Help me Become an IT Ninja!

May 17, 2008 2:32 AM

I know what I like to do and I think I've found a job to go along with it. My problem is: padding my resume.

For the past 6 months or so I've been looking for work in a town that is not friendly to people with degree's. I seem to be stuck in a town where everyone who works in IT (my industry and area of study) is mid-30's sporting a family and a mortgage. They've all been to other places, gotten some industry experience and come back raise kids in this idyllic wasteland. I'm fresh out of college with a fairly impressive resume and a will to work, but I've found nothing until now.

One thing this ridiculously long job search has taught me, is to focus my resume toward the job I'm going for and to highlight the skills that apply most favorably to the job. So in that spirit I spent a lot of time tailoring my resume to suit the needs of my latest find and it's paid off! So, what I want to do now, to shorten future job searches and hopefully make myself more attractive to future employers is pad my resume with skills and technologies that will help me in the future.

I really like being a generalist. During an internship, I worked with a group of professionals who's job was to facilitate the working of software engineers; They would do the builds, dream up automations and ways to increase efficiency, propose and deploy Wiki technology to help with documentation and communication, etc. I was tasked with creating a way to parallelize the build process of their software. This current job is pretty similar: web programming, database work, System Administration, technical support, network tech duties, technical writing (manuals, documentation, etc), creation and formalization of procedures, scouting new technologies, etc. It's all very general and not very tightly focused, which makes this particular search for knowledge that much more challenging. I seem to end up doing this sort of “IT Ninja” job wherever I go, because I come up with, sell and deploy my good ideas with a high success rate.

To that end, I want to be on the look out for skills and technologies that I can use to sell myself as a “Ninja” and eventually a project manager and / or contractor. And perhaps leverage such technologies into the work I do, so that I can gain the skills and enrich the company I'm working for at the same time. I can name some attractive skills off the top of my head; E.g. SOAP, Java, Perl, etc. But, I know my mental list is nowhere complete.

Now that my long winded exposition is done, here are my questions:

What job title would most closely fit my short description of an “IT Ninja” above?
What skills and technologies would be useful for me to learn as a pursue my long term goals of a being a professional “Ninja”?

posted by Pontifex to computers & internet (29 comments total)

Okay, I'm not really answering the question here, but I want to warn you that "padding" your resume is a common term for putting fake stuff on it to make it seem more impressive... so if you're legit, try to stop using that word, particularly around employers.
posted by loiseau at 2:56 AM on May 17 [2 favorites]

It's unclear from your question what it is that you actually know how to do.
posted by orthogonality at 3:09 AM on May 17 [1 favorite]

On the padding point... Padding could mean "putting fake stuff", but I've always taken it to mean that some on sought out a job, position or skill only to make the resume look better.

To that degree I think what might make it look best it to show that you used those skills more than just know those skills. I know C, but I don't use it all the time, and anyone that see's C listed as a skill knows that. So what you might want to do is put the skills under the jobs you used them so they know you are proficient in it.

****
blah blah Job SomeDate-SomeOtherDate

Data base management with MySQL

server administration
- wrote patches in PERL.
- other things you did
****

Just an idea that I like a lot better than the "skills" section people put on resume's

As far as IT skills go, You need basic hardware trouble shooting, database admin, server admin, scripting experience, I think what is often most useful in IT is just being personable. Try to make sure the resume shows you worked well with others.
posted by magikker at 3:16 AM on May 17

IT consulting.

MeMail me if you want more info on this, or just check out some of the bigger organisations. In that field you're expected to be a ninja, or learn to be one pretty damn quick. Career paths will differ for generalists/specialists etc, but I think this sort of work will give you what you want. I know there's actually a MeFi jobs post from allkindsoftime for this at the moment.

