Considering a career in tech? Give Software Engineering a closer look – CareerCast’s annual study ranks 200 jobs from best to worst, and this year, Software Engineering came out on top! No surprise there – many of Evans & Chambers’ software engineers love their jobs – here’s what one of our developers had to say about it:

“I like that my job is laid back and fun.  It’s like doing a giant sudoku puzzle every day.  It’s challenging and feels really good when you’ve completed your tasks.  You also usually know when you’re done (unlike when writing a paper).  You can obviously always make things better, but things either work or they don’t.”

That makes a pretty good case, but the CareerCast study was more than just anecdotal. The study factored physical demands, work environment, income, stress, and hiring outlook in its rankings by assigning scores for each category to individual jobs. When added together, these scores provided the total overall score used in the rankings.

With an overall score of 176, software engineering captured the number one spot for the low physical demand and comfortable work environment. Although tight deadlines, product releases, and hitches in a project can increase the engineer’s stress level, it was comparatively ranked very low in consideration of those jobs that are life-threatening, hazardous, require a lot of physical demands or travel, or involve a lot of publicity. The hiring outlook is also fairly high, based on a complex analysis of data from the Department of Labor on employment growth, income growth potential, and unemployment.

Software engineering is also a lucrative career: with a median income level of $88,000 and max of $133,000, a software engineer might increase his salary by 142% over the course of his career.

Here’s how some other popular careers ranked:

5 Best Jobs of 2012
Software Engineer
Actuary
Human Resources Manager
Dental Hygienist
Financial Planner

5 Worst Jobs of 2012
Lumberjack
Dairy Farmer
Enlisted Military Soldier
Oil Rig Worker
Newspaper Reporter

When agencies and companies need to mine data sets that are too large to be analyzed by desktop analytical tools, they turn to Hadoop. The open source software scales up for large projects to allow for the distributed processing of extremely large data sets. The work is ”divided into many small fragments of work, each which may be executed or re-executed on any node in the cluster.” You can visualize this by imagining the way a search and rescue party canvasses large areas of land – by dividing the mapped terrain into subsections, amassing a team of volunteers, and assigning sections to each individual. In an example of searching 1 million Tweets for the word “drugs,” Hadoop begins with a master server, which parses pieces of the problem (a command to search 100,000 Tweets, say) to sub-servers. Those sub-servers parse the problem further, perhaps by commanding two of its own sub-servers to search 50,000 Tweets. This division of labor can continue, depending upon the size of the problem.

These servers conduct the search, sending back the number of Tweets containing the word “drugs.” The mid-line servers collect results from each of their sub-servers, and pass the information to the master server. In this way, the problem of searching 1 million Tweets is divided among several servers that can perform complex searches faster than one server alone.

So fast, in fact, that in 2008, Hadoop reported that “one of Yahoo’s Hadoop clusters sorted 1 terabyte of data in 209 seconds, which beat the previous record of 297 seconds in the annual general purpose terabyte sort benchmark.”

1. Boomerang: This Gmail plugin allows you to schedule messages to be sent at a later date and time, keep track of responses, and also helps you to remember to follow up within a certain period of time by prioritizing the message if the recipient doesn’t respond. Get it here.

2. Advanced Search: Google’s superior search methodology makes it easy and intuitive to search for messages by sender, keyword, and location. Using only a few keystrokes, I can quickly locate a message that I sent to my boss about an upcoming deadline: “from:me to:Jamil in:sent deadline.” This is right from my inbox – no looking for a separate advanced search page.

3. Services Integration: Like most teams, we have a lot of online tools for accomplishing different tasks, which means we have a lot of bookmarks and passwords to remember. So, we love the Google Apps Marketplace, where we can search for the tools we use most often and integrate them with Gmail. Once integrated, our tools are available right from our Gmail inbox and we’re already signed in. There’s tons of tools to choose from – think CRM tools, expense reporting, contacts managers, project management, and more – all available in the Google Apps Marketplace.

4. Google Docs: As a tech company with different folks on different work sites, our team often works online to complete internal projects and tasks. Our favored methodology for programming is Agile, which normally would require us to meet on a daily basis to share information with the team. The Google Documents feature actually allows us to work virtually to create a document that we can all read and edit at the same time, updated in real time. Google Documents carry the same features as documents created in Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and others. You’re already familiar with the tools, and converting documents between the two is a snap. And since it’s all happening in real time, we can use Docs to share scrum information, even when we can’t all be available to meet.

5. Google Voice: When collaborating on one document isn’t enough, we can instant message and even call each other. Right from our inboxes, we can place phone calls using Google Voice. The call is alarmingly clear, allowing us to free our hands for other tasks without the far-away tone of most speakerphones. We can even customize Google Voice with our own local phone numbers, direct calls to ring our mobile phones, send and receive texts, and save our voicemails online.

You will not use our copyrights or trademarks (including Facebook, the Facebook and F Logos, FB, Face, Poke, Wall and 32665), or any confusingly similar marks, without our written permission.

We’re so not interested in fighting that battle with Facebook.  Moving on.

