How to get into IT?
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cepi69 wrote:
I have noticed that programmers with a BS diploma understand better and deeper the concepts about the how and why of software engineering.
I respectfully disagree and have, in fact, found precisely the opposite. I find that programmers with degrees in Computer Science tend to favor complex solutions over simple and see programming itself as the end-goal, not a solution for someone's problems. The very worse are those with advanced degrees, especially PhDs (every CS PhD I've worked with--no exceptions--has come up with the most complex, convoluted solutions to the most basic problems.)
cepi69 wrote:
The IT market has been corrupted and people who can write a subroutine in VB6 declare themselves to be programmers.
I agree. Unfortunately, I've seen the same with people who major in computer science and couldn't write useful code to save their lives. The competent CS graduates I know all did extensive programming outside their classes. Some had jobs in programming, others did a lot of hobby work. PS. A big reason I didn't major in CS is that at the time--early 1980s--most programs were very heavy into theory and mainframes and I wanted to write consumer applications. Still prefer that area. What startles me the most now with CS grads is how many have no idea a) how to plan and/or estimate projects, b) how to work on a team (I'm not talking the kumbaya, let's all get along crap, but how to share code, divide labor, argue, etc.) c) how to debug and d) how to write coherently (this last one is true for too many college grads from all countries.)
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
Joe Woodbury wrote:
a) how to plan and/or estimate projects,
Without a few large outside projects I don't think this is learnable in school. Normal assignments aren't really large enough to get a handle on this; and learning seems to require time at the school of hard knocks.
Joe Woodbury wrote:
, b) how to work on a team (I'm not talking the kumbaya, let's all get along crap, but how to share code, divide labor, argue, etc.)
My school offered a software engineering class; it was at the top of the anything but list, because unless you joined with several friends you trusted you'd find yourself having to do all the work of idiot/slackers in your group if you wanted to pass. The part of "but my A in it looked really good to people who were interviewing me when I graduated" (heard from several peers who did take that sort of class) never made it back to undergrad land in my school. :doh:
Joe Woodbury wrote:
c) how to debug
Won't argue here. I was taught in HS, I don't recall any teaching in college on this subject at all.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
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I would look at some non-paid tempr. positions first. It might be helpful to get a first hand-on experience on what happening in real commercial software development. Three months in such a place may open your view on what you need to strengthen or learn. After what you may put this experience into your resume and be more brave in looking for the job.
I would take the road less traveled and get a degree. You have a much better chance of getting hired for part-time or summer work while in school because you are making a commitment to the field you want to be in. When you invest your own time and money in a career it says a lot about your character and drive. I agree there are plenty of exceptional developers with no formal education but having a degree proves that you started a 3 or 4 year project and saw it through to completion. How is that for real life experience!
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Joe Woodbury wrote:
a) how to plan and/or estimate projects,
Without a few large outside projects I don't think this is learnable in school. Normal assignments aren't really large enough to get a handle on this; and learning seems to require time at the school of hard knocks.
Joe Woodbury wrote:
, b) how to work on a team (I'm not talking the kumbaya, let's all get along crap, but how to share code, divide labor, argue, etc.)
My school offered a software engineering class; it was at the top of the anything but list, because unless you joined with several friends you trusted you'd find yourself having to do all the work of idiot/slackers in your group if you wanted to pass. The part of "but my A in it looked really good to people who were interviewing me when I graduated" (heard from several peers who did take that sort of class) never made it back to undergrad land in my school. :doh:
Joe Woodbury wrote:
c) how to debug
Won't argue here. I was taught in HS, I don't recall any teaching in college on this subject at all.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains. -- Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
dan neely wrote:
Without a few large outside projects I don't think this is learnable in school.