In hiring people for that field, I look less at their technical skills (though its obviously relevant), and more at how they approach a problem. I try to understand if they're likely to just roll with it if something goes wrong, or they're going to be unreliable or quickly out of depth. This isn't easy to display on a resume, but it might be useful.
posted by kaydo at 5:11 AM on May 17

I'm fresh out of college with a fairly impressive resume

If you believe a resume can be impressive when you just graduated, that might explain why you think the town is unfriendly to college degrees. We had a fair number of guys with this attitude come into the last place I worked. The best advice I can give you to becoming useful in IT is to make sure your head is not lodged in your ass and listen a lot more than you talk.
posted by yerfatma at 8:18 AM on May 17 [2 favorites]

Don't put down job duties that you listed above such as

I was tasked with creating a way to parallelize the build process of their software. This current job is pretty similar: web programming, database work, System Administration, technical support, network tech duties, technical writing (manuals, documentation, etc), creation and formalization of procedures, scouting new technologies, etc.

on your resume. A reader doesn't know if "database work" means "I ran three queries" or "I migrated an existing database to a new schema of my design which improved query speed by 30% and normalized data types for later improvement." Your resume should have examples of the latter, not the former.

Job titles are pretty close to meaningless, stick to the description. In my experience, IT means more of a Sysadmin/"keep things working" kind of position, it doesn't usually entail what you list above since engineers live in a different realm than IT.

Also, to echo yerfatma's point - internships aren't as impressive as you may think. Interns are generally given lower-priority tasks and more intensive supervision, simply because everyone knows they don't really need the job. If an interviewer senses that you know less than your ego might indicate, there's no way you'll get the position.
posted by meowzilla at 10:24 AM on May 17 [1 favorite]

Okay, not "padding". Learn more skills to broaden my experience and make me more desirable to a wider variety of employers as well as make more generally experienced in IT circles. I thought "padding" would be more succinct, I wasn't aware that there was a less savory connotation to the word.
posted by Pontifex at 5:57 PM on May 17

magikker: Good point! I was actually going to look for more "tech related resume help" here in a bit, but I thought I'd get more focus on this question first; Just because it was bugging me having such an amorphous idea about what I liked in the work place.
posted by Pontifex at 6:00 PM on May 17

yerfatma: I'm only parroting what other people have said as they've reviewed my resume. I'm not the first to toot my own horn, or even get close to the instrument, but given the amount of positive feedback, I thought the comment was warranted.
posted by Pontifex at 6:01 PM on May 17

So Thank you all for your comments thus far. I'll try illuminate what I was looking for, as this thread seems to have gotten a bit off track.

What I'm looking for is a set of "sexy skills" that are in common industry use today. For example:

Web Design / Programming - PHP, Ruby on Rails, Cold Fusion, CSS, AJAX, etc.
Database - MSSQL, MySQL, etc
Programming - Python, Java, C#, ASP.NET, etc

When looking around for work I see some of these technologies listed as "necessary skills" for a given position. I also know them from reading IT literature and just being a nerd. They're the skills that pop, desirable skills that employers want to see experience with.

I know something about the ones I listed, but I can't claim fluency or even a degree of knowledge about all of them. But, I would like to.

This serves two purposes: It makes me more desirable to a wider variety of companies and also it helps me to recommend a given popular industry standard technology if I'm called upon to solve a problem. If I know some of the most popular and standardized tools in the field today, I can more easily solve exotic problems by taking advantage of them.

For example. If I were going to build a web site with the same clean design and richness of features as Metafilter, I would have to do some basic research on the subject. Start from scratch. But if I knew some of the "sexy" web design tools I could make some logical assumptions about what goes into making a site like this and immediately begin fabrication with a smaller amount of time researching specifics.
posted by Pontifex at 6:20 PM on May 17

Pontifex writes "What I'm looking for is a set of 'sexy skills' that are in common industry use today. For example:

"Web Design / Programming - PHP, Ruby on Rails, Cold Fusion, CSS, AJAX, etc.
"Database - MSSQL, MySQL, etc
"Programming - Python, Java, C#, ASP.NET, etc"

No one's going to give you a job just for knowing buzzwords.

Well, maybe some pricey "consulting" firm will.

But you're missing the point: these aren't skills, they're ways of applying skills. Are there differences between MS SQL Server and MySQL? Sure are, but the commonalities are much greater.

You should know SQL and RDBMS design principles. If you tell me you "know" MS SQL or MySQL, I become suspicious that you've used a tool, but not understood why you're using it.

