Which of these skills are in demand?

[sappatz]

skill

SEX... thats the main skill asked nowadays

(By the way, SAP is not a skill, its the name of a german sofware company, with lotz of modules, you must know a module like BW/BC/SD/FI/CO/FM/HR/PP/PM/IS-U/IS-OIL/ABAP/....)

[rootsnall]

I'm an SAP ABAP Developer ( known as an ABAPer ). ABAP is the language used to develop SAP applications and is pretty easy to learn but the applications themselves maybe are not so easy and it takes a few years to learn all the weird and wonderful oddities to make yourself a decent ABAPer to contract standard. Its also not the goldmine it once was, the rates really slumped but have recovered quite a bit. I would look at learning the latest Microsoft skills, I reckon C# on the .Net platform, loads of info on the web and freebie material to learn with and if you were serious about getting work in it I'd get certified. The next time I'm out of work I'm going to attempt to take my own advice but will probably be too lazy when the time comes !

[thom234]

Re: Ooo

Lol! Nah, not defensive about my skills as such. If you re-read my post, you'll see it's more the suggestion that I should know about SAP to be involved in IT that I disagree with. The point I'm making is that I’ve no more reason to know about those things than a developer has to know about the stuff I do. I wouldn’t be arrogant enough to suggest that someone shouldn’t be involved in IT if they don’t understand web editing (I’d be out of a job if they did!) or gfx design, for example.

Yeah, most of my mates are developers so I know what kind of rates are around. Seems like they’ve improved in the last few years. Good luck to ‘em – worked with some cracking guys on a recent project, who were working till midnight at one point to get something out on time (still, they were raking in overtime bonuses!).

Tbh, I thought about going down the dev route a few years back because it paid more and I’ve done bits and bobs of coding and mark-up in the past. I even started training it but it just didn’t do it for me. The front-end stuff’s ok but anything beyond that just bored me.

That was the point of the post really – to pick-up some skills that complement what I do (and enjoy doing) so I can keep doing it but be more marketable. I don’t really want to re-train to something else completely just because it pays more - money’s not the only factor. For example, I charge £350 day for freelance work that I do in between contracts and during commutes on the train. Quite possibly I could get enough work to do that full-time (plus I’d save in travel and accommodation), but I know I’d get very bored sat at home. Let’s face it, we’re all over-paid in comparison to nurses, teachers, etc. so we can’t complain.

Anyway, thanks for the info everyone. Doesn’t seem like there’s much around in this area that would both interest me and reward me financially. By all accounts, front-end stuff doesn’t pay anything special either. I think IA might be a good option though. All that drawing boxes and arrows - how hard can it be? ;-)

As for dev stuff being outsourced, one thing I would say is that, IMHO, the best way for any to developer to protect their position is to gain an understanding of the business side of things. The best developers I know do very well because they’re keen to work well with editors, designers, product managers, business users, etc. That kind of skill is more difficult to outsource and often leads them to become good team leaders, business analysts, project managers, etc.

There are few (though hopefully less and less nowadays) developers I know who struggle to deal with the business side of things – either they don’t have any understanding of their needs, or they struggle to communicate in a non-techie way, or they simply see the business as the enemy. Without that understanding, they’re obviously less likely to build apps that fulfil what the business wanted. If stuff does continue to be outsourced, I think it’s that kind of developer that’ll suffer. You see it’s not all about SAP!

[IsItOver]

Re: Ooo

blowjobs!

[MilanB]

Re: Ooo

"As I said, I "am a Web Editor by trade", not a developer.",

what the feck is a Web Editor ?

sounds very late 90's jumped up noddy .com startup kinda title to me

Milan.

[zeitghost]

Re: Ooo

And you obviously forgot about FORTRAN IV.

[xoggoth]

Re: Ooo

I am sure you are grateful for the usual CUK deluge of facetious and irrelevant comments above. I never ever ever feel compelled to make irrelevent or facetious comments personally.

Not sure any one is much good on its own. It depends a great deal on your sector and the combination of the listed skills you have. If you have good financial sector experience, combinations of many of the above, like html/jsript/asp/xml/sql are still in demand. Really best to look through jobserve and see.

The .net stuck on the end is an extension/update, not an entirely separate skill. Not into into yet but I have found with vb/jscript/asp that many of the things I would like to do but can't or can only do with great difficulty, become possible once the .net bit is added. Don't thin'k it can fail personally.

[Vetran]

Re: Ooo

20 years real experience of all of them, we are paying £3 an hour, accomodation provided (reasonable costs (£2.80 hr) will be deducted to pay for your palatial appartment in skegness which is conveniently shared with 20 other coders).

apply to - tatty clipro outsourcing.

Truthfully most of those are available in the for dummies books so you are competing with a wide field.

[expat]

Re: is it?

As a Web Editor, my main duty is writing web copy - something that's unlikely to be outsourced overseas, so I'm pretty confident I'll be in IT for a while to come actually

You mean you're pretty confident you'll be in work for a while to come; and good luck to you. But what makes it IT? Is web copy IT and print copy not, for example?

Do we care? Perhaps not. But I do, because IT is my profession. I respect knowledgeable users (for being knowledgeable as well as for being the people whose work is the raison d'être of mine), but I don't confuse their work with mine.

Ad parhaps ypu do, in that you seemingly do have some questions about your profession; perhaps other people like you, doing journalism rather than developer work, would give you better answers than you will get from us techies.

[karlssonpataket]

Re: is it?

That's the problem you're up against with web dev skills. When the trade you're practicing can be done by non-techies it tends to get paid poorly. It's not fair but a reality. Most non-dev types who dabble with computers think that they could put a web page together. By reading a Macromedia tutorial and practicing over a few weekends they get the 'how hard is Dreamweaver, Flash, et al' mindset and before you know it the rate for web page design is £5/hr. Most web sites are junk because of this and really talented web designers struggle to get recognition. The only skills that pay in my experience are either highly technical and can only be done by either egg heads or journey men who have put in the years learning the tech manuals off by heart or (my route) are tasks that are considered really boring and also take years of manual reading to get to grips with (the best ones are those technologies where there aren't even published books because the potential market is so small). If you can find a niche that combines your current skills and with some additional skills that are very hard to come by then you got a product to sell.