Several times over the past few weeks I’ve had friends and blog readers question my decision to go back to a traditional ASP.NET or PHP Web programming job.\u00a0 “You ought to be in marketing,” they’ve told me.\u00a0 “I have no doubt you’re a good programmer, but your creativity, your communication, and your intuition are your strongest suits.”<\/p>\n
Know what?\u00a0 I kind of agree.\u00a0 I’d love to get into marketing, where I could really apply my creativity.\u00a0 It would be fun and I think it would be a great use of my talents, far more so than another programming job.\u00a0 Not that there isn’t any creativity in programming, but “Find a way to import 10,000,000 records from a third party data provider while optimizing for speed and maintaining 99.99% accuracy” just isn’t a problem that excites me a lot.\u00a0 However, I think my knowledge of what works on the Internet, from the lessons I’ve learned over the past 4 years as a successful blogger and the past year doing affiliate marketing websites, would be a huge plus in a marketing position.<\/p>\n
The thing is, would anyone hire me?\u00a0 I don’t have a business degree (I have an Master of Science in Computer Science), and in fact have never taken a business course in my life.\u00a0 Honestly, I’m kind of proud of that fact, as I don’t believe a business degree is necessary for success in the business world.\u00a0 However, those doing the hiring – those who have spent 4-6 years of their lives earning a business degree – may feel differently.<\/p>\n
The other problem is, if I took a marketing position, I’d likely have to take a pay cut from the money I earned in my last two full-time positions as a senior developer.\u00a0 I don’t mind a 20-30% pay cut if it’s more interesting work, and I’d still earn enough to maintain my lifestyle Downtown.\u00a0 However, an entry-level position would likely be close to a 50% pay cut, and I couldn’t maintain the life I enjoy on that amount.\u00a0 For that matter, I don’t think an entry-level position in marketing would be appropriate, anyway.\u00a0 The lessons I’ve learned and the intuition I’ve gained over the past 15 years should vault me past entry-level, I believe.<\/p>\n
Anyone out there got advice for me?\u00a0 Hit me up at paul@paulryburn.com if you do.\u00a0 I’ve announced that I’m on a hiatus from job hunting until December 1, but this is a field in which I’d be willing to come back prematurely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Several times over the past few weeks I’ve had friends and blog readers question my decision to go back to a traditional ASP.NET or PHP Web programming job.\u00a0 “You ought to be in marketing,” they’ve told me.\u00a0 “I have no doubt you’re a good programmer, but your creativity, your communication, and your intuition are your … Continue reading ““You ought to be in marketing”… Career advice sought”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2782"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2782"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2782\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}