If you tell me you "know" MS SQL and MySQL but never mention knowing SQL, I know that you're just a "fool with tool" who is either not bright enough or not curious enough to understand the foundational knowledge of the discipline he pretends to practice.

Same with "Programming - Python, Java, C#, ASP.NET, etc". Sure, call out each language you're comfortable using. But understand that one procedural language is much like another, and by listing what languages you know, you indicate ignorance of any non-procedural languages or even their existence. (Not to mention, you've listed four languages that are descended from C, but not C, suggesting again, that you don't understand the commonalities that group what you think you know.)

And worse with ""Web Design / Programming - PHP, Ruby on Rails, Cold Fusion, CSS, AJAX, etc.". Here you throw together a programming language, a web framework, a web scripting language, a web standard, and a more-or-less ad hoc tecnique for making web pages dynamic. This basically reads as a mess of buzzwords, or at best as a guy who's done some web site programming that, mirable dictu, happened to work!

So basically, I get the impression that you know just enough to be dangerous, that you're exclusively a "web guy" and probably think all programming is about "the web", that you've probably only maintained others' work, making a change here or there, without really understanding the system or your change, or your change's impact on the system. I'd be very afraid to turn you loose on your own, and so would have to factor in closely supervising you to any job offer. I get the impression that you think you know much more than you do know. (I could be wrong, not having seen your actual resume.)

You seem convinced that you need to add sizzle to your resume, but serious employers want steak. And you give every appearance of not having much real to offer. That said, you sound enthusiastic (if a bit lazy) and I might see hiring you for a very entry level position. But at this point, you've not demonstrated you're a programmer -- just a guy who wants to figure out what buzz words to use to sell himself. And no one only idiots want to hire that guy.
posted by orthogonality at 7:15 PM on May 17

Well I know a lot of idiots, I can tell you. During my interviews I've had several interviewers ask about technologies that I don't have first hand experience with, but can tout basic understanding of technologies (from my education) and it's been a serious detriment to my job search. Most if not all employers in town are asking for specific experience with specific technologies. Not only that, but several job postings on metafilter also outline several “highly desired” or “required” skills / technolgies, some examples:

Web Application UI Designer

CSS
Ruby on Rails
AJAX

Python Programmer

AJAX
PostgreSQL

QA Engineer

CSS
PHP
SQL

Programmer: SQL, VBA, Java, Web Development, Databases

Access
MySQL
PHP
Java

All the technologies I can explain the basis of and even point to some personal experience I've had in using them or derivatives, but without the “fool with a tool” effect I'm MUCH less likely to get an interview or even call back. These postings are actually above and beyond the usual dross I have to deal with. On average technology related postings in my area require experience with the position or an equivalent degree, which is then followed by a listing of "Fool's Tools" to have experience with. There's no mention of general skills in any regard, beyond the degree-or-equivalent-experience line. I think all of these listings are "serious employers" as you put it, while you would term all of the offerings in my area "idiots".

On one memorable occasion I had a job description around here that “required” that I know Access, MS SQL, and have “significant database experience” but was essentially a data entry job manipulating some pre-built interface to their existing database. So really, when dealing with the “idiots” around here I feel the very real pinch of not having the “Fool's Tools” on my resume.

No one's going to give you a job just for knowing buzzwords.

From this line, I highly doubt you read my entire post. In the above response, I stated quite clearly that I'm looking for industry standard skills to augment my own skill set so that I can learn about them to apply them correctly:

This serves two purposes: It makes me more desirable to a wider variety of companies and also it helps me to recommend a given popular industry standard technology if I'm called upon to solve a problem. If I know some of the most popular and standardized tools in the field today, I can more easily solve exotic problems by taking advantage of them.

(Emphasis mine)

So thank you for your post, if only to more clearly illuminate what I'm NOT asking for. Though in future, please check your personal preconceptions at the door. I don't appreciate the tone you've painted me in.
posted by Pontifex at 10:20 PM on May 17

I was hoping to avoid doing my own tedious and lengthy research into the subject, but since very little in the way of productive answers have been stated in this thread, I suppose I'll outline some correct answers to my question and hope that others will deign to add more.

