Programmer Analyst Career Guide and Counseling

Question: What is the starting salary for programmer/analyst level 1? Hi, I was wondering if anyone could help me out with some salary ranges for a level 1 programmer/analyst. I've recently had a job offer and I would like to know how much I can negotiate about my salary. I don't have much experience (about 1 year as a programmer/analyst) and I have a B.S degree in computer science. Thanks in advance for your answers.

Answer: Go to www.salary.com and get some comparisons. You can input the data you have for yourself and get a figure.

Question: How long does it take to become a Senior programmer analyst? I just started an IT programmer analyst program, associate's. Do you have to have a bachelor degree to be promoted to Senior programmer? Do you need a lot of work experience? What areas do you need expertise in? Thanks!

Answer: Every company is different and I doubt very much that you could find an actual standard. Many companies will require a bachelor's degree to even GET a job, let alone get a promotion to a senior level. Others purely look at ability and experience and couldn't care less about formal education. No matter what level of education you have, the number one criteria for a promotion to a senior level position will be your demonstrated mastery of what you do. There are programmers who may work for years and years and years and, really, they are just "ok" and they never get promoted. There are others who by the time they get out of school have already demonstrated an aptitude that will assure them senior level positions very quickly. As a recruiting professional who has done quite a bit of IT recruiting, my advice to you is this - move immediately from the Associates to the Bachelor's. Don't pause, don't pass go, don't look behind you, just slide right on in and finish up the four year degree. In all liklihood it will pay major dividends down the road. No matter how good you are, not having the Bachelor's will keep many, many, many doors completely closed to you. Once you have the bachelor's, be serious about your art. Whatever convinced you to try to get by on an associates is something you need to overcome if you want to pursue the sort of ambition that you seem to have. Promotions aren't given... they're earned. Lastly, I'll give you one more piece of advice. In today's world there are lots and lots of bits and bytes, propeller-head, code-jocks. If you want the long green, augment your technical skills with plenty of business skills. Take accounting, finance, marketing, project management, managerial communications, etc. The big gaping hole in the employment market now and for the forseable future is people who can bridge the gap between business leaders and technology leaders. ie. once you get that Bachelor's degree, go to work for a couple years to get a feel for the real business world, and then do an MBA. You won't regret it. Best of luck!

Question: What are some typical interview questions for a Computer Analyst Programmer? I have this job interview on Tuesday for a Computer Analyst Programmer with a Cancer Care Organization. I am nervous and I really need this job. What some typical questions i should expect to be asked? They also said "knowledge of SAS is preferred but not essential" What does SAS means? Thanks

Answer: If you are a computer analyst, then you should look it up yourself and learn more about the tool from the company (SAS's) website. You can look up under healthcare industries. They will provide you some examples and you will get an idea. You are not required to be an expert. You should only be interested in it and be eager to learn. You can say that you looked up SAS and learned about them from their website and that you found it interesting. Secondly, look up the cancer care organizations website. Ask yourself, why are you interested in this job? They may ask you questions about your programming skills and your ability to learn fast if it is an entry level position. The purpose of the interview is to make sure if you are the right person for the job, you are interested in the job, and will therefore be willing to learn, be a team player, etc. This way it will be a successful match for both you and the company. Therefore, no need to be nervous. Ironically, if you let go and relax you will be yourself and do well in the interview.

Question: How to become an analyst programmer? i want to be an analyst programmer but i don't really know what is analyst programmer, which path i've to do at the university, how many years i need to do(university) and what are the qualification required for this job?

Answer: You want to be an analyst programmer, and you dont know what it is??? First job...find out what it is. Do you even know what a programmer is? Computer Science at uni is probably a good idea, i learnt a lot of programming throughout my Bachelors degree, but i also learnt a lot in my Masters.. you dont need to do a degree though, you can learn a lot through the internet although its sometimes harder to prove your experience, but generally you dont need a specific qualification for being a programmer, its usually experience and skill that count.

Question: Do anyone know what are the common interview questions for Programmer/Analyst? I have interview on next Thursday, Can anyone give me some sample questions for Programmer/Analyst job interview? The position i applied is JAVA Programmer/Analyst, I am a JAVA developer in the same company currently, I cant lie as people in interview panel knows me well...=P

Answer: A bit difficult without specifics, but I have always structured AP's interviews into two distinct parts, one that deals with the technical side, to give a degree of comfort that you have some competence in the language/ DBMS/ applications involved, and the other which looks more at interpersonal skills, how you work with a team, how you resolve conflict, problem solving as an individual or as part of a group, how you perform under pressure, how you set personal goals and work toward them and so on... Think about your personal strengths and also weaknesses and don't be afraid to be upfront about these, with the weaknesses you don't just say, 'I'm shy and introverted', say 'I have a tendency to be shy but I'm working on this', this shows honesty, self awareness and a desire to continue with your self development. I could go on but I would have to start charging you :-) Good Luck, let us know how it goes...

