Professionals on leading positions and Java developers from international companies took part in the webinar. We’d like to thank them all once again for participating. A big Thank you to:

• Anna Zaharova, Java Developer at Cortlex 
• Damien Ferriol, VP HR EMEA at Axway
• Nina Pivavarchyk, People and Culture Lead at Cortlex
• Dominique Fougerat, EVP People & Culture at Axway
• Bojidar Ivanov, Senior Director, Research&Development at Axway
• Mani Sarkar, Polyglot Programmer: Software I Data I ML Engineer

Iva Abadjieva, Founder of Java2Days – the premier Java conference and Founder and Editor in Chief of DevStyleR also took part in the discussion.

During the event, they discussed topics such as salaries of Java developers, employee benefits, career development opportunities, work-life balance, inclusion and diversity in the companies, employer’s requirements, implementation of new technologies, tools and frameworks, technical and soft skills, interview processes and many more.

The audience was from all around the globe but mostly from the US, Europe, India, some African countries, etc. They were very active in terms of asking questions and the panelists did a great job answering them and creating discussions between each other.

Questions regarding an inclusive workplace were raised. These days companies are open to employing candidates from different cultural backgrounds. Another topic of discussion was the pandemic, due to which, many employees are now able to work from home all around the world in international companies. The speakers also expressed their opinions regarding the best-paid technologies their companies implement into projects. They also talked about the best projects for starting a career as a Java programmer, as well as the politics of different companies, the demand of Java developers, the importance of Oracle certifications in Java, and many more.

The 2021 Open Source Jobs Report, compiled jointly by the Linux Foundation, and learning platform edX, gives a nice overview of the demand for open source talent and emerging trends among open source professionals.

The ninth annual edition of the report notes that cloud and container technology skills are most in-demand by hiring managers, surpassing Linux for the first time in the history of the report, with 46% of hiring managers on the lookout for cloud skills. Linux Foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin,  said:

“Open source talent is in high demand, encouraging the most experienced pros to look for new opportunities while hiring managers battle it out for the most desirable candidates. For those looking for the best career paths, it is evident that cloud-native computing, DevOps, Linux, and security hold the most promising opportunities.”

Skills gap

The report surveyed more than 200 hiring managers from across SMBs, large corporations, government organizations, and staffing agencies across the globe. It then combined them with responses from more than 750 open source professionals to get a pulse of the trends. Surprisingly, even though 50% of the surveyed employers are increasing hires this year. an overwhelming number of hiring managers (92%) note that sufficient talent with open source skills is difficult to come by.

To close the skill gap, employers are prioritizing training investments, with an overwhelming number of managers (88%) prioritizing hires of certified talent, and a similar percentage of managers willing to pay for employees to obtain certifications.

One worrying increase is in the number of open source professionals who report they have been discriminated against (18%). The jump represents a 125% increase over the past three years, which isn’t flattering for the community.

Both career fields require extensive programming experience, a strong attention to detail, and a knack for problem solving, but they have different workflows, maintenance requirements, and levels of complexity. For example, web developers often work in close collaboration with business and marketing experts to ensure their company’s website is efficient, user friendly, and aesthetically pleasing. Software developers, on the other hand, tend to work with other tech-oriented co-workers on large-scale software, operating system, and mobile application projects that might not require input from other business units. Ultimately, the career path students choose should align with their professional goals and personal interests, which is why it’s crucial to explore each role in detail before committing the time and resources.

