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For Those Who Wish to be Programmers?
Ryan asks: "I've been stuck in a helpdesk position at 3 different companies for the past 5 years. What I really would like to be doing is programming. At each job, I would write small programs or dynamic web pages in PHP with a MySQL backend, a few small Linux utilities for automating jobs and small Win32 programs, all written in C. Sure, these programs were popular with my fellow coworkers, my boss liked them, but my primary function there is to answer phones, and programming is secondary. I can not transfer to the 'programming department' because its located in another state, nor would I think that department would welcome me, only because I would be coming from a helpdesk. My programming is self-taught, and I don't have a diploma from a university. I'm 25, and have a family, night school is out of the question.
The market here (Danbury,-Connecticut) is dry, and HR wouldn't even look at my resume with out a degree. I know someone out there must have been in the same situation and some how gotten their foot in the door. What did you do? Any suggestions?" I'm sure there many on Slashdot who have been in this situation. If you wouldn't mind sharing your experiences on this matter, it would be appreciated. Share the ups and downs of your decisions and in particular, please answer the question: If you had to do it all over again, would you make the same decisions? Those interested in this topic may also wish to check out the the last article that touches on this subject.
It's much easier to transition from Helpdesk to a testing department. In testing (at least the testing I've been involved in) you often get to use programming to develop test tools, scripts, etc. At the same time (depending on the organization) you have much more interaction with the development group and you may even get to review source code as part of your testing efforts. Over time as the dev group becomes more aware of your programming prowess, then you can look for a way to transfer into a rookie dev job. At that point, since the people you've been working with know your skills, it's much easier for them to justify hiring somebody who might not have a degree or other "proper" development experience.
So, it may come down to choosing whether you would be happier with your current employer, or doing what you want to be doing for someone else. It wouldn't hurt to see what's out there, and if you get an offer then it might make your present employer see you in a new light.
Basically, the company is not going to go out of its way to move your career for you. You shouldn't expect them to. But most employers would be happy to work with you to put you where you will benefit them the most.
As this is happening, I recommend frequent practice. Try to keep abreast of current practices and new concepts and paradigms. Good luck.
If, in the process, you are to come across a Gandalf wallpaper where he looks stoned, please send me a link. Thanks.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
This is truly a problem with the system. I will elaborate. I don't know the author of the question, but let's assume he's a fairly good programmer with a lot of useful experience. The problem is that a company will take a kid straight out of school with a CS degree over this guy any time. Whats unfair or stupid about that is that the guy probably has more useful experience than the student. Students are taught CS, which is basically sorts, lists, theory, etc, but usually don't know anything that actually gets used like Perl or JSPs or SQL, etc. Thus the student will have to take a huge learning curve to learn all the packages, which will be less effecient and cost more than if our guy just walked in and started working, even if he doesn't have a degree. So HR people are morons and should hire based on what practical shit you know, not on whether you have a silly degree from some shit university.
Thanks,
Travis
forkspoon@hotmail.com
Sure, people were able to get their foot in the door maybe five years ago, but times have changed. With the dotcom bust, the market is now saturated with talent that has no formal schooling, but write mean code. In fact, I just got out of a meeting for my company where the comment was made that the problem right now is a glut of too much high priced talent. So, unfortunately, you will probably have to find a degree some how, even if it is doing the Sally Struthers home schooling method. Places are starting to place a huge emphasis on that in an effort to seperate people since there are so many tech types out in the world.
I can some what relate in that I have just a BS, but a Masters degree is what my company is interested in. Plus, I am classified as a test engineer, but would really like to program. I know it is hard, but even one course a semester would look great on a resume. It would tell your HR and higher ups that you are making an effort for a formal education. Heck, just taking two courses last year got me a pay raise.
This is the direction I am taking and I don't regret it. I am moderately happy in what I am doing, and have found persistantly bugging the higher ups for more programming to do doesn't hurt either. One final piece of advice I could offer is don't ignore the power of the web. Take on a moderately difficult task (in my case, creating interactive web sites for my boss and my old school) and then gloat about it as much as you can on a webpage along with a copy of your resume. This can get someone's attention as well!
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
I was doing tech support and some sysadmin for a project, and had been the sysadmin/graphic designer/jack-of-all-trades at a small company before that.
I taught myself Perl (sounds like you've already gotten this far), and picked an application that needed to be rewritten from scratch. In my case, it was the Campus Map at the university where I work. I went to the people who were in charge of developing it (who didn't really have the time to do it right, and it wasn't a high priority for them at all), and volunteered to do it.
Then I did a really good job. I did the project as if it was my real job -- meeting with the people involved with the site and related stuff on campus to get all the input I needed to have the app meet everyone's needs. I redesigned the whole section of the website. I badgered people to get access to all the content that needed to be included. I documented the API for the Perl CGIs so other people could embed the maps into their own websites.