Question: What does a Computer Programmer Analyst do? its for a paper for school. its a requirement for school. i need to know the job responsibilities and education needed for the job. can someone help?

Answer: The job title can either be a programmer analyst or an analyst programmer. A programmer writes computer programs from a specification. This specification is usually a very detailed description of the program that is required. Giving details of all inputs and outputs and any window designs. An analyst programmer is also a computer programmer but the difference is that the analyst programmer will probably write the specification. This means that the level of detail that is given to an analyst programmer can be very brief. Whilst the programmer has freedom to create the code from a detailed specification, an analyst programmer has complete freedom from the specification on to the program itself. An analyst programmer will work with both an analyst and a computer user to establish the details required to produce a program. A programmer will only usually work with the person that has produced the specification for their program. I hope this helps.

Question: Is Computer Programmer/Analyst a good profession and what is the starting salary after an Associate Degree?

Answer: From personal experience and speaking to fellow classmates, I'd say that a Programmer/Analyst position with an associates degree would earn 30k and above. With a bachelors degree, 40k and above would be the norm. These figures are typical for South Florida. If you live in an expensive location like NYC, the salaries might be 10k-15k higher.

Question: Who makes more? A computer programmer, analyst or technician? I was thinking of becoming a computer technician, but I have a ton of relatives who are a computer something and I'm interested in that, but I was wondering because my uncle is a programmer, my cousin is an analyst and since I want to be a technician, who makes more? Thanks

Answer: Here are some websites for information on these occupations: http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos110.htm http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos287.htm http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos268.htm http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos186.htm Median annual earnings (2006): Analyst: $69,760.00 Programmer: $65,510.00 Support Specialist: $ 41,470.00 Computer Field Technician: $17.54 per hour

Question: Is there any company that will employ people in business degree to work as a programmer or system analyst? i know that they prefer the computer science degree to be employed for that kind of thing, but how if people in business degree but they are also good at IT such as programming? how does the company recognize the IT skill of the applicant if they don't have any degree on it? I also find almost all company require the programmer to have some previous experience, but how do they gain the experience at the first time if all company require that?

Answer: You are wrong about the computer science degree. What is much more important is proven ability to do the work. The place doing the hiring is using a particular combination of computer operating systems, software packages, programming languages, tools. If you are unfamiliar with any of them, you probably won't get the job. Typically there is someone at the company, or their tech support place, who knows something about the requirements of the work. There are a variety of tests, many via small talk. For example, you might be shown a program & told about some alleged problem it is having ... how would you fix this? It is like an auto having some problem & asking an auto mechanic how to fix it. Either the person is a real auto mechanic and can talk the talk, or they not get hired. The test is not just what was stated. You look at the program & say something like "Well I would fix THAT PROBLEM this way ... however, I see some other problems with how this program is written." There's a loop here which is not checking for all possible conditions. I also believe that before dividing by anything there should be a check to avoid divide by zero. You see this multiplication here .... because not enough work space is being allowed for extreme values, you can sometimes get unpredictable results. So basically, if you are a professional with the programming language used, it comes with the territory that you are familiar with common programming mistakes made by less experienced people, and you can glance through a program to see if any of them are there, then point them out to the people doing the interviewing. I remember in one interview (in which I got the job), the guy interviewing me made a remark about modifying a program being easier than designing something from scratch & I said that in my experience that depends on the experience of the programmer, and the quality of the documentation inside the programs. He asked me to elucidate, then called in other people to have me explain my opinion to them also. My position was basically that there are scores of different programming techniques. With a program to be modified, when prior work was done by programmers that might have many different techniques, an experienced programmer should have no trouble figuring out what's going on, and rapidly add whatever new stuff is needed, but an inexperienced programmer may not realize the nuances of all the techniques. An inexperienced programmer can have a real challenge tracing what's involved with a sub-program or variable code. One of the programmers, who had been called in to hear my exposition & judge whether I was making sense, interjected "I am familiar with sub-programs, but what's variable code?" We all know we can have variables, fields whose value is unknown at time of execution, but we can also have fields and operations that are unknown in advance. Like a command in a program that could be add these two values, or scan this string, or something else entirely, controlled by variables that are not determined at time of program compilation MAPICS uses the technnique heavily at the control language level to insert substitutions. Typically there can be substitutions embedded inside other substitutions several levels deep. They did it that way because they still want to market to companies with the kind of limited hardware investment that makes Y2k such a problem. BPCS uses it heavily in screens and RPG where we see in the source code what looks like a field name or operation with a value like L123456 which means "at execution time, substitute whatever's in message member L123456 at this point" but at earlier points in the program, it has already made substitutiosn. The reason for the technique is to make it practical for people with different native human languages, like English, French, Spanish, etc. to be interacting with the same data in their language. i went on explaining how modifying vs. new programming, the challenge is not fixed but depends on experience, documentation, and other elements of the working infrastructure. With a clean slate new program, there can be a similarity or simplification of techniques to include, especially not include techniques the inexperienced programmer is unfamiliar with. Of course in any company it is pretty rare to have an application where you cannot copy similar code from other programs. We need to access some file ... find some other program that accesses the same file satisfactorily, copy the code, change the conditions of access to the new requirements. Ideally we ought to have a library of standard techniques that have been thoroughly tested, and a set of programming standards to avoid accidental aliases. A non-programmer executive asked me what an alias is. I said that when we read in files, all the fields are names some way, plus we invent work fields in a program. Depending on how the naming is done, there's a risk that two unrelated fields end up with the same name, contaminating work with the contents. This is especially true if the same file has to be accessed by different methods in the same program. The risk is higher when modifying a program, that you're not familiar with. You don't know which apparent aliases are there deliberately, and which by accident. As for your question of breaking into the business in the first place, you do not start at the top. It is like hiring a President of a Company ... no one hires one with zero experience, they hire someone with RELEVANT experience. So you start at WHATEVER job you can get, be eager beaver to help out with IT, work part time in MIS, whatever That gets you experience so that you can find out if you are cut out for the work, plus now you have credentials to move up. This is true for ANY kind of job ... first you get a job, then you work up to something better, using the experience from the any kind of job.