Becoming a Web Developer

Web developers are responsible for how a website or web application looks and functions, from its user interface and page layout to back-end systems for gathering data. They work with organization leaders to design unique and engaging websites for businesses, nonprofits, government agencies, and anyone else looking to communicate more effectively online. Web developers are also in charge of maintaining the performance of the websites and applications they create, ensuring users have a consistent and positive browsing experience. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, common web developer job responsibilities include:

• Coordinating with clients/business leaders to outline new web design projects
• Creating and testing web applications and website features
• Writing code in various programming languages, including HTML/CSS, XML, and JavaScript
• Integrating content into websites, such as graphics, written copy, videos, and audio
• Establishing technical requirements to support websites’ long-term functionality
• Developing security elements to protect user data and business assets
• Monitoring website traffic and performance

Diving a bit deeper, the web development field can be broken down into three specialized areas based on a candidate’s particular skill sets and professional interests: back-end developers, front-end developers, and full-stack developers. Each of these web design roles comes with different expectations and responsibilities:

Back-end web developers: These professionals focus on the technical aspects of websites and web applications that support both basic and advanced functionality. They largely work on administrative components including databases, website architecture, and application logic, creating new APIs and user interfaces based on predefined specifications. Generally speaking, this type of developer is concerned with how websites and web-based applications work on a fundamental level.

Front-end web developers: Sometimes called client-side developers, these design experts are in charge of how websites and applications look and function from the users’ perspective. They are responsible for making all online content easy to access, browse, and interact with, especially for users who may have limited computer skills. Front-end web developers must also ensure their websites are compatible with a wide range of operating systems, browsers, and devices to prevent display and functionality errors.

Full-stack web developers: As the job title suggests, these web design professionals are proficient in both front- and back-end development tasks. Most full-stack web developers have extensive experience in application design, user experience, and programming languages like HTML, XML, JavaScript, MySQL, and others. As such, they are able to fill advisory roles and technical positions that require both computer science and business savvy.

Becoming a Software Developer

Software developers invent, manage, and optimize computer programs that run on desktops, laptops, smartphones, and other mobile devices. Using different programming languages ― such as Java, Python, C#, and SQL ― these computer science professionals write complex code that governs how desktop applications function. Many software developers work for large technology companies, like Microsoft and Oracle, designing new products or fine-tuning existing applications. This includes troubleshooting code bugs, updating user interfaces, creating new in-app tools, and much more. According to the BLS, software developers have some combination of the following responsibilities:

• Analyzing users’ needs and designing software-based solutions
• Recommending software upgrades to existing computer programs and systems
• Designing new applications for specific audiences (consumers, enterprises, etc.)
• Creating detailed models and diagrams that outline which software code is needed
• Documenting all aspects of application and system design for future reference
• Testing code for new applications to ensure consistency and efficiency
• Ensuring software is compatible with present data management systems

Software developers are heavily involved in every stage of the application design process, from the initial planning to the final rollout of new computer programs. However, just like web developers, professionals in this field are often categorized into specific roles based on their specializations: software applications developers and software systems developers.

Software applications developers: These professionals tend to focus on designing specific desktop and mobile applications, tools, and games for consumer audiences, according to the National Center for O*NET Development (NCOD). They often work on the same project for many years and are responsible for ensuring their software is functional, engaging, and efficient.

Software systems developers: Developers in this role are largely concerned with designing systems-level software for enterprise customers, rather than the public, according to the NCOD. They use their extensive programming knowledge to create computing applications for a range of industries, from manufacturing to aerospace and beyond. The software they develop is used to manage corporate networking apps, database management systems, and other critical infrastructure.

 BUILD THE HARD SKILLS

Get in the habit of regularly doing code challenges. It’s a much more effective way to prepare for coding interview questions than trying to cram a bunch of studying in before the big day. It’s important to schedule time each day to attempt at least one code challenge. You’ll get better at solving them, and you’ll also get better at outlining your process and speaking to it. A few great websites to help you practice code challenges in varying degrees of difficulty include LeetCode, Codewars, and AlgoExpert.

These code challenges help build the essential hard skills you need to perform well in a coding interview technically. If you’re applying for a mid-level position as a software engineer, you’ll want to feel pretty solid with these types of practice problems in your interview preparation. If you’re gearing up for your first technical interview as a junior engineer, you’ll want at least some exposure and practice with these.

