George Schneeloch

One thing I've learned when looking for a job is that it's valuable to specialize in a subset of the software developer world. I'm pretty scattershot regarding what I'm interested in sometimes. I've been applying to positions for Android developers as well as positions involving Hadoop in some way, which don't have much in common. I've spent four years using C#, which is rarely used with Android or Hadoop. Many positions look for a good software developer without getting too much into specifics, which works well with what I'm looking for.

But I've learned that there are certain things like frameworks that require experience to use efficiently. Good frameworks are more intuitive than bad ones, but all require some amount of time to get used to. For instance, I have a pretty good understanding of C# and the .NET framework, but I'm not suited for a position requiring knowledge of WCF or WPF, even though I've used web services and I have experience with UI development on other platforms. The learning curve for WCF and WPF may be short but it's still there.