Transition from infrastructure to development (or reverse)

ptilsenptilsen Member Posts: 2,835 ■■■■■■■■■■
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!
Working B.S., Computer Science
Complete: 55/120 credits SPAN 201, LIT 100, ETHS 200, AP Lang, MATH 120, WRIT 231, ICS 140, MATH 215, ECON 202, ECON 201, ICS 141, MATH 210, LING 111, ICS 240
In progress: CLEP US GOV,
Next up: MATH 211, ECON 352, ICS 340

Comments

  • N2ITN2IT Inactive Imported Users Posts: 7,483 ■■■■■■■■■■
    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.
  • ptilsenptilsen Member Posts: 2,835 ■■■■■■■■■■
    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.
    Working B.S., Computer Science
    Complete: 55/120 credits SPAN 201, LIT 100, ETHS 200, AP Lang, MATH 120, WRIT 231, ICS 140, MATH 215, ECON 202, ECON 201, ICS 141, MATH 210, LING 111, ICS 240
    In progress: CLEP US GOV,
    Next up: MATH 211, ECON 352, ICS 340
  • blargoeblargoe Member Posts: 4,174 ■■■■■■■■■□
    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
    IT guy since 12/00

    Recent: 11/2019 - RHCSA (RHEL 7); 2/2019 - Updated VCP to 6.5 (just a few days before VMware discontinued the re-cert policy...)
    Working on: RHCE/Ansible
    Future: Probably continued Red Hat Immersion, Possibly VCAP Design, or maybe a completely different path. Depends on job demands...
  • the_Grinchthe_Grinch Member Posts: 4,165 ■■■■■■■■■■
    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.
    WIP:
    PHP
    Kotlin
    Intro to Discrete Math
    Programming Languages
    Work stuff
  • paul78paul78 Member Posts: 3,016 ■■■■■■■■■■
    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.
  • jdancerjdancer Member Posts: 482 ■■■■□□□□□□
    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.
  • pseniorpsenior Member Posts: 28 ■□□□□□□□□□
    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.
  • remyforbes777remyforbes777 Member Posts: 499
    @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_Grinchthe_Grinch Member Posts: 4,165 ■■■■■■■■■■
    Never heard of DevOps, thanks for that!
    WIP:
    PHP
    Kotlin
    Intro to Discrete Math
    Programming Languages
    Work stuff
  • RobertKaucherRobertKaucher Member Posts: 4,299 ■■■■■■■■■■
    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.
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