What does Bookbook do, you ask?  Bookbook is the brainchild of our marketing analyst and social media puppet master, Nicole Tripodi.  Being an avid reader, Nicole dreamed up a Foursquare-style app allowing her to keep tabs on what her sister is currently reading, and vice-versa.  An app like this enables that interaction via the concept of “virtual book clubs,” making the act of reading a very social activity for readers across the world.  Think about it: for generations, readers have enjoyed reading books, discussing books, arguing about themes and ideas, criticizing books, recommending great books, and even fraternizing over a common love of reading. But it hasn’t always been easy to convince your friends to read the books you want to read (The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs by Alexander McCall Smith? Anyone?), or to find tailored recommendations for books you’d really enjoy.

As the first step of project planning, we felt it was extremely important to follow agile methodology precepts by defining a product vision statement.  A clear and strong vision statement will help us focus on delivering the best product, minimizing scope creep and analysis paralysis.  Here’s the vision statement we came up with:

Develop a mobile app for avid readers who want to share their perspectives on books, gather perspectives of others on books they are reading, and find new books to read through shared experiences. Bookbook is a social media app for tablets that connects readers.  Unlike other mobile check-in applications, our product focuses solely on checking into books with a delightful user experience that is above the competition.

We’re excited about kicking off the first sprint in this month.  Stay tuned for updates on the project!

In her free time, Deanna enjoys executing a good home improvement project that leaves a hard day’s work on her hands or relaxing by watching a good romantic comedy.  Of course, she likes to point out that no movie is complete without some ice cream (not popcorn!) and her daughter at her side!

If you’re interested in learning about the opportunities at Evans & Chambers, or just want to join me in welcoming Deanna, she can be reached via email at recruiting@evanschambers.com.

Evans & Chambers has been awarded an 8(a) STARS II contract. The 8(a) STARS II Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) is designed to promote small businesses in the federal government by identifying small businesses that exhibit technical proficiency with competitive pricing. The 8(a) STARS II GWAC provides agencies with pre-competed, easy-to-use contracts, access to proven technology providers, a shortened procurement lead time, and 8(a) socioeconomic credit. For a small business like Evans & Chambers, the contract award opens doors for more opportunities within the federal government, and provides an opportunity to lead teams of subcontractors on federal projects, sparking company growth.

Corporate marketing professionals face challenges that parallel those of information sharing promoters in the US national defense community. A great product won’t sell without a strong marketing strategy. In the same way, information sharing initiatives can’t succeed unless the participants (customers) buy-in.

Deeplocal, an award-winning marketing firm servicing Fortune 500 companies, knows a little bit about sharing information with potential customers. As described on their web site, Deeplocal “builds interactive experiences that bridge the physical and digital worlds, generating emotional connections with consumers, earned media, and increased revenue.” The better a brand is able to connect with media and consumers on both the digital and physical planes, the more revenue the brand can expect to generate.

Information sharing benefits are well understood by many: reduction in redundant efforts such as monitoring and data analysis, faster innovation, improvements in the efficiency and effectiveness of intelligence agents and analysts. The benefits are clear and the technology is here, yet we’re not seeing the results that we’d expect. Perhaps it’s failing because there’s no buy-in. Information sharing promoters can learn a lot from marketing firms like Deeplocal.

✓ Increase your earning potential
✓ Increase your chances for career advancement
✓ Place you in an exciting role that might not otherwise be available due to its sensitive nature

We have several open positions available, including Java Web Developer, Software Developer, Ruby on Rails Developer, Database Administrator, Database Developer, and Systems Analyst. We’re adding new positions often, so be sure and check out our openings.

And have we mentioned before that we think it’s only a matter of time before we’re recognized as the best place to work in IT? We recognize the amount of hard work and dedication it takes for professionals to hone their crafts and keep up with challenging technologies, so we’re committed to our employees. We offer an excellent benefits package in a small company environment, direct access to senior leadership, exciting team building events, and numberous opportunities to develop your career.

For more information on how to receive or upgrade your government security clearance through your role at Evans & Chambers, please contact our recruiter, Debra Roberts.

Recently, Evans & Chambers announced its new mentor-protege relationship with Metters, Inc. under the Department of Homeland Security’s Mentor-Protege program. Metters is an experienced Service Disabled Veteran Owned Business providing a range of technical solutions to federal customers, including enterprise IT solutions. “This year, Metters celebrates its 30^th anniversary.  We can think of no better way to mark the occasion than by joining forces with a promising newcomer that shares our passion for technological transformation of the very most critical government missions,”  said Santo LaTores, Metters COO.

Through the partnership, the Metters/EC team will develop innovative solutions and concepts to support the DHS mission – and our first task is developing a solution for using social network analysis to cultivate communities that are more resilient to disaster. Part of DHS’ success strategy is in strengthening our nation’s preparedness and emergency response capabilities, and social networking may be the next tool in disaster response. The Metters/E&C solution considers the ways in which social media might help civic leaders understand the first response community and their geographic relationships, identify underserved populations, plan for distribution of public services, enhance collaboration in resource planning, and guide economic recovery after a disaster.