If colleges and universities weren't so locked into tradition, this would be possible. I know, because I got my film degree from a college that did it--Columbia College, Hollywood (sounds cheesy, but it was a very good college at the time; in the late 90s it sucked, don't know about now.) The way it worked was 1) it was a "two year" program (actually six semesters in 21 months) 2) it did only film classes--you had to have an associates degree or equivalent to be accepted 3) all juniors had to work on senior projects in a secondary capacity (gaffer, grip, etc.) 4) Each semester in your senior year a full class was devoted to a project. Each student was required to fill a major position in that project: director, producer, editor or director of photography/camera operator. (The teacher gave some leeway for people wanting to specialize or if projects went south, which at least one did every semester.) One flaw in my film program, which even the dean once told me was a mistake, was giving directors too much latitude in picking the teams. Problem is that the team leads tended to be the rich kids [since they could afford going over-budget] and they tended to pick people who would make their project easy, not the best. Neumont University has done something similar with CS; they bring in businesses and have groups work on a project. The problem is that as you pointed out, you often end up with groups where one or two people do the work and the rest are slackers (either out of laziness or because they are incompetent.) The point is that I think most colleges and universities have completely lost sight of their true mission and have become absurdly tradition bound. They have become employment factories for the unemployable more than a way for people to truly expand their knowledge and abilities.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. - P.J. O'Rourke
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I know it's a strange topic title, but I couldn't think of anything else. Basically, I've got just under a year left at my sixth form. Maybe if the job market's still bad I'll go into a full-time college course at some form of "IT Academy", but that'd be a last resort. What I'm interested in is getting a job as a developer. But the problem is that I don't really want to get into debt going to university until I have an income to offset the repayments by enough for me to pay bills by Unfortunately all of the jobs I've seen are for people with degrees in Computer Science. And as I said, I don't want to get into debt until I have a job. So it would appear that I'm caught in some form of loop. I've got quite a few years of amateur experience in a few languages, but no commercial experience, so I can't market myself based off that; it isn't quantifiable. There doesn't really seem to be any way out of that I'm fairly aware that my CV wouldn't look good at that point - A levels, no degree, no commercial experience. Is there any way to in effect mitigate this, to make myself appear more employable?
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow
Get into an IT department of a large company in any capacity – some or the best titles are assistant or a secretary reporting to a person who manages the IT department or at list have a capacity to assign duties. Do your job well, complete all the tasks before the deadlines, and report to your supervisor as soon as you completed the task. Volunteer your services for any tasks that others within your department don’t want to do or cannot do due to whatever reason. Doing these steps will allow you to achieve the following: 1. Open doors into the field/profession you want to be in; 2. Give you exposure, hands-on training and experience while YOU are being paid; Then start doing the following steps: 1. Buy trying to complete all your tasks before assigned deadlines make your manager scramble to give you more duties and increasingly complex tasks; 2. Open eyes of your manager that you could be used to unload duties (actual IT-related tasks) that others can’t or don’t want to do; 3. This, in turn, gives you even greater exposure to even more technical/complex IT-related tasks and more IT-related hands-on training. 4. Start asking to be sent to courses you’ve picked. Start getting certifications on any subject you’ve mastered (MS Office, VB, etc.) 5. As for adjustment of your status to better reflect the duties you are now doing and to allow your manager to unload even higher-level tasks on you. 6. Repeat steps 1 through 5 each time increasing your goals. I am an immigrant from Russia. In Russia I went through 4 years of prestigious University (economic degree) but did not complete the actual Bachelors degree as my immigration process had to be completed before my graduation. I came to the US when I was around 21. When in US, just like you, I did not feel like going through another 4-6 years of schooling with no guarantee of adequate income afterwards to compensate me for the time and money spent during the college years. I used the above technique to first learn English (I spent 1 year working in a restaurant and using this job to talk to English-speakers – this was a minimum wage job). Then, I received my Administrative and Accounting credentials as follows: a. got a job as a junior secretary to a General Manager in one of the largest family of car dealerships in California with a salary of 24k a year; b. within a year I became his Administrative Assistant with 30k a year and access to hight-level duties; c. On my 3rd year I started programming some VB routines in MS Office (custom programs in MS Acces
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I know it's a strange topic title, but I couldn't think of anything else. Basically, I've got just under a year left at my sixth form. Maybe if the job market's still bad I'll go into a full-time college course at some form of "IT Academy", but that'd be a last resort. What I'm interested in is getting a job as a developer. But the problem is that I don't really want to get into debt going to university until I have an income to offset the repayments by enough for me to pay bills by Unfortunately all of the jobs I've seen are for people with degrees in Computer Science. And as I said, I don't want to get into debt until I have a job. So it would appear that I'm caught in some form of loop. I've got quite a few years of amateur experience in a few languages, but no commercial experience, so I can't market myself based off that; it isn't quantifiable. There doesn't really seem to be any way out of that I'm fairly aware that my CV wouldn't look good at that point - A levels, no degree, no commercial experience. Is there any way to in effect mitigate this, to make myself appear more employable?
