IT - from testing to development

[MinuteMan]

Hi PH

Wouldn't mind getting some advice as I currently feel like I'm stuck in a rut.

Background: Studied a 60:40 Computer Science/Business course at university, came out with a 1st, and my strongest modules were in object-oriented programming/software engineering (what I enjoyed the most). Did an internship at a management consultancy and accepted their graduate offer.

Been with this company ever since. I joined as a Java developer but have only been in functional testing roles for the past 5.5 years. I went through some mental health and substance addiction issues (unrelated to work) so always took the path of least resistance. Thankfully these issues are behind me, and I can focus on my career now. I've decided I no longer want to stay in testing as I don't enjoy it any more.

Understandably my university degree isn't relevant any more as it was so long ago. I have forgotten most of my programming skills so in my spare time I'm currently taking some online core Java courses which I'm really enjoying, and plan on supplementing this with additional training.

I plan on working on a few personal projects after I feel that I'm competent enough, and uploading them to GitHub as a 'CV' so to speak, as well as contributing to open source projects if I can.

From those of you in the know, how hard would it be for me to take even a junior developer role after the above. Any advice? How can I make myself more appealing as a candidate than a recent graduate, who has probably worked on the latest tech and who the hiring company can 'mould'?

[lyonspride]

Have you ever built a custom high end PC? or any PC?

Your post sounds like someone who did a subject they're not really interested in, if your interested you'll learn and you'll keep up with new tech.

My close friends and I are all computer guys, I went down the hardware and electronics route, they mostly when into ethical hacking roles for a very well known company, others went into IT working for local schools, we all cut our teeth spending our youth on now banned internet forums and hackers mIRC channels, between a whole pile of online PC gaming.

When you have an interest in something, you dedicate your own time to it, you learn and you learn from as many sources as possible, you can't rely on what you learn in an academic setting.

Edited by lyonspride on Friday 17th May 10:37

[eltawater]

Have you considered moving into a non-functional testing area such as performance testing?
Development is part and parcel of the role and quite often you're building entirely bespoke code to facilitate testing.

Otherwise everyone I know is moving into Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery roles with automation tools and cloud deployment.

[mholt1995]

Place I work at has a lot of involvement with these - https://makers.tech/

If you're based in London then this could be quite useful- former member of my team (Incident Management etc. work so not even remotely programming) went into this after a couple of successful interviews and 3 months after is now working in one of our software teams and absolutely loving it.

[272BHP]

Seems like you would be a good fit for a SDET career (Software Development Engineer in Test)

Get stuck into Selenium WebDriver and REST Assured if you know Java. Testers who can write good object oriented code are in high demand.

[Flibble]

lyonspride said:

Have you ever built a custom high end PC? or any PC?

Your post sounds like someone who did a subject they're not really interested in, if your interested you'll learn and you'll keep up with new tech.

My close friends and I are all computer guys, I went down the hardware and electronics route, they mostly when into ethical hacking roles for a very well known company, others went into IT working for local schools, we all cut our teeth spending our youth on now banned internet forums and hackers mIRC channels, between a whole pile of online PC gaming.

When you have an interest in something, you dedicate your own time to it, you learn and you learn from as many sources as possible, you can't rely on what you learn in an academic setting.

Edited by lyonspride on Friday 17th May 10:37

A strange reply. Does it matter if he built a PC, given he wants to go into software dev not building PCs?

Likewise I'm not sure a misspent youth downloading hacking scripts in IRC (pedants note mIRC is a program, IRC is what you access) has any real correlation with future dev success.

[lyonspride]

Flibble said:

lyonspride said:

Have you ever built a custom high end PC? or any PC?

Your post sounds like someone who did a subject they're not really interested in, if your interested you'll learn and you'll keep up with new tech.

My close friends and I are all computer guys, I went down the hardware and electronics route, they mostly when into ethical hacking roles for a very well known company, others went into IT working for local schools, we all cut our teeth spending our youth on now banned internet forums and hackers mIRC channels, between a whole pile of online PC gaming.

When you have an interest in something, you dedicate your own time to it, you learn and you learn from as many sources as possible, you can't rely on what you learn in an academic setting.

Edited by lyonspride on Friday 17th May 10:37

A strange reply. Does it matter if he built a PC, given he wants to go into software dev not building PCs?

Likewise I'm not sure a misspent youth downloading hacking scripts in IRC (pedants note mIRC is a program, IRC is what you access) has any real correlation with future dev success.

I'm not sure what downloaded "hacking scripts" your talking about, I said nothing of the sort.

Having a genuine interest in what you do is a pretty big deal, in any profession.