Question: I just got a job as a software analyst programmer...How do i continuously improve on my tech stuff? I mean, can anyone give me some goooood technical forums , and about the latest tech trends etc..etc.. I hope you guys know what i mean

Answer: I constantly scour the web - there's new stuff every day. I also take all the courses the company will pay for - I'm doing 2 weeks at Learning Tree starting Tuesday. (Get yourself a few gigs of flash drive - I use a couple of SD card adapters, and a pocket-full of SD cards - to save all the snippets that look as if they might be useful in your particular line of programming. And print out all the helpful tutorials that you might lose the link to.) As far as which sites - Jupiter media has a few, for different languages, but which sites are best depends on what kind of programming you're doing and what language(s) you're using. Remember - Google is free.

Question: what is the differnce between a computer programmer and a programmer analyst? plz give me a serious answer

Answer: A computer programmer is more technical and an a programmer analyst is more business oriented. A programmer analyst typically gets paid less because business analysis is easier to do. A computer programmer - if such a title exists - would be someone who codes the whole product, while a programmer anlayst might just code the front-end (even though most of em usually end up just doing BA work) and let the computer programmer make it work.

Question: What the advantage and disadvantage for Computer Programmer and System Analyst?

Answer: A computer programmer takes instruction from a specification. Usually a written document detailing the inputs and outputs of the program plus any special processing requirements. The programmer has the freedom to decide how the specification is interpreted into code. A systems analyst works on an entire section if not all of the system. Defining the data connections and processing rules and writing program specifications.

Question: Is an Analyst/Programmer's job more secure than a Web Developer?

Answer: Not quite. They can earn more by doing freelancing at website like http://www.getafreelnacer.com/ .

Question: do u know the difference between system anaylst and analyst programmer ?

Answer: hurry up and answer me u dogs

Question: Most important data structures / algorithms to know for an entry-level Programmer Analyst job interview? This is a programming job in business, not at a tech company or in science or research. In other words, the candidate will definitely not be designing operating systems, compilers, low-level systems code, or anything that might require knowledge of data structures / algorithms at an advanced level. (Whether they actually are aware of that or not is another thing, since they list Computer Science as their preferred degree, rather than Information Systems or something much more applicable.)

Answer: Normally in an interview you get some questions on linked-lists, arrays, binary trees and such and knowing the differences between them. I practical uses, ArrayList, Collection, Dictionary, HashMap, TreeMap object are much more practical. You should definately understand string parsing, such as counting vowels in a sentence or being able to write your own find/replace substring algorithm. At the advanced level you should be intimately familar with stacks, heaps, trees, recursions, different ways to implement sorting algorithm, and way one is better then another for your given use, and data structure or cominational structure would be good given a certain situation.

Question: what are the benfits for programmer analyst job in infosys?

Answer: Why don't you ask this question on Yahoo! Answers India, instead of on the US version of Answers? I think you'll get more and better answers. http://in.answers.yahoo.com Or click the Indian flag at the bottom of any Answers page.