So, a simple one line break down of what I want:


I'm looking for the names of and / or brief descriptions of IT industry standard tools, so that I can take it upon myself to learn more about them.


What I do NOT want, but seems to be bizarrely easy to assume about my relatively simple question; Given the comments above:

I am NOT looking to fake any skills I place on my resume.
I am NOT looking to "know the buzzwords" and leave it at that.
I am NOT working from a blank slate, I have a rather involved education under my belt.
I am NOT in a large or even medium sized city, so your assumptions about "quality" work may not qualify here.

So in the interest of providing information and perhaps sparking some more comments, here are some skills I've come across while researching that I recognize as being popular in the jobs and articles I've read:

PHP

Used primarily for the creation of dynamic web pages.

Useful to cite: Web programming jobs, in conjunction with database drive applications

C++

A given. Very useful general purpose object oriented programming language. I can claim some 3 years experience with this, given that my education was primarily taught in it.

Useful to cite as: Experience with OOP

Java

Useful general programming language. In the job postings I've seen, there seems to be an emphasis on either web programming or cross-platform applications with jobs related to its use.

Useful to cite as: Experience with OOP, experience with programming for cross-platform applications, some application to web programming jobs

CSS

Web page presentation markup language. Logically separates presentation of a web page from its content. Useful in conjunction with PHP and / or other modern web programming languages.

Useful to cite: Web programming jobs

Ruby on Rails

Application framework designed at easing web development and interaction with backing database.

Useful to Cite: Web development

AJAX

From Wikipedia:

Ajax (asynchronous JavaScript and XML) is a group of inter-related web development techniques used for creating interactive web applications. A primary characteristic is the increased responsiveness and interactivity of web pages achieved by exchanging small amounts of data with the server "behind the scenes" so that entire web pages do not have to be reloaded each time there is a need to fetch data from the server.

Useful to Cite: Web programming

Note: That's pretty cool. I think I've seen that on WoWhead.

Postgresql

Object Oriented Database Management System.

Useful to Cite: Database work, either developing applications or more dedicated database work.

Note: I've had some experience with trying to sell this skill, I work with PostgreSQL for private projects, and there seems to be a perception in my area that it's not a "real" database system. I usually try to sell experience with this technology to companies / people who are cost-sensitive about their IT work. This rates above MySQL in my perception, though this may be skewed by the area I work in.

MySQL

Another database system. Perceptions seem to place this on the lowest rung of enterprise software, though I've used it with some great success in personal and school projects.

Useful to Cite: Database work, both application development and strict database work.

Access

Low end business RDBMS. I've had experience putting together simple applications for it and troubleshooting problems.

Useful to Cite: Business database work, low cost database work, low user fast development database work, etc.

Note: The wikipedia page is more generous to this technology that I give it credit for, so my perceptions may be out dated in this regard.


That's all I have for now, but I will continue to post as I uncover more popular and useful technologies to study.
posted by Pontifex at 5:21 PM on May 18

Javascript

Web scripting language. I believe other more modern scripting languages have learned from Javascript's mistakes; But there seems to be a demand for it.

Useful to Cite: Web programming.

DOM

A useful standard way of interpreting and handling XML / HTML.

Cite: Web Programming and / or working with XML.

SAX

A popular alternative to DOM.

Cite: Web Programming and / or working with XML.

Apache

Popular and robust web server. Most used web server world wide.

Cite: Web Programming, System Administration, Web Master, etc.

Windows Server 2003

Microsoft Windows Server Operating system. My interest here is: Setup, Installation, Maintenance, Scheduled backups, etc.

Cite: System Administration, primarily Microsoft Shop based.

Active Directory

Windows domain software. Setup, Installation, Maintenance, Scheduled backups, etc.

Cite: System Administration, primarily Microsoft Shop based.

IIS

Microsoft's Answer to Apache. Might be useful to know the basics, but useful for all Microsoft shops.

Cite: System Administration / Web Admin, primarily Microsoft Shop based.

Exchange

Microsoft Mail server et al (Also including Calendaring, contacts, tasks, etc).

Cite: System Administration / Email Admin, primarily Microsoft Shop based.

C#

Microsoft invented programming language, similar to C++. Programming for Windows.

