Reply to: WPF as a viable career focus?

[denBen]

Yeah I only know the basics of threading. Not up on C# new Await/Async stuff either yet.

My concern would be if I somehow landed a gig & on the first day they expected me to hit the ground running with say Prism or MVVM Light toolkit, Multi-threading, TDD and complex validation logic.
I think I would be exposed quite quickly.

I'd rather take my time upskilling & go to contracting knowing that I'm suitably qualified rather than putting myself into a 'sink or swim' situation where I'm frantically searching Stack Overflow every 30 seconds when colleagues aren't looking and trying to read up to speed until the early hours every night in an attempt to avoid getting canned...

Did you see my request for a PM?

Anyway, regarding your fear of 'being exposed'. Nobody knows everything, nobody at all. Someone with 10 years experience will most likely only have a few years experience working with their current technology as it changes fairly quickly. You will be expected to hit the ground running as a contractor, but I would be surprised if a company expected anyone to have an expert level of knowledge of every component.

Also, re: stackoverflow. There's no shame in doing that, and it's commonplace.

[Hardgrafter]

Yeah I only know the basics of threading. Not up on C# new Await/Async stuff either yet.

My concern would be if I somehow landed a gig & on the first day they expected me to hit the ground running with say Prism or MVVM Light toolkit, Multi-threading, TDD and complex validation logic.
I think I would be exposed quite quickly.

I'd rather take my time upskilling & go to contracting knowing that I'm suitably qualified rather than putting myself into a 'sink or swim' situation where I'm frantically searching Stack Overflow every 30 seconds when colleagues aren't looking and trying to read up to speed until the early hours every night in an attempt to avoid getting canned...

[MacContractor]

Good call regarding threading.

[jmo21]

If you're looking to get into banking there's a fair few bank jobs up in Glasgow at the moment paying between £400 - £500 and I know for a fact that's they can't get enough WPF dev's. Could be your way in if you fancy working for a bank.

He'll need to brush up on threading for those as well.

[Hardgrafter]

So is the general consensus to take a few years to get to 'Senior developer' standard (whatever that means) before looking to contracting or to just try & dive in at the deep end without the experience?

I know the basics of C#, OOP, Xaml, databinding etc but I'm in no way a guru and I wouldn't expect to be after just 18 months. My plan was to spend 4 years or so getting to the required level, although I don't know what that level is...

Also I don't have the academic comp science background so it really is 18 months from nothing to where I am now.

I was a contractor in a previous life and industry so have no reservations re the lifestyle, running a ltd co etc.

[MyUserName]

That would be fantastic however with only 18 months dev experience I think that's a little above my ability at this point.

Rubbish, give it a shot. Read up on interview questions and dive in there.

[MacContractor]

All my friend are doing is pure UI work, nothing else. All the data is sent to them via a set of services. They can't believe how much they're getting paid for what they have to do. Fire your CV in and see what happens, they can only say no!

[Hardgrafter]

If you're looking to get into banking there's a fair few bank jobs up in Glasgow at the moment paying between £400 - £500 and I know for a fact that's they can't get enough WPF dev's. Could be your way in if you fancy working for a bank.

That would be fantastic however with only 18 months dev experience I think that's a little above my ability at this point.

[MacContractor]

If you're looking to get into banking there's a fair few bank jobs up in Glasgow at the moment paying between £400 - £500 and I know for a fact that's they can't get enough WPF dev's. Could be your way in if you fancy working for a bank.

[denBen]

Cheers guys. I'm in Oil & Gas so probably a good industry base.

I'd like to keep the Xaml thing going as I've invested quite a lot into it and the learning curve is steep but with Windows RT pretty much already dead & Windows 8 on it's arse that only leaves Silverlight & WPF.

Be interesting to see what happens with Windows 9 & if Microsoft keep Xaml alive.

I've also noticed almost all WPF gigs in banking, all London based. Good money but as you say, I don't have the industry experience.

Might be time for me to try & get some web development experience somewhere else...

Hi mate, I am trying to PM you but there is no option on your profile. Have you disabled messages from members? It could be because I have just signed up and my account is still moderated. Drop me a PM if you can, I think we can have an interesting chat.

[VectraMan]

Permie Co. built a prototype for an app in WPF (before my time), but decided it was way too slow and clunky and to write it in C++ instead.

I didn't think anybody used it much.

[original PM]

not sure if Silverlight is a good option as I heard MS were dumping support for it.

MVC as what our dev team are using

MVVM seems to have died a bit of a death

having said that the more you know the more options you will have

[Hardgrafter]

Cheers guys. I'm in Oil & Gas so probably a good industry base.

I'd like to keep the Xaml thing going as I've invested quite a lot into it and the learning curve is steep but with Windows RT pretty much already dead & Windows 8 on it's arse that only leaves Silverlight & WPF.

Be interesting to see what happens with Windows 9 & if Microsoft keep Xaml alive.

I've also noticed almost all WPF gigs in banking, all London based. Good money but as you say, I don't have the industry experience.

Might be time for me to try & get some web development experience somewhere else...

[MyUserName]

The only real issue with WPF is that it is very popular so there is lots of competition for roles in it. Although it is a good thing to have on your cv you might struggle to build a reliable stream of contracts unless you have a strong history in it.

Rather than techs, what industry specific knowledge do you have/can you gain? Banking, telecoms, defense etc.?

If you have an industry that you can demonstrate experience in then you are in a far stronger situation imho. If you work in telecoms then you will learn the skills required in telecoms and, if you are good and lucky, can start bagging contracts in telecoms. Once you have a few contracts behind you you can look at your options over how to proceed. If you are trying to get into, for example, banking with no banking experience then (pretty much) forget it - there are hundreds of experience contractors with relevant experience competing with you.

[MacContractor]

If you want to contract for banks WPF is the way to go. I've a lot of friends making good money writing WPF code for banks. The only down side is that it's pretty much only banks that seem to use it!