes CitiGroup were recruiting for functional programmers for their Risk Front Office divisionInvitation to JavaOne Selection ReviewScala Exchange at Skills Matter. Guest VIP pass courtesy of Wendy A series of Mizuho Interviews – perhaps they should have been using Apache Camel or ServiceMix(?) Clojure Dojo End of Scala adoption my attempt at investment bank in London Re-marketed myself as Java EE engineer – This Scala adoption did not panned out at all. It seemed me to be a lot of fear, uncertainty and deception to me. Invitation to be 2011 JavaOne reviewer for call-for-papers ;-D Thank you Simon Ritter	A London consultancy interviewAttended Job outplacement workshops on Networking and Linked-In Interviews now dried up for the Summer Reviewing JavaOne 2011 call-for-papers JavaFX Session accepted for JavaOne ;-D Booking travel for San Francisco in October! Personal disaster recovery started with some real retrospective ;-/	Prepared my JavaFX 2.0 talk by writing demos for JavaOneTLC Presentation Pronto released on Android MarketConfirmed attendance to Kirk Pepperdine’s Performing Tuning Course in Crete next monthStructuring my own Progressive JavaFX talk outline for JavaOne 2011 in October Aborted Collective Code-Camp event in London, I concluded the UK is not Crested Butte, Colorado. Holiday in Lanzarote – quiet area, drives inland and site seeing (much do something like this together next year)
September	October	November	December
Decided to look outside of banking IT for contracts and Java development roles Find new recruitment agentsKirk Pepperdine’s Java Performance Tuning Course Enjoyable course and time in Chania Greece, a real highlight!Attended a couple of ThoughtWorks interview – a lot of brain and intelligent tests	Attended JavaOne 2011 (Thank you again Simon Ritter!) Performed “Progressive JavaFX 2.0″ talk ;-DAttended Silicon Valley Code CampJavaFX Sillicon Valley User Group, performed  talk for Stephen Chin and bay are community Stayed with my friends Larry and Patti at their lovely house Initial Interview with IB Boost Ltd Interview with two “cloud” computing companies – 100+ JVMs on 32+ servers End of personal disaster recovery for now Interview with household-name broadcast TV company on Java and Agile Interview with two Gaming Betting companies ThoughtWorks UK interview process took far too long for my liking that I had to bail on them Disastrous non-interview outside of banking that caused me to come to my senses!	Preparation for Devoxx University session w/ Stephen ChinInterview with IB BoostAccepted job offer IB BoostDevoxx 2011 University Session w/ Stephen Chin”Happy is a cigar called Hamlet” Started work at IB Boost Limited Regarding wider community Java stuff, I decided on non-involvement for a while at least.	Getting into IB Boost Ltd Returning to private life with no regrets, mulling my thoughts about my lucky escape.Family life, buying presents, gifts and enjoying festivities.Xmas at homeLooking forward to the next year 2012

IMHO the best recruitment agencies are ____  TBD  ;-)

IMHO the worst recruitment agencies of all time are  ____  “ballleeetttted!”

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We were five students of Kirk Pepperdine’s Java Performance Tuning Course, which took place in September 2011 near Chania, Crete.

We were amazed to find out that we were actually three guitarist, one harmonica player and a supporter. We had spontaneous fun on the area of the living room reserved for musical instruments. I was reminded of the fact, that I had not pick up my own musical instrument for awful long time. We found welcome relief and enjoyment, and it was good to have Maxi, the talented kid, to share our fun.

Kirk Pepperdine

Attendees find the course to be a relearning of everything they thought they knew about performance tuning

Roland Brandqvist (playing Maxi Kabutz electric guitar and singing brilliantly the Police’s Roxanne. Roland has band experience ;-o )
Mario (acoustic guitar; a good guitarist also on electric)
Henri Tremblay (harmonica and singing – the Quebecois can rock the blues specially good)
Maxi Kabutz (playing his Roland electronic drum kit; this lad is only 13 years old and he is good)
Simone Barbieri (lending his support as groupie. AS Roma 
Me – Peter Pilgrim (playing acoustic – I am so rusty out of the saddle)

This recording took place on the last day of the course, Thursday 15th, we all stayed at the Kabutz family household and enjoyed a fabulous barbecue. We found out that we are all musicians of some type!

