Ask HN: Transition from Operations to Development Experiences?

The last few years I have been getting the bug to transition from operations in to development. The main drivers being that I miss writing code, looking for a new challenge, reduce stress(??)/off-hours work, adding flexibility to my job prospects in case I would like to move. I’ve been in the industry for about 17 years, with most of that experience in the enterprise content management specialization. While primarily architecting and building/supporting ECM infrastructure, I’ve written code whenever I have the opportunity—things such as lower level system monitors and performance modules.

Given that it is specialized/niche field, the compensation is pretty good, but I’m at the point in my career, where it might be time to try something new, otherwise I’ll be doing this for the next 20 years. I have a pretty good knowledge of backend, and plenty of side projects I’ve coded, but don’t have experience as a developer in an enterprise environment, so it would be essentially starting over.

I’m curious if there are others on HN who have made the transition from Ops -> Development.

How did the transition go? What did/didn’t work well?

Any thoughts are much appreciated.