Cite: Development for Microsoft Shops. Though ironically, not Microsoft itself.

ASP.NET

Microsoft's most modern web programming language.

Cite: Microsoft shop web development.

Perforce

Version control system. I used this during my summer internship.

Cite: Development.

Flash

Web animations and general creativity tool.

Cite: Web Development and Design.

Python

General Purpose Programming language. (Related Question Below)

Cite: Development.

TCL

"Tickle". From Wikipedia:

It is most commonly used for rapid prototyping, scripted applications, GUIs and testing. Tcl is used extensively on embedded systems platforms, both in its full form and in several other small-footprinted versions.

Cite: Embedded programming, development testing, prototyping, development, etc.

Cold Fusion

I see this most often associated with web development, but according to Wikipedia:

ColdFusion is an application server and software development framework used for the development of computer software in general, and dynamic web sites in particular.

Cite: Web Development
posted by Pontifex at 10:45 PM on May 18

Python_Question:

I see from the description at Wikipedia that Python is touted as a general purpose programming language. Other similar languages have "skills" that they excel at over all others, e.g.:

Perl -> String Manipulation
Ruby -> Via Ruby on Rails, Web programming
Tcl -> Rapid prototyping, testing, etc.
Scheme -> Keeping Lisp Wierdo's busy.

But I can't find a citation that details if it's useful for anything above and beyond it's large feature set.
posted by Pontifex at 10:50 PM on May 18

Perl

From wikipedia:

Perl is a dynamic programming language created by Larry Wall and first released in 1987. Perl borrows features from a variety of other languages including C, shell scripting (sh), AWK, sed and Lisp. Perl was widely adopted because it provides powerful text processing facilities without arbitrary data length limits, as were present in many Unix tools at the time.

Text processing and Unix functionality at its finest, all rolled into a handy scripting language.

Cite: Ninja, "Keeping things working", *nix scripting, *nix system administration, etc.
posted by Pontifex at 10:52 PM on May 18

ANT

Apache Ant is a software tool for automating software build processes. It is similar to make but is written in the Java language, requires the Java platform, and is best suited to building Java projects.

Cite: Programming and general Java development

ASP.NET

ASP.NET is a web application framework developed and marketed by Microsoft, that programmers can use to build dynamic web sites, web applications and web services.

Cite: Web Programming, Microsoft Shops

Common Gateway Interface

The Common Gateway Interface (CGI) is a standard protocol for interfacing external application software with an information server, commonly a web server.

Cite: Web Programming

Capability Maturity Model

The Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is a process capability maturity model which aids in the definition and understanding of an organization's processes.

Cite: Systems Analysis

CRM114

CRM114 (full name: "The CRM114 Discriminator") is a program based upon a statistical approach for classifying data, and especially used for filtering email spam.

Cite: Email Admin, Spam, etc

Concurrent Versions System

Concurrent Versions System (CVS), also known as the Concurrent Versioning System, provides a version control system based on open-source code.

Cite: Development

SPSS

SPSS is a computer program used for statistical analysis and is also the name of the company (SPSS Inc.) that sells it.

Cite: General Data Analysis

Apache Tomcat

Apache Tomcat is a Servlet container developed at the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). Tomcat implements the Java Servlet and the JavaServer Pages (JSP) specifications from Sun Microsystems, and provides a "pure Java" HTTP web server environment for Java code to run. Tomcat should not be confused with the Apache web server, which is a C implementation of a HTTP web server; these two HTTP web servers are not bundled together. Apache Tomcat includes tools for configuration and management, but can also be configured by editing configuration files that are normally XML-formatted.

Cite: Web Development, Web Admin

VMWare

VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), a publicly-listed company, develops proprietary virtualization software products for x86-compatible computers, including both commercially-available and freeware versions.

Cite: Server Administration, Software Testing, Deployment Testing, etc

XML

The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a general-purpose specification for creating custom markup languages.

Cite: Software Design, Web Design, Data Manipulation, etc

Extensible Stylesheet Language

The eXtensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) is a family of transformation languages which allows one to describe how files encoded in the XML standard are to be formatted or transformed.

