I just got promoted...but I still want to be a web developer

This week I was informed at my day job that I was promoted. This was some some pretty surprising news to hear. For those who have not read any previous post, I currently work in Sales/Product Marketing and sell data center equipment. I am coming up on the completion of 4 years at this company, but this was not my first choice in careers. I currently hold a B.S. in finance and dream of a career as a Financial Advisor. I unfortunately graduated at the most inopportune time in 2008 while no firms were taking on new advisors or if they were not looking for average students in Tampa.

To speed this up, I worked really hard the last 4 years to obtain a sales job without any sales experience. I always found it interesting how most entry level jobs require significant experience. This is something I find very similar with Web Developing and chronicled in Joshua Kemp's book while he interviewed. My original goal was to get enough "sales" experience to be able to walk in a Financial Firm as a trainee. Most banks or firms now require the experience despite the fact that most have intensive 6-12 months training programs. After applying to multiple firms I became disheartened and gave up on that dream 2 months ago with I discovered a new desire to learn how to program.

What I did to get promoted:
My current role has the benefit of being a semi-technical role where I am technical sales questions. Knowing this I pursued some non-required sales certifications. Even though I didn't need to do that it showed that I had the ability to take initiative. I also did things that were outside the box to recruit new partners, by using Google Alerts on when new data center projects were being announce and followed up customers in the area (full disclosure: This method has not successfully recruit any customers but it has open great discussions).

So what about my developing journey?:
I worked pretty hard climbing through ranks at my current employer but desire to learn to program is still very much there. My promotion will not hinder my learning and will actually help to fund it.

My concern initially was what to do in 3 months once Bloc is complete:

The plan is to immediately begin applying for my future position as a Jr. Developer. I will also hopefully finish the work on my capstone project to make that into a viable business. To further my portfolio I will continue to push out projects from tutorials and build my github repo.

Ideally one can be expected to be promoted in 2-5 years as a entry level sales professional within my current employer. I did it in 18 months with no prior sales experience. My hope is go into web developing the same way with only 3-6 months of experience. I sold myself pretty hard to my management to get a promotion and hope to sell myself pretty hard in the web developing field.

I might of been promoted today but my loyalty lies with learning to program. That is a career I can continue to grow in and not worry of reaching a plateau for quite some time. Also the icing on all of this is that a position as a PHP developer starts 20k higher than my promoted salary. I have no desire to learn PHP at this point but the posting encourages me to continue to push towards the career as a Ruby Developer.

I appreciate you reading this and I look forward to the post where I announce my career change.

If you haven't already done it. Follow me on Twitter to get updates on the rest of my journey.

Never stop learning