PS: Special shout-out and thank you to Simone Barbieri for taking my humble iPhone 3GS and making the video recording!

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The Java software platform is now more diverse in terms of innovations and what is the next best thing.

I just had brief overview view of the Ceylon JVM programming language. In my own view, this represents more evidence of a sea-change of thinking about Java the programming language.

Figurehead and Leadership

James Gosling was the long-term figurehead for the Java programming language and also the JVM, since 1995. His influence was felt for millions of Java engineers out there, who knew how famous he was and still is, what he did. At JavaOne conferences he was a superhero for many developers.

In the last years of Sun Microsystem’s existence, his influence waned as that company went through financial difficulties. Shortly after Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems in early 2010, Gosling left. He has now reappeared at Google in an employee in as-yet unknown role.

In short, the global Java community lost the influence of a key leader as in the programming language. In fact, Gosling, has gone on record, at this year’s Server Side Symposium Journal to reportedly have said that he no longer cared anymore about Java the programming language. [Gosling said what he really cared about was the Java Virtual Machine]

Confidence in Java

On the one hand this can interpreted that Java is no longer relevant. The programming language is relevant, because they are so many customers who are running applications in it today. On the other hand those customers who are running application on systems are no longer dependent on a figurehead.

As a side note, Sun Microsystems always liked to market the statistics: there are billions of devices, mobile feature phones, that run Java, as in Java ME.

The return on investment on Java has been taken and used up. When enterprise first invested into the platform around the turn of the century, having a global figure head, and a team of dedicated people around to help market the Java platform was the next best thing. Businesses understood. They got it. With the Internet generation, the needed a solution that would allow them to write easily server side / enterprise-class applications on commodity hardware. Java programming language applications running on a JVM that abstracted away malloc() and free() and the vendor’s operating system was that solution.

Now in 2011, this ambition has been in achieved, that barn door has been blown off and the horses bolted. Businesses have a great Java EE (or like) applications running now on Java enterprise servers. The money has been made and now what happens next?

Whilst we were all enjoying the rise,rise and rise of Java from the client-side to the server-side in ubiquitous fashions,  we were making good business and money. The majority of us, where happy to accept the lack of innovation in the Java programming language, we accepted the ideas of best practices, and even the mishap of J2EE design patterns.

Some developers were not so confidence in the evolution of Java. That anger or frustration or irritation or curiosity began to appear in open source innovations, such Gavin King’s Hibernate and Rod Johnson, general unhappiness with EJB 1.1, so he invented the Spring Framework from the ideas of dependency injection / inversion of control.

Others like Martin Odersky, though instead of making Java better, rather that they would make a better Java. The Switzerland professor at EPFL came up with a scalable language., called Scala.

 James Strachan wanted a dynamically typed version of Java, instead of a statically typed language. He created Groovy the programming language. 

Charles Nutter already found an external platform like Ruby and thought it would great to port it the JVM. So he got together with Thomas Enebo and created JRuby.

The innovation was a deeper level in to building and designing, or adapting a programming language to supersede the current implementation of Java the programming language.

Open Season

In a nutshell, I do not think we be worrying about proposals for programming languages appearing on the JVM. Like Ceylon appearing out of the blue, a few days ago, I believe it is all good. With Ceylon specifically, there is no point getting upset, until you see the product and have a play with it yourself. Individually, that is how we all learn any new technology. It is certainly the way I learnt to program with Groovy, JavaFX Script and Scala. One cannot just determine a proper and contrite conclusion on just hearsay or back up an opinion on a someone else’s whim.

There is a sense that with Java the programming language it is not really changing syntactically or improving since 2006, there has been a open ground for other alternative JVM language to enter the mainstream. Developers are now living a diverse dream of languages if they are inclined to do so. In other words, what is your motivation to learn? This is the time to do, because it has never been so colourful and rich.