DON’T FORGET THE SOFT SKILLS

Mastery of coding challenges is only half the battle in coding interview preparation, so don’t forget the soft skills. Throughout the entire interview process, including the technical coding interview, there are a lot of things that interviewers are looking for besides your ability to code. These other skills have to do with how well you communicate your thought process, collaborate, talk about the problem at hand, your leadership skills, your drive to learn, and generally speaking, how nice you are. Soft skills are often overlooked by candidates and can be deal breakers for a lot of coding interviews.

A company that’s worth applying to will want candidates that have strong soft skills, sometimes moreso than hard skills, because they show how well a person can grow within the company and develop those hard skills over time. This is especially the case for junior software engineers.

When you practice your code challenges, see if you can buddy up with someone and take turns doing mock interview. Practice talking through the coding problem as you work, asking questions, giving each other hints here and there, and revealing your ability to lead, collaborate, and persevere through the coding test.

ACKNOWLEDGE MULTIPLE SOLUTIONS

This is the “cherry on top” for an interviewer: a candidate that’s not only skilled enough to work through the problem and has a personality that fits the company culture but can also defend their solution and mention alternative approaches. This shows that you’re not just going with what you were taught or what you read online, but that you also acknowledge that there are multiple solutions to the same problem and have considered which is most appropriate for a given context.

As an interviewer administering a coding problem, I would prefer to see the simpler solution over the best solution, as it will give me more time to talk with the candidate. Now, if that candidate can also suggest alternative approaches and defend why they selected theirs, that’s an instant win. Bravo!

An example of this might be a challenge where you’re asked to system design a search function for a video streaming app. You might use an inefficient algorithm for the sake of quick implementation during the job interview, but then mention a more appropriate algorithm that would otherwise be used in real life. Speaking of algorithms…

STUDY YOUR ALGORITHMS AND DATA STRUCTURES

This goes hand-in-hand with the hard skills but deserves its own section. You don’t need to be a master of computer science to ace a coding interview, but there are some standard algorithms and data structures that you should feel good about referencing, or at least mentioning and talking about. For instance:

• How does a bubble sort work vs. a merge sort?
• What’s the difference between a stack and a queue?
• What’s a linked list? What about a hash table?

Unfortunately, at the same time, most software developers still don’t know much about finance and investment in general, and the stock market specifically.

Even the developers, who joined early-stage start-ups or big tech companies and got proper compensation in stocks, don’t know how it will benefit them in the future.

Stocks increasing your capital

If you can save regularly and invest wisely over a long time, you can grow your capital enormously.

However, you shouldn’t invest if you are financially broke. Make sure before that your financial situation is in great shape, that you have an emergency fund to cover around three months of expenses in case of any emergency.

It can also be useful to learn how to free extra monthly cash from your dev-salary for investment, so you can spend less and invest more.

Most investors find long-term investments always beneficial for their capital.

For example, investing in high-growth new-on-the-market stocks may seem and certainly can be a great way to build wealth. Despite that, it’s wise to make an investment portfolio with the shares of established and grown companies.
The most convenient and unmistakable approach to growth capital in the stock market is to buy company shares with great businesses for reasonable prices; hold them as long as they remain doing great businesses.

Another impressive thing about stock investment, that your investment assets are liquid. You can sell them anytime and get your money back to your bank account.

Stocks growing historically

It’s not a secret that there are bad and good times for stock investment.

Last year, there was a stock market crash and have been market crashes, pullbacks, and periods of lousy performance before, and they will be in the market later in the future.

And still, the US S&P 500 has historically produced 10%-11% before inflation or 7%-8% after inflation, and you can easily access it through your online broker or bank account.

Historically, small-cap investing has proved to be much more beneficial than in large caps. Some small-cap companies can become large and highly profitable companies in the long run, like in 10-20 years (along with the digitalization and tech startups, it can take even 5 years).

So if you decide to buy such stocks and hold them for a specific period, you might make a lot of money at the end after selling them or by keeping to collect dividends from them so far as the company decided to pay them off.

