[LRUG] Slight career shift

[Kevin Fullerton]

>
> Hi everyone.
>
> If you were were a good c++ coder [1], who's done a good dash or Ruby and
> loves it along with other high level languages, who generally like the
> science part of computer science, and thinks that maybe they'd really
> enjoy working in this Web 2.0 stuff because it sounds a lot more like
> building real applications, but hasn't really got any web experience, what
> would you do? :-)
>
> This is, I'll admit, partly a random job beg. However, it's also a request
> for advice on how to go about getting in to a company doing a role that
> you've not got a lot of formal experience of.

This is something I'm interested in as well - I've gone my entire
professional IT life (10 years now) working up from an apprentice to an
analyst/developer/project manager for a mid-sized Windows CRM application
- most of this time I've dabbled in Linux in my personal time and lately
I've been doing a lot of personal work in Ruby, Rails, Python and Django -
what I'd love to do ideally is move to working with Ruby/Rails full-time
as the agility and ease of putting a testing structure in place are things
missing from my current daytime job which I have no control over - we
re-sell and customise an off-the-shelf CRM system from the USA where we
have no access to the source of the underlying system, just the ability to
add plugins to add custom functionality to the client.  The problem I have
is that the level I've reached professionally and the experience I have
with Ruby/Rails would mean a pretty hefty pay-drop as I'd basically have
to go in at an entry level Ruby/Rails job, so for me while I dream of
doing that, it's not something I can realistically do :(

Kevin