My own motivation is to get into functional programming, whilst not giving up the object oriented development that I spent over a decade achieving. In 1997 I wanted to become a C++ Guru, because I thought that that was the way forward. I had drank the coffee and tried the Red Bull and vodka. I was going to be the Standard Template Library king and be a generic programming wizard. Of course, my world, it changed. In 1998, I attended a Java programming course and learnt something completely different. During the course, I had decided that there would be no more malloc and free if I could help it, that garbage collection was here, I need required a nascent collection library to write software and a byte-code executor, a virtual machine, portability, networkability and security. Great! Java was the future. I knew absolutely where my programming destiny was going into the next millennium.

By 2010, I already knew that my love affair with Java programming language was diluted. I still have a great respect for Java the programming language, the enterprise side, and I accepted many of the warts. However I have expanded to other possibilities beyond Java on the JVM.

For all of our continual learning, change is normally a good think. It enhances our professional competence, re-energises our brains. It prevents us from falling in to the trap of the status quo.

Politics

There is one other factor that is needs to be address in pushing the boundaries. The long wait for Java the programming language to change fundamentally, have allowed several providers to attempt to challenge Java. The success of Java was its own ability to be attractive, an instant-win, and emotional future value.

Most of the alternative JVM languages, which I have encountered, have been created through academic interest. Ceylon is perhaps one proper example, of commercial business, RedHat, attempting to go for the juggler with a language supported by a business. JavaFX Script was another example, of course, created by Sun Microsystems, 2008.

Watching the massive investment of technical folk and engineer into JavaFX Script 1.x in the years 2007 to 2010 gave a clue to how much of barrier to entry writing a popular and adopted language really it is. In short, as Bruce Tate also wrote in his book, Beyond Java, any new language needs an active community. There are no guarantees from a language design that community will follow and then adopt it without an X factor appeal. Such a language created by a commercial entity needs to have certain guarantees and essential wins. In other words, throwing the code simply over face and slapping a badge of proxy open source is no way near enough to a mark of quality and success.

It takes a long time to build an active community. In terms of Java the platform’s case, including the programming language, it has take on all the time from 1995 to now, which makes me doubtful that a new language can achieve the same success in a much shorter span without political manipulation.

This has not been lost on those who might have a political agenda. Whatever we do, we must aware of that business agenda. We must ask why they are introducing this technology? What do they really want to a achieve? What is the future value-add? Is this new language going to provide genuine benefits? Or we can ask that could elicit negative results. What are they afraid of? What are they attempting to protect? Is there a smell of vendor-lock-in or a walled garden?

In this regards, James Gosling, was massive advocate for the Java programming language and therefore now that he longer cares about Java the language, he will be missed by millions, directly and indirectly. That is a shame. It will be up to graceful leaders in the other language communities to lend a hand and be also, sometimes, watchful.

AudioBoos

Thanks for reading and listening

The number of Java developers according of Evans Data Corp from 7 May 2010.

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The Java software platform is now more diverse in terms of innovations and what is the next best thing.

I just had brief overview view of Ceylon programming language. In my own view, this represents more evidence of a sea-change of thinking about Java the programming language.

Figurehead and Leadership

James Gosling was the long-term figurehead for the Java programming language and also the JVM, since 1995. His influence was felt for millions of Java engineers out there, who knew how famous he was and still is, what he did. At JavaOne conferences he was a superhero for many developers.

In the last years of Sun Microsystems, his influenced waned as that company went through difficulties. Short after Oracle acquired Sun, Gosling left. He has now reappeared at Google in an employee in as-yet unknown role.

In short, the global community lost the influence of Java key leader as in the programming language. In fact, Gosling, has gone on record, at this year’s Server Side Symposium Journal to reportedly have said that he no longer cared anymore about Java the programming language

Confidence in Java

On the one hand this can interpreted that Java is no longer relevant. The programming language is relevant, because they are so many customer who are running applications in it. On the other hand those customers who are running application on systems are no longer dependent on a figurehead.