Stocks keeping investment value

Indeed, stock prices can change, for example, when the market is volatile, even when the actual company stock value has remained the same.

Because depending on the market and its demand, stocks go through higher and lower periods that lead to substantial price fluctuations.

But that doesn’t change the fact that you are getting for your money.

As an investor, you are willing to buy stock shares at that “discount” compared to how the market values them. So in return for buying and then holding these value stock shares for the long-term, you can be rewarded handsomely.

Stocks diversifying your investment

Diversifying means investing across different stocks to mitigate loss risks.

If you invest all your money in a single stock or depend on a particular sector or invest in specific assets, the chances are high that you might lose all your money if those stocks don’t perform well.

Reduce your risk when seeking returns.

To balance out the losses and continue to make money, you must diversify your investments in stocks and not only in them.

If you have an investment portfolio that is permanently diversified and regularly rebalanced, you will not have periods of high losses nor high gains. Instead, you will get more steady capital net growth over the long term.

The number of stocks you should hold linearly depends on the needs to meet your investment objectives and goals.

What projects are you currently working on & what technologies (languages, frameworks, libraries and tools) are you using?

In my regular role, I am working on implementing an adaptive DNS/IP address management tool, so learning more about that and the technology behind it. As a pentester, I am working on becoming more comfortable with web application vulnerabilities, and developing a super deep-dive workshop on buffer overflows. On my own, I’m working on becoming more comfortable with scripting, and I’ve been using Python most frequently.

What does it mean to be a Security Analyst: What are the responsibilities and requirements for this position?

I do a little bit of everything. My main duty is to manage vulnerabilities and help the infrastructure and application support teams to understand and remediate them. I also work with patching, analyzing risk, assisting clients with implementing secure infrastructure, and incident response.

playing with some super basic quantum dev stuff to get the hang of it and making a “hello quantum world” function using a circuit composer. running against IBM’s qx4 simulator for 1024 shots, waiting on results. #quantumcomputing pic.twitter.com/qXXCG8j3Gs

— gabsmashh (@gabsmashh) July 10, 2019

What is the most sophisticated security attack case that you’ve dealt with/heard?

I didn’t deal with it firsthand, but the NotPetya attack that took down Maersk for a while was fascinating to me. So insidious and fast-moving, and it’s amazing how much of their operation it stopped outside of just computers. Definitely points to the uncertainty we have surrounding IoT devices, supply chain, and other embedded/connected technologies. Story here: https://www.wired.com/story/notpetya-cyberattack-ukraine-russia-code-crashed-the-world/

What is the life of a pentester: What’s your daily routine and task management?

Pentesting is all over the place. There’s not really a set routine when working with my team. Sometimes we don’t have a ton of work, and we use that time to hold team development trainings and build courses and workshops that we present to companies. When we do have offensive security testing to do, we collaborate a lot and work off of each others’ skills, Different people on the team definitely have different strengths, and it is what makes our team successful. The rest of the time is a lot of research–looking at new vulnerability reports that come out, new tools that people develop, sometimes developing tools of our own to aid in the testing. It’s a very fluid job.

How big is the team that you’re currently working with & what are their positions?

My security team is three people in my regular role. As a pentester, we have 8 people. They specialize in digital forensics, web application pentesting, OSINT, hardware, networking. A mixed bag.

How did you become a genetic scientist AND an anti-human trafficking advocate? What do these responsibilities mean? 

I originally went to school to study neuroscience and psychology, and worked in pharmaceutical regulation for a while. Once I left that job, I accepted an appointment to a biosafety board where I review studies using recombinant DNA and genetic engineering. It remains a side passion of mine! For the ant-human trafficking advocacy, I saw a talk done by a good friend of mine at the WiCys 2019 conference on cybersecurity and its role in human trafficking. This sparked my interest, and I started to study how I can use my forensics skills and security knowledge to combat the problem.

was just kind of a natural progression. i worked a lot with medical devices and data governance/compliance, became interested in the vulnerabilities that presented themselves and how to fix them, and then fell down the infosec rabbithole 🙂

— gabsmashh (@gabsmashh) June 5, 2019

day 2 of biosafety/biomed recert. talkin bout NIH guidelines for recombinant and synthetic nucleic acid molecules today 🧬 pic.twitter.com/xeRtTmWpdL

— gabsmashh (@gabsmashh) July 19, 2019

You said that you are a NASA racing driver, can you share with us more about this interest of yours?

