The Next Step
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I'll try to keep this short and sweet as possible but I could easily make this a novel I am sure. I have been working as a project coordinator for the past few years in the construction industry travelling around Canada for large projects. While my primary task has been in tracking quantities and reporting on productivity and progress, I have been able to use my time there to build some tools in Microsoft Excel using VBA. This made me develop an ever growing passion for scripting and developing. In my spare time I began building scripts in Ruby and even dipped my toe in Visual C#. Slowly but surely the passion became obsession and now I find myself unfulfilled by my current career direction. I don't want to spend the rest of my life travelling for work, tracking quantities and only getting the rare opportunity to build a software tool or script. I want every work day to revolve around me solving computer system issues and building software tools. The main catch is while I have spent the last 3 years reading technical manuals, developing test systems, and experimenting night and day I don't have any actual accreditation in software development or even system administration. I realize I am going to be competing with decorated college graduates and professionals with decades of experience in the field. I don't even know how I would compare to fresh college grad in terms of my proficiency. This is why I want to take the plunge and earn some accreditation and fill any holes I may have created by being almost exclusively self-taught. Basically I see two possible routes as follows; A professional certification - eg. Cisco Certified Administrator, Red Hat Certified Engineer, or Microsoft Server Administrator etc. A college degree - eg. Software Engineering, Server/Database/System Administrator I am pretty stuck on how best to go about this and ensure that both the program will fill in any knowledge gaps I may have and also give some weight to my resume and ensure I will be a desirable prospect. I like the idea that I could easily cram hard and get 2 or 3 professional certificates within a few months on my own schedule, but if they don't carry much weight in the industry than I don't want to waste my time either. I like the idea of taking a full program in a respectable institution for the idea that it will really fill in my weaknesses and give me the best odds for finding long term employment but I don't know if I am aggrandizing these types of institutions and the weight they carry. I want to find someth
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I'll try to keep this short and sweet as possible but I could easily make this a novel I am sure. I have been working as a project coordinator for the past few years in the construction industry travelling around Canada for large projects. While my primary task has been in tracking quantities and reporting on productivity and progress, I have been able to use my time there to build some tools in Microsoft Excel using VBA. This made me develop an ever growing passion for scripting and developing. In my spare time I began building scripts in Ruby and even dipped my toe in Visual C#. Slowly but surely the passion became obsession and now I find myself unfulfilled by my current career direction. I don't want to spend the rest of my life travelling for work, tracking quantities and only getting the rare opportunity to build a software tool or script. I want every work day to revolve around me solving computer system issues and building software tools. The main catch is while I have spent the last 3 years reading technical manuals, developing test systems, and experimenting night and day I don't have any actual accreditation in software development or even system administration. I realize I am going to be competing with decorated college graduates and professionals with decades of experience in the field. I don't even know how I would compare to fresh college grad in terms of my proficiency. This is why I want to take the plunge and earn some accreditation and fill any holes I may have created by being almost exclusively self-taught. Basically I see two possible routes as follows; A professional certification - eg. Cisco Certified Administrator, Red Hat Certified Engineer, or Microsoft Server Administrator etc. A college degree - eg. Software Engineering, Server/Database/System Administrator I am pretty stuck on how best to go about this and ensure that both the program will fill in any knowledge gaps I may have and also give some weight to my resume and ensure I will be a desirable prospect. I like the idea that I could easily cram hard and get 2 or 3 professional certificates within a few months on my own schedule, but if they don't carry much weight in the industry than I don't want to waste my time either. I like the idea of taking a full program in a respectable institution for the idea that it will really fill in my weaknesses and give me the best odds for finding long term employment but I don't know if I am aggrandizing these types of institutions and the weight they carry. I want to find someth
I traded my hobby for programming for a career in programming in 1989 by applying to a "head hunter" service and then proving my talent on the job. And while I don't dismiss a degree in computer science I don't think it is necessary to become a professional programmer. As a hiring manager for a global technology company I look for transferable skills: the understanding of how to think conceptually, collaborate and overcome boundaries; build clean systems that last and are readable and maintainable. If you can demonstrate to me the basics understanding of being a professional developer rather than someone who has learned to write code, I would consider your application over someone with a 4 year degree who can't build a clean, sustainable legacy code base. Just my 2 cents.