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow
I'd recommend you do some freelance. It will both build up your experience and resumé. When I started developing I was 15 years old, and with 16 I developed a small application to control sales and the warehouse of my uncle's ink store. It gave me little money return, but was worth the experience. Find yourself a little shop in the neighborhood that needs some sort of automation on anything (barcode, etc) and try selling your job. If you start small, you can build up your freelance status to start bigger things. After you build up your experience a little, you can add that to your resumé and then start looking for a job on corporations. You could also add that you are self taught. When I got my first job I wasn't even in the university yet. But I got it, in a factory. Started doing big projects there and building up even more experience and since then I haven't stopped and have been growing since. Regards, Fábio
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Computafreak wrote:
I've heard that the Microsoft qualifications are only just worth the paper they're printed on
To a large extent I'd agree with that as what the company needs is experience rather than paper but you also have to remember that you need to get past two categories of people to get a job. 1. Recruitment agencies/ HR departments who don't understand IT and don't really know what they're looking for so just look for something like an MS certificate on a CV because its an easy thing to filter by 2. The actualy developers/ IT managers who think the MS Cert is a good start but aren't that bothered and only care if you can actually do the job Unfortunately you have to make it past the first set before you get to talk to the second. I've spoken to a lot of recruiters (got made redundant last year) that had been given a list of things the person is supposed to know but have no understanding what any of them meant
KungFuCoder wrote:
Recruitment agencies/ HR departments
When I entered software development from another industry I found that the best approach was to try and seek out the actual technical department in companies (basically I did a lot of running around handing out CVs at reception). Recruitment agencies were a complete waste of time. Typically I would be told to come back when I've got some commercial experience. I was able to get a few interviews but none were successful. In the end I landed a tech support role that could leverage my engineering background. In that tech support role I was able to do some programming and so could legitimately say I had commercial experience. Then that made it easier to land my first proper development job.
Kevin
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I agree. Help desk and tech support positions can be a good way to get your foot in the door in order to prove yourself and gain valuable experience. I started out in support, answering calls for the world most popular word processor for an outsource support firm. Not a lot of fun but it got me enough experience out of the gate to move to bigger and better things. Many support roles require nothing more than an A+ Certification as a starting qualifier.
jeffwask wrote:
I started out in support
I did too. Seems to be a common way of getting into development.
Kevin
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I know it's a strange topic title, but I couldn't think of anything else. Basically, I've got just under a year left at my sixth form. Maybe if the job market's still bad I'll go into a full-time college course at some form of "IT Academy", but that'd be a last resort. What I'm interested in is getting a job as a developer. But the problem is that I don't really want to get into debt going to university until I have an income to offset the repayments by enough for me to pay bills by Unfortunately all of the jobs I've seen are for people with degrees in Computer Science. And as I said, I don't want to get into debt until I have a job. So it would appear that I'm caught in some form of loop. I've got quite a few years of amateur experience in a few languages, but no commercial experience, so I can't market myself based off that; it isn't quantifiable. There doesn't really seem to be any way out of that I'm fairly aware that my CV wouldn't look good at that point - A levels, no degree, no commercial experience. Is there any way to in effect mitigate this, to make myself appear more employable?
