[Baypiggies] Career Advice

[Nick Stinemates]

You may want to look in to a QA Engineer role. Developing tools to aid
testing is a good stepping stone for honing your understanding of delivering
quality software and coding skills.

Good luck

Nick


On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 10:07 AM, Bryce Verdier <bryceverdier at gmail.com>wrote:

>    Hello Fellow Bay Piggies,
>
> I would really appreciate the help as I have an interesting situation that
> I can't seem to figure out.
>
> My current job title is System Engineer. Although I do a fair amount of
> script writing (in python) I am performing a Systems Administrator job role.
> I took this job a little over a year ago because I had experience as such
> before I went back to school and I graduated during a pretty rough economy.
> I do not regret taking this job as I've learned some pretty cool things.
> However, I'm at the point where I realized I want my first programming job
> and I would really like it to be a python based job.
>
> Somehow my resume looks good enough for me to get the occasional
> programming interview. But this is where the problem starts. While I do
> believe that scripting has helped me keep my programming skills from going
> completely dull, I don't spend forty plus hours a week doing it. Thus when I
> do enter an interview, the interviewer is asking me questions that I haven't
> seen or even thought about since I was in school. Or asking me about the
> esoteric aspects of a language that I don't get exposure to as scripting
> doesn't required them.
>
> I realize that the economy still isn't great and that most companies aren't
> hiring junior level programmers right now, as there are enough mid-level
> programmers unemployed and willing to work for the same salary.
>
> My question for the group is, what can I do to position myself better
> towards getting a junior developer job when those start to open up again? Or
> what should I prioritize in my studying to help me cross over from sys.
> admin. to developer? Are there any jobs that you guys are aware of that a
> hybrid job between these two roles that would help facilitate the cross
> over? I am aware of the option to program for an open source project, but
> I'm not sure which one. Though I am looking. ;)
>
> Thanks in advance for your time and any thoughts you may share,
> Bryce
>
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