Transition from infrastructure to development (or reverse)

Has anyone here transitioned from infrastructure careers (e.g. networking, sysadmin, DBA) to more development-oriented or computer-science-y roles (e.g. software engineer, web developer, database developer)? Did you go the opposite direction? Have you found a more hybrid role (e.g. some technical security or database jobs, developing infrastructure tools, heavy scripting)?

Tell us the how, why, what you've liked and what you've disliked!

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Comments

N2IT

I hope you do to be honest. The market is craving capable developers who can practically write their own check once they become accomplished. Oh and because I think you are an alright guy.

ptilsen

Haha, thanks for the support N2. I am getting CS instead of a (IMHO) much easier CIS or MIS degree partially just to keep my options open.

blargoe

If I just got sick of infrastructure, I might would consider something like that. I am trying to get better with scripting and automation and using databases for departmental stuff, maybe that will end up turning into something else.. who knows

the_Grinch

Funny, I was just researching this very topic! I hope to find a hybrid position and to start developing my coding skills. I am lucky in that my Masters will require a couple programming classes. Though my plan is to self teach Python and probably C along with Assembly. Good luck and I look forward to hearing from anyone who has made the switch. Also, good choice going with CS you definitely can't go wrong doing that.

paul78

I am trying to rack my memory to see if I know anyone personally that started out on the infrastructure side and ended up on development. And I can't say that I remember any collegues in that position.

Although, that's not to say that doesn't happen. More likely its because of my own personal background and experience. Most collegues that I know in IT are in the software development and software engineering field.

I started my own career in software engineering. I worked mostly developing applications on Unix and Windows platforms with a year or two thrown in on VMS.

I didn't leave software engineering intentionally. It was more of an evolution for me. I moved into management early in my career and from there I ended up leading various teams including infrastructure teams. Because my software engineering background was fairly low-level (developing software used by network and system admins), understanding systems and networking wasn't a stretch.

I am not aware of any hybrid roles out there. But I bet they are there. Obviously, there will be jobs like what I did in the past which was to write software for other IT roles - whether it was developing libraries for developers or system tools for network and system admins.

I do view software engineering as a discipline that is very different than developing web sites, scripting, or automation.

I do not miss the pure software engineering and development. I prefer to dabble.

I do think based on your postings that working on your comp-sci is a great way to advance your career. The baseline knowledge that you will gain will be invaluable.

jdancer

Personally and professionally, I got started with programming computers as a kid. Back then, PCs had programming languages. I quit programming when C became C++.

Since I have clients asking me if I know of any smartphone apps to manage infrastructure, I went back to school to learn some object-oriented programming. I have to say, I enjoy it.

As soon as Windows 8 comes out, I plan to develop a Windows 8 Metro app. I wonder if the iPhone and Android can support C# programs. I really don't want to rewrite the app in Objective-C and Java.

psenior

I am strongly considering making the transition as well. I started going back to school this month (WGU, BS IT) and will have to learn a little HTML, Javascript, Java, and SQL. There are TONS more developer jobs than IT operations jobs. I've been reading a lot of Hacker News and there are a lot of really smart people doing cool stuff right now with various startups. Also, there's a new line of work called DevOps, where it seems like you can do everything from build a server, to configuring it, to running your web apps on there. This all seems to line up very nicely with the current cloud trend (i.e. IaaS, Paas, SaaS). I can't predict the future, but I am trying to embrace it.

remyforbes777

@psenior:
You are absolutely right. I have a friend that just moved to San Fran to take a position as a DevOps engineer. This is definitely where things are moving. Check out this site. http://www.planetdevops.net/

the_Grinch

Never heard of DevOps, thanks for that!

RobertKaucher

jdancer wrote: »

Personally and professionally, I got started with programming computers as a kid. Back then, PCs had programming languages. I quit programming when C became C++.

Since I have clients asking me if I know of any smartphone apps to manage infrastructure, I went back to school to learn some object-oriented programming. I have to say, I enjoy it.

As soon as Windows 8 comes out, I plan to develop a Windows 8 Metro app. I wonder if the iPhone and Android can support C# programs. I really don't want to rewrite the app in Objective-C and Java.

Look at Xamarin and their Mono Touch (iOS) and Mono for Android. There are other ways of going about this, though, if you are developing Win 8 apps in HTML5.