If you've moved to a career in programming from a systems or network administration background how did you pull it off?
Did you start over from scratch with an entry level position or take on programming responsibilities while still doing admin work?
I think this may have been mentioned on the podcast. Essentially, if you really are to become a programmer, you should already be doing it as much as possible. In your case, study and work on an OS project in your free time, or use programming as much as you can in your work environment. I've never seen an IT guy jump Dev side directly, but you may be able to use your company clout to skip an entry-level position, if you feel qualified and it's possible.
This is when teaching yourself comes in to play. I would try to stay in the role that I am most suited for while I train myself to be a better programmer. Locate a good Data Structure and Algorithms book and pick a language to learn, there is a long list to choose from, but I would pick one that has common traits with others(C#,Java,VB.net,etc..) and that is most popular with peers. Download a free editor and Spend free time to actually do some programming,because the more you program the better you get.
While I'd never official been a programmer, I had written much code including stuff published on cover discs. I wrote tools to help me with my role and used those as examples when I subsequently applied for a developer role.
Take a book and start reading and coding. That is what I did 20 years ago and still do. If you are finished with a book start reading the next book. But today you have internet all full with tutorials, videos and other learning stuff for free. You also have magazines about coding and software design so there is plenty of stuff to learn for you.
If you can seek other developers. Code with other people and learn from other people as much as possible. It's a lot of work but every piece of information may be important. As a developer you never stop learning so I guess there is no point where you can say "I am a developer now."
I started as a Network Admin in the early 90's. The way I transitioned into programming was to start creating applications that made my job a lot easier.
For example, there was a lot of setup involved in creating a new user. From creating the account, to assigning the appropriate group permissions, to creating the home directories, etc. We had some scripts we ran to handle most of this; so I coded them into a regular windows application and cut down our user provisioning time from an hour to 5 minutes.
Once that happened I had a bit more free time to look in other areas of the company that needed help. This lead to building several other smaller applications. Because we had weekly staff meetings with the IT director, I was able to promote my programming skills and eventually get moved into regular development.
Incidentally, we have a network guy here that has been instrumental in resolving web application issues. He has expressed interest to our IT director about moving into development and has started coding some site management tools. I'm sure he will be a regular developer sometime this year.
Basically you just need to start doing the job. It's much easier to make the move within the same company than it is to just go out and get a developer job with no prior experience.
Personally I developed internal support tools for the existing systems on evenings or outside of normal administration duties to decrease friction in company routines like the sales and helpdesk process. Things like a basic but specific-to-our-needs ticket tracker, intranet portal tightly integrated with Active Directory showing off personnel records from it as well and some web systems supporting sales and finance by pulling data from the main systems and presenting this in a cleaner way to the relevant department.
Enrich this stuff with your administrative knowledge by integrating fully with directory services, enforcing single-sign-on and some communicative bonuses like commenting facilities for everything with AD pulled photos, names and employee profiles...
...by doing this and having these "products" to show off, I apparently had a good enough portfolio for a .NET developer position under the agreement that I was a junior, but highly likely to "get things done" as shown by past work. I'm grateful for this chance and am currently 1,5 year later learning lots about developing every day while producing some useful stuff.
I was a system admin in a small company for couple years , in the mean time I found being a dev seems more interesting cause I was really tired of on call 24/7. So I started to write.net program for the office to improve their efficiency and to sharpen my developing skills. That was a small company , basically I can do whatever I like and boss would approve it. One year later , .net developer job market was so hot so I jump in and became a full time dev. That was year 2007 , whoever knows .net can get a job.Things are different now.