And the next time a job came up in the department, I was at the top of the list.
-Esme
I myself spent three years doing help desk before I finally got into a position where I'm programming. The same as you, I spent some time "in the trenches" and only did software that helped me do my job, and delighted coworkers and bosses.
I finally got to a company that saw my programming desire, and took me up on it. With that in mind, there's a few things that (looking back), are very important.
1. Find a smaller company; you don't really have a chance of making the transition in a larger company, unless they're putting you directly into a programming position.
2. Make SURE you bring up your programming interests in the interview somehow, if the company doesn't have a firm programming department. A lot of companies want to do internal programming, but don't want to risk the venture of hiring a programmer ONLY to program. In my case, they set me programming part of the time... when they realized how useful it is, I was put on full programming duty.
3. Make sure you find a company that maintains an interest in programming. Some companies don't want to have anything to do with it, some want a lot of internal programming done. The key thing is to show them how valuable a programmer can be.
I find that most network solution companies maintain at least a passing interest in keeping a programmer type on staff. The company I work for decided to do their own office management system, and that's where I fit in the picture. Some other useful things to know is that some companies, in order to become partners, REQUIRE office management software in order to be listed as a partner. I had the initial challenge of justifying my work, but now that we have instant project analysis and whatnot, they are more than convinced.
almost. My family never had much money and still doesn't. My father is permenantly disabled and my mother is a nurse (RN). Here's my story:
When I was going through high school, I got a job a tech shop repairing and troubleshooting PCs (making $5.50/hr) in a farm town of ~1000 people. I got A+ certified (which is basically worthless to me now) because the other A+ certified guys made $30K / year which I though was a LOT of money. During those high school days I took a few programming classes (Qbasic, Pascal, then C/C++ in that order). I did that tech shop gig for 6 months and left to work at the local ISP for tech support (making $7/hr). There I was introduced to PHP. I worked the graveyard shift there for 6 months and drove 2 hours to work and 2 hours back and gasoline was eating up the money quick. The drive was a huge sacrafice on my part. Every night when I got to work, I spent the 8 hours there reading and learning everything I could relating to programming just becuase it was interesting. I picked up PHP quickly because it's so similar to C/C++. I rewrote the tech support website in PHP with a MySQL backend on Linux while I was answering the phones. I ftp'd everything and had no clue I was working on linux. I didn't know what linux was back then anyway. I left there after 6 months to go to my first real programming position. This is the way I got in:
1. I rewrote the tech support site in PHP, therefore I had sample code and proof I understand basic programming concepts. Code is basically a must have for any development postition (in my experience, YMMV).
2. The company I went to was small 50 people and they were growing. They were interested in me because I was young (17 y/o) and extremely cheap according to the other programmers. I started off at $27,000 / year with benefits while the others were $50k to $75K. This was good for them because they could POSSIblY get a good developer for pennies on the dollar. It's a low risk / high gain opportunity for the company.
3. I was local and didn't require any relocation (I still made the 4 hour a day drive since I couldn't afford to move).
4. I could start immediately without giving 2 weeks.
5. I had a personality as did the company.
I left from there after 6 months to go to my next job making $50,000 year because I had _real_world_ experience. All that happened less than 5 years ago. I have yet to go to college or even take the SATs. The rest is history.
Currently, I am making much more. I have been living in another state ever since I started making $50K / year at the age of 18. You are still relativly young. Almost all of the developers I have had the pleasure of meeting are between 23 and 35.
This is my story. YMMV. A few things you might want to know. The raises you get are bullshit. The only way (IMHO) to get an increase in a pay is to switch jobs. Hope this helps.
This is the Internet. You can say "fuck" here. - AC
I don't know about Conn., but in my state, there is a dearth of skilled computer people working for State Government. I think this could have something to do with lower pay in government than in the private sector.
I was a Mechanical Engineer with a 4-year degree, but I wanted to move into programming. A state agency interviewed me, saw I had passion for programming, and took a chance on me. It has worked out well for them and for me.
Most reasonable people would not say it's impossible to do this. The problem is that most self-taught people do have gaps in their education, if only because we tend to ignore the things we have no interest in AND think we don't need to know. Right out of college (EE degree) I worked with a really smart guy who was a MechE and had a few years digital design experience. As different as our experience base was, I could easily see the mistakes he was making because he had never had the basic circuit theory I did, and he often made things more complex and bug-prone than necessary. I saw the same things in my code when I began to work on my MSSE (Software Engr). Although I was self-taught in programming (except for one structured programming class in FORTRAN in college) and used to read lots of books on programming and s/w development methods, my lack of knowledge on some basic CS concepts made some of my code, viewed in retrospect, look pretty amateurish.
The issue isn't that a person can't teach themselves all they need to know from books. It's that very, very few of us, without the pressure to excel on exams, etc, have the discipline to learn *everything* in those books.