ATTN: Computer Nerds: There are so many tech jobs in our city - I need career advice! (Austin: sales)

[Shredding_Gnar78]

First off, let me say I am an extremely creative person. I have a B.S. in Business. My problem solving skills second to none, however I am at a point in my life where I need some navigation.

I graduated and entered the job market as a sales professional. Years later I went into tech. Before the great recession peaked in Nov 2008, I was paid over 50K to edit javascript code and html and put it into an adserver. I had to know several dashboards for various media companies. The title was called 'Ad Trafficker'

Laid off in Jan. 2009. Term of employment was about 3 years.

I immediately started learning .NET and studied for a year before I got stuck. My problem was that servers need to be running MS, and deployment for the purposes of testing was difficult. I put my .NET learning on hiatus.

From there I dabbled in LAMP, python, drupal, joomla, IT, etc.


I am hoping someone can provide advice as to what is the best direction to go. I have heard from the python/ruby people that .NET is a dying technology, and the MS people will always tell you that "windows runs the world".

I feel like mobile and security are the best places to look into right now. I just need some sort of plan, so I don't have to go back to making cold calls and end up a Willy Loman

Thanks!

[hoffdano]

I will be blunt. You are a complete novice in your field of experience to date. You are competing with hoards of people who can dream in more languages than you have experience in.

That said - you asked for advice. I think mobile is exciting and lively - but people are jumping in head first because it is trendy and hot. Many of these people are already experienced in all the usual areas. Security is a strategic area that will be a big concern for a long time for businesses and enterprise computing users in general. Unless you work for a software vendor, programming is not a big area of opportunity. To be a programmer in this area, you have to know networks, operating systems, databases, etc. as much as you have to know programming. This kind of programming is serious stuff - "systems" programming and a lot of it is still C and C++.

[Shredding_Gnar78]

I sincerely appreciate your honesty. I agree with you. I'm either going to find a trade school or maybe pick up something easier like CMS and graphic design. I thought about getting IT certs, but apparently that space is, like you said, filled with hoards of ppl.

Funny.. the guy working at 711 on burnet and koenig used to be a software developer and said he suddenly realized that he was in the wrong profession. I guess he's writing a book or something.

[hoffdano]

I didn't mean to sound harsh and I hope you didn't take it that way. But you are inexperienced in a city full of very expereienced software people. There are many opportunities in Austin for these skills, and pay is better than many here claim. But for ordinary stuff, like "web programming" it is a bit of a commodity skill now.

Networks, security, databases, virtualization, etc. are great areas to get good in. The "cloud" needs all of those things.