Anyone able to offer career advice?

[elewis]

This may not be the place for this however Tom's hardware has always been a respected place for technical advice for me. I was hoping for some insight as to making a career move.

I have about 2 years experience with support/consulting with networking, Desktops, virtual environments etc. I have quite a bit of personal experience with coding in VBS, SQL, and C++. I more recently starting getting involved in some projects at work involving Microsoft SQL and integration to filemaker solutions.

I really want to make the jump into a development career however I am not sure the best move to make. I will be finishing my associates in network systems administration in November (it was the only degree offered online at the time) and am not sure if it makes more sense to continue for my bachelors in software development or get certifications and start building a portfolio instead.

The bachelors degree would require a lot of extra classes to cover pre requisites for the higher end software development classes so I'm looking at another 3 years worth of student loans if I go that route when I'm pretty confident I could run through tutorials on my own and try to attain some form of certification in the related areas. Any advice is appreciated thanks!

 

[Ralston18]

Does your employer offer any educational benefits: e.g., paying something towards further classes? Especially if course work is work related.

Is is viable to have a discussion with your supervisor about what you currently do (networking) and an eventually transition into software development? What expectations would they have?

Take a look at IT positions currently being advertised and compare the requirements to what you have and what you would like to have.

Difficult to forecast what will be needed/required 3 years down the road once you earn your bachelor's degree. Work (post associate degree) and be a part-time student if that is possible. Gives you the most flexibility with respect to learning for work, for additional certifications/degrees, and for the future.

Lots of trade-offs and hard work ahead no matter what you do these days.