Why is that? As a hiring manager I would certainly take that kind of experience into account along with intangibles such as how well do you work in a team and how much of my time do I need to spend keeping you productive.

I have mixed feelings about that. While working on open source projects is a good way to learn on your own it does not necessarily translate to "experience" in the context of a job interview.

Have a heart to heart sit down with your manager and let them know what your goals are. Before you do that make sure you know specifically what your goals are and what steps you feel you need to take to get there. If you want to be a full fledged programmer then tell your manager that and have them help you towards that goal.

The first question that comes to mind when I read your post is "why are they brining in outside talent to solve their programming needs?" There may be a lot of answers to that question amongst which may be a perception on your manager's part that you already have a full plate with your duties on the infrastructure team (as well as your co-workers) and therefore they need the extra help to fill in the gaps. As someone who has managed I've been there and done that. As someone who has (is) been (now) part of an infrastructure team I have gone through the frustration of wanting to work on a really neat project but have ended up watching a consultant do the work instead.

It is a manager's job (right or wrong) to manage resources within their team to get all the work done.

Hate to say it, but I've been here too, sometimes the only way to get into a position you want to be in is to change jobs. In 1984 I had to do just that to move from being a field service rep to get into my "first love" which was programmming. Ended up a year later being 50% programmer/50% Unix Admin and leter on 100% Unix Admin.

Most important thing I can tell you is get your manager to work with you.

Peter L. Berghold -- Unix Professional
Peter at Berghold dot Net
   Dog trainer, dog agility exhibitor, brewer of fine Belgian style ales. Happiness is a warm, tired, contented dog curled up at your side and a good Belgian ale in your chalice.

In reply to Re: Where does one get experience? by blue_cowdawg
in thread Where does one get experience? by UberGeek27

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.