2015

Market Yourself
Report 1
Abeer AlRumaidh

Table of Contents
Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 2
Interview ....................................................................................................................................................... 3
Independent Research .................................................................................................................................. 4
Analysis ......................................................................................................................................................... 5
Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................................... 6
References .................................................................................................................................................... 7

Introduction
The purpose of the report is to provide a brief discussion about Programming industry and the industry
work environment. The first section will be about an interview that was conducted with a Bahraini
programmer. Second, this part will be an independent research that was made based of American
companies. The Last part is about comparing the findings in both of the interview and research. All
information are gathered by website and the interview.

Interview
At the beginning, there was an interview conducted with Ebtisam AlAttawi which is an advanced
programmer working in Bahrain Defense Force hospital. The hospital is a public and private hospital that
is help people who work in the military and their families, People who have insurance or Medical
emergency to get medical care with specialized doctors. In addition, there are private clinics that are open
24/7 for All Bahrainis. The Vision of BDF hospital is to be one of the leading national and regional hospitals
in efficiency and continuously providing highest quality health care ("Mission and Values").
The Interview was on 2nd of April in Ebtisam AlAttawi office in her workplace. There was prepared
questions that the interviewee should answer to clarify her job environment. First, said that she had
known about the job by looking at the job vacancies on the organization website and applied all the
required documents through the website. She had to go through three different interviews to get the job
and eventually she got it.
She has a Bachelor degree in Computer Science from university of Bahrain, diploma in IT Analyzing from
BIBF, ICDL certificate which is the international computer driving license and Completed advanced English
courses in ACEC which is the American cultural & educational center. As being a programmer, she had
been familiar with ten different programing languages such as C#, C++, PHP, java and swift. Also, she have
general ideas about the other sub majors in IT like networking and Databases. As Part of her studies, she
worked on an HR system for AlNaseem private school which was awarded as one of the best IT projects
in UOB, this project was previewed by the HR department of the organization and they were impressed
with her work. In Addition, before started this job, the only experience that she had was in her training
course in Zain which benefit her a lot to get into the Workplace environment and to get to know the job
better. She also developed an application for Zain that the employees can use to submit their sick leaves
and leave of absence which was a record that qualified her for the job.
She said that the employment skill that a programmer should have are team work , problem solving ,
organizing and planning and communication , she linked these skill to her job by saying that by being a
team player you will cooperate with others to produces better programs , problem solving will help
because while programing a program the programmer might be facing issues with the ending result so
they need to solve these issues before presenting the project , organizing and planning is important before
every program there should be a plan of the program before starting to write the codes to avoid problems
while coding and the last is communication which is really impotent in her job because she had to deal
with different people from different departments and different culture to know their programs
requirements.
She had two different jobs in the same department, when she first started she was under training by the
staff that had more experience than her and she was working as an IT help disk within her training period
which was six months , after she completed her training she had to complete a programing task so that
the mangers know if she is eligible to be a part of the programing team and she got her spot in the team
and since then she has been system analyzing programs , devolving programs with her team or individually
for the organization. She also help in maintain the provirus program and she is starting a new HR system
for the organization that help the manager track their employees attendance.
She is applying for America universities to have her master degree in Management because her manager
are planning that she be the head of the programing team so she need to take courses in management to

be promoted. There was a question in the interview about salaries range in Bahrain, she said that in her
first year working as a programmer it was 650 BD and now it is 1850 BD. At the end of the interview, she
recommenced if I want to get a similar job, I should complete my studies with a good academic
achievements, take as much programing courses that I can take because there are a lot of programing
languages that are not being taught in universities and she recommended that I apply for different
summer jobs to get more experience.

Independent Research
Based on the research, programmer job nature is creating and modifying computer programs by
converting project analysis into a program code. By working as a programmer there will be some duties
that need to be fulfilled such as write, maintain and update programs codes ("Computer Programmer
Career").

Furthermore, most of the America companies are looking for graduate who have a BSc degree in IT in
general or computer science but there are some companies that accept employees that do not have a
bachelor degree but have programming skills and knowledge about programming languages

The most important skill that are needed to be in a programmer are analytical thinking, attention for
details, flexible, persistence and cooperation. Because each one of these skills helps in producing a better
programmer as it is mentioned below (reference):

Analytical thinking: Computer programmer need analyzing data and logical thinking to consider
issues or problems.
Attention to details: A programmer needs to be careful while coding to avoid errors because fixing
them may take longer time that creating the actual program.
Flexible: Being able to accept changes in the workplace and be able to change thought and opinion
to produces the best results.
Persistence: should not stop at the obstacles and quit, programmer should continue working on
their project even though they might face some obstacles.
Cooperation: working in team is essentials in large projects so the person should have this skill to
be able to blend in and work with the team smoothly.

It is a good idea to have some experience before starting a job and it is recommended and sometimes
companies like unexperienced employees so that they are trained by the company or organization staff.
A programmer salary depends on the projects and the experiences, startup programmers start with
900BD as salary and it goes up 20,400BD as they become IT programmer manager ("Computer
Programmer" Job Description - Part 1").

Analysis
While gathering information from both sources, I discovered that there are some similarities and there
are some differences in working in Bahrain or America. I searched for America companies because it
gave a general idea about the industry in most of the countries in America and Europe.

The first similarity is that both of Bahrain and America companies share is that programmer have the
same job responsibilities which converting the project to analyzed project to a coded program.
Secondly, the skill that are required for this industry is similar to both of the companies in Bahrain and
America, both of them are looking for a team worker , good analyzing skill , hard worker and flexible.
Although there are unique cases that companies accept unexperienced people but experience dose
matter for American and Bahraini companies.

The differences are that Bahraini companies hire people with BSc degrees in computer engineering or
computer science meanwhile there are some companies in America that accept people without any
degrees but they have the required knowledge with courses they have been taking. The second
different was the huge gap between salaries in Bahrain and salaries in America, the difference between
a startup programmer in both countries are 250BD and there is a huge difference between and IT
programmer manager in Bahrain and America by 18,550 even though they pay tax on everything, there
are some companies that over payback for most of their employees essentials such as cloths, house,
food and car gas.

Conclusion
At the end, I do not consider myself suitable to be a programmer yet. To be a programmer I should
complete by BSc in Bahrain Polytechnic and to get more work experiences. So I might be suitable for this
job after 2 year when I have completed my studies and got the programming languages certificates that
recommended them to me and then I might be suitable to be a Computer Programmer.

References

"Computer Programmer" Job Description - Part 1. (n.d.). Retrieved April 9, 2015, from
http://job-descriptions.careerplanner.com/computer-programmers.cfm

Computer Programmer Career. (n.d.). Retrieved April 9, 2015, from

http://www.mymajors.com/career/computer-programmers/skills/

Mission and Values. (n.d.). Retrieved April 1, 2015, from

https://www.bdfmedical.org/en/index.php/organization-of-bdfrms/organization-of-royalmedical-services/mission-and-values

Programmer Sample Job Description. (n.d.). Retrieved April 9, 2015, from

http://hiring.monster.com/hr/hr-best-practices/recruiting-hiring-advice/jobdescriptions/programmer-job-description-sample.aspx