Cite: Web Programming

XSL Transformations

Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) is an XML-based language used for the transformation of XML documents into other XML or "human-readable" documents.

Cite: Web Programming
posted by Pontifex at 1:55 AM on May 21

Nessus

In computer security, Nessus is a free comprehensive vulnerability scanning software.

Cite: Security
posted by Pontifex at 11:51 AM on May 21

When searching for some IT job searching help, I found this thread: What tech to learn for a good jobby job.

This thread asks nearly the same question I have here, with more of a web programming focus. Shortly post graduate and looking to do something consultant-ish. Surprisingly enough he actually gets relevant feedback! Lucky him! Here's some choice quotes:

nearly every place I have worked uses some variety of Java/JSP.
drjimmy11

Perl is totally required to be a real *nix head. It's the swiss-army chainsaw of programming languages.
phrontist

Want to work in the basements of financial services companies or software companies, making a fortune? Then you'll be best served with C# and ASP.NET (and the MFC/.NET classes that are really the bulk of Windows programming in any language).

Java/JSP technologies are used in most web projects run by large organizations -- especially in financial circles. Want to work on Yodlee, or paypal, or on a big ecommerce site, or on the online bill payment system of a bank?

Heavily technology-focused organizations use a lot of Python these days, and the skills/habits learned by becoming proficient in Python will translate to lots of other languages. If you want to work for Google, BitTorrent, Yahoo, NASA, NIST and most medical research companies, go down this road. For what it's worth, python does seem to be favored by people who are more strictly computer science oriented. Whether you consider this to be a good thing or a bad thing depends on your personality and how your brain is wired.

The bleeding edge web application companies tend to be Ruby-based (in particular using Ruby on Rails). Ruby is a language designed not to get in your way, and it's quite versatile and well-suited for web application programming. However, it's still evolving (and it's got some things to learn about performance), and it certainly isn't accepted in more slowly-moving organizations like banks/brokerage. If you're interested in doing some work for a cool project with young people, and would like to see your work on TechCrunch, then Ruby is your friend.

Perl is still the swiss army knife of sysadmins, but it's falling out of favor with programmers. It's hard to be a *nix-head without being comfortable with it, but it's certainly possible (especially if you're comfortable with Python or Ruby). You still see a lot of jobs maintaining Perl code, but there are very few projects that are just starting that are perl based.

PHP is quickly becoming the language of so-so freelance coders and Indian outsource companies. There's work, and it's certainly a versatile and powerful language, but most of the A-List talent has moved on (or is moving on), frequently to python or Ruby.

But ultimately, it depends on what drives you. If you're driven by profit, stick with windows programming and/or Java. If you want to change the online world and work on cutting edge stuff with primarily younger coworkers, go with Ruby. If you'd like to become an ubergeek (or a respected manager of ubergeeks) or work on sciencey things surrounded by smart people then go with python (and C, but that's another story entirely).
toxic

Very well said by Toxic.
posted by Pontifex at 11:47 PM on May 21

Snort

Snort is a free and open source Network Intrusion prevention system (NIPS) and network intrusion detection (NIDS) capable of performing packet logging and real-time traffic analysis on IP networks.

Nmap

Nmap is a security scanner originally written by Gordon Lyon (Fyodor). It may be used to discover computers and services on a computer network, thus creating a "map" of the network.
posted by Pontifex at 2:41 PM on May 22

Communication skills. Cite: being human.
posted by dhoe at 7:37 AM on June 1

Nagios

Nagios is a popular open source computer system and network monitoring application software.

Lucene

Lucene is a free/open source information retrieval library.

Ported to a wide variety of languages, very flexible and powerful.

OpenSocial

OpenSocial is a set of common application programming interfaces (APIs) for web-based social network applications, developed by Google

Photoshop

Photoshop, is a graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Systems. It is the current and primary market leader for commercial bitmap and image manipulation, and is the flagship product of Adobe Systems.

Cite: Web Design, Image Butchering of any sort, Cool things to get the ladies


Note: Got most of those from jobs.37signals.com, good resource for interesting jobs.
posted by Pontifex at 10:57 PM on June 2

dhoe

Too general. Thanks for the snide comment though. Some are better than none. Epic Failure Meta-filter!