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow
I did a degree (in the UK) and thought that most of it was a waste of time. Before my degree I did quite a bit of programming (at home and for my A-levels), but I had already gone further than the most of the programming modules went. The first year was like A-levels and it was quite interesting even though I had done most of it. I found the last two years very boring though. I think it is much better to learn from the books because it is not as boring and goes into a bit more detail than the lecturers do. I do wonder whether other universities are better, although my university is supposed to be very good. A lot of the people I did the course with also seemed to be quite incompetent when it came to coding too. During my first year of work, I probably learned more than I did during my three years at university. It really amazes me when I see job adverts that say 'must have a good degree ie. 2:1 or higher'. Anyway, if I had my time again then I wouldn't have gone to university, but on the other hand, if I didn't go to university I would have never known what it was like.
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I know it's a strange topic title, but I couldn't think of anything else. Basically, I've got just under a year left at my sixth form. Maybe if the job market's still bad I'll go into a full-time college course at some form of "IT Academy", but that'd be a last resort. What I'm interested in is getting a job as a developer. But the problem is that I don't really want to get into debt going to university until I have an income to offset the repayments by enough for me to pay bills by Unfortunately all of the jobs I've seen are for people with degrees in Computer Science. And as I said, I don't want to get into debt until I have a job. So it would appear that I'm caught in some form of loop. I've got quite a few years of amateur experience in a few languages, but no commercial experience, so I can't market myself based off that; it isn't quantifiable. There doesn't really seem to be any way out of that I'm fairly aware that my CV wouldn't look good at that point - A levels, no degree, no commercial experience. Is there any way to in effect mitigate this, to make myself appear more employable?
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow
Gidday, I have recently started working as a junior developer... Basically it’s a really hard road. I am have come from a very different background to you, having worked in the franchise industry (at the master franchise level)for 10 years, so my business skills are top notch - something that a lot of jobs I saw advertised would like in candidates. Two years ago I started training at an "IT Academy" in Auckland. The training was very specific and geared towards C# development using the Microsoft curriculum. At the end of my 'diploma' I sat and passed the SQL server 2005 exam, gaining my MCP certification. I do not believe that certifications are useless as has been said; they WILL get you passed the HR department. You may need to in fact start working for FREE... and even that offer might not get you a job. After having been made redundant a month ago I have just landed a 1 month contract (with a view to permanent). Was there any one thing that I think landed me the job? Yes... commercial experience... I knew what "coding standards" are, I knew what 'source control" was and I could show some of my code. So where to from here for you... learn how to code, find a coding standard on the net and adopt it as your own. And get out there and start doing websites for people, for Free! (They pay hosting etc...) And when you go for an interview, you can show some of your work. Find out about source control, SVN is free (and widely adopted). Good Luck
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I know it's a strange topic title, but I couldn't think of anything else. Basically, I've got just under a year left at my sixth form. Maybe if the job market's still bad I'll go into a full-time college course at some form of "IT Academy", but that'd be a last resort. What I'm interested in is getting a job as a developer. But the problem is that I don't really want to get into debt going to university until I have an income to offset the repayments by enough for me to pay bills by Unfortunately all of the jobs I've seen are for people with degrees in Computer Science. And as I said, I don't want to get into debt until I have a job. So it would appear that I'm caught in some form of loop. I've got quite a few years of amateur experience in a few languages, but no commercial experience, so I can't market myself based off that; it isn't quantifiable. There doesn't really seem to be any way out of that I'm fairly aware that my CV wouldn't look good at that point - A levels, no degree, no commercial experience. Is there any way to in effect mitigate this, to make myself appear more employable?
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow
Put yourself together a portfolio of stuff you've built. Employers usually hire based on experience. So if you can show that you've built stuff that is well thought out and error free they may just hire you over someone with academic qualifications. Also if haven't already, put yourself together a website and get your portfolio on there and a contact form (you could do this in a couple of evenings). If you base it on a framework like "Drupal" it'll make management of the site easy too. Also, if you're any good at coding try to answer newbies problems when you can - you'll help others out, you can add it to your CV and you'll learn as you do. As for getting a job, I advise taking the first one you get offered in IT (once you have that foot in the door, then you can move around and get the job you really want). I admit, I went to university and now have a big debt to pay back. but any qualifications you can get in IT are worth doing (just so that you can add them to your CV).