I worked as a mechanic while I was in college, and cars have always been a passion of mine! I grew up with a dad and cousins that liked cars a lot, so I became interested by association. NASA is the National Auto Sport Association in the US. I did a few fun drag racing/track days, and worked the hot pit at a few global time attack races for a friend, and decided that it was something I wanted to try. Signed up and started doing high performance driving events, which are preliminary events you have to complete successfully in order to obtain your pro license. I love it because it’s hands-on, and the adrenaline rush is like nothing else.

 What is your racing car of choice? Why?

I currently drive a MK7 Volkswagen GTI. It has a Unitronic Stage 2 tune and some other modifications, and is perfect for both track and street driving. I’ve always loved Volkswagens and have gravitated to them because my family always had them growing up. I would like to buy an older BMW E36 though, and swap a 2jz into it. Dream car of mine!

What’s your #1 simple rule for better security?

Just awareness. Be aware of your surroundings, of what you click on, and trust your gut feeling when something seems off. It probably is.

What does one Lead Site Reliability Engineer do?

Before I talk about what I do as a lead I first what to define what a Site Reliability Engineer is. Site Reliability Engineering(SRE) can mean a lot of different things depending on the company. The SRE team at Kenna is a group of developers that are focused on using software to optimize performance and ensure stability and reliability across all of our systems. When talking with our lead operations engineer, we decided that an SRE is a developer+. The plus stands for some bit of extra knowledge beyond that of just writing code. For me, the plus is my comprehensive understanding of how Elasticsearch works. For others, their plus might be the ability to work seamlessly with a framework like Ansible, or maybe they have a deep understanding of containers. The plus can be almost anything tech related that would help an SRE with their job.

Another trait that I feel characterizes a good SRE, is the ability to look at and understand how an entire system works. It is easy to understand small pieces of a system, but the ability to step back and conceptually understand how all the pieces fit together is key to being an SRE. Having a high level understanding allows us to figure out a system’s weakest points and improve on them to ensure reliability across the entire system.

As the lead of the team I am responsible for not only acting as an SRE myself by writing code but I also get to determine what projects the team will work on based on what would benefit the company and our platform the most.

What technologies/languages do you use & prefer?

My primary and preferred language is Ruby and that is what I have been using for all of my professional career. A lot of people give Ruby a bad rap for being slow, but it has gotten significantly faster recently. Also, how you use it can greatly affect how fast or slow it performs. It is an easy language to learn but like all other coding languages, takes a lifetime to master and really do well.

What project are you currently working on and how many people are in your team?

There are currently 2 other people on my team and we are looking for a 4th. The team itself has a few projects going on.

• • • Upgrading Elasticsearch to 6.x. Our last upgrade was rough, so we have some extensive testing plans associated with this upgrade.
    • Defining service level objectives. Our customers are happy now, but what does that mean in terms of metrics? How fast do we need to load searches to keep customers happy? How fast does data processing need to happen? Our goal is to answer questions like these.
    • Wrangling all our new virtual private cloud(VPC) environments. A lot of our large clients want their own virtual private cloud for running Kenna. This means we have a lot of different environments. As you can imagine, working with all of them and keeping them in sync is a challenge. As our VPC numbers increase this year, my team is hoping to make working across all VPCs as seamless as possible.

Is there a platform, tool, framework etc., in which you see a problem, but keep on using?