We've got universities churning out burger flippers with degrees, totally clueless idiots who have zero interest in their subject. If you want to stand out, you need to live and breathe your chosen profession.

Take GCHQ for example, they're in the business of employing ex hackers, people with zero formal qualifications, because they know that a degree means nothing without the experience to back it up.

[Flibble]

So your advice to him is to start hacking and hope GCHQ pick him up? Heh, OK.

[lyonspride]

Flibble said:

So your advice to him is to start hacking and hope GCHQ pick him up? Heh, OK.

No, my advice is to do something that your passionate about and not just go chasing a career path because it might pay well, and if you can't do something your passionate about, then do something that pays the bills and leaves you plenty of spare time in which to do the things you are passionate about.

It's easy to find yourself in a job which takes over your entire life and then suddenly one day you fall out of favour and it's gone, and you realise you've spend decades making someone else rich at the cost of the things and the people you love.

[vindaloo79]

MinuteMan said:

Hi PH

Understandably my university degree isn't relevant any more as it was so long ago. I have forgotten most of my programming skills so in my spare time I'm currently taking some online core Java courses which I'm really enjoying, and plan on supplementing this with additional training.

Which Java courses are you currently taking? I am currently cross training into Java, or just the core as it seems expected most people have this under their belt nowadays, I always felt there was someone younger, faster, more experienced doing this and for less money so avoided. But as it complements the kind of skillset I'm expected to have then decided I should have the basics down and stop procrastinating.

codegym.cc has been an easy way to learn. though the thoroughness of repetition can at times slow down the process of learning.

[Flibble]

lyonspride said:

No, my advice is to do something that your passionate about and not just go chasing a career path because it might pay well, and if you can't do something your passionate about, then do something that pays the bills and leaves you plenty of spare time in which to do the things you are passionate about.

It's easy to find yourself in a job which takes over your entire life and then suddenly one day you fall out of favour and it's gone, and you realise you've spend decades making someone else rich at the cost of the things and the people you love.

That I agree with. It's usually easy to spot the folks who are just out for cash with no real enthusiasm as well as they're mediocre at best.

It's mostly the reason I'm in the sector I'm in (games) rather than something like financial programming which pays better but is less interesting.

[lyonspride]

Flibble said:

lyonspride said:

No, my advice is to do something that your passionate about and not just go chasing a career path because it might pay well, and if you can't do something your passionate about, then do something that pays the bills and leaves you plenty of spare time in which to do the things you are passionate about.

It's easy to find yourself in a job which takes over your entire life and then suddenly one day you fall out of favour and it's gone, and you realise you've spend decades making someone else rich at the cost of the things and the people you love.

That I agree with. It's usually easy to spot the folks who are just out for cash with no real enthusiasm as well as they're mediocre at best.

It's mostly the reason I'm in the sector I'm in (games) rather than something like financial programming which pays better but is less interesting.

You don't need to be good these days, you just need to BS a lot to the right people, make the right noises and you can have a 30-40 year career where you don't have to lift a finger.
People who really know their stuff, find it very difficult to spout BS.

Edited by lyonspride on Thursday 23 May 08:54

[lyonspride]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Good way to make enemies, doing people out of a job...... Great way to end up out of a job yourself, as once something like that is in place, you have no value.
Just saying.......

[essayer]

eltawater said:

Otherwise everyone I know is moving into Continuous Integration / Continuous Delivery roles with automation tools and cloud deployment.

This, absolutely. Massive area at the moment. I’d say you’re in a good position if you have both test and dev experience with a CS background.

Get looking at devops roles and see what comes up. Testing UIs, automated deployments, microservices. You can always add to your Java knowledge on the job if you need to. Good luck!

Edited by essayer on Thursday 23 May 11:40

[Flibble]

lyonspride said:

Good way to make enemies, doing people out of a job...... Great way to end up out of a job yourself, as once something like that is in place, you have no value.
Just saying.......

Throw your shoes into the computers while you're at it!

[lyonspride]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Actually it was different back then.

What i'm really talking about is when you start doing such in an office environment, everyone wants to reduced manual labour workforces, but when you try to do it in the average office, your skating on very thin ice.

As someone who worked as a manufacturing engineer, I found that employers only wanted you for as long as it took to implement changes, because deep down they just don't think that engineers are worth paying, but they'll happily keep 50 seats filled with young 20 something year old women who spend their days doing next to sweet FA.

This is the world we live in, a world where mediocre is in demand.

[essayer]

Exactly. Our QA testers used to spend ages running a manual set of tests and raising reports each time there was a failure.

Now the tests are automated, they design and write the tests instead. Duff code gets picked up immediately, not two weeks later with the next round of testing.

There appears to be no limit to the amount of tests that can get written!