2008 review, 2009 hopes

posted by John Rizzo

Dear Java Belts,

I write this note to you shortly before midnight this December 31st 2008, GMT. As our East-Asia members are already waking up in 2009, our members on the American continent are just starting Sylvester Day 2008.

As we jump into a new year, it is time to think about our achievements in 2008 and what lies ahead.


JavaBlackBelt Platform

In 2008 our main platform development has been the new moderation process.
Together with this new process we designed a new UI for managing questions.
I'm happy it's up and running. As we are fine-tuning the process, adding your contributions will be easier and more efficient, with undoubtedly a positive impact on the overall content.

Making so many teams and individuals across the globe working together efficiently on-line, remains a major challenge of most 2.0 communities. Some recent JavaBlackBelt community numbers:

• 250.000 contribution points earned by
• 50.000+ registered users.
• 2.000+ unique visitors / day
• 4.000.000 answers given to technical questions.

On the corporate side, one of our main 2008 achievements has been to change the education culture of a large banking and insurance group with more than 100 Java developers. Learning in this company was organized with traditional courses in a conventional classroom-oriented fashion. Today the organization has adopted a dynamic and result-driven approach based on JavaBlackBelt exams. It does not mean that classroom learning has been replaced, but rather that they have defined targets and implemented measurable learning paths. Now classroom courses are just one possible mean to achieve individual and organizational education targets. In the past, just taking a course was a target/achievement by itself. Throughout the JavaBlackBelt implementation process, the reaction of developers has been very interesting. I will post an article about that in the upcoming weeks.

Conferences

In 2008, we've had the opportunity to meet and talk to hundreds of you (if not thousands) at many conferences. It's always very enjoyable to meet in the physical world and put faces to the members of an on-line community. Most of all, it is inspiring to hear your numerous stories about how JavaBlackBelt impacted your Java skills, sometimes even your life. For instance I recall meeting Lucasz, based in Poland, who explained us how he got his job in the UK thanks to JavaBlackBelt, or Eric in Denver who's career was boosted largely thanks to the recognition he got via our platform.

You'll find some pictures of our 2008 activities in our web album.

We apologize to the organizers of the conferences we had to decline, we just cannot physically be everywhere, sometime we have to work home ;-)


Goodbye 2008, hello 2009!

It's difficult to talk about 2008 without mentioning the financial crisis, the real-estate crisis, automotive crisis, and yes indeed the IT crisis, ... More particularly it is interesting to note the consequences of the crisis on developers and the relation to their skills. Imagine a pyramid with the best developers at the top, and mediocre developers at the bottom according to their ability. Horizontal bars represent the level you need to get a job as a developer. When the bar is high, there are fewer positions open and it's more difficult to be hired (or the rate is lower).



Let's go back to the Internet bubble at the beginning of the millennium. I remember how companies were hiring developers as if they were buying office supplies! I've seen so many self-proclaimed highly-skilled developers who could barely find the power button on their computer. At the same time, J2EE came out. It was incredibly hard to use (remember EJB v1, no Spring, no Hibernate, no Struts2,...). The perfect mix for most Java projects to fail. As of today I am still wondering how Java survived that stage.

The bubble bursted and in 2003 it was much harder to get a job as a developer. As you can see on the diagram, the ability bar was raised. The market has been purified someway. Fewer crazy projects. Fewer inefficient coworkers. More professional attitude adopted by recruiters. It has probably been unfair and unpleasant to many people, but globally, in the long run, I think it was better for the IT professionals and their customers.

Even with high growth rates and difficulties to find skilled good developers in 2008 (until the last few months), it seems the market remembered mistakes done during the internet bubble and recruiters further increased professionalism, although the ability bar was lower in 2007 than in 2003. A large number of companies hired junior developers fresh from school and took on the entire training.

I fear that the current crisis will make the bar very high again. This time I'm afraid some good developers will be looking for a job.

For illustration purpose, every year, since 2003, my team has been training 12 job-seeking developers as a government-run program. They usually have some experience or an IT degree when starting. After 6 months of intensive class training, they are able to develop a web-application with Spring and Hibernate. Near the end of their training, they start looking for a job. In June 2008, we started with a really outstanding group of above the average achievers. They've been just brilliant. Two months ago, they started looking for jobs. It has been much more difficult for them. Over the past 3 years, 90% of the group was hired before the end of the training. This year, only 50% were hired (note: my best wishes to the remaining 50%).

Today the experience level required to get a job is definitely higher than one year ago.

If you are at the bottom of the pyramid, don't even think about it. Unless you have a really strong potential, IT is no longer a gold mine.

If you are at the top, you'll never be in real trouble (just your salary/rate may drop).

But what if you are "stuck" in the middle? Are you just below or above the line?

This question is quite complex, because the ability (to make successful projects) is not only about hard technical skills. It's also about soft teaming and communication skills. I leave the soft skills to others. Let's talk about the technical skills.


Learning in 2009

Recently I was showing some stats about JavaBlackBelt exams (number of succeeded exams vs. number of failed exams over time), when someone asked a very disturbing question: "What do we propose to those numerous developers who failed their exams ?"

As you know, exam takers learn during the exam, and also after the exam when they see the correct answer of each question.

But it would be great if we could provide them the necessary support to succeed rapidly and efficiently. It is impossible to propose classroom training as there are simply too many candidates, and they are too dispersed. On the other hand, leaving them alone with the web and a book is not enough for most people. We are convinced there is a solution somewhere between these two alternatives (classroom and alone) that really helps programmers learn efficiently and faster.

We are currently working on it, and that will be one of our main projects in 2009: develop the best distant support we can for programmers to learn Java technologies.



On behalf of the JavaBlackBelt team, I am graetful to all 50.000 of you for your great and quality activity on JavaBlackBelt this year.

As a token of our appreciation, I have a New Year gift for you: $100 auction to spend your remaining 2008 points. Good luck !


I look forward to seeing you on the platform this new and challenging year,

John