Dr. Dobb's Journal November 2006
Employer: Advisen Ltd.
Job: Data Architect
DDJ: Where do you work?
JV: I work at Advisen Ltd. in midtown Manhattan. Advisen is a Web-based information service, providing real-time research and analytics to the commercial property-casualty insurance marketplace.
DDJ: What's your job there?
JV: I am a Data Architect. My responsibilities include Oracle database design, with special emphasis on financial data. I am the firm's principal resource for integration of financial markets domain knowledge with database design, as I came to technology after many years in the financial markets.
DDJ: What do you like about your job?
JV: I enjoy having the ability to take a project from concept to implementation, to see it from end to end. I enjoy solving problems that involve finance and technology, integrating domain knowledge into the application.
DDJ: What do you find challenging about your job?
JV: We have a fairly short development cycle. Requirements and specifications are frequently done in parallel with code development, which can be challenging. Also, we are in the midst of reengineering our application so as to better encapsulate business logic.
DDJ: What have you found that makes your job easier?
JV: Our collaborative work environment. Everyone is ready and willing to help anyone who needs it. Also, having our customers involved on a continuous, real time, face-to-face basis, is a plus.
Employer: Undo Software
Job: Development of the UndoDB bidirectional debugger
DDJ: What do you like about your job?
JS: I'm finding that I spend a large proportion of my time working on and solving real problems. This is a real contrast to some of my previous jobs where large amounts of my time was spent trying to cope with poor build systems, badly documented code. It scares me how many man-hours are wasted in the computer industry, coping with the continuous waves of complicated new technologies that appear, which are often no better (and often worse) than the old ones, but that still require vast amounts of time to learn about. For the moment at least, I'm mostly insulated from this sort of thing, which is a very nice position to be in.
DDJ: What do you find challenging about your job?
JS: The basic underlying problem that UndoDB solves is unavoidably difficult. In fact, there were times early on when we weren't even sure it was possible to solve it in a useful way. And because it's a debugger, it has to be as solid and reliable as possible, and cope with debugee code that could do anything at any time.
Employer: Cabot Communications, Izmir, Turkey
Job: Tech lead, IDTV project
DDJ: What's your job at Cabot?
OK: I am working on embedded systems, currently for an Integrated Digital Television (IDTV) project.
DDJ: What do you like about your job?
OK: I like using C/C++ very much. After working for years on PC-based projects, switching to embedded systems is very nice. However, at the beginning I experienced a culture shock!
DDJ: What do you find challenging about your job?
OK: The biggest issues are the technical problems. Sometimes I find that things apparently working well in our middleware for years are in fact working thanks to miracles. Isolating bugs from obscure clues, finding the root causes and fixing them, is very rewarding. [And I have to] keep an eye on digital broadcasting standards—not an easy thing to do.
DDJ: What have you found that makes your job easier?
OK: We maintain a Wiki in the company intranet and every staff member can contribute to it freely. It is a great source for tips and information.