DSXchange

I am currently deciding between whether to take a fulltime developer position or do contracts. The rates I am hearing from consulting
companies are much lower than some mentioned in this forum. My question is, what is the long term future (in your opinion) of Datastage contracting? If I am willing to travel, are rates between 80 to 100 achievable consistently?

Really appreciate your responses.

For the right skills, experience, and professionalism, absolutely.

I seem to be busier than the proverbial one-armed wallpaper-hanger with a bad itch.

FIGJAM

Either Ray is a fan of Phil Mickelson... or he just said a dirty word - just ask him!

Selecting Datastage is good decision. But dont be specific on any tool. They come and go. Try to be experitised on different domains. If you are master in the doamains then you can play with any tool.

iamnagus wrote:Selecting Datastage is good decision. But dont be specific on any tool. They come and go. Try to be experitised on different domains. If you are master in the doamains then you can play with any tool.

Either you can expert you skills in domain (Business) or in tool(Technical). Both will provide you the way. Gaining the knowledge in both is ultimate (You will drive the team). There are companies looking desperately for datastge experts with Xyears of experience. (Irrespective of domain)
I know some site, where Daily batch jobs are running for 36 hours. Which was built by people having more experience in Data warehousing but not in Datastage.

iamnagus, can you tell me what you mean by "different domains"?

Thanks.

[Selecting Datastage is good decision. But dont be specific on any tool. They come and go. Try to be experitised on different domains. If you are master in the doamains then you can play with any tool.]

I mean,
Suppose take retailr business(I say this is one Doamin). One should have detailed knowledge on this environment before he works on the tool to process the data. If it is an END to END project, there would be lots of analysis on the business where he should take part for the things to be done. Once the final things are ready then he should code the jobs using any tool which this part comes almost in the last. As per knowledge concerned, he would design any thing related this business in a better way if he know how the business is and how it flows. I modified my Tech Specification Doc, Mapping Doc & and accordingly DS job many times after i closely looked the real business data. If i was welknown the business and real data before i have done all these things then i would have eliminated the rework. So tool is not so specific here but rather he should be expertise how a business could be better processed. If he has been done on any tool for a specific period, then he could play with any tool as almost all the tools provides more or less same features. As long he is as developer, tool specific is ok but as he growing in industry he must definitely have different domain knowledge as if he move towards project management. One gut feeling is, if he is fully aware the business knowledge, definitely he would be recognized very soon in the project.

I will tell one more live example here. After a completion my project on Datastage, there is no project ready on Datastage. Then they can not keep me in buffer(on Bench) for long time till next Datastage project lined up. Then they asked me work on other technologies like Informatica, unix, Maninframe, PL/SQL etc. Then simply i can not ignore them because i have to survive here. So things would be like this in real life.

This is my feeling with own experiece.

I have now had experience in many different business milieux (what iamnagus was calling Domains), but had to get started in one. Success there led to others. The business analysts and subject matter experts are other people - I use their output as my input.