There are no entry-level programming jobs. You have to lie, cheat, and steal your way into a development career. Practically what this means is getting a company to take a chance on you. This isn't too hard because the market for web development talent is really hot right now and nobody wants to pay the salaries developers are commanding at the moment.
But getting a company to take a chance on you requires that you adhere to their expectations of you R.E. salary, what you're putting on your resume, what you tell them in the interview. Once you have some professional experience under your belt, then you can start to be pickier about who you're going to work with.
I was in your exact position two years ago, down to the sysadmin and electronics military experience. First job I took was $40K. It lasted three weeks before they let me go with a letter of recommendation, which I never ended up using. Second job was with Panasonic for similar money. I hated it so I found another job after about six weeks for where I'm at now. They hired me at $60K and I made enough noise after a year that they bumped me up to $75K. I was a Test Engineer at Panasonic but represented myself as a Web Developer, as that's what I was actually doing at Panasonic when I wasn't doing testing.
I'm active in the development community and while there's a hot market for talent, there's a lot of pickiness on both sides of the table, perhaps justifiably. I would love to hire an entry-level guy to work with me, but my company doesn't seem to want someone that's actually entry-level, but rather someone who is experienced but willing to take an entry-level salary. They lowball the experienced guys and won't even make offers to the unexperienced guys. So none of my candidates have worked out so far. Companies don't want to foot the bill for teaching someone how to code, perhaps because they don't want to pay all this money just to watch them walk out the door a year later.
But getting a company to take a chance on you requires that you adhere to their expectations of you R.E. salary, what you're putting on your resume, what you tell them in the interview. Once you have some professional experience under your belt, then you can start to be pickier about who you're going to work with.
I was in your exact position two years ago, down to the sysadmin and electronics military experience. First job I took was $40K. It lasted three weeks before they let me go with a letter of recommendation, which I never ended up using. Second job was with Panasonic for similar money. I hated it so I found another job after about six weeks for where I'm at now. They hired me at $60K and I made enough noise after a year that they bumped me up to $75K. I was a Test Engineer at Panasonic but represented myself as a Web Developer, as that's what I was actually doing at Panasonic when I wasn't doing testing.
I'm active in the development community and while there's a hot market for talent, there's a lot of pickiness on both sides of the table, perhaps justifiably. I would love to hire an entry-level guy to work with me, but my company doesn't seem to want someone that's actually entry-level, but rather someone who is experienced but willing to take an entry-level salary. They lowball the experienced guys and won't even make offers to the unexperienced guys. So none of my candidates have worked out so far. Companies don't want to foot the bill for teaching someone how to code, perhaps because they don't want to pay all this money just to watch them walk out the door a year later.