The return on investment on Java has been taken and used up. When enterprise first invested into the platform around the turn of the century, having a global figure head, and a team of dedicated people around to help market the platform as the next best thing. Now in 2011, this ambition has been in achieved, that barn door has been blown off and the horses bolted. Businesses have a great applications running now on Java enterprise servers. The money has been made and now what?

Whilst we were all enjoying the rise,rise and rise of Java from the client-side to the server-side in ubiquitous fashions,  we were making good business and money. The majority of us, where happy to accept the lack of innovation in the Java programming language, we accepted the ideas of best practices, and even the mishap of J2EE design pattern.

Some developers were not so confidence in the evolution of Java. That anger or frustration or irritation or curiosity began to appear in open source innovations, such Gavin King’s Hibernate and Rod Johnson, general unhappiness with EJB 1.1, so he invented the Spring Framework.

Others like Martin Odersky, though instead of making Java better, rather they would make a better Java. The professor at EPFL came up with a scalable language. James Strachan wanted a dynamically typed version of Java, instead of a statically typed language. Charles Nutter already found an external platform like Ruby and thought it would great to port it the JVM.

The innovation was a deeper level in to building and designing, or adapting a programming language to supersede the current implementation of Java the programming language.

Open Season

In a nutshell, I do not think we be worrying about proposals for programming languages appearing on the JVM. Like Ceylon appearing out of the blue, a few days ago, I believe it is all good. With Ceylon specifically, there is no point getting upset, until you see the product and have a play with it yourself. Individually, that is how we all learn any new technology. It is certainly the way learnt Groovy, JavaFX Script and Scala. One cannot just determine a proper and contrite conclusion on hearsay or back up an opinion on a whim.

There is a sense that with Java the programming language not really changing syntactically or improving since 2006 there have been a open ground for other alternative JVM language to enter the mainstream. Developers are now living a diverse dream of languages if they are inclined to do so. In other words, what is your motivation to learn? This is the time to do, because it has never been so colourful and rich.

My own motivation is to get into functional programming, whilst not giving up the object oriented development that I spent over a decade achieving. In 1997 I wanted to become a C++ Guru, because I thought that that was the way forward. I was going to be Standard Template Library king and be a generic programming. Of course, it changed. I attended a Java course and learnt something different. No more malloc and free, garbage collection was here, a nascent collection library and a byte-code executor, a virtual machine, portability, networkability and security. Great! Java was the future. I knew absolutely where my programming destiny was going into the next millennium.

By 2010, I already knew that my love affair with Java programming language was diluted. I still have a great respect for Java the programming language, the enterprise side, and I accepted many of the warts. However I have expanded to other possibilities beyond Java on the JVM.

For all of our continual learning, change is normally a good think. It enhances our professional competence, re-energises our brains. It prevents us from falling in to the trap of the status quo.

Politics

There is one other factor that is needs to be address in pushing the boundaries. The long wait for Java the programming language to change fundamentally, have allowed several provider to attempt to challenge Java. The success of Java was its own ability to be attractive, an instant-win, and emotional future value.

This has not been lost on  those who might have a political agenda. Whatever we do, we must aware of that business agenda. We must ask why they are introducing this technology? What do they really want to a achieve? What is the future value-add? In this regards, James Gosling, was massive advocate for the Java programming language and therefore now that he longer cares about Java the language, he will be missed by millions, directly and indirectly. That is a shame. It will be up to graceful leaders in the other language communities to lend a hand.

AudioBoos

Thanks for reading and listening

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As I write this early in the morning I am really tired on being on the back side of what counts as information technology. Recently a friend asked me to simple two questions. I could not give a satisfactory answer.  The questions were why are you (as in me) not yet a manager of a team? Why are they no black people who are senior managers in banks? I could not answer without embarrassment and a bittersweet taste of foreboding of the excuses that I was about to make to the individual. In fact I was confused, disappointed and then suddenly very annoyed by the questions. Emotions ran high, as blurted out a weak answer, that I consider myself more technical and an engineer type rather than a manager. Okay I thought, I can clearly talk about my personal situation. The second question left me vacant of expression. I could not answer it at all.