That is a GREAT question! I have so many examples of tools we used for the longest time at Kenna and it wasn’t until we got a full time SRE team that we finally replaced them. Each replacement has paid off tremendously! For example, a year ago we were having issues with NewRelic because it was not retaining data long enough to be useful for us. Once the SRE team was formed we took on the task of switching us to Datadog and it was the best decision we ever made. Another example of a tool that was used at Kenna for years and we finally are making the push to get rid of is Resque. Resque is a background processing framework that uses Redis to process and track background jobs. Resque has become very dated and is currently not very performant for our use case so we recently have made a push to move all our background jobs to a new framework called Sidekiq. Sidekiq is very well maintained, constantly coming out with new features, and is much more performant than Resque. Looking ahead, the next system that will likely get replaced is our CI solution CircleCI. As we scale it has gotten tremendously more expensive and we are on the hunt for a more practical solution.

You’re currently trying Ansible. Why did you choose to start this journey & what are the benefits of this tool?  

3 years ago our Operations team made the switch from Chef to Ansible for managing all of our infrastructure. Now that I am an SRE I work a lot more with the Operations team so I have made it a point to learn more about Ansible so I can better understand what they do. It is also great to have another tool in my toolbox that I can use when it comes to building SRE features. Even though I am new to Ansible, I have found that understanding it at a high level and what it is doing is very easy. It gives you the ability to run commands on multiple servers which is incredibly convenient and powerful when you are working and managing a lot of infrastructure.

What is the use of Elasticsearch?

Elasticsearch is at the cornerstone of Kenna’s platform and is used extensively for comprehensive searching of a company’s assets and vulnerabilities. Elasticsearch is actually the reason I ended up becoming an SRE. When I joined Kenna no one had taken ownership over it so I decided to step up and learn everything I could about it. Becoming proficient in Elasticsearch and working a lot with it to improve performance and stability made the transition from Software Engineer to Site Reliability Engineer very natural. Elasticsearch is a great tool for when you have a lot of data that needs to be searched in complex ways very quickly. It is what allows Kenna to stand apart from its competitors because no one else offers the kind of search speed that we do.

My desk if you are looking for inspiration! Big fan of my Pop head figures and my Educated Guess wine bottle with sunflower 🌻 oh yeah and there’s the Tito’s 😅 pic.twitter.com/BQhJOKcch7

— Molly Struve 🦄 (@molly_struve) May 16, 2019

What’s the hardest tech task that you’ve encountered?

Oh man, it is so hard to pick just one. Usually what is hard at the time, I look back a few months later and it seems so easy. I think the hardest part of my job in general is debugging a performance issue. For example, if a server crashes that is running our application it is usually my job to figure out why. Figuring out the why involves combing through lots of logs and data and trying to piece together what exactly the server was doing at the time it crashed. Once I have figured out what it was doing, then I have to take my best guess at which task caused it to crash. Putting all the pieces together involves a lot of problem solving and having the ability to step back and really look at the big picture of how everything is running together. It also involves a bit of trial and error. Sometimes the cause is not easy to deduce and I have to take my best guess at fixing it. Sometimes it takes a couple of fixes before I finally solve the root cause of the problem.

Is there any question that every Lead Site Reliability Engineer should know the answer to?

One strategy that I read about in Google’s SRE book that I think is paramount to being a good SRE is when a system breaks the first thing you should always do is work on getting the system back online. Sometimes as a SRE we immediately want to know WHY it happened. We need to fight the urge to figure out why until after we have the system back online.

What’s your motivational phrase that keeps your code running?  😉

Fail forward! This is a saying that our VP of Engineering has instilled in our culture at Kenna and has really hit home with me. Anytime we find ourselves with broken code or an upgrade gone bad we always try to push forward. The mantra also reminds me that it’s ok to fail sometimes, but when you do, keep moving forward. Don’t ever let failure send you retreating backwards.

Ooof, might be time to call it for the day 😅

But if I am being honest, I won’t until those specs run green pic.twitter.com/LiFoD2URmW

— Molly Struve 🦄 (@molly_struve) June 20, 2019