This is a 'career advice' talk that was given at King's College London in February 2014, that was produced by request after an interesting 'cross-polination' meeting between the industry people from the London Java Community (LJC) and London academics. This presentation includes details about my career, some of the motivation for my choices, and then looks at the current state of the programming landscape. It concludes with my predictions for the future of a successful IT career, and recommends potential skills to learn for a productive (and fun) future.

1. Working in IT:
(My) past, (the) present and (your) future
Daniel Bryant (@taidevcouk)
IAT Ltd (@iatltd)
London Java Community (@ljcjug)

2. Me…

3. (My) past

4. My career on a single slide…
• 1990: Got my first computer (64k memory - booyah!)
• 2000: Undergrad Computing and IT
– Placement year working for UK Government
• 2004: MSc Internet Computing
• 2005: PhD Artificial Intelligence
• 2008: Freelance Software Development
– Worked for quite a few IT startups
• 2013: Chief Technology Officer at IAT Ltd

5. Personal career highlights
• Playing with cool tech daily
– And getting paid for it!
• Seeing my software used
• Travelling the world
• Visiting high-profile tech offices
• Meeting amazing people!
– Tech legends

6. My “light bulb” moments…
• Large organisations (government) vs startups
• Contractors vs "permies"
• Getting involved in Open Source Software
• Joining London Java Community
– and other User Groups

7. My “match strike” moments…
• Learning the fundamentals
• Teaching / public speaking
• Taking risks
• Choosing to be “professional”
• Leading a team

8. (The) present

9. Chief Technology Officer
• Quite a varied job
– Development
– Architecture
– Operations
– QA / Support
– Team Leading
– Presales
– Industry research
– Evangelism
www.fortuityconsulting.com/cto/web-chief-technology-officer-cto-job-description.html

10. The current state of programming…
Reference: bit.ly/1hCpwCO

11. Java is dead, long live Java!

12. (Your) future

13. What are the “cool cats” doing?

14. Strong foundations for the future…
• Fundamentals
– Craftsmanship
– Team work
– “Generalising specialists”
– DevOps (Cloud)
• The rise of the “lean enterprise”
– Business fundamentals
– “Lean” thinking

15. If I had to gamble…
• IoT and M2M
– The next disruptive tech
• Big Data
– Math, statistics
– Machine Learning
– Programming (Java + Python)
– DevOps (Cloud)
– Infographic design
– Storytelling

16. In Summary

17. A career is (maybe) for life… choose wisely

18. Learn from experience…
• Have a serious think about what you want to do
• Take action to gain experience
– Work experience
– Internships
– Open source projects
– Anything!!
Software Craftsmanship: leanpub.com/socra

19. …and learn from others
• Engage with the community
– Join User Groups
– Talk to like-minded people
– www.meetup.com/Londonjavacommunity
• Take part in hackdays
– Take advantage of free teaching
– The London tech scene is amazing
• Find mentors
– www.meetup.com/grad-dc

20. Thanks for listening
• Contact me:
– @taidevcouk
– www.linkedin.com/in/danielbryantuk
• ”Chuck Norris Doesn’t Do DevOps…” (7pm 13/03/14)
– www.meetup.com/Londonjavacommunity/events/168168722
• Thanks to
– LJC (www.meetup.com/Londonjavacommunity/)
– www.recworks.co.uk & www.epoints.com