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.

Comments

How about testing?

[TTop]

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.

How I did it

[esme]

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