What is on Your Mind?

Hi Guys, I am into unix administration past few years, i am interested in development, Purely from the Job Market View, should i shift from administration and move to development, will it reduce the options i have (i mean not many companies are into development)

Suggestions/Opinions ???

I don't think learning more about UNIX will reduce your options -- the two aren't mutually exclusive.

moving to something within same industry may open new opportunities in the long term. But it could mean starting all over ... low pay etc but having the interest can make a difference.

A friend from the old field service team switched to SAP development back in 2000, he jumped at the chance to join an internet start-up back in those crazy times and started all over again but when the dot.com bubble burst he struggled during the fallout years but time has proven that he made the right move. Today he hires himself out as a SAP consultant earning serious money.

It almost always beneficial to have a variety of skill sets. In your case, the job market seems to be the criterion, rather than the long term career choice you may have set out for yourself. So it is important to realise that you may have to qualify for programmers' opportunities and the learning that comes with it. Wage-wise there should not be much difference.

It purely based on your interests and the opportunities you get.

I started my IT career as a Software Tester (having no knowledge of UNIX) .
During the time I learned some basic shell scripting and After 2 years, I got opportunity to switch into Development.
During development, I sharpen my Unix Skill and learned Perl.
I also got chance to learn and work for many other related skills (or I can say I choose to learn). because, when you are a developer, you are free to choose among several options to develop something and you can not learn faster until you get an assignment/task. So that is the most important.

Today, I know Unix Scripting, Perl, HTML, PHP and couple of other similar tools. However not expert, but I can comfortably work on these skills.

As far as your point to choose between Unix administration and development, There is not much difference. It is mainly what else you want to learn.
I do lot of admin work during the development. for example, I don't want to go to admins if I need to install some Perl modules, configuring apache for my requirement, updating various configuration files etc. All the developers at least, know some basic administration tasks.