Listen to AudioBoo: Black People Will Never Be Promoted

Through my own eyes, you see, I have certainly met plenty of black people working in IT, inside investment banks, for over my 13 years of experience in the City of London and the  Docklands. During that range of times I have met many Afro-Caribbean, Afro-North-Americans, Afro-South-Americans, and just Africans. However you are unlikely to see an abundance of smart and intelligent black people in the London work place. Much of this is down to simple city and national demographics.  In the capital city, London, whose population is 7 million people. Black people would count statistically as a one in ten. Inside an investment bank it is safe to say this is 1 in 100, thus we are few and far between.

However it is not the demographic the ratio that upsets me. The job titles of have been depressingly non-inspirational such as PC Support, Oracle Database Support, IT Support, CISCO Phone Engineer, Hardware Support, Network Administrator, IT HelpDesk, Quality Assurance, Systems Tester, etc. .. I think I have met one other Black senior developer in my 13 years of investment IT software development.  I cannot recall from memory any one in my career path, who has been a Software Architect, Team Manager, Line Manager or Technical Leader.  Most of black staff, therefore, which I have witnessed in 13 years, have been in the non-creational roles. In other words they have not been typically software engineers or developers. Why is that so?

Where is these other notable Black engineers, designers and developers? And where is that other inspirational leader? It may be just because we are missed each other in engagements, yet, in the square mile. Maybe they have been working in C# and Microsoft Dot-Net, or perhaps they have been working in another investment bank completely opposite to my the one I was involved during any time in a decade.

During my time in banks and IT, whilst I can take away five years of contracting, 2003-2008, I never witnessed a promotion of a single black individual of note inside Information Technology inside an investment bank. In many of the institutions, the company sends emails, memos and announcement of senior management personnel who received promotions, I cannot recall one with a black person. Maybe I was blind to it or did not pay attention.  Tell a lie, I can remember one senior manager, three staff levels above me, however only just one. He was Black and definitely African.

The source of my chagrin was the question that I could not affectively answer without deep resentment about my profession:

Technical versus managerial career path – the fact that software creation people, technical engineers do not have path to follow

Poor excuses about our communication skills – the fact that black people are continually being put or marked down for poor communications

• Lack of influence of external vectors – the fact that being involved in the external community outside of work, e.g. running a user group, building a network has had little effect
• Lack of evidence of improvement – the fact many of those Tech Support, Help desk people are not in upper echelons of management. Surely one would expect a black Head of Operations IT or Head of Networking Administration by now if most of us Black person are in non-creational roles?
• Lack of training – the fact we are black people, non-blacks are offer more opportunities on external training courses by their white managers. In other words trying to getting training is like getting blood from a stone.
• Talking a good game – the investment banks talk a good in diversity, they over promise and seldom deliver
• Lack of coaching and mentoring – the fact with hardly any black technical leaders in town, inside investment banks and their IT operations systems infrastructure, we do not see chances of being coached or to do the coaching with the approval of the (white) senior management of such organisations.

For this very reason, I found solace outside the banks, contracting paid for JavaOne, Devoxx and other conference tickets, hotels and flight. It is also obvious to me that creating the JAVAWUG (a Java user group) allowed me explore roads and discuss technology outside the organisation. Consequently, I do not believe that black people with ever be promoted or rewarded satisfactorily, especially in this new decade. Sad,  but true. 

ADDED 01/Feb/2011: Some one pointed out that many IT developers tend to be (post) graduates, they have at least one university degree or an equivalent HND BTEC qualification, and therefore they were surmising that, in any case, only small ratio of graduates can be black against the whole populace of available qualified folk. I would contend there are enough black graduates out there and for precisely all of the reasons that I alluded to in the above blog, they might be deflected from pursuing a software development (technical) career. I am also at large, on the bench, in between contracts and gigs at the time of writing.

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