--Pontifex
Keeping Hope Alive.
posted by Pontifex at 10:59 PM on June 2

So if it isn't blazingly obvious by now, all of these technologies and skills have several things in common:

Large Community
Developed by a person / team with a passion for the work.
Rich Feature set and deployment base
Widely used in IT today.

Simple! Discuss!
posted by Pontifex at 11:01 PM on June 2

An alternate question would be:

What's your most powerful / most liked / most used, software tool?
posted by Pontifex at 11:29 PM on June 2

Splunk

An example of Agentless data collection. Web 2.0 compliant. Really neat SYSLOG server. Though classifying stricly as such does it a disservice. Search your logs and compare to other professionals to find out what your problem is.

Cite: System administration, network administration, making sure the beige boxes work right.
posted by Pontifex at 12:45 PM on June 4

Git

Git is a distributed revision control / software code management project created by Linus Torvalds, initially for the Linux kernel development.

Site: Software development, revision control, code management

Mongrel (web server)

Mongrel is an open-source HTTP library and web server for Ruby web applications written by Zed A. Shaw.

Special mention, because it's targeted at running Ruby; Which is a very popular web development language (Ruby on Rails, above)

Cite: Web Development / Administration

memcached

memcached is a general-purpose distributed memory caching system that was originally developed by Danga Interactive for LiveJournal, but is now used by many other sites. It is often used to speed up dynamic database-driven websites by caching data and objects in memory to reduce the number of times the database must be read.

Special recognition for the sheer dearth of cites which utilize it.

Cite: Web Development

Subversion

Subversion (SVN) is a version control system initiated in 2000 by CollabNet Inc. It is used to maintain current and historical versions of files such as source code, web pages, and documentation.

Popular version control system.

Cite: Development

Django

Django is an open source web application framework, written in Python, which loosely follows the model-view-controller design pattern.

Python web development!

Cite: Web Development, Python use

Zend Framework

Zend Framework is an open source, object-oriented web application framework implemented in PHP 5 and licensed under the New BSD License. Zend Framework—often referred to as ZF—is developed with the goal of simplifying web development while promoting best practices in the PHP developer community.

PHP Web Development Framework.

Cite: Web Development, PHP
posted by Pontifex at 10:22 PM on June 12

I've started to notice more trends for "skills" (such as MVC, Agile, etc) in my last reviews of job postings. Another interesting effect of this listing these skills and technologies is the ability to identify and quantify techniques within a target company as falling into such a category.

In that a company may utilize a form of Agile development, but explicitly name it as a discipline of such development; E.g. they have a particular flavor that's been developed internally and can't be identified as one of the more popular techniques.

Also such people may not explicitly identify the techniques they're using as they may assume that you're already familiar with the techniques, when that may not be the case. E.g. I may become a junior web developer, where I didn't have such a focus in my education; Thus common techniques - such as MVC - may not be known to me. But the developers may train me in the skills without identifying the name for the skill set.
posted by Pontifex at 6:04 PM on June 28

Symfony

Symfony is a web application framework written in PHP which follows the model-view-controller (MVC) paradigm.

Symfony aims to speed up the creation and maintenance of web applications and to replace repetitive coding tasks.

Symfony is aimed at building robust applications in an enterprise context, and aims to give developers full control over the configuration: from the directory structure to the foreign libraries, almost everything can be customized.

Hibernate

Hibernate is an object-relational mapping (ORM) library for the Java language, providing a framework for mapping an object-oriented domain model to a traditional relational database. Hibernate solves Object-Relational impedance mismatch problems by replacing direct persistence-related database accesses with high-level object handling functions.

LAMP

Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP; Or derivation thereof.

The acronym LAMP refers to a solution stack of software, usually free and open source software, used to run dynamic Web sites or servers.

Lua

The Lua programming language is a lightweight, reflective, imperative and procedural language, designed as a scripting language with extensible semantics as a primary goal.

Dojo Toolkit

The Dojo Toolkit is a modular open source JavaScript toolkit (or library), designed to ease the rapid development of JavaScript- or Ajax-based applications and web sites.
posted by Pontifex at 5:47 PM on July 4